With a new $12m ship on the way and the Japanese whaling fleet on the retreat, the conservation organization is having a banner year – provided the Whale Wars stars can navigate a rising tide of multimillion-dollar lawsuits

In 2010, the world watched a $3m eco-action boat called the Ady Gil sink off Antarctica after being run through by a Japanese whaling ship. In many ways, it was a moment that defined the last five years for Sea Shepherd, the vigilante conservation group to which the trimaran belonged. With the sinking came renewed public support for their mission to do anything necessary to stop whaling.

The collision is likely to make headlines again this summer, as three separate multimillion-dollar lawsuits against Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) come to a head.

The lawsuits are brought by Ady Gil, the businessman turned animal rights activist who had bought and lent the high-speed boat to Sea Shepherd (the organisation, in keeping with tradition, named the boat after him). Gil now claims Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson ordered its captain, Pete Bethune, to scuttle the boat and make it look like the work of the Japanese.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Sea Shepherd’s ship Ady Gil, after it collided with Japanese whaling vessel Shonan Maru No 2. Photograph: Joanne MacArtur/AFP/Getty

In the five years since the accident, Gil has become dead-set on rooting out the dishonesty he sees in Watson’s radical conservation organization. He and his own conservation group, Ady Gil World Conservation, are bringing lawsuits against Sea Shepherd and its founder for damages, defamation and fraud – the first of which, concerning the loss of the ship, will likely be decided this summer.

The first suit alone could cost SSCS as much as $50m, according to court documents – a major blow for an organization whose declared assets at the end of 2013 were just $3m.



“These are people who will do anything possible to draw sympathy,” says Gil, who describes Sea Shepherd in an interview with the Guardian as “infested with corruption”. When asked why the organization continues to attract thousands of loyal followers, Gil compares it to a cult: “Charles Manson had followers. And they were really nice girls – from Hollywood, from good homes.”

Watson told the Guardian that Gil was coming after Sea Shepherd for purely mercenary reasons. “When you go down to do confrontation with people like illegal Japanese whalers, you can’t cry when you lose your boat,” he says. Watson stepped down as president of Sea Shepherd’s US and Australia operations in 2013, but remains an advisor and continues to coordinate campaigns. Sea Shepherd’s global CEO, Alex Cornelissen, agrees: “Quite frankly, I think Gil should be focusing his efforts on something else instead of wasting our time with this.”

A perfect PR storm

The almost 40-year-old direct-action group – so termed because it polices the oceans instead of lobbying governments to do so – appears to have plenty on its plate this year. While the sinking of the Ady Gil created a groundswell of public support, it also resulted in an Interpol red notice for Watson from the Japanese government, and a ruling in US court that prevents Sea Shepherd from intervening against whaling near Antarctica.



Watson and Sea Shepherd were found in contempt of court in December, for transferring assets to Sea Shepherd’s Australian branch in order to continue the fight against Japanese whaling. They’re also on the hook for legal fees, because their liability insurance company won a summary judgment against them. The increasing legal pressure prompted Watson’s move to Paris last July.

Despite all this, Sea Shepherd is having a banner year worldwide. The organization experienced record fundraising and announced in January that it will spend a $12m award from a Dutch national charity on a new custom-built, super fast “dream ship”. In January, the North American branch also purchased two decommissioned Coast Guard cutters, and Whale Wars, the Animal Planet TV series that made Sea Shepherd a household name, is slated to continue filming with Sea Shepherd Australia.

“All the assaults on the Sea Shepherd US entity have certainly helped us grow in other countries,” says Cornelissen, who is based in the Netherlands. “You could say in a way, they’ve helped us go through a massive growth.”

Paul Watson’s cult of personality

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paul Watson, former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, continues to to lead the organization despite growing pressure. Photograph: Paul Darrow/Reuters

In contrast to Sea Shepherd’s highly visible anti-whaling campaigns, their legal battles haven’t been widely covered. Ady Gil’s lawsuit against Sea Shepherd for the cost of his lost ship was sent to arbitration in 2014, meaning that witness testimony and the plaintiff’s findings will not be made available to the public.

