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♪ ♪
WATSON (voice-over): Whales fascinate humans
because of their size...
...their social complexity...
...their intelligence.
We know that there's something there.
They look at you, they look you you.
They seem to be trying to, uh, question you.
They don't just see you. They see through you.
They see your heart beating. They see your lungs moving.
They see the blood flowing through your veins
because they're seeing with their ears
a picture of what you are.
All mammals,
from mice to people, have three lobes to the brain,
where cetaceans have four lobes to the brain.
Fourth lobe is almost entirely of thinking.
Communication abilities.
Who knows what a whale is thinking?
I believe they're thinking, though.
They know what we are and what we're capable of.
♪ If you had seen ♪
♪ You'd understand ♪
♪ If you had seen ♪
♪ All the things ♪
♪ That I've seen ♪
♪ You'd scream like I screamed ♪
♪ I know ♪
♪ I've seen the sky ♪
♪ On fire ♪
♪ Seen the oceans ♪
♪ Dry ♪
♪ Seen the mountains ♪
♪ Fall ♪
♪ Seen the whole world ♪
♪ Die. ♪
-(drawers opening) .WATSON: A lot of flags.
Maps, pictures of ships. (chuckles)
Brigitte Bar dot, a file.
Charts, you know.
Used charts.
These are just, uh, different awards and things,
like "Giraffe Award." (chuckles softly)
For sticking your neck out
or something like that, I guess.
'Distinguished Global Citizen" plaque. Whatever.
Just more ph...
Oh, there's some photos here which are interesting.
That's the seal campaign of, uh, '79.
Dalai Lama.
There's that
when I was running for mayor.
65 people ran for mayor,
and, uh, I came in fourth.
In fact, I was afraid I was gonna be elected at one point.
This is another picture of Mother and I.
-CHILCOTT: You knew even then? .WATSON (chuckling): I didn't.
CHILCOTT: You wanted to be a sailor?
WATSON: I didn't. She did.
I don't know if you saw the footage where there's a...
knife thrown at us.
So, the guy threw it,
and you see it coming right over.
Yeah, so, we still got the keys to the hotel room.
(laughs) So, I didn't have a chance
to give back their hotel keys when they, you know,
took... dragged me out.
Yeah.
NEWSMAN: Interpol has issued a Red Notice
for a self-proclaimed ecoterrorist,
Paul Watson.
NEWSWOMAN: Where is Paul Watson?
The Feds are urging anyone
who know of his whereabouts to contact authorities.
If he were to pop up in any country,
really, who's part of Interpol, the police forces
in that country could arrest him.
NEWSMAN: Japan is after him, as well.
-NEWSWOMAN: Yes. .NEWSMAN: Obviously Costa Rica.
♪ ♪
MAN: "A" and "B" mark.
(clapboard taps)
-"C" mark. .(clapboard taps)
(sighs) Where would I be...?
(chuckles) It's a very complicated...
Because, uh, when I left...
I first came to, uh, Vancouver,
uh, in late '67, early '68, I think.
That was when I first came to Vancouver.
I didn't have any money. I lived in the gun towers
down on Wreck Beach on, uh...
near the university campus, and that...
And I tried to work my way through, uh...
I went to Vancouver City College, and that...
But I ended up actually getting a job as a deckhand
on a Norwegian, uh, merchant vessel.
So, we shipped out of Vancouver.
Uh, went to, uh, Iraq
and, uh, Mozambique and South Africa and then back.
And that was, uh... When I came back,
uh, it was in 1969, in October of 1969.
Uh, there was a demonstration at the Peace Arch
on the Canadian-American border,
and it was, uh, to-to oppose
the, the nuclear testing in Amchitka.
And out of that group of people who were protesting,
we formed a group called
the Don't Make a Wave Committee.
("Green Tambourine" by The Lemon Pipers playing)
Two groups.
The Sierra Club, of which I was a member,
and, uh, the Quakers.
The Quakers were peace and antinuclear,
and the Sierra Clubs were the environmental impact
of nuclear testing.
I was 18.
I was the youngest founding member.
We sat down and said, "Well, what can we do about this?"
And the Quakers had sent a.a boat
to Bikini Atoll in 1956
to protest nuclear testing there.
So we decided, "Okay, let's get a boat."
At one of the.the early meetings,
somebody left and flashed a peace sign like that,
and, uh, and Bill Darnell,
who was one of our early members, said, uh...
He said, 'Make it, uh, Greenpeace."
And Bob Hunter said,
"Wow, that's a great name for the boat."
So, the boat came before the organization.
The idea with the... with the Greenpeace is to...
is to stop the Amchitka bomb.
WATSON: I was pretty much the only one who had
any sea experience.
I went on as first officer.
♪ My green tambourine... ♪
All the, uh, early people
were pretty much journalists or broadcasters.
I worked for "The Georgia Straight."
I was a communications major
at Simon Fraser University.
We understood the medium.
Bob Hunter, he was the one
who coined the phrase, uh, "mind bombs,"
which today would mean "going viral."
He said, "You know, we got to throw a few mind bombs
into the media mainstream." (chuckles)
MAN (over radio): And our last port of call
before making the run to Amchitka.
Everyone on the ship is cheerful
and looking forward to the challenge.
WATSON: My concern was that it was a...
a wildlife preserve in Amchitka, and you couldn't take
a gun onto the island, but here we were
blowing a five-megaton bomb up underneath of it.
And the shock waves
were killing seals and sea otters, and that...
So that was my motivation.
We got a terrific amount of attention on that campaign.
As Bob Hunter said,
"You know, if it-it takes standing on our head
"and doing silly tricks to get
"the attention of everybody,
then that's what we got to do."
They didn't do any further tests after.
♪ ♪
You know, the old whalers,
going back 1600s, 1700s,
described incredible amounts of whales that they sighted.
The ocean, of course, was full of whales.
It's hard to say how many there were originally.
The American whalers didn't have to go very far.
I mean, they were right there on their doorstep.
And then, by 1850, they were going
all the way around the world to find them.
They'd wiped them out everywhere else.
It was the oil industry of its time.
Whales weren't actually in focus at all
by Greenpeace, originally.
PAUL SPONG: You are a child of the universe.
No less than the trees and the stars.
You have a right to be here.
WATSON: Paul SPONG came to us and said, "You know,
we really got to do something about whales."
I jumped on that, Bob Hunter jumped on that,
and said, "Yeah, let's do something with the whales."
And, uh, began
the Greenpeace Five mission, which was
to go after the, uh, the Russian whaling fleet.
We had no idea where they were.
I would think that this area here
would be the best one to go for.
Hello from the Greenpeace Five.
There's just a big, gray ocean around here.
But we haven't seen any whales yet.
WATSON (voice-over): Against all odds,
we found the Soviet whaling fleet
about 60 miles off the coast of Mendocino
in California.
-(man whoops) .There's nine.
-MAN: There's nine boats. .One, two, three, four, five
over there, there's one by the Voss dock,
and there's three over here.
MAN: So, we'll put the Zodiacs out,
run over and have a damn good look at it.
WATSON: The first thing we saw was a dead whale.
MAN: That's a goddamn baby whale,
for Christ's sake. It's only about..
How long is that?
I got off onto that whale and-- to measure it.
Found out it was an undersized whale.
MAN: What do you say, Paul?!
How long do you think it is?!
What?
How long?!
About 18 feet.
♪ ♪
We had been talking about this,
what we were gonna do, for a long time.
Put ourselves between the harpoon and the whales.
