Captain Paul Watson
on being a Pirate of Compassion in the name of our Oceans
In The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera tells us of a time when the land felt a great emptiness. It was waiting for someone to love it and lead it. That’s when Paikea came on the back of a whale.
“The sea is not my enemy. It is my teacher, my guide. And I, the whale rider, will follow its call wherever it leads. The whales are calling, and I know that they have chosen me,” says Kahu, the girl who carried her ancestor’s legacy forward.
Our modern whale rider is Captain Paul Watson.
To some, he is an eco-terrorist, a pirate chased by Interpol and imprisoned in Greenland. To others, he is a Sea Shepherd, a guardian of the ocean. A man with the audacity to put himself between a whale and a harpoon, because “you have to rock the boat!”
What made his heart beat for these magnificent water creatures?
His defining lesson came in 1975, as a founding member of Greenpeace. Watson and fellow activists steered an inflatable boat between a Soviet whaling ship and its prey. For a moment, they believed they had stopped the killing. Then the harpoon fired and struck a female sperm whale, filling the sea with blood. An angry male rose from the deep. He could have crushed the boat, but stopped: “As I looked into that giant eye, I saw something that changed my life forever: understanding. He knew what we were trying to do. He could have killed us, but chose not to. I realized we were killing these magnificent beings just to make a weapon for the mass extermination of human beings! We’re insane as a species!”
That moment became the turning point of his life. He vowed, quite literally, to die for “the others”, the species we are trying to destroy: “That’s who I represent. They are my clients, not people. In the long run, it’ll benefit people.”
He founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and authored many books, including Earthforce! and Ocean Warrior. He is the second person, after Jacques Cousteau, to receive the Jules Verne Award. Wherever he goes, his philosophy flows like a tide: “I measure intelligence by the ability to live in harmony with nature. The real disease is anthropocentrism, the belief that we rule the Universe. We must live by the laws of ecology: diversity, interdependence, limits to growth.”
Captain Paul calls economics “the politics of extinction”, a system built on short-term gain, rewarding destruction. But the ocean, to him, is the heartbeat of Earth: “Life began in the ocean. It is the lifeblood of our planet. If the ocean dies, we all die.” He encourages us to see Earth as a spaceship, with its life-support system run by non-human crewmembers. “We are killing off these intelligent engineers. If we do, the passengers will go down with the ship!”
Read his answers for Inspirators, and carry his mad love as a compass in uncertain waters!
Thank you, Captain Paul, for being a Pirate of Compassion!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Paul Watson
Company / Institution: Founder; Marine Wildlife Conservationist; Environmental Activist
Title: The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society; Captain Paul Watson Foundation
Website: www.paulwatsonfoundation.org
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/captainpaulwatson/
Country of origin: Canada
Country you currently live in: France
Your definition of Regeneration: We must give planetary ecosystems the time to recover and to repair the damage we have inflicted. We must live in accordance with the three basic laws of ecology:
1. The law of diversity - the strength of an ecosystem is dependent upon the diversity within it
2. The law of interdependence - all species within an ecosystem are interdependent with each other
3. The law of finite resources - there is a limit to growth, a limit to carrying capacity, and when one species steals the carrying capacity from other species, that causes a diminishment in diversity and interdependence, which leads to ecological collapse.
Main business challenge you face: I don't have any business challenges, I only have ecological challenges.
Main driver that keeps you going: My love for life, my respect for nature, and my desire for adventure.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: Imagination.
The trait you most value in others: Loyalty.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Poetry, children, animals and plants, the ocean, the rain and storms, and the wondrous mystery of the universe.
The Inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path: Whales, the sea, the forests and children.
A starting point for companies or professionals that are beginning the regeneration journey: Discover your passion, recognize your talents, and nurture your imagination.
Most used and abused clichés in sustainability that bother you: The word “sustainability”, which has come to mean business as usual.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope: Don’t be depressed or pessimistic about the future. You have no power over the future, but you have absolute power over the present, so focus on the present and that will define what the future will be.
Books that had a great impact on you / Must-Reads for any regenerative professional:
· The Monkey Wrench Gang by Ed Abbey
· The Sheep Look Up by Juhn Brummet
· Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
· Sea of Slaughter by Farley Mowat
· My own book, Earthforce
· Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
· The poems of Robert Service, Lord Byron, Leonard Cohen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Shakespeare.
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again: Sharkwater by Rob Stewart. How to Blow up a Pipeline. Killers of the Flower Moon and Moby Dick.
Websites / Podcasts you visit frequently: Comedy Central.
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: Celtic and Folk, Classic Rock.
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: Antarctica, Greenland, East Africa, Turkey, Greece, Galapagos, New Zealand, Iceland and Siberia.
Global Regenerative Voices you recommend us to follow:
· Sylvia Earle
· Jane Goodall
· Raoni
· Lamya Essemlali
· Cyrill Gutsch
· Greta Thunberg
· Carl Sagan
· Farley Mowat
· Bob Brown.
Events we should attend / Best places for networking (online or offline):
Offline – conferences and university lectures.
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030:It will be a better year than 2031, 2041 and most certainly 2051.
Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030: We aren't there yet, so I am not worried yet. Hopefully, we will remove any cause for pessimism.
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: Passion, courage and imagination.
The Inspirator(s) you are endorsing for a future edition:
· Greta Thunberg
· Marie-Sarah Adenis
· Lamya Essemlali
· Nathalie Gil.
The quote that inspires you:
"The pale blue dot. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
(Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994)
Your own quote that will inspire us:
