“With a shock, my eyes met the left eye of the whale like Odysseus facing the Cyclops. That one eye stared back, an eye the size of my fist, blackish brown and with a depth that astonished and gripped me. This was no brutish creature. This was no dumb animal. The eye that I saw reflected an intense intelligence. I read the pain and I read understanding. The whale knew what we were doing. This whale had discriminated. That message was beamed directly into my heart by a mere glance. Fear there never was, but apprehension vanished like a crest upon a wave. I felt love both from and for. I felt hope, not for himself but for his kind. I saw a selflessness of a spirit completely alien to our primate selves. This was a being with an intelligence that put us to shame, with an understanding that could only humble us. And the most shameful message of all passed over to me; forgiveness. In an instant, my life was transformed and a purpose for my life was reverently established.” – Paul Watson
Captain Paul Watson
As we prepare for the challenges and mysteries that the new millennium will reveal, we must take stock of where we have come from, where we are now, and where we are heading.
We are closing the door on the most violent yet most technologically inventive, most educated yet most environmentally destructive century in the history of our species. The good news is that we survived it. The bad news is that we may not survive another.
We set foot on the threshold of the new millennium with the message of the Y2K bug reminding us that technology can ambush us if we come to rely upon science exclusively to solve all of our problems.
We must never forget that the one virtue that we can always depend on is that part of us that is rooted in the world of nature, in wilderness and wildness, intuition and emotion. We must never sacrifice this warm embrace of the earth to the cold rationality and mechanical dictates of technology and economy.
Our challenge in the 21st Century is to find imaginative solutions to the most ominous threats ever to face this planet and our species. How do we come to grips with escalating human population growth and its effects: the escalating destruction of biodiversity, the obliteration of eco-systems and the rising rate of species extinctions?
We are faced with horrendously difficult problems without easy answers. It is so tempting to simply ignore the issues and retreat into the world of self-gratification and selfishness. If not outright denial, we can appease our consciousness with the belief that technology will be the remedy to all the planet’s ills – forgetting that it is technology that has caused most of the problems.
At Sea Shepherd, we see the massive ships dragging, trawling, drift-netting, long-lining, seining and strip-mining the oceans, diminishing the fish and decimating habitats. We see the whales desperately trying to avoid the sonar and merciless exploding harpoons, the eyes of innocent seal pups reflecting the descending club, and the panic of dolphins drowning in the lethal bondage of plastic nets.
Our opposition has all the technological and financial strength. They have the power of a manipulated media at their disposal, a media that dictates reality and controls perception. It is the tragedy of the commons that exploiting nature has the incentive of wealth and power whereas the defense of nature yields few material rewards.
Fortunately, the one great advantage that we have over those who destroy for profit is that we see a larger picture. We are not restricted to viewing the world through the prism of economics. We understand that we have the responsibility to defend the majority of humanity – all those people who will be born in a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand years – from the relatively tiny minority of people in the present whose greed is robbing the future.
And it is not just humanity that we are responsible for. As the most powerful species on the planet, we must protect those myriad millions of other species from… well, ourselves.
And the most wonderful thing of all is that we can actually do it. All we have to do is to surrender our fears to the guidance of our heart and spirit and become activists. This means placing our talents, skills, experience, and virtues into the service of creating a better tomorrow. Over the last quarter century I have stood at the helm of an organization that has saved lives, protected habitats, and motivated thousands of people to become activists. We have created positive change and we have witnessed positive change. In the last quarter century we have seen the emergence of a conservation ethic and we have experienced the development of the environmental movement.
In 1960, hardly anyone knew what the word “ecology” meant. Since then we have seen the contributions of many individuals and organizations that have championed endangered species and threatened habitats.
Your very own Sea Shepherd International has shut down pirate whaling operations, halted drift netters on the high seas, stopped draggers from exterminating fish, and saved the lives of sea-turtles and seals.
What we have been doing for a quarter of a century is creating a legacy to hand down to our children tomorrow, building a strategy to make a continuing difference, and building the strength to persevere against the forces of destruction, never forgetting that it is the passion and compassion of individuals that forges a movement, and it is the imaginative vision of individuals that creates solutions.
Our society is an organization of passionate people, motivated by our compassion for the earth, her oceans, and her living community of species. It is from this gentle membership that Sea Shepherd International is given our strength, our ideas, and our guidance in taking our fight to the high seas – to the killing fields with the objective of intervening with the gift of life and hope.
Into the new millennium we sail and we have no shortage of enemies. But as that great pirate and hero Captain John Paul Jones once said – ” give me a fair ship that I may sail her into harm’s way.” That is where we will continue to go – into harm’s way, with a mission to protect and conserve the living treasures of our oceans.
Over the years, it is you who have made it possible for our ships to go forth. Only with your support will we continue. In return for your support, we will never compromise our objectives, nor will we ever fear to go where we are needed – though all the forces of technological hell be arrayed to bar the way. For the whales, the turtles, the dolphins, the sea-birds, the seals, the fish and all those fabulous and beautiful creatures of the deep blue sea who are our clients, we, your activist crewmembers, offer you our most sincere appreciation for your support
Best wishes,
Captain Paul Watson
Founder, Sea Shepherd International
Read more about the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Read Paul Watson’s essay The Aquatic Ape