I spoke to Captain Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, at the Animal Rights National Conference in 2008, the day after he delivered a rousing keynote speech at the conference banquet. Sea Shepherd is known for disrupting whaling activities by placing themselves between the whales and the harpoons, boarding whaling ships, and throwing stink bombs onto the decks of those ships.
Animal Planet has been following the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society during their anti-whaling campaigns in Antarctica, and the television series “Whale Wars” premiered in the fall of 2008. The 2008 season is now available on DVD (Buy Direct), and a new season aired summer of 2009.
How did you decide to found Sea Shepherd?
I was a co-founder of the Greenpeace Foundation back in 1969. I left Greenpeace in 1977 to found Sea Shepherd because I was tired of protesting. I didn’t want a protest organization, but rather an interventionist organization, upholding international conservation rules and regulations. I find protesting to be a very submissive sort of position. The rules of law are on our side. The treaties are on our side, so let’s get in there and enforce them, so that’s what we’ve been doing.
You mentioned in your speech last night that the pig is the biggest consumer of fish?
It’s basically the world’s largest aquatic predator. It consumes more fish than all the world’s sharks put together. The domestic housecat eats more tuna than all the world’s seals put together. We’re just pulling fish out of the ocean to convert it into fish meal for the raising of livestock, for pigs primarily. Sometimes cows, but generally, it’s the pig and the chicken who are eating most of the seafood. And also, raising fish on fish farms, it takes 70 fish caught in the ocean to raise one salmon on a farm. It’s an incredible waste of life in the oceans.
What I’m trying to do here is, there is a direct link. The environmentalists always say, “What has this got to do with us? This is animal rights.” You cannot be an environmentalist unless you are a vegan or vegetarian. It’s a total contradiction. It’s willful ignorance on their part. You know, the Sierra Club or Greenpeace dismiss veganism or vegetarianism as an animal rights thing. It’s an environmentalist thing. And in fact, it’s probably the most significant environmental problem on the planet right now.
The meat industry releases more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation industry. The transportation industry releases CO2 as a byproduct, which is a global warming gas. The meat industry not only produces CO2, but also produces methane, which is a 26 times stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Plus nitrous oxide, which is 226 times as significant.
For instance, Greenpeace had an article like, “You can save the world by singing in the shower.” Some sort of silly thing where you turn off the shower, sing, lather up, and the water you save when you turn off the shower will save the planet. And then you go and have a steak, which takes 3,000 gallons of water to produce one ounce. It’s an incredible waste, and environmentalists don’t take this into account.
Also, all the groundwater pollution in South Carolina is caused by the massive hog farms that are there. So the animal industry’s causing groundwater pollution and wastes resources, and on and on and on and on. So it’s definitely an environmental issue and environmental organizations don’t want to confront this, in the same way that Al Gore doesn’t want to confront this. Because they don’t want to upset people.
Watson talks about "biostitutes" and the TV series "Whale Wars" on page 2.
