The 73-year-old ‘Greta of the seas’ facing 15 years in jail

We’re many miles from the ocean, but Jolly Roger flags are hoisted at full mast by protesters outside the Danish embassy in southwest London, alongside banners showing dolphins and whales.
One man’s face adorns them all. “Free Captain Paul Watson!” a crowd chants, as black cabs crawl past in Knightsbridge. A Japanese television crew is filming the whole thing: “This is a big issue in Japan,” the cameraman tells me.
Who is this big-in-Japan man that inspires such fierce emotions? With his trademark Santa Claus beard and shaggy hair, “Captain” Watson is the fiercest marine activist on the high seas. To some, not least the Japanese, who are keen to put him in jail, he’s a menace, an eco-pirate who has endangered shipping and sailors alike. To others, he’s a hero, a pioneer, saviour of whales and dolphins from Torshavn to Tokyo.
Watson has lived a rollicking life at sea worthy of Blackbeard. Aside from being married four times — including most recently to a glamorous Russian opera singer — the 73-year-old Canadian has risked his life to stop whaling ships by whatever means necessary.
Charismatic, divisive and radical, he is a Greta Thunberg of the seas, a Roger Hallam for bottlenose dolphins and, like the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Watson faces a extradition order for his alleged crimes He’s been accused of ecoterrorism: ramming and sinking vessels, scuttling ships in harbour, violently confronting seal clubbers and evading Interpol warrants by living at sea. In 2009 he achieved the ultimate badge of notoriety: a South Park parody.
But Watson’s buccaneering days could soon be coming to an end. Last month, he was arrested by Danish police in Nuuk, Greenland, and faces extradition to Japan on criminal charges over his alleged involvement in action against the whaling vessel Shonan Maru 2 in 2010 — including “accomplice to assault” and ship trespass. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail.
Watson was nowhere near the ship but is being arrested as an accomplice after Peter Bethune, an activist with the Sea Shepherd environmental organisation, attempted to detain the ship’s captain. Bethune was given a two-year suspended prison term and an Interpol arrest warrant was issued for Watson.
His fate will be decided at a custody hearing in Nuuk this week. President Macron of France has pleaded with the Danes to release Watson to France, where he was granted asylum in 2009 and lives with his wife, Yana, and two young sons, Tiger and Murtagh, on a houseboat on the Seine.
While many will feel that whaling has no place in the 21st century, Watson’s divisive tactics over the years have led to him being ostracised from mainstream environmental groups, including those he has founded.
He has many enemies and not just in the whaling industry. He claims to be a founding member of Greenpeace (something it disputes), but was jettisoned in the 1970s after clashing with board members who described him as an overly vocal “mutineer”.
In 1977 the exiled Watson went on to found Sea Shepherd, which grew into a global movement. Its methods included intercepting whaling fleets. In 1986 it sunk two whaling ships in a Reykjavik harbour and in 2009 the Sea Shepherd flagship, the Steve Irwin, was damaged when it positioned itself on the slipway of Yushin Maru No 2 (which was also damaged) so that whales could not be loaded onto deck and butchered.
Then, two years ago, in echoes of what happened at Greenpeace, Watson was removed from the Sea Shepherd board in what he calls a “betrayal”. Watson then set up the Captain Paul Watson Foundation — putting himself front and centre (and also presumably ensuring he could not be ousted a third time). Neither Greenpeace nor Sea Shepherd wanted to comment.
Despite Japan and Norway’s whaling industries being unprofitable, relying in part on government subsidies, the battle between Watson and the whalers has intensified. After 1986, when commercial whaling was outlawed globally, Japan was still allowed to kill 1,000 whales a year for scientific purposes, but in 2019 it withdrew from the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial whaling.
Japan launched a new $47 million whaling megaship and new vessels are equipped with water cannon to fire at fleets of animal rights protesters. The Japanese government expanded the lists of species it allowed commercial whalers to hunt and on August 2 it confirmed that the first fin whale (the second-largest whale and considered to be a vulnerable species) had been killed. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation organisation estimates that whaling ships have killed about 40,000 whales since 1986.
Watson is in choppy legal waters but his loyal supporters will seemingly follow him anywhere. At the London protest I find “Elks”, who is here on a day trip from Wales for the protest. He’s read all of Captain Paul’s books. “All the main conservationists in the world — Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle — are all inspired by him,” he gushes. “He’s beyond Attenborough. This guy actually put his body in front of a whale. He’s a modern-day hero.”
Watson’s vast following is in part due to his extreme methods. “He would be prepared to die for the animals and that’s what resonated with me,” says Jasmine Alexander on the Captain Watson Foundation advisory board, who is concerned that Watson might spend the rest of his life in a Japanese prison. “He’s galvanised millions of people.”
Watson also has a number of celebrities in his corner. The Baywatch actress and animal rights campaigner Pamela Anderson has lent him support. He has had ringing endorsements from the actors Martin Sheen, Brigitte Bardot and the late Sean Connery — no doubt drawn in part by his starring role in the Whale Wars documentary that ran for seven series on the Animal Planet channel.
Another big eco-name who has funded Watson’s endeavours is Dale Vince, the British green energy businessman and Just Stop Oil donor, who first heard of Watson in 2010, “I read about his exploits in the South Atlantic and I sent an email to his organisation in America saying can I send you some money,” Vince says. “I’m just a big fan of his work.”
Vince makes this former fugitive wanted by Interpol sound like a cuddly grandpa. In 2011, Watson visited Stroud, Gloucestershire, where Vince’s company, Ecotricity, is based, and the pair got on really well. “He’s a very peaceful person,” Vince says. “He’s big on history.” Vince later made Sea Shepherd a charity partner at his football club, Forest Green Rovers, putting the logo on the kit. Last year he donated a boat to Watson’s fleet.
Vince insists that Watson has never hurt anybody in his exploits. “But he absolutely puts himself, his crew, his ships in harm’s way — in between the harpoons and the whales,” he says. “I can understand why he’s got a bit of a cult following. He’s got all the ingredients of a cult leader, including a big white beard.”