Feb 2, 2024

In the latest edition of Outside magazine, Peter Hammarsted is quoted, making a very bizarre statement.

It was his justification for unlawfully dismissing me from the Sea Shepherd Global Board of Directors. The Dismissal was ruled in December, 2023 by a Dutch Judge to have been illegal because Sea Shepherd France President Lamya Essemlali and I were not invited to the meeting or allowed to participate in the vote.

In the interview, he said he had to remove me because of an oath her took.

An oath.

Both Lamya and I were unaware of any such oath.

Peter Hammaerstedt in OUTSIDE: “When you join a board of directors, you take an oath to put the financial and legal well-being of the organization above all else. That can sometimes put you in conflict with family, and in this case a mentor who’s like family.” Now Hammarstedt finds himself helping chart a new direction for an international organization that has lost the figurehead who defined it for so many years.

My reply:

CAPTAIN PAUL WATSON: This statement by Peter Hammarstedt is both deceitful and laughable. There was never any oath of allegiance required to be a Board member. We have never in our entire history put our “legal and financial well-being of the organization above all.” We always put the mission and our clients, the whales, the seals, the fishes above all else. In every single mission we risked everything to protect and defend lives in the sea. More than anything else this statement reveals Peter Hammarstedt’s priorities – self interests, self security, and caution, three things that have never defined what we are about. This new direction is about complicity with governments and corporations. They did not lose myself as a figurehead, they illegally and disrespectfully forced me out, seizing the assets, the ships and the memberships. If this is how Peter believes his family should be treated, he has some serious ethical issues. Peter Hammarstedt did not just betray me, he betrayed everything that Sea Shepherd ever stood for – aggressive non-violence, non-compromising and confrontational. We were unique as a global movement. 

So, Peter’s rationale for dismissing the Founder of the Sea Shepherd movement from Sea Shepherd is some sort of oath that he claims he swore, an oath that no one else is aware of. The very idea of such an “oath” is ridiculous.

However I did swear vow to myself in June 1975, as I watched the life of a dying Sperm whale flicker out and disappear beneath the surface of the sea. That whale spared my life and firmly set me on the path to do anything and everything to protect his kind regardless of the sacrifice, the time and the obstacles.

The Sea Shepherd organization always took second place to the original objectives of stopping the slaughter the whales. I established Sea Shepherd to save whales. I did not establish Sea Shepherd to use whales as a means of justifying the legal and financial interests of Sea Shepherd.

Peter and his gang of co-conspirators who betrayed me view my entire history as being too confrontational and too controversial. For that reason, not only did they betray me, they betrayed our entire movement.

What I did with the ramming of the Sierra, the sinking of half the Spanish and Icelandic whaling fleets and the confrontations with the Navies of the Soviet Union, Norway and Denmark made Sea Shepherd successful and the TV show I created made Sea Shepherd famous.

These four men did nothing but to plan a hostile takeover of something they did not create. They transformed a movement into secure and comfortable positions for themselves.

It was self-interest.

There was no oath, just another lie. 

Photo from the Hobart Mercury/Tasmania/P. Hammaerstedt