Voice from the Deep!

Greenpeace International and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society…two “eco-warriors”, both trying to get our attention and stop the pain and suffering that we are inflicting on the Earth’s environment and it’s wildlife.

Both have different views and ideas on how to go about it. Yet one was “spawned” from the other…
Sea Shepherd was founded by Paul Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace, and “voted out of office” by the results of his  direct actions. Some say that is a good thing.. some say otherwise and that Greenpeace has gone soft over the years.

Paul Watson, environmental activist, was asked to leave Greenpeace because he yanked a club out of a hunter’s hand to protect a baby seal. 

I would have done the same…  My question is: Why didn’t the other Greenpeacers do that also ?

 I tend to agree on the “gone soft” option..  gone are the days when Greenpeace activists would get stuck in and do the “dirty work”.

I was on the receiving end of a Greenpeace action when I was part of the security on Salisbury Plains, many years ago, guarding United States of America nuclear assets in the form of mobile missile launchers. With rows and rows of razor wire and many coils of barbed wire surrounding the whole area, thermal cameras, night vision, trip flares and RAF police dogs… Yet Greenpeace still stalked the darkness in the dead of night. Suddenly a trip flare goes off in a little copse of woods some 300 meters to the front.. I spot them running into the night on the thermal sight, they think they are unseen as they stop and confer what to do next. They stand there glowing white in the dim red darkness of the thermal sight image. Suddenly a commotion  further around to the left of  the curved perimeter razor wire fencing.. a shout from the darkness “They’re inside the wire…”  The game is on…

A game for us.. but something deadly serious for the Greenpeace activists. If they had fallen within the razor wire they could have easily been cut very badly, had severed fingers or even killed if cut on the neck. It’s not called razor wire for nothing!

Over the years I’ve asked myself what motivates people to risk they’re lives of something so seemingly trivial… after all the US were there as a nuclear deterrent for us all.

After watching the anti-whaling campaigns over the years I’ve come to realise that I feel the same way as they did, back when they scaled the razor wire.

How things have changed…

Sea Shepherd doesn’t have the PR of Greenpeace, doesn’t have the publicity, doesn’t have the funding… yet they seem to have done more for the anti-whaling cause than Greenpeace ever could. They are what Greenpeace used to be… yet Greenpeace HQ seem to be more concerned with lining they’re own pockets with funds rather than doing what they should be doing and saving the environment and wild life.

Sea Shepherd would like them to return to the Southern Ocean. We need as much opposition to the whalers as possible. There is strength in diversity of tactics and of strategy. Greenpeace has stated that their campaign for this year is over. (What?  The Japanese are still on the hunt for whales!) In other words they have enough footage, photos and a storyline to fuel another multi-million dollar fund-raising drive for the rest of the year.

This is Sea Shepherd

 

Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin said:

Now I know I may be sounding cynical here and perhaps I am but as a co-founder of Greenpeace I have to say that I am personally disgusted at this corporate, emotionless, exploitative annual ocean posing event that Greenpeace stages every year.

My message to them is simple. If you collect the money to save the whales then you should spend the money on saving the whales.  And they do collect the money! That is an area that Greenpeace excels in. Tens of millions of pieces of direct mail appeals each year. Door to door and telephone solicitations. Online advertising, television ads, radio ads, magazine ads.

Greenpeace spends more on soliciting funds to save the whales than they spend on actually sending a ship to sea to save the whales. For example Greenpeace has booked the online advertising space for major Australian and New Zealand newspapers and for news outlets like Google for three solid months to coincide with their annual whale-a-thon marketing event. 

And they only oppose whaling operations based on the popular appeal of the operation. You won’t see Greenpeace on the beaches in Taiji protecting dolphins or on the shores of the Faeroe Islands protecting pilot whales or in Neah Bay, Washington trying to stop the illegal killing of Grey whales by Makah Indians. Sea Shepherd covers all these places without ever once seeing a Greenpeacer in the area. The reason is simple, the market potential of these regional atrocities is small compared to taking on the Japanese whalers.

I’m sad to say that I agree whole heartedly with his views. The actions of Greenpeace HQ has brought shame on the whole Greenpeace foundation that have proved so popular and effective over the years.

Sea Shepherd may not be popular for tackling American Indians for illegally killing whales and we may not be popular in Japan for exposing the brutality of the killing of 20,000 dolphins every year by Japanese fishermen and we upset a lot of Scandinavians by intervening against Norwegian and Danish whaling but one thing Sea Shepherd does not do is discriminate.

