Get your own Free Home PageGreenpeace Founder Condemns Greenpeace for Being a Judas to the Whales.
Marina del Rey, California. September 9, 1997:
The internationally active Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is disclosing information that Greenpeace activists visiting a Bering Sea native village in Gambell, Alaska last month joined a whaling operation by helping Inupiat Eskimos to retrieve a highly endangered Bowhead whale. Sea Shepherd President Captain Paul Watson, who was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972, is outraged at the group which he now considers as the greatest "turncoat operation" in conservation history.
Last month, crew members from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise dispatched two zodiac inflatables to bring the harpooned, bullet-ridden, Bowhead whale carcass back to the Eskimo village for butchering. "Greenpeace stated to the Inupiat that they are not opposed to whaling," says Watson, presently the founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society "The Bowhead is a critically endangered whale species -- It sounds to me that Greenpeace is now talking the same language as the whalers that they once so vigorously opposed!" Sea Shepherd confirmed this event through interviews with the Managing Editor of Alaska's Bering Strait Record, a regional newspaper that had a staff journalist present during the retrieval of the Bowhead.
Greenpeace traded their assistance for Inupiat support for their global warming campaign.
Recently Greenpeace supported the US government's efforts to pass the "Dolphin Death Act" a law which diminishes dolphin protection laws for international tuna fishing operations. Prior to this change in Greenpeace dolphin protection policy, Sea Shepherd also condemned the group's decision to support the Norwegian government's Revised Management Plan (RMP) initiative, a whale hunting proposal that would facilitate the start of a new commercial whaling era.
"Greenpeace's willingness to compromise -- in fact their eagerness to support these efforts -- will result in the death of many, many more marine mammals!" Watson also sees Greenpeace's recently reported financial woes and subsequent retreat from North America as a sign that people are starting to realize the group no longer considers whale protection as a priority or a cause worth fighting for.
An angry Captain Watson stated, "Now I hope people will realize that this big, green, bureaucratic, corporate, monster called Greenpeace that I helped to create, is misleading the public when it comes to their stand on whaling."
Greenpeace has openly confirmed that it does not oppose aboriginal whaling and that they support Norwegian claims about Minke whale populations having..."sufficient stocks to justify resource extraction." Watson reports that Greenpeace's involvement in the Alaska Bowhead hunt simply undermines that groups willingness to sacrifice whales for corporate and government alliances. Watson reaffirms that Sea Shepherd will continue to oppose all whaling, as well as opposing Greenpeace as an organization, if necessary.
"Now that Greenpeace has involved their ship Arctic Sunrise in a whale hunt, that ship can be considered a whaler," Watson warns. "Greenpeace knows what Sea Shepherd does to whalers."
For further info: Contact Lisa Distefano.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
P.O. Box 628
Venice, CA. 90294
USA
e-mail: seashepherd@seasheperd.org
Web Site: www.seashepherd.org
Tel: 310-301-SEAL(7325)
Canada: 604-688-7325
Fax: 310-574-3161
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