interview with Rex Weyler (All 5 Podcasts of an FM radio special feature originally airing January 21 -25, 2025).

In December 2024, the environmental activist Paul Watson was freed by Danish authorities from detention in Greenland.  He had been held there due to an Interpol red-notice (warrant) issued against him by the government of Japan. The Danish Ministry of Justice denied official requests to extradite Watson for trial in Japan, and he was released to rejoin his family.

What did Paul Watson do that so angered the Japanese government?  Watson, born in Canada, has spent most of his adult life — ever since the 1970s — protesting against the commercial slaughter of whales and other marine mammals.  He was a founding member of Greenpeace, and participated in their early actions to document and obstruct the Russian whaling fleet in the North Pacific.   One of his shipmates on these early campaigns was longtime Cortes resident Rex Weyler.

In this special feature, we offer an extended interview with Rex Weyler; he offers his personal memories of the early Greenpeace campaigns and of Paul Watson, who became a lifelong friend.

 

[It’s been] More than 50 years since I first met Paul. About exactly 50 years, isn’t it? It’s 2025, I met Paul in 1973, so it’s been 52 years. And he’s still going. And I give him a lot of credit for that, and I admire him for that. […]

 He was this big, rough, tough type of activist. Lumberjack guy, like tough, and courageous, and confident. Had that kind of alpha male quality.  He was the guy in our little group of activists who would pretty much do anything. He wasn’t intimidated by cops. He wasn’t intimidated by locked fences. And he had certain leadership qualities, because if we were doing a demonstration or a protest or something, Paul would be the guy who would often take a more aggressive role.

He also embodied that kind of macho style […] he would imitate John Wayne and it was funny — Paul could be very funny, when he did his little John Wayne routine. He had a sense of humor. He could be hilarious. He was courageous. He was fun to hang out with, to be with. He wasn’t a big drinker He wasn’t a big pot smoker. And he was serious. He was absolutely dedicated, which was part of what gave him his courage, like he would do anything to protect these animals.

Paul Watson, in Rex’s memory, was a vivid personality: physically strong and hardy, with domineering tendencies, passionate and utterly committed to the protection of marine mammals, fearless to the point of recklessness. He contributed greatly to Greenpeace’s early efforts in opposing and exposing commercial whaling, but soon parted ways with the organization. 

 We were friends, but we could argue. And I’ve always valued those kind of relationships, where, you can say what you think. […]  We used to always have fun conversations and arguments about various tactics […] pacifism versus aggression. Is it okay to ram a boat? Paul Watson wanted to ram one of these Russian whaling boats…

 What we [Greenpeace] did not do, is we did not destroy other people’s material goods. And we didn’t cause physical harm to people. We were non violent in that sense. Aggressive, but non violent. We’ll blockade your boat. We’ll cork your effluent pipes. [But] we’re not going to throw rocks through your window. And I think that was fine. That’s a good stance to take. And it was the more Gandhian approach. But Paul was more, the aggressive radical, and so eventually Paul and Greenpeace split ways. He wanted to do things like ram a whaling boat, which by the way, he did.

Greenpeace prided itself on strict pacifism, its protests never crossing the line into property damage. Greenpeace put their fragile Zodiacs and other craft in the way of whaling ships, impeding their operations; Greenpeace filmed and publicised the whalers’ brutal methods. Paul Watson felt this was not enough: stronger, more direct actions against whaling ships were needed to stop the slaughter of cetaceans.  He advocated for actually ramming, sabotaging, and disabling whaling ships.  Greenpeace leadership did not find these tactics acceptable; by the late 1970s, Watson was founding his own organisation, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

 When Paul started his own organization, he had no problem attracting people to work with him. And he created the Sea Shepherd. And I believe it was in the summer of 78, if I have it correct, or the summer of 79, I can’t remember which — Paul rammed the pirate whaling ship Sierra in the Pacific Ocean.  And of course that was big international news

Sea Shepherd became a kind of rumbustious younger sibling to the more decorous, respectable Greenpeace.  Sea Shepherd operations included disabling whaling ships, boarding them, and even scuttling two whaling vessels while they were in an Icelandic harbour.   With some brief absences, Paul Watson led the Sea Shepherd effort until 2022 — when once again he departed to start a fresh organisation.  His Wikipedia page makes for some very interesting reading — a life full of incident, danger, arrests, and litigation.

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What would inspire a man to spend fifty years of his life on a personal crusade against commercial whaling? It’s worth remembering how things stood at the end of the 1960’s.

At the time when Greenpeace originated the “Save The Whales” slogan and began campaigning for the preservation of the world’s cetaceans, the state of cetacean populations was dire.  Whaling reached a peak in the 1960’s with about 700 thousand individuals killed during that decade. 

 Paul was aware of what was happening to the whales worldwide — basically they were being obliterated by the whale hunting and most marine mammals were down to between 5 and 10 percent of their peak herds all over the planet. The seals, the harp seals — most seal species — the bowhead whale was down under 5%, like down to 2 or 3 percent of its peak herds: on the verge of extinction.

