Paul Watson, Anti-Whaling Activist, Is Detained in Greenland
Paul Watson, a prominent anti-whaling activist, was arrested in Greenland on Sunday and may be extradited to Japan, where he is being sought on an international arrest warrant, Mr. Watson’s organization said.
Mr. Watson, a Canadian American activist who founded Sea Shepherd, a nonprofit marine conservation organization known for confrontational tactics, was taken into custody by the Danish police in Nuuk, Greenland, immediately after docking his boat, the John Paul DeJoria.
“We were immediately boarded by a SWAT team and Danish police, who wasted no time in cuffing Paul Watson, our founder, and arresting him on a decades-old red notice at the request of Japan,” the boat’s captain, Locky MacLean, said on a video posted on the official X page for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. A red notice is an international arrest alert issued by Interpol.
Mr. Watson, who founded Sea Shepherd after a contentious departure from Greenpeace, an international environmental conservation network he also helped found, is known for leading seafaring campaigns that directly interrupt whale hunting, shark finning and other contested maritime practices.
It was such a mission that had driven Mr. Watson and his crew to Greenland this weekend, where they had planned a refueling stopover during a well-publicized journey to the North Pacific Ocean. There, they planned to intercept the Kangei Maru, a Japanese factory ship whose long range and storage capacity has spurred rumors that the country might be planning to use it to reinvigorate whaling expeditions in the Antarctic Ocean.
Mr. Watson had been the subject of a previous red notice issued by Japan relating to his 2014 anti-whaling activities the South Ocean, where the Japanese hunted whales until 2016. That Japanese warrant disappeared several months ago, Mr. Watson’s organization said in a news release.
“We understand now that Japan made it confidential to lure Paul into a false sense of security,” Mr. MacLean said in the release. “We implore the Danish government to release Captain Watson and not entertain this politically motivated request.”
Mr. Watson could face up to 15 years in jail if he is convicted.
The Danish police confirmed in a statement that they had detained Mr. Watson because of the Japanese red notice.
According to Mr. Watson’s foundation, he will be detained in Nuuk until Aug. 15 while the Ministry of Justice investigates his potential extradition to face unspecified charges in Japan. A judge denied Mr. Watson bail and called him a flight risk, citing a 2012 charge in Germany related to shark finning in which Mr. Watson had fled house arrest.