The fallout began when the captain of the Ady Gil, Pete Bethune, contacted its owner in late 2010 to tell him that the he and Sea Shepherd had deliberately scuttled his ship. Bethune told Gil that after the Shonan Maru 2 rammed his boat, Watson gave the order for Bethune and his crew to open the hatches and sink the vessel in the middle of the night, making it appear as though the collision had caused it to founder.

An investigation by the New Zealand government almost a year after the sinking determined that both Bethune and the captain of the Shonan Maru 2 were to blame for the close-quarters situation and subsequent collision. It did not offer an opinion on what prompted the sinking of the Ady Gil, except to say that the boat’s engineers indicated it should not have sunk on its own (even with its hatches open it is likely still floating just below the surface, a possible navigation hazard). The investigation found that the system that tracked the boat’s vitals had been thrown into the sea, and the data destroyed.

Paul Watson posted a digital rendering of Ady Gil as Brutus and himself as Caesar to his Facebook page, underneath saying that Gil was ‘as bad as Sea World’ and the whalers. Photograph: Facebook

Bethune subsequently spent five months in a maximum-security prison in Japan for boarding the boat that rammed his. He testified on trial in Japan that it was Watson who ordered him to board the Shonan Maru 2 and present the captain with a $3m bill for his lost boat. Bethune says the scuttling and boarding were a publicity stunt, typical of the set pieces Watson designed for the media and for the Animal Planet crew.

He says that after he was released from prison, relations with Sea Shepherd quickly cooled. “Anyone who dares to stand up to Sea Shepherd or Paul Watson, they get vilified,” says Bethune. “I’ve had some death threats.”

Watson, who has accused Gil of enjoying whale meat and called Bethune a “rat and a snitch” for naming him in court, says he had no part in the decision to abandon the Ady Gil, let alone sink it. “We didn’t lose his boat. His hand-picked captain, Pete Bethune, lost his boat,” says Watson.



“That is nonsense,” responds Bethune, who says that he was selected by Sea Shepherd and completely loyal to Watson. “But if you say it often enough, people will believe that it’s true.”

The ultimate weapon to save whales

Watson has always understood the importance of winning the media war, repeatedly saying that the “most powerful weapon on the planet is the camera”.

Gil still believes that Sea Shepherd brought public awareness to whale conservation, but his opinion on their tactics has changed. “You do your work, and you spend money and time, and then Sea Shepherd come and destroy what you did. Literally destroying it,” he says. “When you alienate people, it’s hard to convince them later on that what they’re doing is wrong.”

There aren’t many countries that still whale, Gil points out, and the most active, Japan and the Faroe Islands, aren’t likely to be swayed by bullying.

Bethune isn’t so sure. He believes that Watson’s calculation was in some ways justified, because it brought such pronounced media attention to the anti-whaling movement. Last year, the International Court of Justice found that Japan’s whaling in the Southern Ocean was illegal. For the first time in 30 years, the Japanese fleet killed no whales this season.

The sinking of the Ady Gil “forced Australia’s hand to take Japan to the international court of justice,” says Bethune. “That’s an example where you could say, maybe Watson’s right, maybe if we hadn’t scuttled the Ady Gil, maybe media wouldn’t have followed it so much.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Japanese whaling fleet’s harpoon vessel Yushin Maru No 2, with a minke whale in the Southern Ocean. Photograph: Glenn Lockitch/AFP/Getty Images

There’s plenty to be done in regards to marine conservation – the question remains how to do it quickly and effectively, before it’s too late.

Hal Whitehead, one of the foremost experts in sperm whale behavior, says that whaling shouldn’t be considered the biggest issue threatening marine mammals. “There is whaling around. Some of it might not be sustainable, but it’s relatively minor compared to what it was, and also compared to some of the other things we’re worried about,” he says, pointing to the more deadly and pervasive threats of climate change, plastic pollution and disruptive sonar. “The bloody mess that’s whaling is dramatic, but all these things are pretty dramatic, too.”

