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AgelessThrival™
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Article from Issue #52 (December 7, 2022)

If the Ocean Dies, We All Die

by Captain Paul Watson

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I have followed Paul Watson throughout the years as he understands the Patriarchy's power over and controlling paradigm has brought humanity to the brink of extinction through its abuse of our ocean's and ocean life. He is the Co-Founder of Greenpeace and Founder of Sea Shepard of which both organizations turned their backs on his fierce commitment to saving the oceans. Here is what happened in his words.

Support him at: https://www.paulwatsonfoundation.org/

I’ll try to explain the recent history

Sea Shepherd had evolved from an organization centralized in the United States to a global movement in numerous countries with the ships coordinated out of the office of Sea Shepherd Global in Amsterdam.

I could not have been happier. It was a global movement that I always wished Sea Shepherd to be, and it was no longer under my sole control. It was now in the very capable hands of directors in other countries and in the hands of our captains and officers on ships working all around the planet.

In 2019, Director Leslie Chilcott released her film WATSON, the third and best documentary on my life. Leslie had directed the film Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore so I was thrilled to participate.

But not everyone was thrilled. There were some in Sea Shepherd who saw the film as counterproductive complaining that I had come off as too radical. Organizations change and as Sea Shepherd grew it had attracted development directors, administrators, merchandise directors and fund-raisers. The dark side of this is that they wanted me to be more mainstream, less confrontational and less controversial.

Because I am by nature sometimes naively trusting, I was slowly marginalized and in 2019, The Sea Shepherd USA Board asked me to voluntarily step off the Board because they said my reputation and history was an obstacle to the Board acquiring director’ insurance. I was assured that I would still be part of the decision making. Foolishly I agreed.

However, I only agreed to do this when the Board hired my friends Captain Alex Cornelissen as CEO and Captain Peter Hammarstedt as Director for campaigns.

Slowly other friends were being dismissed like Captain Oona Layolle, Captain Locky MacLean and my assistant Omar Todd.

The turning point came in early 2022 when I was told that I could not participate in a meeting because they were having a Zoom conference with U.S. government officials and I was told that my presence would not be acceptable.

In April 2022, Alex Cornelissen and Peter Hammarstedt resigned from Sea Shepherd USA citing micro-management by the Board.

In June of 2022, I was invited to a Board meeting where I was informed that Sea Shepherd would be changing direction, becoming more mainstream and working towards partnerships with governments. I was told that our priority would now be research and cooperation with governments and that my style of confrontation was no longer acceptable.

I replied that I could not support nor participate in this course change for Sea Shepherd. The Board informed me that I was an employee and I was expected to do what I was told.

In response I resigned from the organization I had founded in 1977.

Sea Shepherd US removed my name as Founder, my profile and my pictures. They simply erased me from my own organization.

I was still a director for Sea Shepherd Global. Sea Shepherd Global Director Alex Cornelissen was not a fan of the USA Board so I assumed I would continue to work with the Global Board.

What I did not know was that the U.S. Board had covertly registered trademarks all over the world for the name Sea Shepherd and the logos that I designed. I was told that I could no longer wear the logo or anything with the name Sea Shepherd on it.

Sea Shepherd US then used the trademarks to threaten Sea Shepherd Global to submit to their authority. And one of the demands was for my dismissal. So, in early September 2022, I received an email from Alex Cornelissen informing me that I was dismissed. There was no meeting, no discussion and no vote. Lamya Essemlali who supported me was also not allowed to vote.

Strangely I was not bitter. I actually felt liberated and more importantly I felt more motivated than ever. Now I was free to be who I am and always will be. I established the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and formed a coalition with Sea Shepherd France, U.K., Germany, Austria, New Zealand, and Brazil to continue the Sea Shepherd legacy.

Sea Shepherd is not an organization. It is a movement and they can try and stop an individual or take over a branch but the tree can survive with some branches still strong and healthy.

The Sea Shepherd groups I am working with are working to reform Sea Shepherd Global and we are legally challenging Sea Shepherd in the U.S.

But the work needs to continue and that is why I have established the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (www.paulwatsonfoundation.org) to continue to work with the allied Sea Shepherd groups.

We are in the process of securing two ships and I am confident that we will be able to refit the ships and have them ready for campaigns in 2023.

Many of my former crew members and supporters are continuing to work with me and many Sea Shepherd supporters are now supporting me and the Foundation.

Sea Shepherd occupied an important niche within the marine conservation movement and there continues to be a need for a confrontational and controversial approach. We will focus on a number of projects including campaigns that the current Sea Shepherd leadership have backed off from, like whaling in Iceland, Norway, Japan and Denmark, the killing of pilot whales in the Faroes, the dolphin killing in Japan and confronting the crimes of the Chinese and Spanish pelagic fishing fleets. I am also concerned about massive exploitation of krill in the Southern Ocean by Japan and Norway.

Your support over the years has been very much appreciated and I am honored to have your continued support going forward.

Leaving Greenpeace in 1977 made me stronger and departing from Sea Shepherd US will also make me stronger. They wanted to turn me into a highly paid (yet) impotent figurehead of the very organization I founded, with an agenda I opposed. They actually offered me $300K a year to simply do nothing but support a new direction and that I simply could not do.

I did not establish Sea Shepherd as a means for a comfortable retirement nor to provide jobs for people more interested in merchandising and fund raising than action.

So many people simply choose to not envision the consequences of what humanity is doing. Just this week the Guardian reported that we have lost 70% of the planet’s wildlife since 1970 and since 1950 we have lost more than 40% of the phytoplankton in the sea.

That is why I constantly repeat the fact that if the Ocean die, we all die.

I will keep you updated as we make progress with the Foundation and organizing campaigns.

For the Ocean, Diversity and the Future

Paul Watson