Anti-whaling activist and co-founder of Greenpeace Paul Watson is wanted on charges of breaking into a Japanese vessel in the Antarctic Ocean in 2010, obstructing its business, causing injury and property damage. His extradition hearing is set for Oct. 23.Leiff Josefsen/The Globe and Mail
Paul Watson’s prison cell in Greenland overlooks the mountains and the icy North Atlantic where an occasional humpback whale breaches in the fjord.
In one of the few countries that still permits whale hunting, the anti-whaling activist, co-founder of Greenpeace and former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has spent 93 days and counting behind the steel and concrete walls of this high-security prison, gazing out his bar-less window on the outskirts of Nuuk.
Mr. Watson, a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, was arrested aboard his ship in Greenland, a Danish autonomous country, as it prepared to dock in the capital to refuel in July.
He’s been detained ever since while Denmark decides whether to extradite him to Japan – a decision the 73-year-old has said could be a death sentence. His lawyers have said he could spend up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
The international arrest warrant was for the charges of breaking into a Japanese vessel in the Antarctic Ocean in 2010, obstructing its business and causing injury and property damage. His next hearing is Oct. 23.
Ny Anstalt prison in Greenland, where anti-whaling activist and co-founder of Greenpeace Paul Watson is detained.Leiff Josefsen/The Globe and Mail
Inside the Ny Anstalt prison, Mr. Watson appeared upbeat during an interview in a small visiting room as he drank vending-machine coffee from a plastic cup. Wearing a T-shirt with a pilot whale on it and with shaggier-than-usual white hair and a beard, he denied any criminality. The incidents took place while he was filming the documentary-style reality series Whale Wars, which chronicled Sea Shepherd activists disrupting Japanese whaling expeditions.
“This is revenge for that television show,” he said about the charges. “We embarrassed and humiliated the Japanese whaling industry, and they want the revenge.”
He says the charges stem from an allegation he was an accomplice to a Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activist who boarded a Japanese harpoon ship and later served a two-year sentence for trespassing and assault. Japan also alleges that stink bombs thrown by Sea Shepherd activists injured a whaler.
Mr. Watson believes his arrest is “blatantly political.”
“What it is is 50 years of opposition to whaling.”
Raised in the fishing town of St. Andrews, N.B., Mr. Watson helped found Greenpeace in the early 1970s. He left the group in 1977 over disagreements about his radical tactics and set up the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which he left in 2022, launching the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. Worldwide, he’s known as a controversial figure who has aggressively confronted whaling vessels at sea and led a campaign that effectively ended the commercial seal hunt in Canada.
Many public figures are speaking out in his support, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who has asked Denmark not to extradite him, as well as famed primatologist Jane Goodall, actors Brigitte Bardot and Pierce Brosnan, film director James Cameron and Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder. A petition calling for his release has also amassed more than 192,000 signatures.
Mr. Watson, who lives in Paris with his wife and two young children, has appealed to the French government for political asylum.
On July 21, he and a volunteer crew were aboard his ship, the John Paul DeJoria, en route to the Northwest Passage on a mission to intercept Japan’s newly built whaling ship in the North Pacific.
The Japanese ship’s owner, Kyodo Senpaku, had previously dismissed the claim it would be whaling in the Antarctic Ocean and said it would use the new ship for commercial coastal whaling in its own waters, according to The Guardian.
Canadian environmentalist Paul Watson has been detained since July, 2024, while Denmark decides whether to extradite him to Japan.Leiff Josefsen/The Globe and Mail
When Mr. Watson began intercepting whaling expeditions in 1974, he said hunts were happening around the world. He tells a story that harks back to the pages of Moby-Dick – witnessing the ocean turn red off the coast of Mendocino, Calif., and seeing his reflection in a dying sperm whale’s eye, a life-altering moment that set the stage for 50 years of aggressive marine-mammal activism. He lists off all the countries that are no longer whaling because of his interventions, explaining that there’s been no whaling outside of the territorial waters of any national state since 2019.
The International Whaling Commission, responsible for whaling management and conservation, introduced a moratorium in 1986, binding for member countries with exceptions for Norway and Iceland. It also designated sanctuaries in the Indian and Antarctic oceans. Japan left the commission in 2019.
Today, whales continue to be commercially hunted for food and scientific research in Japan, Norway and Iceland. Last year, Japan took more than 200 whales in the Northwest Pacific, while Norway caught 507 and Iceland took 24 in its coastal waters.
Indigenous subsistence whaling remains prevalent in some countries, especially Greenland, where Greenlandic Inuit took a total of about 200 minke, humpback and fin whales last year – a practice that’s been part of the culture for more than 1,000 years.
“There’s a big difference between Indigenous whaling – which morally I oppose, but physically I’ve never opposed – and large-scale commercial whaling,” he said.
Earlier this month, his lawyer Jonas Christoffersen pleaded for his release, telling the court that keeping him in custody for four months without permitting him to present evidence violates his human rights.
Greenland chief prosecutor Mariam Khalil declined an interview with The Globe and Mail but told the BBC that the case merits serious consideration. “It has a deep impact on Mr. Watson if we get to the point that he has to be extradited. So I will take the time needed to do it properly,” she said.
Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage said Canadian officials are in contact with a Canadian in detention in Greenland. Masashi Mizobuchi, assistant press secretary for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Watson said he was somewhat surprised when he was “pulled from his seat” and handcuffed by police as his ship arrived in Nuuk. He was previously detained over the alleged crimes in Germany in 2012 but left the country after learning that Japan sought his extradition.
When he passed through immigration in Ireland in June, he said his name didn’t show up on an Interpol Red Notice, a worldwide law-enforcement request for arrest, and he assumed he was no longer a wanted man.
Mr. Watson says he’s not worried – insisting there is no basis to extradite him to Japan. He says life in prison is just like being on a ship but without the fear of drowning. And this isn’t the longest he’s ever served in prison either, he says, referring to a 120-day stint in a Dutch prison in 1997 on an Interpol warrant from Norway.
“If they think this is going to dissuade opposition to the killing of dolphins and whales worldwide, they’re completely wrong,” he said, sitting with a stack of letters and postcards to supporters and his sons, ages 3 and 8.
“I mean, I could sit here for years if it wasn’t for one thing, and that’s my two little boys.”