We were reading a lot of Gandhi at the time,
and we thought that that was-- that was going to work.
I was, uh, piloting the Zodiac.
Bob Hunter and I
that was bearing down on us at, uh, full speed.
The harpooner was looking at us.
We could look up there and see him crouched
behind the, the harpoon,
getting ready to fire.
I would maneuver the boat to block his path
every time he tried to take aim.
The Soviet captain came running down the, the catwalk
and screamed into the ear of the harpooner.
Then he turned towards all of us, smiled,
and brought his finger across his throat,
and that's when I realized
Gandhi wasn't going to work that day.
And then, a few moments later,
-this horrific explosion. .(boom)
And a missile flew over.over our heads,
slammed into the backside
of one of the sperm whales in front of us,
uh, this pod of eight whales,
and hit a female,
and she screamed, and it was like this woman in.in pain.
There was blood everywhere,
and, uh, it was all happening s-so fast.
Suddenly, we saw the largest whale in the pod.
He rose up and dove
and his-his, his tail slapped the water.
Uh, like a clap of thunder, really.
And he just dove and disappeared
and, uh, he swam right u-underneath of us.
The next thing we knew, he was coming out-out of the water,
straight at the harpooner, to protect his pod.
But they were ready for him.
They knew he would do this,
and they had an unattached harpoon.
This whale was thrashing about in agony.
I could see his eye as he rolled about on the surface,
and he dove.
Coming straight at us real fast.
He came up and out of the water at an angle so that
the next move would fall straight down on top of us.
His head was rising right beside me.
I mean, so close, I could actually, uh--
Reached up and encircled one of his teeth with my fingers.
♪ ♪
I was looking into his eye.
I could see the whale understood
what we were trying to do.
He could have killed us.
I saw that eye disappear.
And he died.
I feel personally, uh, indebted to that whale
for the fact that it didn't kill us.
I saw pity.
Not for himself but for us.
Wh-- How could we do such a thing?
Why were we doing this?
And that's when-- Right in the water,
I'm sitting in this boat and I said,
"Why were they doing this?"
♪ ♪
You know, they were killing them for oil.
And one of the things that they were going to use that for
was for the fabrication of, uh...
of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
That's one of its valuable uses
in the Soviet Union at the time.
And I said, "Here we are,
"killing this incredibly magnificent,
"socially complex, self-aware,
"intelligent creature for the purpose of making a weapon
meant for the mass extermination of human beings."
And it occurred to me--
We're insane.
It was a major, uh, uh, turning point in my life.
And from that moment on, I said,
"I-- Everything I do in my life will be for them."
♪ ♪
After the whale campaign,
I felt, "Well, why don't we do this in other...
in other areas?"
♪ ♪
The seal hunt had always been a concern of mine.
It was the largest mass slaughter
of marine mammal population any-anywhere in the world.
It still is.
It's a ruthless activity,
equivalent to just, uh, somebody deciding
that they're gonna go and bash the heads in
to a bunch of kittens, really.
They're totally helpless.
With these big eyes and everything and--
So I think it takes a special kind of, uh--
I don't know-- cruelty in order to, uh--
To-to club them like that.
♪ ♪
I-I went to the Greenpeace people
and said, "I want to do this."
They-- Most of them were against it.
The idea was to, uh, save the seals by putting
an indelible organic dye onto the seal--
Baby seal pelts to destroy the economic value of their pelts.
They kill the baby seals
Well, they won't be getting white fur.
They'll be getting, uh, green and white fur.
When we arrived in, uh, St. Anthony, Newfoundland,
there was a roadblock.
And they had nooses and they were threatening
to, to lynch us and everything.
(indistinct shouting)
Bob Hunter and Pat, uh, Moore came along.
And, uh, they got all intimidated.
HUNTER: There are 900 species
on the endangered list, and Greenpeace is concerned
with all of them. But one of the species
that's on the endangered list
is-is the Newfoundland fisherman,
and we're concerned with him, too.
WATSON: Bob turned over
our packages of green dye
so we couldn't dye the, uh, seals
and said that they would only go after the Norwegians.
Here's the-- here's the dye.
WATSON: Uh, you know, I felt really, um, betrayed.
We were good friends.
♪ ♪
We went out onto the ice with a new strategy,
and that strategy was to-to block the-the sealing vessel.
(calls)
(wind blowing)
MAN: Look out! The boat's moving!
Blocking the boat.
Bob and I were blocking a-a Norwegian sealing vessel,
uh, in the ice.
We got on the ice in front of it.
It kept pushing forward.
The ice was cracking under our feet.
One of the sealers on the ice is yelling up at the captain,
saying, "They're not moving. They're not moving."
I was trying to coordinate with Bob.
I said, "Okay, if the ice breaks up underneath of us,
"I'll dive this way, you dive that way.
"We don't want to dive in the same pos-position.
So, just-- You go there."
And he said, "I'm not moving."
I said, "Well-well, okay.
Well, I guess I can't be moving either."
♪ ♪
We wouldn't move, and we actually stopped the boat
in its tracks.
♪ ♪
We returned against the seal hunt the following spring.
We began to confront the sealers much more aggressively.
I walked up to one sealer.
He was about to kill a seal, and, literally,
I grabbed his hand and I pulled
the club out of his hand and threw it in the water.
Then I picked up the seal and removed it to safety.
They were pulling in piles of pelts, of bloody pelts,
that were on the ice there,
just pulling them in across the ice,
through the water, and up the side of the boat.
So I handcuffed myself to that winch line
that was pulling in the pelts.
They pulled me across the ice with that pile of bloody pelts,
and then they pulled me into the, uh--
Into the water and, uh, up the side of the boat.
Then they dropped it into the water again
and pulled it up and then dropped it again
so that I was getting soaked
in the-- in-in the water each time.
Instead of taking me to shore
with the Mounted Police helicopters,
they pulled me up the side of the sealing vessel.
Took me all night to recover because of, uh, hypothermia.
Everybody in Greenpeace was very supportive
of all of these actions at the time.
It was only, uh, two months later
that they condemned me for them.
Pat Moore became president of Greenpeace.
He made this accusation that my campaign was violent.
He lobbied everybody in.
Said that they wanted to vote me off the board of directors.
It was the best thing to ever happen,
being forced out of Greenpeace.
("Lust for Life" by Elvis Kuehn and Max Kuehn playing)
♪ Here comes Johnny Yen again ♪
♪ With the liquor and drugs... ♪
Right from the beginning, Sea Shepherd was set up
as an anti-poaching organization.
We're not a protest organization,
so we target illegal operations.
Fully intend to stop them from going into the ice pack.
If that includes having to ram them, yes, we will. Over.
♪ I been hurting since I bought the gimmick ♪
(voice-over): Aggressive nonviolence and interventions
against, uh, poaching operations.
WATSON: I came to a very early understanding
that, uh, there are four elements to media:
sex, scandal, violence, and celebrity.
So, in every campaign, we had
to exploit those four elements.
The Greenpeace approach was to hang banners,
take pictures, and observe.
I can't do that.
I-I think bearing witness and doing nothing else
is very, very cowardly.
Well, what we deliberately go out to do is
to, uh, protect marine mammals.
And if that involves confrontation,
then, uh, so be it.
Is it illegal? Okay, let's go after it.
(horn blows)
I feel that it's, uh,
from going out there and raping and plundering
to their heart's content and destroying, you know,
the rich treasures that-that this planet has for all of us.
You don't walk down the street,
see a woman being raped or a kitten being stomped
to death, and do nothing
but hang a banner and take pictures.