Sea Shepherd actions are directed against the unlawful slaughter of marine species by anyone, anywhere, for any reason, popular or unpopular. This is one of the reasons that Greenpeace does not like Sea Shepherd. By our actions we call into question their motivations.

Greenpeace says that it disapproves of Sea Shepherd because we are a violent organization despite the fact that in our thirty year history, Sea Shepherd has never injured a single person, has never had a single person injured and has never been guilty of a felony crime. (Unlike Greenpeace I might add!)

Greenpeace states that damaging property is violent and we agree except when the property is used to illegally destroy life. Sea Shepherd does not protest, we intervene and we have no qualms about destroying the harpoon or the rifle of a poacher.

Greenpeace only seem to take on things that have a good PR result and can bring in more funds..  If there was money in “Save the Mosquito” you’d see Greenpeace up there at the forefront!

Captain Paul Watson:

A few years ago after Sea Shepherd had scuttled half the Icelandic whaling fleet I was doing a radio talk show program in Vancouver when someone called in a bomb threat to the station to “protest his violence.” That was weird enough but with the radio station staff and myself on the sidewalk as the police searched for the “pacifist bomb,” a reporter thrust a microphone into my face and said, “Greenpeace has just denounced you as an eco-terrorist. What’s your response?”

The only thing that came to mind was to try and laugh it off and to say, “Oh what do you expect from the Avon Ladies of the environmental movement?”

Well they’ve never forgiven me for that although my reference to their door-to-door solicitors was more accurate than their accusation of me of being a terrorist.

Some people may be surprised to learn that Greenpeace does not oppose all whaling.John Frizell of Greenpeace has said that “Greenpeace does not condone nor condemn whaling in principle.” The whale slaughter in the Faeroes, coastal whaling in Japan, the Canadian seal hunt, the polar bear sport hunt in Alaska and the dolphin slaughter in Japan have all been described by Greenpeace as “sustainable.”

Sea Shepherd we were once chasing the Nisshin Maru we saw the Japanese whalers hang a banner from the stern saying “Greenpeace is a sham.”

That is something myself, Paul Watson, the Japanese whalers and many others agree on!

Now every year we see Greenpeacers battling water cannons fired from the whaling boats. It all looks very dramatic but is it real? Sea Shepherd boats never get hit with the water cannons for the simple reason that they are so easy to avoid. Sea Shepherd boats run alongside the whalers to try and foul their props or to toss stink bombs on the deck and never get hit. What Greenpeace does is run their boats directly into the water columns but they make sure the cameras are running first.

As Patrick Moore once said when he was President of Greenpeace Canada, “It does not matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

It’s called ocean posing. This year Greenpeace said they attempted to put a small boat between the supply vessel Oriental Bluebird and the factory ship Nisshin Maru but the tactic failed when the Zodiac inflatable pulled away to avoid being crushed. A sensible move of course but it undermines the effectiveness of the tactic. If the opposition knows that the move is a bluff then they will proceed knowing that the boat will get out of the way.

The Japanese did just that.. they effectively ignored the Zodiac (until it got snagged on a cable) and continued to close the gap. Why did the Zodiac crew untangle themselves.. surely if they let the boat become more entangled the tactic would have worked and the refuelling would have halted. The boats pulled apart when the Zodiac was stuck and they knew it couldn’t get out of the way.

Captain Paul Watson:

I am the person that developed the Greenpeace tactic of taking small inflatable boats and running them between harpoon ships and fleeing whales. I did that way back in 1975 and it was a tactic that worked only for as long as there were men and women with the courage to hold the line, - that is to actually place their lives on the line rather than to pretend to place their lives on the line and then duck out at the last moment. When the first Greenpeacer to move out of the way of a harpoon did so, the tactic was rendered obsolete because any true eco-warrior would now be taking an unacceptable risk if the harpooner assumed the boat would get out of the way. Non-violent tactics work only if the activist is sincere and does not back down - no matter what.

Greenpeace said the boat got out of the way because it was dangerous. Of course it was dangerous. What is the point of putting your life on the line for a cause if you are only putting your life on the line in a kind of, sort of way, that is, until it becomes dangerous? The Freedom Riders did not back down to the lynch mobs of Mississippi. Gandhi’s people did not back down to the clubs and bullets of the British army, and in the early days of Greenpeace they did not back down from blocking sealing ships even when the ice was breaking up under our feet.

Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd…  I’ve just cancelled my Greenpeace payments.

Read more on the Sea Shepherd site