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Right now, in over the last 100 years, humanity has been raging war on life at the sea and over-exploiting everything. Every single commercial fishery is in a state of collapse. We eradicated whale populations, dolphins populations...
How serious a crisis are the world's oceans in today?
Jacques Cousteau said just before he died that the oceans are dying in our time, and we're not really... It's out of sight and out of mind for us. We really don't pay too much attention to it. But the reality is this: if the life in the ocean dies, the oceans die and we die. Civilization ceases to exist. That's how interconnected it is right now. Every single commercial fishery is in a state of collapse. The diminishment of the world's oceans is really incredible. Not many people are aware of this.
So it's a very serious situation we find ourselves in right now. The protection of life in the sea is the priority environmental conservation issue of our time right now. The environmental movement is pre-occupied and obsessed with global warming, which is nothing. They can't do anything about it. Nobody is going to stop global warming. If everybody stopped driving a car tomorrow it isn't going to stop it. You might be able to mitigate it a bit, but that's about it, it's here. we have to learn to adapt to it.
But what is the real factor causing global warming? It's the destruction of bio-diversity, because life on this planet creates and absorbs carbon dioxide. In a normal situation, the amount of carbon dioxide created and the amount absorbed is in equilibrium. Now we're producing 3 billion tons more then organic life can absorb, and as we diminish other species we actually increase that amount because we're taking away the absorption factor.
Really people need an education about this. We have Al Gore's movie Inconvenient Truth. Well the biggest inconvenient thing about that movie is the fact that the man does not once mention meat production as a source for global greenhouse productions. In fact, meat production and the fishing industry produce more global greenhouse gas emissions than the entire automobile industry. So eating a steak actually contributes more to global warming than driving an automobile. As I say, a vegan driving a hummer contributes less than a meat-eater riding a bicycle. Nobody wants to confront these issues because meat production produces not just carbon dioxide but also methane and, most importantly, nitrous oxide, which is 296 times as deterimental a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
The real issues are not bring addressed. The environmental movement really is conversation and not really conservation at all. People talk about issues but nobody really ever wants to do anything. They don't want to make the sacrifices.
Now what Sea Shepherd does when we go to the high seas — we don't talk about, we don't do petitions, we don't lobby politicians. We go in and directly intervene and shut down what these people are doing. We do it aggressively, but at the same time we do it non-violently. We never injure anybody, and we don't intend to injur anybody, but we're not going to sit back and watch them destroy the planet without interfering.
What's your objective in going after the Japanese whaling fleet?
Our objective in going against the Japanese whaling fleet is to simply uphold international conservation law. The Japanese are targeting endangered species in a whale sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium, in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty — numerous regulations that they're breaking. So we're simply going in there to uphold those regulations.
As a self-appointed law enforcement body, what gives us the right to do that? It's the United Nations World Charter for Nature which allows for non-government organizations and individuals to uphold international conservation law. We have the laws. We have the regulations. What we don't have is enforcement. We shouldn't be doing this. Governments should be doing this. If they're not going to do it, we will.
Our objective in going in there is to simply uphold those laws and regulations. Our secondary objective, which probably the most important objective, is to hurt the Japanese whaling industry economically, as significantly as we possibly can. For the last two years we've done just that. They've only gotten half their quota now they're $50 million in debt in subsidies to the Japanese government and we cost them over $70 million.
So when people say how could they shoot at us or get so angry? 70 million dollars is a big factor in their aggressiveness. We expect that next year they will be more aggressive because of this because now they're becoming desperate. The one language that they understand is profit and loss, so we have to make sure that their losses continue to exceed their profits.
What specific laws and treaties protect whales?
Japan is in violation of killing whales in a whale sanctuary established by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). They’re targeting endangered whales that are protected under the Convention of International Endangered Trade and Species (CITES). In 1986, the IWC passed a motion to declare a moratorium on commercial whaling all around the world and so all commercial whaling is illegal. Norway just completely flaunts that and ignores the law, and Japan has come up with a bogus—what they call a loophole, which is “scientific whaling.” But they haven’t produced any papers on it and the scientific community doesn’t recognise that as legitimate research.
Where do you get your authority?
We do what we do under the direction of the United Nations World Charter for Nature, an organisation which allows for non-government organisations and individuals to uphold international conservation law, specifically in areas beyond national jurisdiction. We have all of the laws and regulations and treaties we need to protect the oceans but there’s a lack of economic and political will for some, so we’re simply doing what the governments of the world should be doing. We’re simply intervening. I don’t see any difference between what we do and any other policing authority.
How do you sink a whaling vessel without causing anybody harm?
They were sunk by opening up the water cooling systems in the engines and then thereby sinking them. We’ve never injured anybody; we’ve never been convicted of a felony; we’ve never been sued. We approach all these things using every precaution to make sure that nobody’s injured and the vessels that we sunk actually had no personnel on board at the time.
How do you stay out of jail?
We don’t break any laws. What we do we do very carefully, and with a good understanding of international law. We don’t injure anybody; we don’t destroy or damage property that isn’t being used for anything other than illegal activity. If you’re dealing with criminals, they’re not going to want to go to court.