And you don't watch a whale die
and just hang a banner and take pictures.
You have to intervene.
♪ Itching once you buy the gimmick ♪
♪ About something called love ♪
♪ Oh, love, love, love ♪
♪ Well, that's like hypnotizing chickens... ♪
CHILCOTT: How many times
would you say you've risked your life?
Oh, uh, I... you know, I have no idea.
I have no idea. I don't keep count of that.
I certainly didn't, you know...
Yeah, I don't tally that up.
CHILCOTT: And you've also been quoted
as saying that you don't ever really fear
for your life when you're in dangerous situations.
Is that really true?
Yeah. I-I don't... I don't have that kind of fear, no.
I think that goes back to my childhood, though, because, uh,
at one point, uh, I almost died, uh, in a...
Well, on a couple occasions, I almost died,
and, uh, at the time, I just over... you just overcome that.
But I also learned something, uh, very early,
and that is, if you can overcome the fear of death,
you overcome the fear of anything.
(birds squawking)
I lived in the Passamaquoddy Bay area,
which had the highest tides in the world.
You know, 85-foot spring tides.
We were p-playing pirates, and I got tied to the mast
of a... of a sunken boat and, uh, forgotten.
We were just playing, and they forgot,
you know, as kids happen to do.
The tide was coming in, and
the tide kept rising and rising.
It was up to my chest.
And I was yelling for help, but there was nobody there.
The horror of, you know, the-the water rising,
and then the acceptance
that I couldn't do anything about it.
And then, as it was getting higher,
then a bunch of teenagers, uh, heard me
and they came in and... and cut me loose.
But just prior to that, I realized
that-that I was gonna drown, and I accepted that
as that was what was going to happen.
And I've never been afraid of anything since.
♪ ♪
I was raised in a fishing village.
I remember lobster traps over a mile long,
piled high along the road into-into the town.
You could always tell the poor people
who went to school because we went to school
with the lobster sandwiches on, on homemade bread,
and that was considered pretty low.
Desperately trying to trade those lobster sandwiches
for bologna or, uh, you know, peanut butter.
I'm the oldest of seven children.
I have three brothers and three sisters.
When I was about eight, I went, uh, fishing with my father,
and he was pulling trout out of the river,
just one after another.
He would catch 30, 40 fish,
and then just take five or six of them
and just leave the rest there,
because he just wanted the best ones.
My father was, uh... was abusive, he was cruel.
He, uh, lacked empathy, I believe.
I naturally rebelled against that.
When I was ten years old, I spent a whole summer swimming
with a family of beavers.
Terrific fun. It was just me and these beavers.
The next summer,
when I went back to the same pond, I couldn't find them.
I began to ask questions, uh, about people around there,
and found out that a... a trapper had come in
and, uh... and taken them all.
That winter, I began to walk the, uh...
the-the trap lines and free the animals
and, uh... and destroy the traps.
My mother was very kind to animals.
She was a very kind person.
She even taught us that you should be kind to insects.
Watch where you walk and that.
She was a very educated person.
I have no idea why she married my father.
It always bothered me that she was so passive.
You know, he was very abusive, both to her and to us.
That always affected me all my life.
I have absolutely zero tolerance
for any... any man who, uh, is that abusive.
He had left my, my mother with six kids,
and, uh, we hadn't heard from him for two years,
until he showed up the day that... after she died.
She died from, uh, childbirth.
Uh, the baby died inside her and poisoned her.
I tried to visit her that night.
They wouldn't let me in because I had to be accompanied
by an adult.
Then the next day, uh, uh, she died.
My father-- he took us back to Toronto.
Within a couple of days,
our whole world turned completely over.
That led to me constantly, uh, running away from home.
It was always very adventurous.
I never actually knew where I was going.
♪ ♪
The Sierra was the most notorious of the pirate whalers
that were operating in 1979.
They use the fact that whales help each other.
A whale's been harpooned, and other whales will come
to its assistance to raise it to the surface
to prevent it from drowning.
And they take advantage of that to harpoon those whales,
which are coming to the assistance.
All of these whales have been killed in areas that are
totally off-limits to whaling.
I had been aware of the Sierra for a number
of years and, uh, had tried to, uh, talk Greenpeace
into going after it, unsuccessfully.
I took the Sea Shepherd to Boston,
and I just put out, um, an ad in one of the local newspapers,
uh, saying, "I need a crew."
We left Boston and, uh, headed out across the Atlantic.
About a day, uh, out of, uh, the Azores,
I stopped the ship because of, uh...
we had hundreds of loggerhead turtles that were
swimming past the ship.
That delayed us for an hour, an hour and a half.
Exactly at noon the next day, I saw the ship.
I could see a big "S"
on the side of the funnel, and I knew it was the Sierra.
If it wasn't for the turtles stopping us,
we would have missed them completely.
Right from the beginning,
my intention was to disable that vessel,
but I couldn't do it out there, where the seas were very rough,
without risking people's lives.
So I chased it right into the port of northern Portugal.
There were 20 people altogether, including myself.
And I call-called the crew and I said,
"Look, I'm going out and, uh, ram that vessel.
"And we're going to disable it
"and make sure it doesn't kill any whales again.
'Mow, you all have a choice.
"I can certainly say that if you stay with me,
"you're probably gonna go to jail in Portugal.
'Uh, you might even get hurt. I don't know.
"But your choice-- leave the ship or come with me.
Uh, but you got ten minutes to make that decision."
So, ten minutes later, 17 crew were on the dock.
But fortunately,
the two that stayed with me was my chief engineer
and my third engineer.
Three of us took the Sea Shepherd out
and gave the Sierra a warning blow in order
to get its crew members up on deck to see what was going on.
And so, once they were up on deck,
we came in on the port side and hit them at 12 knots
full into the mid ship section of the ship,
which ripped a six-foot by eight-foot hole in the ship.
We were going to hit them a third time,
but they got their engine started and went
from a dead stop to full speed ahead.
And as a result of that, their engine bearings were destroyed.
So the ship has been permanently, uh, damaged.
Some people criticize us for saying
that it's a little unfair to ask people
to risk their life to protect a whale,
and I don't think it's unfair at all.
I, uh... You know, our society asks young people
to, uh... to risk their life,
to give their life and to take life,
uh, to protect, uh, oil wells
and real estate and flags and religion.
I feel it's a far more noble thing to risk your life
to protect an endangered species
or a threatened habitat.
NEWSMAN: In Iceland, they're checking the damage.
Early Sunday, someone scuttled two whaling boats.
WATSON: We served warning on Iceland last...
NEWSMAN: Paul Watson is
telling the world they were his men,
members of a whale conservation group
called the Sea Shepherd Society.
WATSON: At about 10:30 Vancouver time last night,
uh, our crew were able to get on board,
uh, two of the ships and open the sea cocks,
uh, in the engine rooms, flood the engine rooms,
and sink both vessels.
And they were able to get themselves
out of Iceland, uh, this morning.
NEWSWOMAN: How many people were involved?
I will be, in a couple of days, when they're securely back
in their own countries of origin.
This is really the birth of terrorism in the name
of the rights of mammals, because you have decided
-the Icelanders shouldn't do this. -Terrorism...
Terrorism is when you cause, uh,
uh, injury or death to innocent people.
There are no innocent people involved in here.
You plead guilty, however, to masterminding this operation.
I-I... I plead responsible, uh... responsibility for this.
Uh, however, I don't feel guilty.