The Atlantic gray whale was already extinct. The Pacific gray whales were down to around 5 percent of their peak herds. The sperm whales were being wiped out.

Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd were instrumental in calling attention to the near-extinction of whales, and eventually  public opinion swung against whale hunting to the extent that a global ban was agreed upon in 1986.  The commercially targeted whale populations have rebounded encouragingly since then, and now most maritime countries regard living whale populations as more precious than whale meat or whale oil.

Greenpeace had a huge impact in the 1970s to save marine mammals. So we can all take some credit and pleasure in the fact that we were successful — and Paul should get his share of that credit, because he was totally dedicated, and in fact he stayed dedicated, to that for the next 30 years.

 Even though Paul clashed with Greenpeace, not everybody in Greenpeace was against Paul. A lot of us admired him. And I personally thought: It’s better to have two organizations. It’s better to have this non-violent Greenpeace and this group, Sea Shepherd Society, which is willing to ram ships and be a bit more aggressive.  So I thought this was perfect; and I still to this day think, yeah, that’s better than having people bickering within one organization. And more effective.

I think a lot of us really admired Paul. And for good reason! And Paul has been successful — and I would say he’s done as much as anyone to preserve marine mammals on earth. And we can thank him for that.

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Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and similar groups did win a great victory in 1986 when the global moratorium on whaling was agreed upon. But that victory was not complete, which is why Captain Paul Watson has never retired from his chosen mission. Controversy and conflict continue to this day over whale fisheries in Japan, Norway and Iceland. 

Japan withdrew from the international whaling commission in 2019, and resumed commercial fishing of whales in its territorial waters.  Prior to this withdrawal, Japan circumvented the global ban by conducting what was called a “scientific research” fishery in the Arctic — meat from which mysteriously made its way into the black market or was given as “gifts” to influential people.  This apparent hypocrisy outraged many conservationists, including Sea Shepherd — which engaged in direct actions and negative publicity campaigns against the Japanese whaling fleet.  

As of 2024, the Japanese government has added fin whales — the 2nd largest animal on our planet — to their list of commercially exploitable species in their own waters.  Fin whale meat has sold for more than $1300 a kilogram at auction in Japan.  Officials there are trying to keep the industry alive with substantial taxpayer subsidies, despite a decline in demand for the very expensive luxury meat.  “This is supposed to be business, and without large government subsidies, I think it would be extremely difficult for it to be sustainable.” (Nobuhiro Kishigami, expert on indigenous Japanese whaling traditions)

Iceland and Norway also continue to support a commercial whale fishery, in defiance of the global moratorium.  Although Norway restricts its fishery to smaller minke whales, Iceland also hunts fin whales.  Fisheries minister Svandis Svarvarsdottir raised conservationists’ hopes in 2022 when she said there was “little to justify” the extension of whaling permits after the current batch expired in 2023.  But the whaling sector brought political pressure to bear on the minister, with calls for her resignation; and the international conservation community was disappointed when permits were renewed once more with expiry dates in 2029.  There seems to be no end in sight for the killing of fin whales and their smaller cousins in Icelandic and Japanese waters.

The kill rate of these two countries is small compared to the massive annual slaughter that prevailed prior to the successful anti-whaling campaigns of Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and other marine mammal conservation societies. Whale populations are recovering in some areas, such as our own BC coastal waters; and whale watching has become a major tourist draw and economic mainstay for many coastal communities, generating over $2B in revenue annually worldwide. 

But for passionate, committed activists like Paul Watson, the mission is still not accomplished, and will not be accomplished until all cetaceans are safe from the cruelty of commercial fishing. Evidence of the intelligence and social complexity of cetaceans has led in recent years to discussions of “sentient species rights” similar to human rights. This conversation may — conservationists hope — lead to a worldwide ban on the hunting and slaughtering of cetaceans. In the meantime, Paul Watson continues his fierce and public battle against whaling.

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The broadcast version of this feature offers the full interview with Rex Weyler as he discusses his connection with Paul Watson — fellow activist, shipmate, and friend.  Rex’s personal reminiscences give us an inside view of the exciting early years of Greenpeace, what it was like to be out on the open ocean confronting Russian whaling ships. He also talks about human frailty and group dynamics, the internal politics of Greenpeace and its conflicts, as well as its achievements… We’ll learn about one Greenpeace founding member in particular who later switched sides and became an anti-environmentalist… and hear more of a veteran environmental campaigner’s reflections on organising, activism, leadership, and the real human being behind the legend of Captain Paul Watson.

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Links of Interest:

• Index page for Rex Weyler’s articles on Greenpeace International
• Rex Weyler’s website
• Greenpeace International
• Articles about Greenpeace’s early years on Cortes Currents
• Articles about, or mentioning, Rex Weyler

[historical photos courtesy of Rex Weyler; watercolour podcast illustrations by Midjourney, prompts by author; interview content has been edited and resequenced for continuity and brevity]