I have made a serious mistake. An understandable mistake, considering my unexpected dismissal from my life’s work, but a mistake nonetheless.

The mistake that I made was trying to hold on to something which no longer has any intrinsic meaning or value to me.

The Sea Shepherd name that I created, the Sea Shepherd logos that I designed have been stolen, and we can’t afford the time and the energy to get back what is rightfully ours. 

And we don’t have to. Names and logos are meaningless, just masks for something that is no longer there. The movement that I created has collapsed.

The late Robert Hunter, my friend and fellow co-founder of Greenpeace, once told me, “Just let it go, don’t let the past trap you in the past.”

The stain of betrayal has tarnished the once respectable escutcheon of Sea Shepherd outside of the boundaries of France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Hungary, New Caledonia and Tahiti.

These countries have remained true to the spirit of what was once universal, and the mutineers are working to take them down also.

Sea Shepherd entities everywhere else have cravenly surrendered to compromising mediocrity and establishment principles.

I can’t even begin to understand Sea Shepherd partnering with Australian and Japanese fishing companies or with dolphinariums and corrupt governments. I never could have imagined Sea Shepherd exchanging monitoring and merchandising for confrontation or operating by the book of compromise instead of controversial acts of direct action.

These odious things have enraptured the ambitions of people I have worked with and trusted for years, people that I could never have conceived or ever suspected as untrustworthy.

They cast me out and dismissed me, removed me from their websites and are working to erase my history.

But moaning about it will change nothing. Once the dagger has been plunged into one’s back, it’s quite impossible to turn around, to smile and surrender or forgive such treachery.

There is however another path going forward and it is the path that I have now decided to take and that is to start over again, to rebuild, recreate and rise from the ashes of defeat.

And that is why we have begun to rebuild our navy, Neptune’s Navy to be exact.

We have one very good ship, the John Paul DeJoria, strong, fast and long range, and it will be ready for sea next month. Plus, we are in the market for a second equally stout vessel and by next year, a third ship.

We have whales and dolphins, sharks and turtles, fishes and birds to protect and defend and we will continue to do so using the very effective strategy of aggressive non-violence that I formulated in 1977, a strategy that ended the careers of dozens of whaling ships, shut down seals hunts, freed hundreds of Bluefin tuna and tackled the navies of Norway, the Soviet Union, Portugal and Canada with amazing results.

I have not left Sea Shepherd empty handed. I took the most valuable assets – the courage, the passion, the determination, and the imagination of hundreds of my Sea Shepherd former crewmembers, now fellow crewmembers once again. We have also come away with the incredible support of friends and supporters to help us rebuild.

We have all that we need, and although I am saddened to lose that which I created, the reality is that the past is not relevant. What matters is the present and it is in the present that we have the power to act and how we act is what will define what the future will be

Sea Shepherd in the United States, Germany, Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Italy are dead and irrelevant now. There are many people remaining true to the spirit of what we are. As they join us, we become stronger with each passing day.

We are Neptune’s Navy, and we have a great deal to do on the high seas to protect life and diversity in the Ocean.

The past is gone, our battleground is the present and within the present we will define the future.

After ten years of forced exile, I am returning to sea once again.