I feel quite elated that we were able to go in there,
get the job done, enforce the regulations,
cripple the Icelandic whaling fleet,
and at the same time we were true
to our-our primary objective, and that is,
we do not cause any injury.
-We have never caused any injury. -By luck.
-By happenstance. -Not by happenstance at all.
-Well, tell me how you... -We could have taken...
We could have taken all four vessels out.
The only reason we did not do so is because
there were watchmen on two of them.
And although scuttling the vessels
sinks the vessels slowly,
we could not rule out the possibility of a heart attack.
Therefore, we only took out 50% of the fleet.
Well, you left them the other half. You'll do that next year.
If we get an opportunity to do so.
Well, even at this age, they're pretty docile.
(chuckles)
Nice and warm.
Look at the camera. Look at the camera.
(voice-over): After 1983,
the market for seal pelts plummeted
because of all of the exposure.
So there was a...
a period from sort of 1983 until, say, 1995
where hardly any sealing was taking place at all.
It was only under huge government subsidies
that it began to, uh, be rejuvenated, uh,
in the mid-1990s through into the new century.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has come up
with an idea to provide an alternative.
A cruelty-free, non-lethal form of sealing.
Because these little white coats here
lose their hair after three weeks.
It's naturally molted.
It can be collected and cleaned and made
into products like bed comforters or clothing.
(speaks indistinctly)
Gently around the eyes.
Yeah.
I found that they actually enjoyed it.
So I thought that I had discovered something
that would be acceptable to
the sealers and those who love seals.
NEWSMAN: At first when we went out to the Magdalen Islands,
I thought we might not even have a story.
Paul Watson was going out there,
along with actor Martin Sheen, not to confront the sealers,
but to offer them an alternative way
of making a living without having to kill the seals.
WATSON: The sealers got together, and they all started
drinking and went crazy and then
started marching through the streets.
Uh, the exact words from the leader was,
"We don't want anything to do
"with a faggoty idea like brushing seals.
Seals are meant to be clubbed, not to be cuddled."
MAN (voice-over): Mr. Watson is not welcome in Magdalen Island.
So, uh, they're going to, uh,
where he's staying and tell the owner
he's, uh... he's not desirable here.
-NEWSMAN: Okay, are they doing that right now? -Yeah.
You need to get out of here with your film.
They're coming back.
They're coming back from the airport,
and they're gonna confiscate everything.
WOMAN: They're gonna get everything, okay?
(sealers shouting indistinctly)
WATSON: They're all very angry and very drunk,
but I wasn't going to, uh, you know, back down.
They smashed down the door, and then I was facing
about 50 of them in a very small room and, uh,
they hesitated, and then one of them came over
and punched me in the side of the head, at which point
I was able to knock three of them down
with a stun gun that I had.
But the others then just piled in--
It was like an avalanche.
And then it just broke into a big fight.
Another guy put his fist through the window behind me
and cut himself-- there's blood all over the place.
Four police officers came in, pulled me out of the room,
through a gauntlet of sealers who were stabbing me
with car keys and things like this.
I went through, and they brought me down into the, uh,
parking lot and threw me into the back of a police car.
Then suddenly a sealer jumps into the back seat with me.
A brick comes in the... to the passenger-side window.
Meanwhile, this guy's punching me in the backseat,
and I had to elbow him in the side of the head
in order to, you know, to get him off of me.
And then we took off.
They had called in a plane,
and, uh, they threw me in this plane-- without a coat,
without any identification, without any money--
And the plane just took off.
Yeah, he took an ax to it.
Auberge Madeli and...
(chuckles softly)
But, see, the problem is, I had these in my pocket.
(laughs) So I didn't have a chance
to give them back their hotel keys
when they, you know, took... dragged me out.
I don't know, somebody brought this. I...
(quietly): Yeah.
♪ ♪
We always consider our clients to be the creatures
that live in the ocean.
The whales, the dolphins, the sharks, the fish, the turtles--
Those are our clients.
So when people criticize what we do, we say, "Well, you know,
we're representing the interests of our clients."
We're not really concerned with the criticisms of people.
WATSON: ♪ I don't care if it rains or freezes ♪
♪ Long as I've got my plastic Jesus. ♪
You know, in, uh, New Mexico, 50... 60,000 people
have gone to the pilgrimage
to see the face of Jesus in a tortilla.
WATSON: Back in the late 1980s,
uh, we came across Cocos Island.
Always we would find poachers,
and I always took the opportunity to chase them away.
There is a boat coming right now.
(voice-over): In 2001, we saw
a large Ecuadorian long-liner.
They were catching sharks,
so we intervened.
It became the first vessel that was actually confiscated
by the Costa Rican courts for illegal fishing.
-Here. -WATSON: Because of that,
we, uh, got a lot of support from the rangers.
WATSON: I think that Cocos Island
is the most beautiful, uh, tropical island.
(birds chirping)
(bird squawking)
It was certainly the inspiration
for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.
I would dearly love to have Sea Shepherd partnered
with the Costa Rican government
to protect and defend Cocos Island once again.
I've seen the steady diminishment
around that island over the last 30 years.
Things that are so incredibly beautiful, pristine and unique,
yet we have to struggle to protect the ban.
There are certain ecosystems that, you know,
you have to look at as sort of the line in the sand.
'Cause if we can't save Cocos Island,
how are we going to save other places?
RANDALL: Cocos Island is...
one of the main areas of shark aggregations
in the eastern tropical Pacific.
Paul Watson had the idea that he could come here
and provide permanent protection.
WATSON: Randall Arauz is
probably one of the most prominent defenders
of, uh, of marine ecosystems in Costa Rica.
He's totally dedicated,
especially to places like Cocos Island.
RANDALL: What we do is, we attach tags to the sharks
when they swim nearby us.
We need to know how these sharks are moving.
If the sharks are resident in Cocos Island,
then it's Costa Rica's sole responsibility to protect them.
But if they're moving to other islands,
then it's also the responsibility
of these other nations.
WATSON: Sharks have been one of the most successful groups
of species in the history of this planet.
They've been around for 450 million years.
They have literally molded evolution.
Every fish in the sea, its color, its camouflage,
its speed, its behavior,
has been influenced by this apex predator.
RANDALL: When a shark swims within feet away from you,
and you get to see the shark eyeballing you,
that is such a feeling.
You can kind of, like, imagine the...
the classical music when you see these sharks
just moving around so beautifully.
♪ ♪
WATSON: What we've done over the last couple of decades
is slaughter them to the point
where many of these species are deeply in trouble.
We kill about 90 million sharks every year
for, primarily, the shark fin trade,
because a shark fin is, uh...
there's a big demand for it in China.
They make shark fin soup, which really just takes on the flavor
of chicken or pork or whatever they're cooking it with.
It's very expensive, and it's set as a status symbol.
It's served at weddings and special events.
Three basic laws of ecology.
First is the law of diversity: that the strength
of an ecosystem is dependent upon the diversity within it.
The second is the law of interdependence:
that all of the species within that diversity
are interdependent with each other.
And the third is the law of finite resources:
that there's a limit to growth, a limit to carrying capacity.
And what we do when we, um...
our numbers increase, uh, beyond what is, uh, healthy,
is we literally steal the carrying capacity
from other species.
So they have to disappear, and therefore that's a diminishment
in diversity, a diminishment in interdependence.
All three of them working together.
But no species has ever survived on this planet
outside of those three basic laws of ecology.
(objects thumping)
So this is, uh...
I'm trying to figure out which boat this is.
Oh, this is Steve Irwin, the voyage from, uh,
Hobart to Fremantle.
So this is for the Farley Mowat.
And this would be...
for 2006.
So, we literally have hundreds of these books. (chuckles)
CHILCOTT: ls there any one of these
that kind of stands out or has more meaning to you than...?
I don't know, probably the one from Costa Rica is more...
the more interesting, but...
We found the...
the, uh, this Veradero 1,
and that was on the morning of, uh, April 22.
♪ ♪
I was on my way to Costa Rica to sign an agreement
with the Ministry of the Environment to, uh,
to protect Cocos Island.
Uh, Rob Stewart, making his movie "Sharkwater,"
was on board and he was rolling the cameras.
We were passing through Guatemalan waters,
and I encountered a Costa Rican vessel,
the Veradero 1,
and it was shark finning.
They want to get the sharks on the boat
and off as fast as they can.
So the shark is brought on board.
They slice off the fins and then throw the animal back.
They don't bother to-- to kill the shark.
They just let it fall to the bottom-- it can't swim,
so it just goes straight to the bottom and dies slowly.
There's not a lot of value in shark meat,
but there's value in shark fins.
RANDALL: Let's say I gave you a box--
This is, you know, about this big-- and I tell you,
"Don't come back from your fishing activity
until you're full."
So, let's say you go out there and you catch one shark.
Well, you bring this one shark,
and you fill the little box I gave you.
So for that one shark, I'm gonna give you,
okay, a hundred dollars for the fins.
Let's say the fins weigh a kilo.
But if you throw the body away,
you can bring the fins of 20 sharks in there.
♪ ♪
WATSON: We would never do this
to an animal that lived on land.
WOMAN (calls): They got another shark.
-WATSON: They did? -Yeah, they've got two on deck now.
Right here.
Yeah, we're 145 miles off the coast of Guatemala,
so they're 55 miles inside the Guatemalan fishing zone.
I contacted the Guatemalan government,
and the Guatemalan government
gave us permission to stop them.
They said they drifted, like, across... across two countries.
There's so much of this going on in the world.
We got to have it stopped.
WATSON: They had their lines in the water,
they were taking, uh, sharks off those lines,
they were cutting the fins off those sharks,
and they were throwing the bodies back into the water.
Right there.
Grab the top.
-Where's the next one? -(man shouts in Spanish)
MAN: They want to pull up the line,
and then it seems that, uh, they will come with us.
WATSON: Okay.
(voice-over): We took them under tow
towards San Jose in Guatemala.
WATSON: Okay.
WATSON (voice-over): Well, they've decided to run from us.
We're gonna have to go back and force him back.
MAN: They're dragging a shark.
(indistinct shouting)
WATSON (voice-over): They claimed that I rammed them
and tried to kill them.
If my decision was
to ram them and try to kill them,
they would be dead.
MAN: Yeah, they've agreed to go to San Jose
in Guatemala voluntarily now.
(man speaking Spanish)
WATSON (voice-over): We were in communication with
the port captain in San Jose.
He knew we were bringing them in.
And after about 50 miles,
uh, suddenly we are informed
that they're going to arrest us.
I realized that, you know, money had
exchanged hands and so I just said,
"You know, they're on their own."
We left and we carried on to Puntarenas in Costa Rica.
Suddenly, the police came on board.
I'm the prosecutor in Costa Rica.
So she is the judge.
MAN: Our logbook is here, keep a log
-of everything we do. -(speaking Spanish)
WATSON (voice-over): I was charged with eight counts
of attempted homicide.
They cannot take sharks for fins alone.
They cannot fish in Guatemalan waters.
They cannot fish outside of Costa Rica without a permit.
-That's illegal... -We went to court and we showed
the film, and, uh, they had no choice.
They-- There was no evidence there to,
to show that we tried to kill anybody.
So the charges were dismissed and we went back to the ship.
A few days later, another
boarding came on with a different judge,
and this time I was charged with eight counts of assault
against the fishermen.
Once again, we went into court and we showed the film,
and once again, the charges were dismissed.
And I never heard another thing about it for ten years.
We've documented everything that we've ever done.
There's always been cameras on board the vessels.
Within a media culture, if it isn't on camera,
it didn't happen.
McLuhan: You think of TV
as quite independent of the program.
There is a huge technology involved in TV.
And the effect of that huge service environment
on you, personally, is vast.
WATSON (voice-over): When I was studying communications
at Simon Fraser University, I was fortunate to have
a guest lecturer, Marshall McLuhan.
McLuhan really taught me a lot
about the nature of media.
Just understanding
what media is and, uh,
how media can be utilized.
There's cold media and there's hot media.
When you have a hot issue, when it's, uh, being communicated
in a cold medium, like newspapers,
people aren't really that involved in it.
They read the news, but they're not involved in the news.
The television is the most effective media
to get, uh, dramatic issues across.
Just jump on that goddamn dock right now.
You got all the TV cameras.
(crowd clamoring)
They threw one of our people in the water
and you guys are doing nothing!
MAN: The might of America's media has arrived-- ABC, NBC,
"Good Morning America," so they've all
come over here to the Sea Shepherd to talk
to Captain Watson, which I'm sure,
pleases him to no end.
♪ Con... ♪
♪ Quest ♪
♪ He was out to make a ♪
♪ Conquest... ♪
McLuhan (voice-over): Any painter,
any poet, any artist, any musician
sets out to create an effect.
He sets a trap to catch somebody's attention.
That is the nature of art.
♪ Another conquest... ♪
And TV is a popular folk art.
♪ ♪
WATSON: We're down here off the coast of Antarctica,
and behind me is the Nisshin Maru, which is the largest
whale-killing machine on the planet.
(voice-over): I went to all the different networks
to sell this idea.
And I said the biggest show on Discovery right now is
"Deadliest Catch." You have a show about
a bunch of men going into hostile waters,
very cold waters, uh, to catch crabs.
I can offer you a show of men and women going
to even more hostile areas, colder areas,
to protect whales.
It has to be more interesting
than catching crabs every week.
One of the tactics that we want to do is
try and get people on board the Nisshin Maru.
If we can get people on board to be held hostage by
the Japanese whalers, that will force, uh, Australia
into a very difficult diplomatic, uh, position.
The reason we wanted to do it
was to create a global audience.
To make everybody in the world aware
of Japan's illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.
MAN: Go, go, go, go!
We're on board! (whoops)
Two of our crew are being held hostage on the Yushin Maru.
They've tied both of them to the rails of the vessel.
"Japan Times."
They're taking whales
in the, uh, Southern Ocean--
A whale sanctuary--
In violation of a global moratorium
on commercial whaling.
Yes, we've got-- we're filming them, actually.
We have a helicopter right above this,
That one's a little less scary because
-they aren't surrounded by people. -Yeah, that-that's
the one we need though, the one with Giles that's, uh...
-Where he's screaming like that. -Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too.
WATSON: And you can see the photograph
that we have available,
he's obviously in pain.
Two members of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society boarded a whaling vessel.
Yeah, we're destroying our oceans and we're,
and it's being done by criminals.
McLuhan (voice-over): The clown, the international
motley of our time,
the clown is trying to tell us
his grievance.
His job was to tell the royalty
exactly what was wrong with the society.
He often lost his head in the process.
(indistinct shouting, clamoring)
WOMAN: Listen up, salty sea dog!
WATSON (voice-over): I could not pay people
to do what these volunteers do for nothing.
-(all grunting) -We're not that big
an organization, really. When you look at Sea Shepherd,
its annual budget's about 12 million.
I compare that to the Greenpeace budget,
which is $400 million a year.
