‘If the oceans die, we die’: Anti-whaler Paul Watson on activism, prison and not giving up hope

Watson has been fighting for the rights of whales and the wider environment for more than 50 years - and is showing no signs of slowing down.

Transcript

00:00The oceans are dying and I think anybody who comes to the realization of just how dire that situation is will

00:06understand that we all have a responsibility to make sure that we protect

00:10Biodiversity interdependence in the sea because if the oceans die we we die

00:14it's as simple as that one moment that changed my life was back in 1975 when a harpoon sperm whale was dying and

00:21It came up out of the water at an angle that would come crashing down on us

00:25And as he came out of the water, I looked into his eye and I I saw my own reflection in that eye

00:29But I also saw understanding the whale understood what we were trying to do and instead of coming forward and crushing us

00:34He began to slide back and making a big effort in doing so and I saw his head go beneath the surfaces

00:40I disappear and he died he could have killed us and chose not to do so

00:43But I also that when I became aware of one very important thing and I said to myself

00:48Why are they killing these whales?

00:49They're killing them for oil and that was used for high

00:52heat resistant industrial machinery and one of the things that was most valuable for was for the construction maintenance of

00:58Intercontinental ballistic missiles and I said here we are killing this incredibly beautiful intelligence self-aware sentient being

01:03For the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings and that struck me as insane

01:09so I

01:10Dedicated myself ever since to protecting as many of their kind as I possibly could when I began doing this

01:161974 that is protecting whales. There were many many whaling nations and since then we've seen Australia Chile, South Africa

01:24Peru so many countries that stopped whaling and

01:27We've achieved I think about 90% of the world's whaling nations have shut down. So that leaves Norway Iceland and in Japan

01:34I'm pretty confident. We'll shut down Iceland within the year next year or so and

01:38If we shut down Japan, then Norway will go with it because Norway only kills whales to sell to the Japanese anyway

01:44so we just have to keep the pressure on and

01:47Understand that this is this is not something that's achieved overnight

01:50You just constantly have to keep at it and

01:53After 50 years, I think we've achieved a lot

01:55Yes in 2019 was the first time in the history of whaling that no whales were killed in international waters. That's that's a major achievement