Goodhearted viewers, today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants features Captain Paul Watson, legendary guardian of sea life and defender of the world’s marine ecosystems.

I believe that the answers are to be found in the impossible. And what I mean by that is that what we look upon as impossible now can be possible through the application of courage, passion and imagination.

As the founder and president of the non-profit organization the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Captain Watson has been at the forefront of global marine conservation efforts for more than three decades. He leads a compassionate vegan lifestyle, and has made all Sea Shepherd vessels vegan as well. His career as a staunch protector of animals and the environment began when he was a mere boy.

When I was 11, I used to swim with these beavers in the beaver ponds. And then the next year, they were gone. And when I began to ask questions, I found out that trappers had taken them all during the winter time. So I became very angry about that and began to walk the trap-lines in the winter and find the beavers and other animals, and release them. And then I destroyed the traps. Then I got involved with those animal rescue missions.

Now when Greenpeace formed, it was formed as a group called the “Don’t Make a Wave Committee.” And it was in response to nuclear testing by the Atomic Energy Corporation of the United States, where they were detonating a five megaton bomb under Amchitka Island up in the Alaskan Aleutians. And a previous test had killed about 1,000 sea otters and seals around the island because of the shockwave. Now, the “Don’t Make A Wave Committee” came together from two different groups; the peace side came from the Quakers, and the environmental side came from the Sierra Club.

And I was probably a little different than those two because my motivation was the fact that Amchitka was a wildlife preserve, and I thought it was a little absurd that you couldn’t carry a gun onto the island but they can blow a five megaton bomb up underneath of it. So that was my reason for getting involved. Now, in 1974 I helped Bob Hunter to move Greenpeace away from just nuclear testing (protests) to try and protect the whales. And then I got them involved with protecting seals on the east coast.

Captain Watson recalls the first-ever Greenpeace whale campaign, during which one particular experience with the giants of the sea left a profound impression upon him.

We were going up along the coast of Vancouver Island, and we were up in the Straits of Bella Bella, and we saw a pod of orcas coming towards us. And we were pretty enthusiastic at the time, so I remember three of us jumped into the water in front of this oncoming pod of orcas. We wanted to just film everything, just being involved with these orcas. And then all of a sudden they disappeared. And so we were just sitting there treading water, wondering where they were, when suddenly they surface right beside us.

And one of them was so close that I was able to reach out, grab his dorsal fin, and literally ride the back of this orca for about 200 meters. And the realization that in the entire history of orca-human relations, there’s never been an orca that’s attacked and killed a human being in the wild. And I think that’s certainly an indication of just how intelligent they are. We’ve had one of our inflatable (rafts) picked up on the tail of a Grey whale, lifted out of the water, and gently put back down.

Swimming with humpbacks, they’ll come at you and they’ll just raise their fin and right over your head and come down the other side. They could easily bump into you. They could easily injure you not even meaning to, but they’re very gentle, and they’re very sensitive creatures. And I personally think they’re the most intelligent life forms on the planet.

The incredible tenderness displayed by the orcas starkly contrasts with the unconscionable behavior of the ruthless whalers. A defining moment that spurred Captain Watson on his path came after witnessing the harpooning of whales in June 1975.

I was just thinking, “Why are we killing these whales?” You don’t eat whales. Sperm whales are used for sperm oil. And one of the things that they were utilizing it for was the development and manufacture of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

So I said, “Here we are destroying this incredibly beautiful, socially complex, intelligent creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings.” And that’s when it just struck me: we must be insane. And so from that moment on, I decided that I would do what I do for whales and other creatures of the oceans, the sharks, the turtles, and the fish.

In 1977, Captain Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to investigate, document and enforce laws protecting marine wildlife when illegal conduct is observed at sea. The organization’s valorous efforts to halt whaling are known globally and the group’s activities are the subject of a highly popular reality television series called “Whale Wars” that premiered in 2008 on the Animal Planet television channel.

Our approach has always been about not appeal to them morally or ethically, because I don’t think that people who are plundering our oceans really care, but to appeal to them economically. And right from the beginning with the Japanese whaling fleet, our objective was to sink the whaling fleet economically, to bankrupt them. And after seven voyages, I think we’ve managed to do that. And we’ve done that by making sure they don’t get those kill quotas. And every year we were able to save more whales than the year before.

And every year we got stronger, every year they got weaker, until this year we were able to shut them down completely. We just get onto their stern slipway of their factory ship and stay there. And if they can’t load whales, they can’t kill whales. Now, two years ago they tried to test me on this. We were blocking the slipway and they came in to try and unload a couple of dead whales. And we didn’t move.

And that resulted in three different collisions. They never tried again, because they knew that we were not going to back down. We were staying there. I mean I’m not really concerned about the damage to my ships; those are just steel objects and if they have to sustain the damage to achieve the objective, then that’s all well and good.

It’s just amazing what you do. Could you also comment on the fearless courage of fellow crew members in preventing the killing, and their love for the animals also?