He is quick to say that attacking other groups on the conservation spectrum for not doing enough is not the way to go, however. The more aggressive interventionist organizations help those that are willing to work with corporations or governments: “To my mind, saying one’s right and the other’s wrong is not helpful.”

A new era for Sea Shepherd

With the decline of whaling, Sea Shepherd has been focusing on illegal fishing campaigns, most recently off the coast of West Africa, where as much as 40% of the fishing is conducted illegally. Last month, Sea Shepherd’s boat the Bob Barker tracked an Interpol-wanted vessel for months until the fishing crew seemingly sank it in a last-ditch effort to avoid arrest off the coast of Sao Tome, according to a Sea Shepherd press release.

Governments all over the world are struggling to combat illegal fishing, and some are even giving it tacit support. A Greenpeace report issued last month condemns China’s state-operated National Fisheries Corporation, which it says is operating more than 450 fishing vessels in Africa due to depleted fish stocks in the country’s own waters.

“The world quota for [threatened] toothfish is exceeded by imports into the US alone,” says Watson, who stresses the need for uncompromising sacrifice in the face of uncompromising enemies. “Sea Shepherd is not a protest organization. We’re an interventionist organization – we’re intervening against illegal activities.”

In addition to intervention, Sea Shepherd continues to branch out and make high-profile allegiances with less aggressive groups. They recently partnered with Bionic Yarns, a fabric company fronted by singer Pharrell Williams that turns ocean plastics into high-end fashion. Last month, SSCS entered into an agreement with the Mexican government to provide patrolling and scientific monitoring for the vaquita, a rare species of porpoise. The group will also organize volunteers this summer to protect turtle hatches in the name of a Costa Rican environmental activist killed by poachers.

The results of theses campaigns are also visible. In May, Japanese aquariums agreed to stop buying animals from Taiji, Japan’s infamous cove, where Sea Shepherd volunteers have for over a decade attempted to obstruct bloody dolphin roundups.

The battles to come

In the wake of the Ady Gil controversy, at least half a dozen employees or high-ranking volunteers have left.

Former deputy CEO Chuck Swift, who was with the organization on and off for two decades, says that he quit to save his integrity. “I do think that they’re still effective, but my concern is this: I think to have an effective win for the whales or for the environment, and to be able to stand proudly in front of our donors or the public, we need to have accomplished that victory in an ethical way.”

Swift, who captained the Bob Barker during the 2010 Antarctic campaign, signed a confidentiality agreement before he left Sea Shepherd. But he would say that the 2010 campaign in the Southern Ocean was a “pivotal moment” for the organization, and was largely responsible for why he left. He says that neither Sea Shepherd nor Pete Bethune are being completely honest about what happened when the Ady Gil sank. “I can tell you that there are holes in both sides of the story.”

He and Watson have had no contact, and Swift says their close friendship ended the day he quit. He worries that the cultish nature of some of Watson’s followers, the pressures of the TV show and the ethical compromises the group has made as a result threaten to unravel a lot of the good the organization has done. But, he adds: “Paul’s done a lot of cool shit. He’s saved a lot of animals.”

Former Sea Shepherd employees have turned to direct-action conservation projects of their own. Swift, who left in November 2011, now works as a conservation consultant for, among others, Ocean Defenders Alliance, a volunteer-based organization devoted to reporting and cleaning up ocean pollution. Former CEO Steve Roest left the organization in 2011, followed by Laurens de Groot in 2012, with whom he founded Skycap and ShadowView, which deploy drones to assist with anti-poaching missions.

As for Bethune, he is now running Earthrace, a group that intervenes in poaching and deforestation and which has its own TV show, the Operatives, airing in nine countries. He said five of his volunteers are Sea Shepherd veterans.

Sea Shepherd continues to draw legions of new volunteers, and they might well be called to the Antarctic in six months. Despite the International Court of Justice ruling, Japan has said it intends to resume whaling this coming winter. “They can call us pirates or whatever they want to call us,” said Watson. “But these are the people who are criminals, not us.”