If our oceans die, we die | Captain Paul Watson | TEDxNoosa

Captain Watson is guided by a singular truth: if the oceans die, we die! Humanity and civilization cannot survive on this planet with a dead ocean, and Captain Watson leads a movement that seeks to inspire passionate people to harness their courage, imagination and resolve to defend life and biodiversity in our oceans.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Host: It's 7:45 a.m. over in Paris.

I'd like to give a very warm welcome
to Captain Paul Watson.

(Applause)

[Paul Watson - Sea Shepherd Captain]

Paul Watson: Okay, thank you.

I'm here in Paris,
where at the end of this year

we're going to have yet
another international conference

on addressing the threats
to our environment.

I attended the United Nations Conference
on the Environment in 1972,

and again I attended it
in 1992, in Brazil,

the first one being in Sweden.

And not a single, you know,
suggestion, proposal, plan

of any of those conferences
was ever carried out.

So will this just be another get-together

for international leaders
to, you know, have some expensive dinners

and photo ops

or will they actually
address some of the issues?

The problem is,
when governments get together,

they don't really address the solutions.

Usually come down to:
Can we tax anybody over this?

You know, the carbon taxes or whatever.

But there are real solutions,

and the problem is is that people -
they want to see change,

but they don't really want to change.

And what we have to address here

is the problem of what
we're doing to our oceans.

The ocean is the life support
system for this planet.

It provides food, it provides oxygen -

about up to 80% of the oxygen
is supplied by phytoplankton in the sea.

It regulates temperature, storms.

It is the life support system.

And on Space Ship Earth
that life support system is run by a crew.

And we're not crew,
we're just simply passengers.

We're having a great time
amusing ourselves.

But the crew, well, we're killing them.

Everything from the bacteria
through to the plankton to the fish

to the great whales to the trees,

we're killing them.

And there's only so many
crew members you can kill

before the machinery begins to collapse.

And that's where our future
is heading right now,

a collapsing life support system.

One of the things that I want to bring
to this conference here in Paris

is the need to replenish
diversity in our oceans.

Industrial fishing fleets have destroyed
90% of the fishes over the last 16 years.

The whaling industry has devastated
entire whaling populations,

driven many of them
to the brink of extinction.

And these are the species
that keep everything running in the sea.

For example, a blue whale.

One blue whale, every day,
defecates three tons into the sea.

Three tons of iron-,
nitrogen-rich fertilizer,

and that of course provides nutrients
for the phytoplankton,

which in turns provides food
to the zooplankton,

which provides food to the fish
and ultimately, again, to the whales.

Since 1950 we've seen a 30 to 40% decline
in phytoplankton populations in the ocean.

And I think a lot of that has to do

with the fact that we've diminished
the whale population so much.

We killed 300,000 blue whales
in the twentieth century.

That's an incredible amount
of iron- and nitrogen-rich fertilizer

that has been taken away from the sea.

We humans, we take fish from the sea
and put nothing back.

We have actually no long history
of being part of that ecosystem.

And so we've been
rather destructive about it.

Fishermen will say, "Well, you know,

we need to get rid of the seals
and the dolphins and the seabirds

because they're eating all our fish,"
like we own those fish.

But the fact is is if you want more fish,

you need more seals, you need
more dolphins, you need more whales.

It's a cycle that's worked perfectly
for millions of years,

and we have destroyed that cycle.

You know, 300 years ago

there was no shortage
of fish in the oceans.

When Jacques Cartier set out
from France to Canada in 1534,

there were some 45 millions seals
in the North Atlantic,

including species that are now extinct.

There were animals like the sea mink,

the atlantic gray whale

and the giant auk,

and once we were even walrus
in the North Atlantic - all gone.

We used to have beluga whales
in Long Island Sound off of New York -

all gone.

The tragedy is is that not only
have we destroyed them,

we've actually forgotten
that they've ever existed,

and that diminishment has been ongoing.