The reality of it is that I couldn’t pay people to do what these volunteers do. That kind of courage, that kind of passion can only come from a volunteer base. And that’s what makes the difference. Sea Shepherd wouldn’t be able accomplish anything if it wasn’t for the passion and courage of all of our crew members. We’ve had over 5,000 people crew on our ships over the years. In this last campaign, it was 88 crew on three different vessels, and that was from 23 different nations. And so that is the backbone of this organization, is the volunteer crew.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society also strives to preserve the highly endangered Bluefin tuna.

In June of this year (2011), we will be intervening against poaching operations, primarily off the coast of Libya. The Bluefin tuna is an example of what I call the “economics of extinction,” that corporations actually make money by driving species into extinction. They want them to go extinct. And the reason being is that, for the most part, fishing operations have been taken over by corporations where it’s short-term investment for short-term gain.

They’ll make as much money as possible off of this particular fishery. And how to do that is through diminishment. You build up a five-year supply, 10-year supply, 15-year supply, as much as you can get. And as you’re doing this, you’re diminishing the numbers in the sea. And diminishment translates into higher prices for the commodity that’s in the warehouse. A Bluefin tuna, one fish right now, is worth US$75,000 on average. So, this kind of investment in extinction is what’s causing a lot of our problems.

In March 2011, Sea Shepherd signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Pacific island nation of Palau to safeguard sharks that inhabit a marine protected area from fisherman.

We signed an agreement with the President of the Republic of Palau to control poaching in Palau waters and we’re preparing to send our ship there. But, another factor has entered into that. Japan sent a delegation to Palau.. They’re offering to provide Palau with a patrol boat and the funds to run it, which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine. We will gladly withdraw if Japan makes good on that promise.

We’ll see how they do. Because what that’ll mean is that we can now go to the Cook Islands or Vanuatu or Tahiti and make the same offer. And if we can motivate Japan into providing patrol boats to all these countries, then I think we’ll achieve something very significant here.

Captain Paul Watson, we are ever-grateful for your steadfast efforts to defend our precious marine co-inhabitants and ecosystems. May the winds always be with you and the brave Sea Shepherd volunteers while sailing the high seas as you continue to gift compassion to our planet.

For more details on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, please visit

Please join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the conclusion of our interview with the intrepid Captain Paul Watson. Cherished viewers, it was a pleasure having your company on today’s program. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May we always be blessed with the immense love of the oceans and all the life within.

They could easily injure you not even meaning to, but they’re very gentle, and they’re very sensitive creatures. And I personally think they’re the most intelligent life forms on the planet.

Hallo, virtuous viewers and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today, we present the conclusion of our two-part program featuring the renowned animal rights and environmental advocate Captain Paul Watson, legendary guardian of sea life and a true superhero.

Captain Watson, the vegan founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has over the past three decades, commanded more than 200 voyages, each with the mission to protect, defend, and conserve our world’s marine animals.

I think a lot of animals have this intuitive ability that most humans lost a long time ago. For instance, if you’re diving on a coral reef and you’ve got a spear gun in your hand, the fish will keep their distance; they know what that is. But if you’re diving with a camera in your hand, they will come right up to you. So, they know what your intentions are.

For instance, when a dolphin looks at you, he’s seeing more than just your physical form. His echolocation looks right through your body. He can see your blood moving in your veins; he can see your lungs. That’s why they’ll try to rescue people who are drowning. They can see the water getting into the lungs. So it’s almost like they can tell if anybody’s being dishonest or if they’re afraid of them or whatever. They can sense that far more than we can because they can literally see the workings of the internal organs.

In addition to their sensitivity, cetaceans are born geniuses!

They have the largest and most complex and most evolved brains on the planet, there’s no doubt about that. The human brain is 1,300 cubic centimeters, but the orca’s a 6,000 cubic centimeter brain. The sperm whale, the largest brain ever evolved is a 9,000 cubic centimeter brain. I believe that all animals are intelligent.

And to me, the key to intelligence is the ability to live in harmony with the natural world, and by that criteria, humans are not that intelligent. One of the problems with people is that we associate intelligence with technology. If it doesn’t have tools, it’s not smart. We don’t understand non-manipulative intelligence. The intelligence displayed by dolphins, whales, elephants, for instance, bears, all are incredibly intelligent. Why does a whale need a telephone when they can transmit over a thousand miles underwater?

I believe that whales actually have the ability to transmit visual images between each other. Their communication skills are vastly superior to ours. The number of actual components of humpback whale language about two million on that, putting it together. We’re spending billions of dollars searching through space for extraterrestrial life, when there is intelligent life on this planet that we could be communicating with, and we’re not.

Scientists just go absolutely giddy at the possibility of finding bacteria on the moon Europa, but we’re wiping out so many species at the same time here. Why are we so obsessed with something that’s beyond our atmosphere and we ignore what’s going on here?

The current surge of species extinctions on land and sea has been referred to as “the anthropogenic period,” because, unlike the past five mass extinctions, one of which caused the last of the dinosaurs to disappear, the ongoing one is driven by human actions. Pollution from industrial activity, hunting, fishing, and animal agriculture are ongoing threats to biodiversity.