We're pretty small.
Yes, Captain!
WATSON (voice-over): You have to be really,
truly passionate about the cause
in order to devote that time, that energy,
and take those risks.
(laughter, clamoring)
We get volunteers from all over the world.
At any given time, there's about
25 different nations represented.
(laughter, clamoring)
I used to describe Sea Shepherd as the ladies
of the night of the conservation movement--
Meaning people,
seen with us in the daytime.
(volunteers clamoring)
MAN: Does Poseidon want you?
(laughter)
WATSON: There is no right answer, Peter.
He wants me, Captain. He wants me.
WATSON: Well, good!
(cheering, clamoring)
(thunder rolling)
WATSON (voice-over): "Oh, the rare old whale,
"mid storm and gale,
"in his ocean home will be,
"a giant in might,
"where might is right,
and King of the boundless sea."
♪ I move away from this place ♪
♪ In the form of a disturbance... ♪
Property in our societies
has more value than life.
Property is sacred.
Life is expendable.
♪ Like some tiny distortion... ♪
The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or something,
that is a sacred object.
Whereas the Amazonian rain forest
or the Great Barrier Reef of Australia,
that's considered just something
to be used and abused.
But really, the property's already owned.
The bears own the forest.
The whales own the ocean.
We're taking that away from them.
PILOT (over radio): There's whales right off their bow.
Right there? See them?
Dude, this sucks.
Hold on, buddy.
These whales are swimming at 17 knots
to try and get away from this ship.
I can't get up to them.
MAN: It's 14 knots.
WATSON: Aw, shit.
Can we get any burst of speed?
PILOT: Oh, this sucks!
Got to get it over.
Hit those bastards.
PILOT: Come on, keep moving, guys.
-Damn it. -Look what they're doing.
PILOT: Keep moving, keep moving.
Oh, Jesus, they're fast.
PILOT: Oh, they got this one in a bad spot.
This whale.
PILOT: Oh, my God.
They just shot it.
♪ ♪
We're just not fast enough.
We're just... trying to get by
with what-- the resources we have.
By the middle of, uh, the 1940s,
it was becoming quite apparent
that, uh, whale populations were disappearing.
So, uh, international community got together and formed
the International Whaling Commission
for the purpose of making sure the whales didn't go extinct.
But by the mid-'70s,
uh, conservation organizations begin to get involved
and, uh, begin to have an influence.
So that ended up with the decision
to, uh, declare a global moratorium
on all whaling, uh, beginning in 1987.
That year is when Japan said,
"Okay, we're not gonna do commercial whaling.
What we're doing is research whaling." (chuckles)
Nobody believes that for a minute,
that it's got anything to do with research.
The Japanese get away with it because they're Japan.
They're a big economic superpower,
and they pretty much just, uh, you know, flaunt the laws.
♪ ♪
Operation Waltzing Matilda
was where we introduced the Bob Barker.
And also, we were working with this vessel
called the Ady Gil, which we didn't own,
but we were in alliance with Ady Gil
and its captain, Pete Bethune.
His role was, as a scope vessel,
to go down there and find the Japanese fleet,
'cause it was a very fast boat.
We might be able to dangle it in front of them
and kind of wave it around and get them a bit weary
and make them change course a bit.
WATSON: What Bethune did is started to harass
the harpoon vessels.
♪ ♪
WOMAN (gasps): Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
WATSON: Pete Bethune was just sitting dead in the water.
Complete lack
of strategic sense, really.
MAN: They better turn around.
(alarm blaring)
(man groans)
(woman chuckles)
-MAN: Whoa. Whoa. -WOMAN: Whoa. Whoa.
MAN: Oh, my God. They hit it?
MAN 2: They've taken the whole nose off.
Get-get a heavy line.
We're gonna get that boat ready.
We can use the gangway if we can come alongside them.
-That's-that's fucking so sick. -MAN: Put on a survival suit.
Y-You see people?
WOMAN: No. I don't see any people.
MAN: Paul. We just had an incident.
The Shonan Maru No. 2
just took the bow off of the Ady Gil.
HAMMARSTEDT: It deliberately turned onto the Ady Gil
and put the lives of our crew in danger.
We're gonna put a small boat in the water,
and we're going to assist our crew-
If you make any move on them that endangers their lives,
we're gonna... we're not gonna hesitate
to defend ourselves, you understand?
WHALER: Okay.
We've got some dramatic video to show you.
A clash in the Arctic Ocean caught on tape.
One person on the smaller boat was injured.
Joining me now by phone is Paul Watson.
WATSON: It was our harpoon interceptor vessel.
It's a very fast boat,
and, uh, it's a miracle
that nobody was, uh, was killed.
Criminal acts are taking place down here.
Not only are they poaching whales
but they're assaulting us.
They're damaging our property.
They're, uh, threatening our lives.
♪ ♪
BETHUNE: It's a shame we lost one of the most amazing boats.
Well, as they say, you know, boats are expendable.
-Species aren't, so... -Yep.
I heard, uh, that you wanted to stay on and go back with us,
but I actually really think you...
You know, it'd be worthwhile going to Australia
and New Zealand, doing all the media you can and...
You don't want me to try
and get on one of these Japanese vessels?
Do you think you can get on those, uh...?
I'm not saying it's-it's easy, but it is possible to do.
-Yeah. -And look, I would like to go to Japan.
-With me having driven the boat through... -Okay.
If you feel that that's what you want to do,
I'm all... I'm open to it. Yeah, certainly.
I see.
(voice-over): It was his intention
to confront the captain on the Shonan Maru
with the fact that his boat
had been destroyed.
That this be dealt with, uh, legally,
one way or the other.
♪ ♪
-You ready? -Yep. Ready to go, brother.
MAN: Okay.
Okay, going to zero pitch now.
♪ ♪
(pinging)
One click's everything's fine.
Two clicks is, uh,
they're making an attempt to get on board.
-WOMAN: It's been two clicks. -Shh.
-What was that? -(overlapping chatter)
-MAN: One click. -One click.
-MAN: It's open. -MAN 2: He's on board.
Yeah.
They deliberately destroyed
his boat, and there's no legal repercussions at all.
In fact, they got away with destroying
a $2 million vessel.
The Japanese response was
to immediately seize him
and then take him back
to Japan and charge him with trespassing.
NEWSWOMAN: This afternoon,
the Shonan Maru 2 docked in Tokyo harbor
with Sea Shepherd's Peter Bethune on board.
Bethune is expected to be arrested
on suspicion of trespass.
If convicted, the skipper faces up to three years in prison.
WATSON: The prosecutor had made a deal with him
that if he accused me of ordering him
to board the Shonan Maru No. 2
that they would give him a suspended sentence
and let him go, so that's what he did.
I made a secret deal with the Japanese prosecutors
in exchange for a lenient sentence.
And I have apologized for Paul
that my choice of words were unfortunate.
In my final testimony, I recanted it
because I said in my final testimony
that Paul Watson had knowledge of my boarding,
but he did not order me to do it.
WATSON: Bethune did sign an affidavit
saying that he had lied to the Japanese
in return for the suspended sentence.
But Japan refused to accept that affidavit.
(speaking Japanese)
WATSON: Japan put my name on the Interpol Blue list,
which means that everywhere I traveled,
I had to be, uh,
questioned and my, uh, whereabouts
had to be reported back to the Japanese.
I was arrested in May of 2012 in Germany
as I was on my way to the Cannes Film Festival
and, uh, my passport was flagged.
The German officer said,
"Well, there's a warrant for your arrest."
