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Antiwhaling captain's tactics popular, but called extreme

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 1, 2007

MELBOURNE, Australia - Paul Watson flies the Jolly Roger from his ship and boasts of ramming more boats than any living seafarer, part of an antiwhaling crusade that even Greenpeace calls too radical.

Watson and his group came under withering criticism this season, summer in the Antarctic, for tactics that some say put the lives of whales above the lives of people.

A Japanese whaling ship caught fire after being chased and harassed by Watson's fleet, the ships and volunteers of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which not only rammed the whaling boats but fired smoke canisters and ropes to entangle the propellers.

Japan announced Wednesday that it was ending its whaling season early because of the fire, which killed a crew member. Although the blaze came a day after Watson's group pulled back for lack of fuel, and there's no alleged connection, Japan calls Watson a terrorist.

But the 56-year-old Canadian, who founded the society 30 years ago, dismisses the complaints.

"Call for a boycott of tuna fish these days and they call you a terrorist," he said.

Watson has spent his adult life as a conservationist, beginning with Greenpeace, which itself has a strident reputation. The turn to radicalism came, he says, when he made eye contact with a harpooned whale as it rose above his dinghy before falling back into the sea.

The society bought a ship with donated money in 1979, allowing members to disrupt seal hunting in eastern Canada. Later that year, the group rammed its ship into a whaler in a Portuguese harbor, and the pattern was set. Sea Shepherd claims responsibility for ramming six whaling ships and for playing a part in 10 others going out of the whaling business.

Watson says his whatever-it-takes tactics threaten lives no more than whaling itself. He points to the Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru, which was crippled in February for 10 days in ice-strewn Antarctic waters after the fatal fire.

"I think the Japanese are extremely reckless taking a floating factory down to a pristine and fragile ecosystem with the potential of causing a major oil and chemical spill and of course killing endangered species," Watson said.

Sea Shepherd is at an extreme fringe of a movement that has broad popular support. Most whaling opponents distance themselves from the group's tactics.

Japan has called on governments with Antarctic territory - including Australia, New Zealand and the United States - to do more to stop Sea Shepherd attacks. But exactly who has jurisdiction, what can be done under the law and how to collect evidence for prosecutions isn't clear.

[Last modified March 1, 2007, 01:14:12]