I was raised in a fishing village
in Eastern Canada.

I've seen that
diminishment in the seas.

If we can replenish our ocean,

and that means a total ban
on industrialized fishing operations -

long lines, trawlers, seiners -
we have to get rid of them.

If there's going to be any fishing,
it has to be artisanal only,

local fishermen.

You know, we always talk about the jobs,
the jobs that are at the sea.

We don't talk about the people
who really lose their jobs:

a million Indian fishermen put out of work

because of the Norwegian
dragger fleets going down their coast;

Somali pirates driven to desperation
because the real pirates,

the European and the Asian fishing fleets

came in and took everything
out of their waters.

Within 10 years' time we're going
to have the pirates of Mauritania,

the pirates of Senegal.

Because right now, at this very moment,

we have those industrialized fishing
operations plundering those seas,

taking everything they can.

Sea Shephard just returned
from Operation Ice Fish,

which is one of our
most successful campaigns.

We left the two ships, Sam Simon
and the Bob Barker in December,

and set out to find six of the most
notorious poaching vessels in the world

fishing on Patagonian Antarctic toothfish
in the southern oceans.

On December 17th, the Bob Barker
found the most notorious of them all,

that was the Thunder, and began a chase.

That chase lasted for 110 days,

from the coast of Antarctica to western
Africa, off the equator, off of Sao Tome.

And with nowhere to run, on April 6th,
the Thunder scuttled their own vessel

to destroy the evidence.

But our crew managed to get on board
before it went under the sea,

and were able to recover
that evidence.

And they rescued the crew, turned them
over to the Sao Tome officials;

they're still under detainment.

When they left,
when they began running,

they've dropped 72 kilometers
of gill net into the sea.

Our vessel the Sam Simon
spent 200 hours recovering that gill net.

And that gill net has now
been offloaded in Germany,

where it will be recycled into clothing

because that's part of our project
called the Vortex Project,

which is to remove plastic
from the oceans and recycle it.

That campaign, our toothfish campaign,

resulted in Malaysia
seizing two other vessels,

Thailand seizing one,

and as it happened, the remaining two
decided to head off to a place

and sneak into a port
up in Cape Verde Island.

And of all the places to choose,
they chose one country

where we actually had a patrol vessel
off the West African coast,

and although they changed
their name and their flag,

Captain Peter Hammarstedt
was able to identify the vessel,

and last week it was also
detained, boarded,

and that meant that all six
of these toothfish vessels

have been now shut down.

So it's been a highly successful campaign.

But what I want to really illustrate here

is that we were, as a non-
government organization,

able to shut down these notorious
poaching operations,

whereas over the last 10 years,

the governments of the world
have done very little to stop them.

And the reason for that, I think,

is because there's just simply
no political or economic motivation

on the part of governments
to uphold international conservation law.

And this is what has led to the tragedy
of overfishing around the world,

to the depletion of the whales.

You know, we've been condemned as
everything from ecoterrorists to pirates

for opposing the Japanese whaling
operations in the Southern Ocean.

But people forget

that there is an international
global moratorium on whaling worldwide

and that this is the Southern
Ocean whale sanctuary.

And you don't kill whales
in a whale sanctuary.

For 10 years we battled them.

Australia finally took Japan to court.

The Japanese were condemned
by the International Court of Justice.

Yet still they say
they're going to continue whaling.

The International Whaling Commission
has condemned them.

But what I am proud to say is
that after all of those years,

what gives us such a sense of satisfaction

is that there are 6,000 whales
in the Southern Ocean

that are swimming there now

that would otherwise be dead
if we hadn't have intervened.

The passion that my volunteers
bring to the table

is something that you cannot get -

you can't pay people to do
what our people do for nothing.

And so Sea Sheperd has now
become an international movement,

no longer an organization
but a movement in 40 countries.

At any time we have
over 100 people at sea.

