Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a non-profit, marine conservation activism organization based in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, in the United States. Sea Shepherd employs direct action tactics to achieve its goals, most famously by deploying its fleet of ships to track, report on and actively impede the work of fishing vessels believed to be engaged in illegal and unregulated activities causing the unsustainable exploitation of marine life.
Sea Shepherd has been criticised by some environmental groups and national governments that oppose its tactics. The Japanese government, whose whaling industry is a leading target of the organization's efforts, has called Sea Shepherd eco-terrorists for "impeding their research".
History
The predecessor organization of Sea Shepherd, the "Earth Force Society", was formed in 1977, after its founder, Paul Watson, was ousted from the board of Greenpeace for disagreements over his direct action activism which clashed with their pacifist nature. Watson soon left Greenpeace. Initially without funding and with only a small group of supporters, Watson convinced Cleveland Amory, head of the Fund for Animals, to fund Watson's first vessel, the Sea Shepherd in 1978.The first direct action undertaken by the organization was against Canadian seal hunting in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in March 1979. The same year, the Sea Shepherd also rammed an unregulated Portuguese whaling vessel, the notorious Sierra. After the Portugal campaign, the first Sea Shepherd had to be scuttled, but Watson sold the story to raise money to fund his next vessel. He then spent the 1980s undertaking a variety of controversial and dangerous operations in support of various marine conservation aims, and physically intervened against Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Makah, Faroese, and Japanese whalers.
In the 1990s the group is described as having undertaken a shift in its public attitude. Having previously argued primarily from an ethical viewpoint, Sea Shepherd began to describe itself as an anti-poaching agency, a claim it based on its interpretation of the maritime and conservation law. The decade also saw the organization make more progress in saving wildlife, including by teaming up with other groups to reduce the prevalence of driftnet fishing. In 1994, Sea Shepherd sank an illegal Norwegian whaling vessel. However, no charges were brought as the vessel had been involved in even more illegal behavior than anticipated by the authorities.
The organization began in the 2000s by assisting with the clean up of the Petrobras oil spill, Brazil's worst oil spill to date, after being contracted by the Rio government to mitigate against the devastation. Sea Shepherd also cooperated with other governments against maritime poaching, including in Costa Rica, though not always with good outcomes. In 2008, Sea Shepherd conducted two trips around Antarctica to disrupt illegal whaling practices.
Since 2016, Sea Shepherd has increasingly co-operated with national governments in assisting anti-poaching activity in national territorial waters and marine reserves, including with the Italian Coast Guard in Sicily, Mexican Navy and the Coastguards of Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, which saw Gabonese military marines sail aboard Sea Shepherd vessels.
In late 2022, a schism occurred after Paul Watson was removed from the board of directors of Sea Shepherd Global, a move which, he says, was due to the organization shifting away from his policy of independent, direct action to one of collaboration with governments. Watson subsequently formed his own organization, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and a competing Sea Shepherd group called Sea Shepherd Origins. The France, UK, and Brazil chapters of Sea Shepherd have pledged their allegiance to Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd Origins, and have left the umbrella of Sea Shepherd Global. Neither Sea Shepherd Global or the regional chapters that remain loyal to it have issued statements in regard to these events.
Organization
Sea Shepherd is a non-governmental, non-profit environmental organization. In the United States it has a 501 tax exempt status. Most of the organization's revenue is spent on its programs – 89.9 percent in 2019, with just 10.1 percent spent on administrative costs and fundraising. Sea Shepherd has also been rated highly for financial transparency and accountability. The group is supported by private and corporate donations, lectures by Watson, internet advertising and grants. It is operated by volunteers and a small paid staff, and is committed to staying small and with low spending on fundraising or recruitment.Sea Shepherd is governed by a board of directors and several boards of advisers, each addressing an area of expertise. The Scientific, Technical and Conservation Advisory Board includes Earth First! founder Dave Foreman and Horst Klienschmidt, a former deputy chair of the International Whaling Commission. The Legal and Law Enforcement Advisory Board includes Ian Campbell, a former Australian Minister of the Environment and Heritage. The Animal Welfare, Humane and Animal Rights Advisory Board included animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, until his death in 2017. There is also a Media and Arts Advisory Board, Photography Advisory Board and a Financial and Management Advisory Board.
