April 20, 2023

I sometimes wonder how do they feel, these people who betrayed me? Have they simply justified their betrayal? Is job security their motive? Does it bother them that they betrayed me, and more importantly, does it bother them that they betrayed the principles that Sea Shepherd was built upon?

I try to put myself in their shoes and when I do, it makes me feel sick to my stomach. 

Let’s start with Peter Hammarstedt. He was 18 when he joined my crew as a skinny somewhat nerdish lad. He seemed intelligent enough and certainly eager and when I gave him the position of quartermaster he took to the bridge with an excited commitment. I remember in the Galapagos when he got so drunk that he threw up on Shannon Mann in the Taxi boat and how sorry he was, and we just laughed and said that these things happen, and we were proud to have him on the crew despite his weird sense of humor and initial lack of confidence.

Over the years he learned the ropes and was promoted to 3rd officer, then to 2nd officer and to 1st Officer until the day I gave him command as Captain of the Bob Barker.

I was very impressed with his steadfast position in Nova Scotia when he was being interrogated by the Canadian RCMP in 2008. He stubbornly refused to say a word until the Mounties, after a few hours just threw up their hands and released him. He had courage and that went along ways with me, and when I asked him to physically block the Japanese factory ship the Nisshin Maru in 2013, he did so without hesitation and stood his ground.

Peter served on campaigns in the Southern Ocean to protect whales, in the Faroe Islands to protect dolphins, and in Canada to protect seals. And he served well, and in so doing, he earned both my respect and my trust.

Peter Hammarstedt and Captain Sid Chakravarty organized Operation Ice Fish in 2015 to pursue Toothfish poachers in the Southern Ocean, with Peter captaining the Bob Barker and Sid captaining the Sam Simon. It was a successful campaign and both men did an incredible job.

After that campaign, Sid left Sea Shepherd after Peter virtually ignored and sidelined him in an effort to take sole credit for the campaign. What Peter did on that campaign was extraordinary, but the truth was that without Sid and the awesome crew of the Sam Simon, the campaign would have not been so successful. 

The other mistake Peter made was to allow the toothfish vessel Atlas Cove owned by Austral Fisheries to join in the pursuit of the toothfish poacher Thunder for a few hours. This had the effect of showing Sea Shepherd supporting the toothfish operations of an established Australia/Japanese company which led to further collaborations between Austral Fisheries and Sea Shepherd Australia. Peter was and continues to be a director of Sea Shepherd Australia and now supports this partnership with an Australian/Japanese fishing company in return for material and financial donations.

Despite that, after that campaign, when he organized a campaign to partner with African nations to patrol their waters, I encouraged and supported him although I was concerned that some of these partner nations were supporting Japan at International Whaling Commission meetings. Peter told me that he would argue for them to not do so, but he never did.

In 2019, when I was manipulated off the Sea Shepherd US Board by Pritam Singh, I was happy to have Peter Hammarstedt take over from me the duties of ship and campaign coordinator for Sea Shepherd USA. I trusted him and I thought that he had the experience. He was younger and would do a good job, and I stepped back and did not interfere. One of the reasons that I wanted Peter to do the job was that I was constrained from traveling due to the Interpol Red Notice that Japan had placed me on. This meant that I could only coordinate campaigns from a distance. Peter could be in the field and hands on.

My last campaign was to send the Brigitte Bardot to Iceland to protect whales in 2019 and I was surprised to find that Peter was in opposition to that, and in an email to U.K. Director Rob Read, he said that he felt that an Iceland campaign would interfere with his campaigns in Africa because he felt Sea Shepherd should no longer oppose governments and needed to be in his words, “rebranded.” He said that I was too controversial and a threat to rebranding.

He never confronted me with his opposition to the Iceland campaign, but he made an effort to undermine me to other Sea Shepherd groups and especially to Sea Shepherd USA. 

After that he became very hostile to Captain Locky MacLean, Omar Todd, Peter Brown and anyone he thought was supporting me.

The 2019 campaign was a success and Iceland cancelled whaling operations with the arrival of the Brigitte Bardot. I remember that the success of the campaign received a very lukewarm response from Peter, Pritam Singh and Alex Cornelissen.

In 2019, Alex Cornelissen became the CEO of Sea Shepherd USA.

I supported Alex and I supported Peter taking over as campaign director. He could be in the field whereas I could not. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way. Peter was not much involved with Operation Milagro at all except from a distance. On December 31st, 2020, our vessel Farley Mowat came under attack in the Vaquita Refuge in Mexico. Molotov cocktail and stone throwing poachers forced the captain of the Farley Mowat to take evasive measures and to move out of the Vaquita Refuge. As he was doing so, a panga with two fishermen collided with the Farley Mowat, killing one of the crew and injuring the second. For the first time in our history going back to 1977, someone was killed on a Sea Shepherd campaign. 

