Activism

From: Animal People July/August 1997

Paul and the pirate

	BREMERHAVEN––A pirate whaler is at large in the central Atlantic, Captain Paul Watson is out of jail, and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has a ship and crew at Bremerhaven, Germany, almost ready to sail. “We don’t know if we’ll be able to find it,” Watson told ANIMAL PEOPLE from Washington D.C., after addressing the Animal Rights ‘97 conference and attending a banquet in honor of Animal Rights International founder Henry Spira, “but we’re going that way anyway to chase some driftnetters, and we might as well have a look.”
Photograph of Captain Paul Watson courtesy Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The Portuguese Navy was reportedly already looking with a warship––but the last time there were pirate whalers in the region, the Portuguese Navy protected them. The most notorious was the Sierra, operating from Lisbon with impunity. On July 16, 1979, Watson, Peter Woof, and Jerry Doran overtook the Sierra with the original Sea Shepherd vessel, then rammed her twice as she ran for the protection of a Portuguese destroyer. The destroyer apprehended the Sea Shepherd after a high seas chase, but Watson, Woof, and Doran all eventually escaped, while inspired Sea Shepherd sympathizers sank the damaged Sierra and three other whalers. The rest left the Atlantic.
Mark Simmonds of the British-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society on June 10 confirmed rumors circulating since May 13 that yacht crews had discovered dead and dying whales lashed to buoys equipped with radar reflectors in an area about 200 miles west of the Azores.
Said Simmonds, “It is likely that catcher ships first kill or wound the whales with harpoons before tying them to the buoys. The factory ship then comes over the horizon and detects the buoys with radar. It can then process the whale meat at its leisure.” Sperm whales appeared to be the primary targets. Simmonds’ account was confirmed by British yachters Jeff King, of the Tuesday Girl, and Brad DeLange, of the Globana. Getting out Watson then still had 10 days to serve in jail, after The Netherlands on June 9 refused the last of a series of Norwegian extradition requests. The first, rejected in Germany on March 30, two days before Watson was arrested in The Netherlands on the same warrant, was based on 120-day sentence issued in absentia as an accesory after the fact to the 1992 scuttling at dockside of the whaler Nybraena. Norway also sought to indict Watson for allegedly ramming the Norwegian naval vessel Andennes, sending a false distress signal, and trespassing in Norwegian waters in August 1994. Photos of the incident published by ANIMAL PEOPLE clearly showed that the Andennes rammed Watson’s vessel, the Whales Forever, not the other way around.
Evidently, Dutch authorities agreed––so instead of sending Watson to Norway to stand trial, they held him on various pretexts until, as Norwegian prosecutor Geir Fornebo admitted, “If Watson had been serving the time in Norway, he would automatically have been set free,” having served two-thirds of the original sentence.
	Click on the image above for a video clip of the the Andennes ramming the Whales Forever taken from a helicopter. You need a multimedia player to view this 1.84-MB MPEG, which takes approximately 2.5 minutes to download at 33.6 bps. Photograph courtesy of the Sea Shepherd Log
On the other hand, the Sea Shepherds had also received warnings that Watson would be killed if ever actually in Norwegian custody. Pirate whaling is scarcely the only current threat to great whales in the Atlantic and Mediterranean––especially sperm whales, washing up in record numbers along the Scots coast since 1987, with a particular surge this spring. Before 1987, the recorded average Scots coastal dead whale count was .25; since 1987, coinciding with increased North Sea seismic oil exploration, the average is eight. Leading marine mammologists speculated on the MARMAM online discussion board that seismic explosions might damage sperm whales’ hearing, consequently impairing their ability to echolocate.
	A similar problem, blamed on jet fighters, reportedly caused 16 infant seals to become separated from their mothers along the north coast of Germany during the last week in June. They were taken to a rehabilitation center, where they will spend three months, until old enough to return to the sea.
As if to underscore the importance of Watson’s planned anti-driftnet campaign, the Italian stranding rescue network Centro Studi Cetacci released sperm whales from driftnet entanglement on June 9 and June 14.
Across the ocean, on June 24, Center for Coastal Studies scientists Charles “Stormy” Mayo and David Mattila and fisher John Ours freed a 55-ton North Atlantic right whale from entanglement in drifting fishing gear off Nantucket. Ours, ironically, had spoken strongly against more stringent federal regulation of fishing in waters used by right whales. The incident was variously interpreted as proof that stiff new regulations are needed, as activist Max Strahan has contended in a series of lawsuits, and as evidence that any whales who do run afoul of nets can be rescued successfully.