Large drag trawlers, bottom trawlers, middle water trawlers, long lines, drift nets, that kind of technology is something that fish, for instance, cannot keep up with. We’re taking the fish out of the ocean far, far faster than they’re able to reproduce. We have removed about 90% of the fishes from the oceans, and we’re taking 70 to 90 million sharks alone. Right now, we’re in what the anthropologist, Richard Leakey, described as the world’s sixth major extinction event.

That means that between the year 2000 and the year 2065, we will lose more species of plants and animals to extinction than we’ve lost in the last 65.2 million years since the end of the Jurassic period. And we will be responsible for that. And of course, we (humans) could be on that list.

Another tragic consequence of humanity’s abuse of the ecosphere can be seen in the growing frequency of whale and dolphin strandings on beaches across our world.

I think we’re having a lot of whale and dolphin strandings for the simple reason that it’s a very painful death for a whale or a dolphin to drown. It takes a long time. And when they’re afflicted with a problem, they ground themselves and die on the beach. And a lot of that can be caused from pollution or from sonar testing. A lot of the US Navy sonar testing literally bursts the ear drums of these animals, which takes away their guidance systems, too. . But you’re going to see more and more of this as the oceans become more compromised with sonic and waste pollution.

Do you think they also have a message through this to humans?

Well, I think they’re certainly telling us that what we’re doing to the oceans is not healthy. The ocean is the pump that keeps it all going as far as regulating climate, providing food, and providing oxygen. Eighty percent of the oxygen is produced by vital plankton in the oceans. And most people just take it for granted; it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind, “What’s this got to do with me?” Well, it’s got a lot of to do with everybody because the survival of the oceans means our own survival.

For the courageous and compassionate endeavors of Captain Paul Watson and all the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society volunteers to save endangered ocean life, Supreme Master Ching Hai sent Captain Watson a letter of special thanks and donated US$50,000 to his organization to further these efforts.

So this is a letter from Supreme Master Ching Hai and it reads: Respected Captain Watson, We wish to humbly salute and thank the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for its daring feats of courage, and for your extraordinary acts of bravery, selflessly roaming the oceans to protect and preserve our precious, yet vulnerable marine life. Thanks to your amazing efforts, the Japanese government has announced that it will stop its whale hunt henceforth and for the foreseeable future, to the exuberant cheers of whale lovers and conservationists worldwide.

Every year, Sea Shepherd ships (manned by vegan crews) track the whalers to prevent the needless, insensitive slaughter of innocent creatures. Using creative, nonviolent methods, your volunteers risk life and limb to prevent the killings. Such bold and committed work has earned the support of governments including Australia, Chile, and France, as well as many groups and individuals.

Your fearless persistence along with resolute strength in risking your own safety and an unwavering love for the marine animals has saved not only hundreds of gentle whales, but also countless of other innocents from danger. In defending marine wildlife and their habitats, you are preserving the Earth’s life support system, and thus protecting us all, present and future generations alike.

May Heaven bless the Sea Shepherd’s vision of a day when a complete and permanent ban on whaling and indeed the end of any killing of animals, is enacted throughout the world. For your fearless sacrifices, for the strength of mind and fortitude in the face of danger, for your spirit, concern and tenacity and your compassionate commitment to all life, we hereby applaud and salute the heroic courageous deeds of Ecologist and Environmental Champions, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and legendary leader, Captain Paul Watson.
With Great Honor, Love and Blessings, Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Oh, thank you. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. Yes, this will make a big difference. I mean all these ships that we have are very, very expensive to run. But they get the job done, and it’s certainly worth everything that we can put into them, to keep them running.

In addition, Captain Watson received several gifts, including a selection of Supreme Master Ching Hai’s DVDs, as well as her newest books “From Crisis to Peace” and “The Love of Centuries.”

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

I’d like to say to Supreme Master Ching Hai that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, our officers, our crew, our supporters, our advisors, and directors, are all very, very appreciative for this support and for the recognition of what Sea Shepherd is doing on the high seas. We’re proud of the fact that we are a vegan vessel.

And in fact, I think we are probably the only vegan expedition that’s ever gone to the southern oceans, to the South Pole. And so we are very much proud to be associated with a philosophy that promotes this kind of kindness and regard and respect for other life forms on this planet. I think that her promotion of veganism is one of the healthiest things, because this is the key to changing our attitude towards animals and being able to survive on this planet.

Do you have a message to our viewers?

We have to understand that we have an intimate connection with our oceans. And that if the oceans die, we die. And if we want to survive and leave a legacy to our children’s children’s children, then the best way to do that is to preserve and protect and defend biodiversity in our oceans.

After our interview with Captain Watson, he announced on May 12, 2011 the Sea Shepherd's intentions to protect the nearly extinct Bluefin tuna off the coast of Libya by monitoring activities in the region, in accordance with a European Union fishing moratorium there. In response, on May 17, 2011, Supreme Master Ching Hai again donated US$20,000 in added support to this noble work.