I said, "Really? From who?"
And he said, "From Costa Rica." I said, "Costa Rica?
Why would Costa Rica want me?"
The Germans had me under house arrest
for two months until July.
While I was being held, the Japanese also
issued an arrest warrant, uh, to the Germans.
The Germans accepted both of those extradition requests.
A supporter within the German Ministry of Justice
called up my lawyer
and said, "You know, when he goes in on Monday,
he's gonna be detained and sent to Japan."
And so on Sunday, I was out of Germany.
(chuckles) Uh, so I jumped bail.
It was a quarter of a million dollar bail,
but you know, uh, if I go to Japan,
there's no coming back.
(speaking Japanese)
WATSON: When I left,
Germany complained to Interpol,
and then Interpol issued a Red Notice.
I drove from Frankfurt in Germany to the Netherlands
and then got on board of a sailing vessel,
crossed the North Atlantic to just off of Sable Island.
Then we went ashore in Nova Scotia,
drove up to Cape Breton Island,
then drove back to the Maine-New Brunswick border,
crossed over the border,
then across the United States, uh, to Los Angeles
and then off to Catalina Island.
Boarded, uh, another vessel,
which took me to, uh, the American Samoa,
and then went to Australia, down to the Southern Ocean
along the coast of Antarctica.
Then up through the Kerguelen Islands
to Western Australia to Tasmania.
Then went to Tonga, New Caledonia, Vanuatu
and spent quite a bit of time in the South Pacific.
So I was actually able to cross about halfway around the world
with no papers at all.
From, um, March of 2013 till October 2013,
I was in, uh, the southern Pacific Ocean.
Pretty much in exile.
On deserted islands and everything.
So, there was only two things to do.
One is to collect plastic,
and the other was to collect seashells.
So, this is the seashell collection
that I got during that... during that time.
I was allowed back
into the U.S. by Secretary of State John Kerry,
who personally intervened to allow me to come back.
Uh, if I go anywhere outside the U.S.,
I could be picked up under the, uh, Interpol Red list.
I have a Red Notice from Japan for conspiracy to trespass.
Then another one from Costa Rica
for shipwreck endangerment.
The Interpol Red Notice is really for serial killers,
war criminals, major drug traffickers.
I didn't damage anything.
Didn't hurt anybody. Didn't steal anything.
They've, uh, severely punished me
for having the audacity
to, uh, oppose their illegal activities.
(chuckles): I couldn't imagine doing anything else
than what I've been doing for the last 50 years.
CHILCOTT: Do you think your passion for Sea Shepherd
was at the expense of your earlier relationships?
Oh, I-I definitely think that-that when...
I always certainly put what I was doing
before every other consideration,
uh, relationships or whatever.
I met Starlet Lum when she was, uh,
she was a bookkeeper for Greenpeace.
She left, uh, Greenpeace when I did.
We were married in 1979.
Starlet knew exactly what I was doing
when we got married, but then after Lilliolani was born,
uh, she wanted me to not do that anymore.
And I couldn't stop doing that and get a regular job.
You know, do I do this, or do I do that?
And, uh, building Sea Shepherd was difficult.
And also, the-the issue
of having to go to sea for so long, you know?
Uh, going...
Taking a campaign up to Siberia.
Taking a campaign, uh, to Labrador.
I mean, these things take months and months and months,
so I had to be away for many, many months at a time.
I don't think I'm that easy a person to be married to.
I don't even think
that I was as dedicated a father to my daughter
because of all of the things that I was doing,
which were extremely distracting.
-How are you? -Fine.
WATSON (voice-over): I couldn't put 100%
of my energy into that.
All I could really focus on was making sure that she was
financially adequately cared for.
But a lot of things, I just simply wasn't there.
I have spent my entire life at sea.
It is frustrating and disheartening
to not be able to... to go to sea anymore.
(birds singing)
ABRAHAM STERN (voice-over): This is a complete copy
of the criminal file.
Every single motion, every single resolution,
every single fight we have given during the last 16 years.
This is a terror movie.
Every single page here is a disaster.
(voice-over): Today, we're going to file
a criminal complaint against ten judges
of the criminal court for violation of their duties.
We're accusing them of prevaricating,
which is ruling against the text of the law.
It's my conviction that they have been doing this
with the intention to harm Paul Watson.
The accusation from day one was wrong,
and they have been trying to cover up the mistake.
Costa Rica has no jurisdiction over this case,
because everything
happened in Guatemalan waters.
It's very simple.
The statute of limitations has run,
and they keep pushing to keep this case alive.
I don't know why.
WATSON (voice-over): Recently, there was an election
in Costa Rica. The Costa Rican
government appears to want to work with us.
♪ ♪
WATSON (voice-over): The sea is the home
to three-quarters of life on this planet.
Life started in the ocean.
Water that's in your body right now was once locked up in ice,
was once flowing underground.
It was once in the sea, it was once in the clouds.
The lifeblood of the planet.
We shouldn't call it "the planet Earth."
It is "the planet Ocean."
(birds squawking)
Heavy gear fishing is strip-mining the ocean
at an incredible rate.
You have long lines,
anywhere from ten miles to 100 miles long.
Baited hooks every ten or 20 feet,
clear-cutting the ocean.
Purse seine nets surround a school of fish.
It's like a drawstring purse, so it closes on the bottom.
Then they just scoop the fish out of the net.
Bottom draggers not only catch fish, but also destroy habitat.
Coral reefs, rocks, everything like this.
Fish need structure in order to survive.
So it's basically destroying the ecosystems
that the fish need for their own survival.
Gill nets.
The fish comes in, and then when they back up,
their gills get stuck in the net,
and they can't back up.
They have to move their gills.
If they can't do that, they're going to drown.
The worst one: drift netting.
Long nets up to a hundred kilometers long.
It's like a curtain of death hanging in the ocean.
They've been outlawed since 1997,
but they continue to be used.
Each and every day, fishing vessels lose nets.
These become ghost nets
that remain in the ocean after they're lost
and continue to kill forever.
On average, about 40%
of the fish that we buy in supermarkets
or in restaurants has been caught illegally.
There are ten million fishing boats
on the world's ocean right now,
taking everything they can, whenever they can,
wherever they can, by whatever means necessary.
The fishing industry has the capacity
to destroy civilization.
I firmly believe that.
If we lose fish in the ocean, then, uh, I believe,
oceanic ecosystems will collapse.
And, uh, if that happens,
then life on land will be severely impacted.
I don't think that human beings will be able
to survive in a world without-without fish.
Bluefin tuna.
Kiyoshi Kimura,
owner of the Japanese sushi restaurant chain,
paid $1 .76 million for the first bluefin,
which weighed 489 pounds.
Uh, previously in 2012, he had paid $736,000 U.S.
for the first one. That was 593 pounds.
But, uh, the price rose from the '70s,
has risen about 10,000%.
(voice-over): The economics of extinction is
that there's money to be made by driving the species extinct.
(whistle blows)
Mitsubishi has tuna in their warehouses right now.
They could supply their market for the next ten to 15 years
with what they have in the warehouses.
They could stop fishing tuna tomorrow and give it a time
for a recovery, but they won't do that.
And the reason they won't do that is that if
the tuna populations rise, the price
of their tuna in the warehouse goes down.
(rhythmic beeping)
If the bluefin tuna were to go extinct,
then they're sitting on a priceless commodity.
Uh, bluefin tuna's the most valuable
wild animal in the world.
The scarcer they become, the more... the higher the prices.
Yeah.
So it's...
