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Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American environmental, conservation and animal rights activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
Watson, a native of Toronto, has been an environmental activist since his teens. He joined a Sierra Club against nuclear testing in 1969 and crewed onboard the Greenpeace Too in November 1971, to oppose nuclear testing at Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. In 1972, he was a co-founder of Greenpeace. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. Greenpeace has since stated that Watson was an influential early member, but not one of the founders of Greenpeace. Watson states that Greenpeace has revised their history but Jerry Rothwells documentary How to Change the World firmly established Watson as the 8th founding member of Greenpeace, with the lifetime membership number of 007 with Robert Hunter being 000. The same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
Watson promotes aggressive non-violent intervention to defend marine life and marine eco-systems. He also promotes Biocentrism.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica. Watson has never been convicted of a criminal felony despite numerous arrests during his career.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Paris, writing books, giving lectures and coordinating marine conservation campaigns, currently focusing on opposition to illegal whaling operations and opposition to deep sea mining.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
He has created his own foundation, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, as Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the board of Sea Shepherd Global removed him. He has also left the executive office of the Australian branch.
In July 2024, Watson was detained in Nuuk in Greenland by the Danish police, citing an Interpol red notice from Japan. He was expected to stay in pre-trial detention until October 2, 2024; Watson and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to have the decision set aside. After his detention was extended several times, on December 17, 2024, the Danish government decided that Watson would not be extradited to Japan. He was released from prison and returned to France.
In 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway, and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade.
Watson has one daughter, Lilliolani (born 1980), with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah people anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris. Watson and Rusinovich have two sons, Tiger and Murtagh.
Watson ran for Parliament in Vancouver Centre twice for the Green Party. In 1995, he ran for Mayor of Vancouver for the Green Party.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, The Amchitka voyage was one campaign with two ships, the Greenpeace and the Greenpeace Too. Together it was one expedition with the Greenpeace voyage in October and relieved by the Greenpeace Too in November.
Watson was forcibly removed as head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in September 2022, after the board of directors voted him out in place of new government deals and promises of reduced conflict and a disengagement of direct obstruction to illegal fishing and whaling vessels. Many branches of Sea Shepherd worldwide followed Paul Watson and dissolved their campaigns in light of a new chapter suitably named, Captain Paul Watson Foundation. Captain Paul Watson is no longer legally allowed to be seen or photographed with the Sea Shepherd name or logo and has completely dropped all ties to the brand.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste ... No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas ... We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion ... Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach ... Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime law regulations against illegal whalers and sealers. , 1998.]]
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland.
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as peligro de naufragio ("danger of shipwreck"). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013. On August 7, 2012, Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
On July 21, 2024, Watson was arrested in Greenland—an autonomous territory of Denmark—by Danish authorities due to the red notice issued by Japan against him in 2012. His arrest was announced by Neptune's Pirates. The organization criticizes this decision, arguing that "after having been posted online for years, the notice had recently disappeared from the Interpol website, leading Paul Watson and his lawyers to believe that he was now free of his movements”. On October 2, the Nuuk court ordered Paul Watson to remain in custody until October 23, in order to ensure his presence in the context of the extradition decision by the Danish courts. Subsequently, another extension of his detention was issued by the court on October 23, stating that he would be detained until November 13, 2024. This was followed on November 13 by another extension which set the next hearing date as December 2, 2024. On December 2, it was announced that a decision on whether not Watson will be extradited to Japan will be taken by December 18, 2024.
In October 2024, while imprisoned in Greenland, Watson sent a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron requesting political asylum. While Macron has previously expressed his support for Watson and had intervened with the Danish authorities on his behalf after his arrest, there has been no public comment from Macron’s office to Watson's letter. Before his imprisonment, Watson was living in France with his wife and two young children.
In December 2024, the Ministry of Justice of Denmark denied Japan's request to extradite Watson and as a result he was released from prison. His release was confirmed by his lawyer Julie Stage, who remarked that the charges against him were "groundless".
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, paraphrasing Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the , Pete Bethune, described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying, "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "an unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating: "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the humpback whale populations in the Pacific Ocean.
The 2019 documentary film Watson, directed by Lesley Chilcott, features interviews with Watson. The film also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
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