Читать книгу Captain Paul Watson Interview - Paul Watson, Michele Sciurba - Страница 14

We are curious how you have been. The last time we met was in Paris.

It was 2016 and you were living in France. We met with you and your wife Yana, who was pregnant at the time. Can you tell us how you were allowed to return to the US?

Well, I was able to return to the U.S. because Secretary of State John Kerry intervened on my behalf. In 2012, I couldn’t return because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made it quite clear that she would extradite me to Japan. So, thanks to John Kerry I was able to return.

We are amazed that Hillary Clinton made such a statement.

It’s not surprising.

You were still considered a fugitive from the law in Japan and Costa Rica. Why did it take quite a while before Costa Rica finally dropped all charges against you?

Well, they dropped the charges because they had a change of government, which goes to prove how political it was. The new judiciary was able to do that. I did receive a phone call from the new minister of the environment after the government had changed who virtually apologized for what had happened. So, that’s behind me, but Japan refuses to drop the issue. They haven’t filed for extradition in France or in the U.S., and I don’t think they really want me in Japan. They just want to keep me from traveling. We sent Interpol a statement of our position and they agreed with everything we claimed but they said: “Yeah, but it ultimately comes down to whether Japan has the power to do this.” This illustrates how a large economic superpower can use its power for political purposes.

An adult and sub-adult Minke whale are dragged aboard the Japanese whaling vessel NISSHIN MARU. The wound that is visible on the calf's side was reportedly caused by an explosive-packed harpoon. This image was taken by Australian customs agents in 2008, under a surveillance effort to collect evidence of indiscriminate harvesting, which is contrary to Japan’s claim that they are collecting the whales for the purpose of scientific research.

We worked on many cases where there were similar situations with red notices. It’s clear that Japan’s politically motivated red notices are unacceptable because they are not in line with Interpol’s own statues. Such abuse is also present in the fishing industry, when, for example, Japan falsely declares its whaling fleet to be research vessels.

It’s even more absurd when you consider that Sea Shepherd works closely with Interpol to stop poaching in African waters. So, on one side we are working with them and one the other side … (laughs) When one of the guys at Interpol had a retirement party, I called into to congratulate him, he said: “Well, this is probably the only time in history when somebody here has been congratulated by somebody on the red notice list.” That’s even more absurd when you consider what a red notice is. It is a measure reserved for serial killers, for war criminals and major drug traffickers. Nobody gets put on there for trespassing, especially conspiracy to trespass.

The Significance of “Seaspiracy”

We followed the discussion in the international media regarding the Seaspiracy documentary on Netflix. What are your thoughts on that? How was it to participate in the documentary?

We were actually co-producers on that. I think we invested 50.000 USD in that film. Lucy and Ali Tabrizi worked on it for about five years, I think. So, they put a lot of work into it. It’s hard to condense that story into 90 minutes, but I think they did the best they could. Of course, we expected the fishing industry to attack it, and they did. They attacked it before they had even seen it. I find it interesting that they say the film is full of errors and that it’s not factual, but nobody has ever pointed out what those errors are. They just keep repeating that “it has no scientific basis”. But if you look at the scientists who criticize the film, they’re all in the employ of the seafood industry. As the film says: Follow the money and that’s where you will find out who is whom. I actually have a name for those types of scientists. I call them “biostitutes”.

One criticism of the film was that one study that was cited projected that overfishing would deplete the fish supply in the oceans by 2048 was inaccurate, but as Ali Tabrizi noted, whether it’s 2048 or 2078, the question is: What is the trajectory? Are things moving in the right or wrong direction?

The Boris Worm study was accurate at the time. He updated it to project that 88% not 100% of the ocean fish would be depleted due to overfishing. But does it make a big difference whether the oceans are depleted by 2048 or 2078? I mean really.

Whaler factory ship NISSHIN MARU fires water cannons on Sea Shepherd Crew.

SHONAN MARU 2 fires water cannons on Sea Shepherd Crew.

It makes no material difference. It’s just a polemical critique of the film. For us, it is really interesting that the Covid-19 pandemic led to a sharp reduction of travel and air traffic which in Frankfurt virtually stopped so that, in an ecological sense, Frankfurt is a better place to live now than before Covid.

Well, I don’t know. The fishing industry has only declined by 10% but poaching has increased, because there has been a diminishment in enforcement because of Covid. The pandemic has caused us a few problems, but we have managed to overcome them. Our ships still go on patrols and campaigns but crews have to quarantine for two weeks prior to joining our vessels. One of our vessels, the Ocean Warrior, was stuck in Singapore for six months but is now working out of Peru. It has been inconvenient, but we were prepared for it and we will be prepared in the future because pandemics like the Covid pandemic have long been predicted. If you read Laurie Garret’s 1995 book on the coming plague, she predicted all this. For the most part, we ignored all these emerging zoonotic transmitted viruses – Hantavirus, MERS, SARS, West Nile virus. Why? Because it didn’t affect western people. Because it didn’t affect white people. Suddenly you got a global pandemic for the first time since say 1918, and people stand up and take notice, but this is just a harbinger of what is to come. Vaccinations are just band aides. They don’t solve the underlying problem. The real problem is the diminishment of ecosystems and the biodiversity of species, which causes the zoonotic transmission of viruses; and it’s only going to get worse in the future. On top of that, you have emerging pathogens from melting permafrost, and an increase in fungal infections from fungi. The future is one in which we are faced with biological problems of our own making because we have refused to live in accordance with the basic laws of ecological diversity, interdependence, and finite resources. The further we diminish the ecosystems, the more problems we are going to create.

How dangerous was the Trump administration for you or Sea Shepherd?

Well, it didn’t really affect us because we aren’t that active in the United States. Objectively the U.S. has pretty good enforcement in their own waters. The various state fishing and game organizations are pretty effective in my experience. So, we rarely get involved in U.S. issues. We did oppose plans to try to kill whales in Washington State and we still continue to try to stop that and we’ve been successful. They haven’t killed any whales for 20 years, but they’re trying to, but we’ll continue to oppose that. Mainly, our operations now are working in partnerships with countries in Africa and Latin America. So, now we have very solid partnerships with Namibia, Tanzania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gabon and Gambia. These are working really well. In Latin America, we’re partners with Peru, Columbia, Panama, and Mexico.

We have been following the cooperation of Sea Shepherd with Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe and the incredible story of Sea Shepherd chasing an illegal fishing vessel there.

It was the Thunder near São Tomé and Príncipe, which was an incredible chase.

The educational side of Sea Shepherd is to produce documentaries. Either we do that directly or we work with people who produce them. It started with Shark Water in 2007, The Cove, which came out in 2009, Chasing the Thunder and of course the Whale Wars series. There was a film about me called Watson, and now Seaspiracy. We’re finding that this works best. The challenge is how do you create a documentary without preaching to the converted, but where you are reaching people who are not aware of the problems. I think we’ve been breaking through to people in that way. Whale Wars was the first time we did that and reached a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise be aware of the extent of the problem. Seaspiracy is important not only for the message but the medium. Because it was on Netflix, it began to trend in the top 10 and was even number one in many countries. I think the secret to getting it across to people is to find the proper media. Blackfish, for instance, would not have received as much attention if CNN had not played it 30 times or more. So, that’s where we have to focus.

Brutally clubbed, skinned and murdered Seals.