On Paul Watson's arrest

whales given legal personhood

On the 21st of July, world renown anti-whaling activist Captain Paul Watson, who now runs the Paul Watson Foundation after a split from Sea Shepherd, was ambushed by a dozen Danish police and SWAT team members as they boarded the M/Y John Paul DeJoria as soon as it made port.

Watson was about to embark on a mission to intercept the Japanese whaling ship 'Kangei Maru' in the North Pacific, a similar mission which led to his initial arrest warrant, issued as an Interpol Red Notice for his anti-whaling interventions in the Antarctic region about 14 years ago: known as the Whale Wars. The arrest comes as a surprise though, since Japan’s Antarctic research whaling program JARPA was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2014, and his arrest warrant recently went "offline" on interpol’s website.

But as we explore further in this article, international law is.... shall we say, a finickey thing.

Paul will be detained in Nuuk, Greenland until August 15th, waiting for the judge’s decision of whether or not to extradite him to Japan. If extradited, he could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in a Japanese prison.

There doesn’t seem to be much we can do at this point the help Paul get out, however, supporters are being urged to sign this petition addressing the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, to release him from custody.

Captain Watson’s arrest comes at an interesting time in the world of conservation. In March this year,