Captain Paul Watson, the self-proclaimed eco-pirate who helms the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, thinks the financial fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster will keep Japan’s whaling ships in port when the Southern Ocean whaling season begins in December.
“With the Japanese government cutting old-age pensions because of all the disasters, I just can’t see them justifying further subsidies for whaling,” says Watson. “However, there is the pride factor and if they come we’ll be ready for them.”
Japan has hunted whales for “scientific research” under a loophole in an international moratorium on commercial whaling enacted in 1986. In an annual confrontation on the high seas, Sea Shepherd dispatches ships from its fleet to disrupt Japanese whalers and protect the fin and minke whales they hunt. (A drama documented in the Animal Planet series “Whale Wars.”)
The tsunami also heavily damaged Japanese ports that are the home base for whalers who troll Japan’s coastal waters. (The Japanese government sponsors whaling in the Southern Ocean.)
Meanwhile, domestic demand for whale meat remains anemic and the International Maritime Organization’s ban on ships’ use of heavy fuel oil in Antarctic waters takes effect in August.
“That might be the saving-face excuse for Japan not to go because it would make the Nisshin Maru [whale meat factory ship] illegal under IMO regulations,” Watson told me.
For Watson, saving whales is all about business.
“We don’t appeal to people ethically or morally; we appeal to them financially,” he says. “Our objective was to sink the Japanese fleet economically. I think we’ve achieved that. I think we’ve actually won this but we’ll see in December.”
In the meantime, it’s on to new battles. Watson called from Los Angeles, where he was about to board a flight to Italy and from there would join the Bridgette Bardot and the Steve Irwin – Sea Shepherd names it ships after prominent environmental and animal rights activists.
The ships are patrolling the waters off the Libyan coast, chasing away fishing boats attempting to exploit the chaos in that country to illegally trawl for bluefin tuna.
“We’ve already turned back five boats from Malta,” Watson says. “I think we’ll be quite successful in stopping this.”
