Twyla Groening on Paul Watson's visit to Winnipeg

Captain Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace and Founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has left Winnipeg but not without leaving a mark on all of us who had the incredibly good fortune to hear him speak.

In preparation for his visit, AnimalWatch Manitoba managed to arrange a number of interviews for the Captain - most notably, one with Charles Adler on Adler Online (now heard nationally) - which unfortunately had to be cut short as Captain Watson was forced to appear in court in Charlottetown for charges of interference with last spring's seal hunt (the requirement of his presence in court is puzzling as no one else who's been charged with summary offenses as these has had to appear before). Bartley Kives of the Winnipeg Free Press did a large, positive piece on Paul's work that appeared in the paper on the same day as his talk.

His talk itself at the University of Winnipeg was by all accounts a huge success. Over a hundred Manitobans listened fascinated with the Captain's stories of adventures on the high seas and were stunned to hear that the number of illegal fishing operations far outnumber the number of legal ones. He talked extensively of how we've over-fished almost every species (one Pew Foundation study concluded that we've caused the extinction of 90% of the world's pelagic fish). We learned that whales have 4 lobed brains (outnumbering our paltry 3 lobes) and more convolutions than an equally scaled-to-size human brain; and we felt the Captain's sense of awe at his life-changing experience of looking into the pitying eye of a dying whale who was harpooned while trying to defend a female in his pod, despite the valiant efforts of Captain Watson to save the pod from an illegal whaling ship.

A particularly horrific stat is that a veterinary study a few years ago estimated that up to 42% of seals are skinned alive, because the vets' post-mortem examinations revealed that many had not sustained sufficient skull damage from the sealers' blows to ensure death or unconsciousness. An equally disturbing fact is the extent of the Canadian federal government's indirect subsidization of the seal hunt. The sealers would not have access to the seals were it not for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans sending out the Coast Guard's icebreaker ships to clear a path for the sealers' small, fragile boats. Paul estimated that the bill to the taxpayer for the icebreakers is $100 million, over six times the revenue of the seal hunt to all the sealers.
On a personal note, Paul's compassion for all creatures came through loud and clear when he met my injured kitten, Jain. Little Jain lost an ear and has permanent damage to her jaw from what we think was her being thrown from a moving vehicle onto the gravel road by our house. Paul very gently picked Jain up and she contentedly purred and cuddled in to him, knowing she was in compassionate hands.

Paul Watson is not the radical "eco-terrorist" that many make him out to be. He is enforcing international conservation laws - the legal right of any individual, organization or government - to protect ocean creatures and ecosystems, where national governments have turned a blind eye or worse.

I will continue to support Paul and the enormously important work that he and the Sea Shepherd does. The world could use a fleet of Paul Watsons.

Twyla