A biography for Paul Watsonhasn’t been written yet.
“The Polynesians used to have a system where they proclaimed a fishing area as 'taboo.' If any fisherman was caught fishing in a taboo area, they would be killed. The Polynesians understand that the fish had to be given a chance to recover.”
“We live on the most incredible planet, and yet we abuse it, and we abuse it mercilessly.”
“If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.”
“The fact is, Japan's whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.”
“People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?”
“I always try to take the unexpected things and make them work for me.”
“I used to swim with these beavers in a beaver pond when I was 10. I went back when I was 11 and found there were no more beavers. I found that trappers had taken them all, so I became quite angry, and that winter I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps.”
“In Africa, the rangers shoot poachers.”
“You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.”
“Does Greenpeace think it can stop whaling in Antarctica by publicly eating whale meat and declaring it delicious? What are these people thinking?”
“My clients are the whales and the seals.”
“Sustainable fishing is a fraud. It's a marketing term that really means 'business as usual.'”
“I want to stay in the ocean. I'm not going to be able to do that from some holding cell in Japan.”
“The seal hunt has made me ashamed to be a Canadian.”
“I'm not really a fugitive.”
“The biggest predator of fish like cod is other fish - and seals keep fish like that in check.”
“The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.”
“My concern is not for the judicial system, but for the reality that the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica has a price on my head, and a Costa Rican prison would provide an excellent opportunity for someone to exercise this lethal contract against me.”
“There are quite a few disgruntled Greenpeacers who are opposed to its policy of non-cooperation.”
“No words can describe the personal liberation that heading seaward bestows upon me. In this aquatic realm, no man or woman is subject to the petty decrees of social bureaucracy.”