Paul Watson

Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American environmental, conservation and animal rights activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.

Watson, a native of Toronto, has been an environmental activist since his teens. He joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969 and crewed on board the Greenpeace Too in November 1971, to oppose nuclear testing at Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. In 1972, he was a co-founder of Greenpeace. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. Greenpeace has since stated that Watson was an influential early member, but not one of the founders of Greenpeace. Watson states that Greenpeace has revised their history but Jerry Rothwells documentary How to Change the World firmly established Watson as the 8th founding member of Greenpeace, with the lifetime membership number of 007 with Robert Hunter being 000. The same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.