Sea Shepherd readies for battle

BY PAM WALKER
When Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd flew into Australia to fundraise for Operation Musashi this week, he was held for questioning at the airport for nearly two hours.

This is the first time that has happened in Australia to the legendary anti-whaling campaigner whose life goal is to break the economic back of the Japanese whaling industry.

His aggressive campaign last year lost the industry $70 million and the Japanese government had to subsidise it to the tune of $50 million.

‘I want to prevent them killing whales and I haven’t seen a whale die since I left Greenpeace,’ Watson said.

‘Greenpeace wants to convince the Japanese public to withdraw support from whaling but that will not work and it would take decades even if it did. Economic pressure is the way to go. They need to make a profit and I will continue to make sure they don’t – for as long as it takes.’

That could be as little as two years from now, judging by the cutbacks in Japanese crews, but whaling could end today if governments took the necessary action to stop the killing of endangered whales in conservation zones, he said.

The election of Barack Obama might help but Watson is not holding his breath.

‘I was more hopeful about the election of the Rudd government but Peter Garrett won’t even look at me, let alone work with me. The Howard government was doing more,’ he said.

‘Garrett just announced $6 million in research to show you don’t have to kill whales to study them. But everyone already knows that.’

In March this year Captain Watson was fired on and a bullet lodged in his Kevlar vest just above his heart. No-one knows who fired the shot.

The incident occurred inside the Australian Territorial Zone during a clash between the crew of the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin and the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru when the Japanese Coast Guard began to throw flash grenades at the crew of the Steve Irwin.

Watson, who said he has been fired at since 1979, now always wears a bullet proof vest, as do members of his crew. But Australian authorities refused him permission to bring his vests into the country for his latest campaign, Operation Musashi, which starts in December.

The campaign was named after Japanese philosopher Miyamoto Musashi, a legendary samurai swordsman.

‘For years I was a student of kendo, Japanese sword fighting. Musashi advocated a twofold approach of pen and sword; that is not just to do battle but to change thinking and make your reasons clear.’

But what would Captain Watson and his ship do if they succeeded in completely ending the killing of endangered whales’

‘We’re involved in protecting everything in the sea. There’s plenty for us to do. We’re investigating the shark fin industry, seal hunts, and dolphin kills,’ he said.

‘It’s not like we’re going to run out of things to do. But I will be extremely satisfied if we can bring the whaling industry to a halt.’

Meanwhile, according to news reports on November 17, Japan’s whaling fleet appears to have departed on its annual hunt in the Southern Ocean.

Saving whales and other marine species is a very expensive enterprise. A campaign fundraiser was held on November 18 at the Rocks. To donate visit seashepherd.org