In July, the anti-whaling activist Captain Paul Watson was arrested and jailed in Nuuk, Greenland and faced extradition to Japan. He was detained by Interpol on a red notice issued by the Japanese government dealing with an allegation of trespass dating to 2010. However, just before Christmas, Denmark’s Minister of Justice announced that Watson would not be extradited and was free to leave.
It was the latest, and longest, brush with the law that Watson had in his 50 years of ocean activism. He was an early member of Greenpeace, before founding Sea Shepherd in 1977. In 2012, he became only the second person, after Jacques Cousteau, to be awarded the Jules Verne Award, dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. In 2022, he left Sea Shepherd and started the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. In early January 2025, SURFER caught up with Paul at his home in Paris to discuss the jail stretch, his half-century of activism, and what surfers can do to help save our oceans.
Below are snippets from our discussion with the influential ocean activist:
(PGERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images
On Five Months In A Greenland Jail
“This was a maximum security prison, but it was more like a hotel. I had my own cell with a refrigerator and television, but most importantly, I had this beautiful view from my cell window of the fjord and the mountains, and I could see whales out there. I missed my family, but the situation provided an incredible opportunity to continue to expose illegal Japanese whaling internationally with the added benefit of exposing and focusing on the killing of pilot whales and dolphins in the Danish Faroe Islands. So we got an incredible amount of publicity during the time I was there.”
On Interpol and The Red Notice
“The Interpol Red Notice was designed for war criminals, serial killers and major drug traffickers. However, it has been weaponized by many countries to be used to go after activists, dissidents and whistleblowers. I’m the first person in history to be put on there for conspiracy to trespass. The maximum penalty in Denmark for the so-called crime that I was alleged to have committed was a $600 fine. Japan was caught talking about giving me 15 years in prison for that. Now the Danish government were hostile from the beginning and wanted to extradite me. However, they weren’t prepared for the protests, not only from hundreds of thousands of people who signed petitions but also from people like Jane Goodall, Richard Branson, President Macron of France and members of the Australian parliament. In the end, the Danish Attorney General didn’t have much choice. He had a 65-page document that was mainly based on politics but didn’t make any sense legally. His arm was also twisted by international public opinion. I would say though that the Interpol red notice is still active and hasn’t gone away.”
Related: Anti-Whaling Activist Paul Watson Released From Greenland Jail
On The Japanese Government
“Their actions are revenge for my “Whale Wars” television show. That severely humiliated and embarrassed the whaling industry and the Japanese government. So really what this is all about is a politically motivated false accusation on a very minor charge from 2010. Now in 2017, the European Commission on Human Rights did an inquiry on the abuse of Interpol for political purposes, and my name was cited as an example of that abuse. Japan and Denmark did me quite the favor by having me arrested in Greenland. That created this incredible opportunity to focus attention. So when I was forced off my ship in Greenland, the John Paul De Jore, I just simply renamed the prison, The Good Ship Nuuk, and carried on using the prison as a vessel to raise awareness.”
On 50 years of activism
“I’ve never been angry at anything in my life, really. It’s just not an emotion I utilize. Persecution for being an activist is just part of the job. I mean, you have to expect that you’re not going to make change without taking risks and without making sacrifices. You need to turn that into a story to dramatize the issue and get people’s attention. I’ve been arrested and put in jail many, many times, but I’ve never been convicted of a crime. I’ve also never injured a single person in my entire career over the last 50 years. In 1977, I developed a strategy that I call aggressive nonviolence. We would aggressively intervene, but we aren’t going to hurt anybody and we have to operate within the boundaries of both the law and practicality. “
You have to expect that you’re not going to make change without taking risks and without making sacrifices. You need to turn that into a story to dramatize the issue and get people’s attention.
Paul Watson
On The Law
“The law is a funny thing because there are international, national, state and local laws. We tend to intervene using international law as a basis for doing so. And so everything that we oppose is a criminal activity. Japan’s whaling in the Southern Ocean in a whale sanctuary is a violation of the International Whaling Commission’s global moratorium that was upheld by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2014. No Japanese whaling ship can come into an Australian port because they’re considered to be in contempt of the Australian court. But one of the classic strategies of governments today is to turn anybody who opposes them into eco-terrorists. But I don’t know of a single act of “eco-terrorism” where someone has killed or injured anybody. When people ask me, ‘Are you an ecoterrorist?’ I just say, ‘No, I’ve never worked for Monsanto or Union Carbine any of the real eco-terrorists operating in plain sight.'”
In part 2 of our conversation, Paul talks through surfers’ role in activism, his split and beef with Sea Shepherd, on playing the long game and what we can do to help.
