Social change comes through people.
— Paul Watson
Protesting against illegal activity is not piracy.
People sometimes feel frustrated about what's going on in our oceans and environment, and 'Whale Wars' shows that ordinary people can take action and make things happen.
I'm not pessimistic about anything.
I would just say that nobody could do what I do unless you had a big ego. It's the only way you can really put it. You have to be arrogant enough to challenge the arrogance of the human race.
The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.
I feel that we have a responsibility to try to do everything we can to protect species, and the best way to do that is to uphold international conservation law.
The sealing industry is dying.
Commercial fishermen are the greediest, stupidest people on earth.
Protesting is fundamentally submissive.
Canada I don't trust. The Canadian government hates me more than the Japanese.
If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.
Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.
You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.
I was doing a talk show in Vancouver, and somebody called in a bomb threat to protest my violence, which I thought was pretty strange. We had to evacuate.
Nobody can legitimately claim to be a marine ecologist and conservationist while continuing to eat fish. It is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.
My clients are the whales and the seals.
Documentaries make a difference.
Nobody has ever been hurt by the actions of ships I have been on.
All revolutions are violent revolutions.
No species is more important than others.
Putting Zodiacs in front of whaling vessels doesn't do it anymore. Done that, been there, seen that.
I'm not interested in culture; I'm interested in the law.
Ships are expendable; the whales are not.
I have been honoured to serve the whales, dolphins, seals - and all the other creatures on this Earth. Their beauty, intelligence, strength, and spirit have inspired me.
I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now.
Dutch prisons are probably the most civilized you're going to find anywhere in the world.
The oceans are the last free place on the planet.
NATO isn't going to be concerned about fishing.
Costa Rica and Germany have simply been pawns in the Japanese quest to silence Sea Shepherd in an attempt to stop our annual opposition of their illegal whaling activities.
I'm never horrible to anybody. My problem, and you can ask any of my friends, is that I'm too nice to everybody.
I used to swim with these beavers in a beaver pond when I was 10. I went back when I was 11 and found there were no more beavers. I found that trappers had taken them all, so I became quite angry, and that winter I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps.
The fact is, Japan's whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.
Pete Bethune is a hero in New Zealand. He's a hero worldwide to people who want to see the end of whaling.
Most people can't see the connection between their own lives and the oceans.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy, but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.
I have never suffered under any delusion that saving the whales in the Antarctic sanctuary would be easy, but the one thing I am certain of is that I and my passionate crew of international volunteers will never quit defending life in the seas from poachers, no matter what consequences we must endure to do so.
I wouldn't think I was successful if I didn't have just as many people hate me as support me.
Russian subs are a bargain at $60,000. Unfortunately, none of the dials or instructions are in English.
The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.
My concern is not for the judicial system, but for the reality that the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica has a price on my head, and a Costa Rican prison would provide an excellent opportunity for someone to exercise this lethal contract against me.
We're close to losing our essential diversity. Look at our wheat crops - we rely on a handful of grain crops and plants that we've refined and bred over hundreds of years.
There's no rest when you're on planetary duty.
I want to stay in the ocean. I'm not going to be able to do that from some holding cell in Japan.
I'm not really a fugitive.
There are very few fishermen left today.
My grandfather carried me around on his shoulders at 85.
I don't care if I put people off.
Being lampooned on 'South Park' is hardly something to complain about. They brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed.
Greenpeace has a fast ship that could stop the whalers cold.
