Commentary by Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The late Cleveland Amory once told me that being profiled in The New Yorker was the pinnacle of recognition by the American establishment. If you can make it into The New Yorker, you can make it anywhere.

Well, Sea Shepherd and I have done just that and I have to say that getting a profile in The New Yorker is pretty prestigious stuff. Even more so when the profile is the leading cover headline. 

The story conveys the message that we wanted delivered and that is that the oceans are being pillaged and destroyed and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is the only organization out on the high seas trying to do something about it. That message is delivered loud and clear so thank-you to author Raffi Khatchadourian for that, which is all that I really hoped to see from this article, and you delivered that message. 

My criticisms of the article are few.  I was not very happy to have some unidentified person make the accusation that Sea Shepherd takes credit for whaling boats sunk that we did not sink. And it is a little nit picky to say that we sank only two and only scuttled two others. Scuttling a ship is the same as sinking it. As for the others, if we did not sink them, then who did?  If this unidentified person is so sure that Sea Shepherd did not sink the other whaling ships then why did he not state who did, or identify himself to give some credibility to his accusation. Just another one of our disgruntled critics attempting to undermine our achievements.  

The bottom line is that we scored a major profile in one of the most prestigious magazines in the United States and the message that our oceans are being destroyed was delivered loud and clear. As for being compared to Captain Ahab, I prefer the comparison to Captain Nemo.

Nemo understood that it did not matter what humans think because humanity was the problem. Nemo had no use for Society's rules, morality and judgments. His duty was to save life in the sea from the greed of mankind. I understand that philosophy and I have lived it every day of my adult life.     


You can purchase The New Yorker on news stands now or read the article online at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/05/071105fa_fact_khatchadourian