(clock ticking)
(voice-over): We look upon everything in the ocean,
from phytoplankton to the great whales,
as equally important and deserving
of defense and protection.
The blue whale is the largest whale
that has ever existed.
Bigger than any dinosaur.
I mean, this is an animal
with a heart the size of a Volkswagen.
Any one feeding, they can take six tons of food
into their mouth.
And each day, they defecate about three tons of manure,
heavily rich in nitrogen and iron.
The whales speed at deep depths.
They bring that food up when they digest it
and deposit the feces on the surface.
That's where the-the plankton gets to graze on it.
Whales are the farmers of the ocean.
They literally cultivate crops of phytoplankton,
these microscopic plants which then, in turn,
feed the zooplankton, which then, in turn,
feed the fish and everything, and that goes all the way up.
The phytoplankton provides, uh, 80%
of the oxygen that's on our planet.
In fact, the smallest creatures in the sea
are ecologically the most important.
We've had about a 40% diminishment
of phytoplankton population since 1950,
and I think that is relative to the fact
that we've diminished so many marine mammals in the ocean.
If phytoplankton were to disappear,
then we wouldn't survive.
We are here because there's phytoplankton in the ocean.
♪ ♪
(muted squeal of joy)
(muted laughing)
♪ ♪
(birds chirping)
(voice-over): Well, I credit the Japanese
for the fact that I-I met Yana.
I met her through Facebook, of all things.
I had made a comment about music.
She was an opera singer.
We had a couple of weeks of just questioning back and forth
on different things about music, and...
and then we were married on February 14 of 2015.
(speaking indistinctly)
There. There.
WATSON: There.
-(Yana laughs) -There.
WATSON (voice-over): Now I feel
that I can put energy and effort
into my son, Tiger.
I do have regrets
that I couldn't do that with my daughter.
And I think the difference was simply my age.
In my 30s, I wasn't as committed to that
as I am now.
(Yana laughing)
(speaking French)
WATSON (voice-over): Every time that there's an action,
there's a reaction, and you have to spin that reaction
so that it works to your benefit.
I was able to...
enter a relationship and have a child,
which would never have happened
if it wasn't for these Red Notices,
and now I can't even imagine what it would have been like
if I didn't have those Red Notices issued against me.
My life would be radically different and, uh,
not necessarily as good.
I don't think it's really necessary
to have one person
as sort of, uh, the leader.
An organization can have a leader,
but a movement doesn't really have a leader.
♪ ♪
To do this job,
you have to be able to write, you have to be able to talk,
you have to be able to navigate a vessel,
and most of all, though, you need to have
the courage to, uh, to commit.
(automated voice speaking indistinctly)
I'm gonna push in against the Sun Laurel.
WATSON: Peter HAMMARSTEDT really illustrated
that courage when he blocked the Nisshin Maru
from refueling.
They've got us. Pushing us into the tanker.
MAN (over radio): Roger that.
HAMMARSTEDT: Nisshin Maru, Bob Barker.
You are pushing us into the tanker.
You're gonna create an environmental mess.
Stay clear of me.
(alarms blaring)
WOMAN: Nisshin Maru, Nisshin Maru.
This is Bob Barker.
-Stop, stop! -HAMMARSTEDT: Stop this position.
-WOMAN Stop... -MAN: Oh!
HAMMARSTEDT: Nisshin Maru, this is Bob Barker.
I will not move. I will not move.
If you have any intention of conducting your
illegal whaling operations or your illegal refueling,
you will have to sink me right here next to the Sun Laurel.
I am not going to move for you.
WATSON: In 2006, uh, you know, up until then
we only really had one ship.
And after that we had two. Then we had three.
Then we had four. Of course--
Well, that's the entire eastern coastline of Africa.
WATSON: Alex Cornelissen joined as a cook in the Galapagos
in 2002.
"Locky" MacLean, he also did the same.
And, uh, now they're both captains.
Well, I wanted to hear back
from the French authorities
on the, on the partnership...
WATSON (voice-over): Lamya Essemlali joined in 2005.
She went back to France and organized Sea Shepherd France.
She now has 19 chapters.
What Japan has done is actually
make Sea Shepherd much stronger.
I had resigned from all of the boards on Sea Shepherd.
I resigned from the Sea Shepherd USA board,
I resigned as captain because I didn't want to
implicate everybody, because they were
coming after me personally.
I didn't want to bring everybody down with me.
Do you want me to put out a call out for volunteers
from outside Europe?
(voice-over): In December of 2012, that's when we decided
that we had to set up Sea Shepherd Global.
We have over a dozen partnerships now
with various nations around the world
to help patrol their waters.
It's a program that's expanding.
We're getting more and more requests.
WATSON: I hear you just came back from your weekend, uh,
pleasure trip out there.
The-the two vessels we just arrested
up in the north of Gabon, so we're escorting them
down into Libreville now for detention.
What flags are they?
HAMMARSTEDT: They were Chinese flags.
It's actually the first time that Chinese flag vessels
have been arrested in this part of Gabon.
And the Ministry of Fishery has made it very, very clear
that if they want to fish in Gabon,
they need to be licensed to fish here.
And, uh, I think she's gonna use these two vessels
to set an example.
WATSON: What we have now is a movement,
and a movement is bigger than an individual.
It's bigger than an organization.
Sea Shepherd France, Sea Shepherd Germany,
Australia, New Zealand, Italy.
They're all independent.
-Hey, Rob. -Hi, Tiger.
Hi from Scotland. (chuckles)
People tend to disagree with us.
They think that we're too in other people's faces,
that we're too aggressive,
that, uh, we're too controversial.
Well, those are all just opinions.
But it doesn't impact what we are.
This is what we are. We are controversial.
I've always said that if you want to be
an effective conservationist, you gotta be prepared
to say things that people don't want to hear,
and do things that people don't want to be seen done.
You have to rock the boat,
and you have to piss people off.
And if you're not doing that, then you're not doing your job.
You know, w-we try to get messages out every day.
What's happening with animals,
what's happening with the environment.
People either listen, or they don't listen.
And generally, they don't listen.
We have an incredible ability
to justify anything we want.
We justify our cruelty,
we justify our selfishness, our greed.
It's very easy to do.
And because of that, that's one of the reasons
that these-- a lot of these problems never get solved.
We just sort of sweep them under the rug
inside our brain and, uh, carry on.
-Papa. -Mm-hmm?
You gonna sit down? Let's sit down.
Come on. Waiting for Mama.
(voice-over): I don't believe in retirement, never have.
You know, I'll be doing what I'm doing
until, uh... to the day I die.
MAN: And I'll send it to you...
WATSON (voice-over): We have a navy now.
It's the largest non government navy in the world.
Navies are run from various locations.
If I have to run it from a desk,
then that's where I'm going to run it from.
We're not gonna stop what we're doing.
♪ ♪
The Earth is a spaceship.
It's on an orbit around the Milky Way galaxy.
It takes 250 million years to make one revolution,
going at a terrific speed--
Thousands of miles per minute.
And the spaceship, like any spaceship,
has to have a life-support system.
And that life-support system, primarily, is our ocean,
which manufactures the oxygen that we breathe,
provides food to eat,
regulates the temperature and the climate.
And a life-support system has to be run by a crew.
Whales and phytoplankton and bacteria.
We're not really crew members;
we're passengers on spaceship Earth.
What we're doing as humans is killing off the crew.
There's only so many crew members you can kill
before the mechanism begins to break down.
If the ocean dies, we all die.
We don't live on this planet with a dead ocean.
♪ ♪