Direct action activism
Sea Shepherd engages in conventional protests and direct actions to protect marine wildlife. Sea Shepherd operations have included interdiction against commercial fishing, shark poaching and finning, seal hunting, and whaling. The group has been active in intervening against fishing and poaching in the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, and in waters around the Galapagos Islands. In addition to their direct action campaigns, Sea Shepherd works on ocean issues such as plastic pollution. Sea Shepherd chapters across the world organize onshore cleanups throughout the year to pick up debris near oceans, streams, and rivers. In April 2018, Sea Shepherd released a PSA that takes an artistic approach to telling target audiences that more than one million marine animals die every year from plastic debris.According to its mission statement, Sea Shepherd "uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas". In addition to the organization's role of documenting and reporting violations of conservation laws, Sea Shepherd operations have utilized direct, non-lethal tactics including scuttling and disabling whaling vessels at harbor, intervening in Canadian and Namibian seal hunts, shining laser light at whalers, throwing bottles of foul-smelling butyric acid onto vessels at sea, boarding whaling vessels to protest while at sea, and seizing and destroying drift nets at sea. Sea Shepherd argues that these tactics are necessary to uncover and impede actions that violate international laws protecting wildlife, as the international community has shown itself unwilling or unable to stop species-endangering whaling and fishing practices.
Sea Shepherd staff and equipment have also been on the receiving end of physical violence by members of the fishing industry. In November 1998, Makah seized an inflatable boat belonging to the group and threw rocks at the Sea Shepherd's Sirenian in response to protests over their whale hunt. In 2005, 11 Sea Shepherd crew were involved in an altercation with sealers while on the ice. The sealers were not charged with any crime, but the activists were arrested and later convicted for approaching too close to the hunt. In 2008, fishermen in the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon cut the mooring lines of the Farley Mowat after hearing Watson make disparaging comments about the deaths of four seal hunters.
In 2009, Paul Watson claimed the organization has sunk ten whaling ships while also destroying millions of dollars' worth of equipment. Their practice of attacking and sinking other ships has led to reports of injuries to other sailors as well as the Sea Shepherd crew, including concussions and complications from chemical attacks. Watson considers the actions of Sea Shepherd to be against criminal operations and has called the group an anti-poaching organization. Critics claim that Sea Shepherd's actions constitute violations of international law, while Watson has stated that Sea Shepherd believes that their actions constitute an attempt to enforce international conservation laws and international maritime law under the World Charter for Nature adopted by the United Nations. Australia has declared Japan's hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to be illegal, and federal court judge Jim Allsop has stated "there is no practical mechanism by which orders of this court can be enforced". The lack of official enforcement mechanisms in that law prompted Sea Shepherd to adopt, without official sanction, what it sees as a law enforcement mission. A 2008 academic paper by researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, concluded that Sea Shepherd's approach could constitute vigilantism, because its seeks to enforce a legal status quo in the face of the international community's "inabilities or unwillingness to do so".
Anti-whaling controversy
Watson left Greenpeace in 1977 after being voted off the board over his confrontational methods. Since then, Greenpeace has criticized Sea Shepherd for the group's tactics, particularly regarding its interaction with whaling ships while at sea. The rival environmental group maintains Sea Shepherd is a violent organization whose tactics may endanger the lives of fishermen and whalers, and has labelled Watson an extremist. Greenpeace has also stated: "By making it easy to paint anti-whaling forces as dangerous, piratical terrorists, Sea Shepherd could undermine the forces within Japan which could actually bring whaling to an end". In his 2009 book, Whaling in Japan, Jun Morikawa stated that Sea Shepherd's confrontational tactics had strengthened Japan's resolve to continue with its whaling program by helping to rally domestic support from Japanese citizens who might otherwise have been ambivalent about the practice of hunting and eating whales.In March 2014 the International Court of Justice ruled Japan's whaling program was not for scientific purposes. The Court ordered that Japan "revoke any extant authorization, permit or licence to kill, take or treat whales" and refrain from granting any further permits." In response to the court ruling, Japan cut its annual whaling quota from 915 to 333. The new quota included only minke whales, and ended the hunting of humpback whales and fin whales. Paul Watson said: "I think we've done an amazing job reducing their quotas and saving whales," and claimed the actions of Sea Shepherd were a major factor behind Japan's decision. In 2017, Sea Shepherd said it would stop sending ships to the Antarctic Ocean in pursuit of Japanese whalers, citing Japan's increased use of military surveillance satellites and passage of anti-terrorism laws specifically to thwart Sea Shepherd. Japan passed new anti-terrorism legislation in view of the coming 2020 Olympics, but among its elements, the new law declared the presence of eco-activist vessels near whalers a terrorist offence. The combined measures were deemed to make Sea Shepherd's Antarctic operations no longer productive, with Watson noting his organisation "cannot compete with their military-grade technology".