Paul Watson

 

Paul has never been a stranger to controversy, and has used it in the mass media to draw attention to the plight of whales, sharks, and other marine fauna. He has been arrested numerous times, on charges stemming from collisions with poaching whaling and sealing boats, but he has never been convicted of a crime. Paul endorses “monkeywrenching,” the practice of covertly sabotaging illegal whaling ships, as well as scuttling, the practice of deliberately sinking ships by forcefully creating holes in the hull.

 

Paul was born in Toronto in 1950 but his family moved to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea New Brunswick when he was six. There Paul joined the Kindness Club, which fostered his love of animals. He destroyed leg-hold traps and otherwise disrupted deer and duck hunters. Paul’s family returned to Toronto after his mother died in 1964.

 

As a teenager Paul travelled Canada by boxcar, and settled on the West Coast. He worked for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Princess Marguerite as a fireman, then joined the coast guard at 18. Later he worked as a deckhand for a merchant Norwegian vessel. Paul held his love of animals as he saw the seas of the world, and at 19 he joined a Sierra Club and Quaker protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island in the Bering Strait. The groups sent two ships, Greenpeace I and Greenpeace Too, to stop the test blast, but a five megaton explosion was detonated before Greenpeace Too arrived. The protest attracted sufficient media attention that no detonation has since taken place at Amchitka.

 

In 1972 the groups involved in the Amchitka protest formed the Greenpeace Foundation. Paul remained heavily involved through the mid-70s and led several more confrontations at sea. Paul controversially left Greenpeace in 1977 as the group became more mainstream and less oriented to direct action. He founded Sea Shepherd the same year.

 

In the late 70s and early 80s Paul was also a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife and a field representative for the Fund for Animals. He co-founded Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. He worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in the 80s and 90s, running unsuccessfully for Mayor of Vancouver in 1996. He has also run for Member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre, the Vancouver Parks Board.

 

Paul has been named an honourary citizen of the Florida Keys and the French town of St. Jean Cap Ferrat. He was named Toronto City TV's Environmentalist of the Year in 1990, given the Genesis Award in 1998, and has been enshrined in the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame. He was given the George H.W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and is one of Time Magazine’s environmental heroes of the 20th Century. In 2008 Paul was named by the The Guardian as one of "50 people who could save the planet."

 

Paul continues to skipper Sea Shepherd boats and is a prolific author and lecturer. He has written six books and lectures at universities around the world. He was a professor of Ecology at Pasadena College of Design from 1990 to 1994, and an instructor in UCLA's Honors Program for 1998 and 1999. Most recently, Paul has become a television personality as the star of the reality TV show Whale Wars on Animal Planet, which documents the work of Sea Shepherd against Japanese whaling boats in Antarctica.

 

He has a 19-year-old daughter, Lilliolani (“Lani”) Paula Lum Watson, from his first marriage to Starlet Melody Lum. He has been married three times.

 

 

 
 

 

A Shepherd On The Lam (Halifax Sunday Herald,  July 20, 2005)