July 1, 2023

The name Sea Shepherd once inspired global respect and admiration. It was an organization that dared to go where others would not, to say what needed to be said and to intervene where intervention was necessary.

It was a kick ass controversial and provocative movement, blocking whaling ships, disrupting dolphin and seal slaughtering, stopping illegal fishing operations, tackling turtle poachers, confiscating illegal nets.

This is still true for Sea Shepherd France and Sea Shepherd Brazil where the original spirit of what we have always been continues to be a strong force for addressing the threats facing life and diversity in the sea.

It is also true for Sea Shepherd UK which is now the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK.

We were never afraid of tackling governments, from invading the Soviet Union in 1981 to get evidence on illegal whaling to fighting the Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean and in the courts between 2005 and 2017.

We were never afraid of being arrested for interfering with the killing of pilot whales in the Faroe Islands to protecting baby seals on the ice floes off the Canadian East coast.

And just when it was becoming a global force in marine conservation it was hijacked by people wanting to change the focus and the agenda.

From confrontation to compromise, from intervention to complicity.

Not a lot of people did this, specifically just five people. Alex Cornelissen, Peter Hammarstedt, Geert Vons, Jeff Hansen and Pritam Singh.

The first four are men that I trained, men I thought I could trust, that I thought were my friends. The last was a donor who I also thought I could trust because he was initially very helpful and supportive.

These five men not only betrayed me, but they also betrayed the entire movement and took what we were from all of us in order to control it all themselves for their own selfish reasons.

From an organization unafraid to be critical of governments to an organization taking orders from governments.

Once flying the Jolly Roger flag with pride to now being afraid to hoist it up the mast because it offends their governmental partners, although continuing to use it on merchandise because it maintains the bad ass image to supporters.

What I created in 1977 has been compromised and watered down to be a lingering shadow of what was once something real and powerful.

Since ousting me from the organization I founded, established, and built over 45 years, these people I once trusted have made Sea Shepherd into something that I am ashamed of, except for the incredible activists of Sea Shepherd France and Brazil.

With Sea Shepherd Australia partnering with Austral Fisheries and the Japanese fishing corporation Maruha Daichiro to support “sustainable fishing” to Sea Shepherd Global ships working in partnership with Namibia while staying silent about the merciless slaughter of Fur seals in Namibia. From working with corrupt African governments like Liberia and Tanzania that support the Japanese whaling initiatives at the International Whaling Commission to being used by the government of Mexico to greenwash the incompetent and destructive efforts to “protect” the endangered Vaquita.

The policy of working WITH governments has devolved into working FOR governments, doing what they are told and allowing all information to be controlled by their government partners.

The history of activism has been deleted from website pages. As the founder of Sea Shepherd, I have been removed from Sea Shepherd pages as if I have never existed. Anyone who is critical of the new direction is blocked from commenting as the new bosses focus on marketing merchandise and doing fund-raising campaigns.

All dissent is met with threats of lawsuits for trademark violations or actual lawsuits like the ones directed at myself and Lamya Essemlali of Sea Shepherd France, where they are spending hundreds of thousands of donor dollars to shut us down and to prevent us from doing what we have been doing for decades.

We are being sued over logos that I created and designed which they now claim they own. Lamya and Sea Shepherd France are being sued for using the name Sea Shepherd and the logos, despite the fact that she had registered the name years before the establishment of Sea Shepherd Global.

The strangest thing for me about the lawsuit against me is that I have not used the name or logos since being unlawfully ousted from Sea Shepherd. The lawsuit is designed to cripple us in the courts where even if we win, we lose. SSCS and SS Global have donor money to attack us in the courts while we struggle to raise funds for campaigns to stop the slaughter of whales and dolphins.

All those people that I trusted and worked with for two decades or more have refused to communicate, refused to respond to messages, refused to debate and refused to explain why they are doing what they are doing.

I think they believe they can weather the controversy, that people will forget and will continue to support them doing whatever they are doing although what they are doing is contrary to everything we have done and how we have done it for four decades.

Intervention, confrontation, controversy, and courage have been replaced by complicity, conformity, corporate and governmental collaboration, and timidity.

That is what they want but that is not who we are, and we are encouraging everyone who supports what we have always been to now support the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and Neptune’s Navy. But if you are in France or Brazil, you can continue to support Sea Shepherd in these two countries with pride.