This was not the fault of the captain and crew of the Farley Mowat, and it was not the fault of Peter Hammarstedt, and the Mexican government agreed, although the families of the fishermen are now suing Sea Shepherd over the incident. I was officially named in the suit until it was determined that I was no longer in a position of responsibility having recently been replaced by Peter Hammarstedt, nor was I still a Board member of Sea Shepherd.

It also became obvious that although Alex Cornelissen was CEO of Sea Shepherd USA, he was nothing more than a figurehead mouthpiece for Pritam Singh.

In early 2022, I knew something was truly amiss when I arrived for a meeting at the home of Pritam Singh in Vermont. As I was walking outside towards the door, Peter stepped outside and closed the door behind him and told me that he, Alex Cornelissen, Pritam Singh and a few others were having a meeting. I replied that yes, I knew, that was why I was here.

He then told me that I needed to wait outside because they were on a Zoom meeting with U.S. government officials and that my presence would be counter-productive to the conversation. Shortly thereafter Alex Cornelissen appeared on a panel with a U.S. Admiral on the American Security Project talking about collaboration.

Apparently, I was being referred to as “the Watson Problem.” I was told that my history, in fact the very things that made Sea Shepherd what Sea Shepherd became was a problem because of disapproval by the people they were speaking to with the governments they wanted to work with. What I was seeing was a change from what Sea Shepherd had always been to what some wanted it to be now – a “respectable” group working in partnership with governments and corporations.

In April 2022, both Peter Hammarstedt and Alex Cornelissen resigned from Sea Shepherd USA citing difficulties working with Pritam Singh. I supported both of them and their concerns. They both said they would no longer work with Pritam Singh for any reason.

In June 2022, I was told by Pritam Singh that the focus of Sea Shepherd USA would be radically changed and when I opposed this, I was told I had no say in it because I was merely an employee. In response I resigned, confident that I could move forward with Sea Shepherd Global. Alex Cornelissen said they had my back and my position on the six-person Global Board was secure.

At the end of August 2022, after Pritam Singh revealed that he had covertly registered the trademarks for the Sea Shepherd name and logo, he made it quite clear to the Global directors that I could no longer be a part of Sea Shepherd Global. It was obvious that Alex and Peter were very much afraid of Pritam Singh, this Florida property developer who was now calling the shots.

Without a meeting, without a discussion and without a vote, I received an email from Alex Cornelissen dismissing me from the Global Board. Lamya Essemlali, the President of Sea Shepherd France, was not invited to any meeting nor invited to vote on my dismissal.

Since September 2nd, 2022, neither Alex Cornelissen or Peter Hammarstedt have responded to any message from me. Instead, they initiated a lawsuit against Lamya Essemlali for defying them, seeking to remove her right to use the Sea Shepherd name and logos.

Alex, Peter, and Jeff Hansen owe their positions to me. I mentored them, enabled them, trusted them and encouraged them. In return they betrayed me and now they are betraying Lamya Essemlali. Overall, they are betraying Sea Shepherd, turning it from global movement into an autocracy controlled by five men, themselves plus Geert Vons and Pritam Singh.

Peter Hammarstedt is seeking to be the global face of Sea Shepherd. The sad fact is that if he had remained loyal to both Sea Shepherd principles and he would most certainly have risen to be a prominent face of Sea Shepherd and he would have done so with honor and with respect.

Now he is a mutineer, ignobly branded as a traitor and a compromiser. It seems he has come to terms with this and most likely believes that the controversy will blow over and will be forgotten. The fact that my bio, pictures, and history have been removed from websites and social forums indicates that it is their hope that this will all be forgotten.

When Peter narrated the film about the retirement of the Bob Barker, he neglected to mention that I had raised the funds and secured the purchase of that ship and appointed him as Captain. He also shamefully scrapped the Bob Barker when he had the opportunity to retire the ship with grace and honor in the Danish Faroe Islands or in Spain where both countries had threatened to seize any Sea Shepherd ship that entered their territory. 

Unfortunately for them, history is not revised that simply. They also did not believe that I would recover from their deceit and manipulations and that we would rise again, more determined and more committed then ever under a new name – the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

What I built over 45 years can be rebuilt because it is not the name and logos that are important, it is the courage, resolve, imagination and passion of our supporters and crew that defines what we are and what we do.

We still have these qualities, Peter and his fellow mutineers do not. History will not be kind to him.