Vigilante justice on the high seas: The New Yorker has a long article on the fight by Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to save whales and other creatures of the world's oceans, by any means necessary.“Monkey-wrench a bulldozer and they will call you a vandal. Spike a tree and they will call you a terrorist. Liberate a coyote from a trap and they will call you a thief. Yet if a human destroys the wonders of creation, the beauty of the natural world, then anthropocentric society calls such people loggers, miners, developers, engineers, and businessmen.”
~ Paul Watson
2 comments:
Wow, amazing article, riveting stories! I thought a few really interesting events highlight Watson's stories, such as being voted out of Greenpeace, and the incident where the Japanes whaler, after being dogged by Watson's crews, came to their aid when a zodiac got lost in the fray. Intense stuff.
Watson, to me at least, represents a true deep ecologist in a lot of ways. His actions in life are, for the most part, pretty consistent with the position that /all/ living creatures have equal rights. If we posit whales as equal members of a legal community, all he's doing is defending them the way you or I might defend a helpless human from being murdered in cold blood.
In a lot of ways, Watson reminds me of a self-loathing religious zealot; in constant guilt of his own nature, and in constant emotional need to redeem his existence on account of what he calls the 'original sin' of society: agriculture - in which he is forced, at least in part, to participate. Not unlike the dogmatic Catholic, perhaps Watson's boat is his place of worship, and nature his God.
- Jared
Great article.
Interesting man, this "Captain" Watson.
I remember reading about him in Robert Hunter's book "Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement". The article does a good job of describing the relationship between Hunter, the Greenpeace board, and Watson.
It was only last summer that I found out about the Sea Shepperds.
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