Seaspiracy, Sea Shepherd & effective activism with Captain Paul Watson

In this episode Jim chats with co-founder of Green Peace & founder of Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson about Seaspiracy, Sea Shepherd & effective activism.

Source of the bio below www.seashepherd.org.uk Paul Watson was born in Toronto, Canada, on December 2, 1950. At six years old, he and his family moved to the lobster fishing town of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea in New Brunswick. The eldest of seven children, Watson lived there until January 1964 when his mother died and his father returned the family to Toronto. His father was Anthony Joseph Watson, a French-Canadian born in New Brunswick, Canada. His mother was Annamarie Larsen, the daughter of a Danish artist Otto Larsen and Canadian Doris Phoebe Clark. The Greenpeace Days Watson was one of the co-founders of the Greenpeace Foundation. In October 1969, his involvement began when he helped organize a voyage on the U.S. and Canadian border to protest against the nuclear testing at Amchitka Island by the Atomic Energy Commission. In the meantime, a second ship was organized. This was the converted Canadian minesweeper the Edgewater Fortune. She was named the Greenpeace Too. One of her crew was Watson. The Greenpeace Too passed the Greenpeace I near Campbell River and carried on north to Alaska - first to Juneau, and then outward bound across the Gulf of Alaska to the Aleutians. The nuclear test had been delayed to foil the voyage of the Greenpeace I, however, the U.S. Atomic Energy Committee advanced the next blast date to avoid the Greenpeace Too. The five-megaton explosion was detonated under Amchitka Island when the Greenpeace Too was still a few hundred miles away. The controversy the Greenpeace voyages generated led to the decision to cancel further tests, and the detonation of November 1971 was the last nuclear test to take place at Amchitka. In 1972, the Don't Make a Wave Committee took the name of the two ships from the first campaign and renamed themselves the Greenpeace Foundation. Watson was one of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace. In fact, he was officially the eighth founding member. Robert Hunter was the first and his lifetime membership number was 000. His wife Roberta Hunter was second and her membership number was 001. Watson's official membership number was and continues to be 007. In 1972, Watson skippered the tiny Greenpeace boat Astral, and placed it on a collision course with the French helicopter carrier, the Jeanne D'Arc, in Vancouver harbor. This was a protest against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific. The Jeanne D'Arc was forced to change course. The Astral changed course and kept on target - bow to bow with the warship, forcing the Jeanne D'Arc to stop.In 1973, Watson and David Garrick represented Greenpeace during the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota by the American Indian Movement. Both men served as volunteers for AIM, with Watson working with the medics and filing stories back to Robert Hunter at the Vancouver Sun. Watson left Greenpeace because he felt the original goals of the organization were being compromised, and because he saw a global need to continue direct action conservation activities on the high seas by an organization that would enforce laws protecting marine wildlife.

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