Right now we have our vessel
the Martin Sheen in the Sea of Cortez

protecting the endangered vaquita.

We have three vessels being prepared
to go up to protect pilot whales

off the Danish Faroe Islands this summer.

We have our vessel
the Jairo Mora Sandoval in Cape Verde

protecting turtles and patrolling
the waters there for poachers.

And we just secured two new vessels,

the Jules Verne and the Farley Mowat,
which are now in Florida,

and we'll be deploying them
to protect sharks

off of Cocos Island, Costa Rica,
and Malpelo Island off of Colombia.

So what we're building here
is an international movement of people,

volunteers, who can make a difference.

We have to protect our oceans.
If the oceans die, we die.

We don't live on this planet
with a dead ocean,

and it's as simple as that.

And all ecosystems
have to abide by or exist

within the context of the three
basic laws of ecology:

diversity, interdependence,
and finite resources.

And no species can survive
and exist outside those three laws.

We need diversity;
we need interdependence;

and there is a limit to resources,
a limit to carrying capacity,

and right now, we're stealing
the carrying capacity of other species.

And for our numbers to grow,
they simply have to disappear.

And that will lead to
the downfall of the human species -

it's as simple as that.

We're not here to protect the planet;
the planet can protect itself quite well.

We're here to protect humanity

because if we're going to survive,
we're going to have to adapt

and learn to live within the context
of those laws of ecology.

And that means that we have to address
the things which are causing the problems.

Most greenhouse gasses are produced
by the development of agriculture,

especially the production of meat.

40% of all of the fish
taken from the ocean

is fed to livestock -
to pigs, to chickens.

We now have a situation where chickens
are eating more fish from the ocean

than all the world's
puffins and albatrosses.

We're feeding more fish
to our domestic house cats

than are eaten by seals.

And we're simply eating the oceans alive,
and we have to address that.

And that's one of the reasons
that for over 15 years

our ships have been run as vegan vessels,
and we promote this vegan lifestyle.

Because there simply
just isn't the resources

to continue to support
7.5 billion people on this planet

with the resources that are available.

The oceans are been depleted
at an alarming rate,

and right now fish is more important
living in the sea,

you know, maintaining the ecological
integrity of the ocean

than it is on anybody's plate.

I found it quite amusing that last week
I attended the Cannes Film Festival.

I was invited to a dinner that was
raising monies for environmental groups.

And at the dinner they served
Chilean seabass.

And when I pointed that out -

because they asked
why we weren't eating it,

and I said, "Well, because
it's an endangered species,"

and the person across from me said,
"But you should really try it. It's good."

I said: "No, we're depleting
the oceans; they're disappearing."

And she looked at me very puzzled
and just said, "Yes, but it's good."

And so it's really hard to get
that message across to people,

even while those people
are attending a fundraiser

for environmental organizations.

They just cannot seem
to get that connection

that what we eat is destroying our planet

and destroying the future of our children.

We all have to get involved in this.

We can't depend upon governments
to solve these problems.

They've never have solved
any social problem; they never do.

Governments mainly cause problems.

And politicians certainly are
the biggest troublemakers on the planet.

We have to do this ourselves.

As Dian Fossey once said that,
you know, we all have to be involved.

And Margaret Mead said,

"Never depend upon
any government or corporation

to solve any social revolution
or problem; they never have.

All change comes through
the passion of individuals."

You know, slavery was ended
by people like Wilberforce and Douglas,

not by the U.S. government
and other governments around the world.

So it has to be motivated by individuals,

and the same thing is with
the conservation environmental movement.

We have to all be involved in that

if we're going to make
a significant change.

So what we need,
and what I'm very happy to see,

is that we're having
a global movement that's growing.

There's now 3 million
non-government-registered

environmental organizations in the world.

There are activists all over the planet
that are making a difference.

You don't hear about them
because they're not really recorded.

I mean, in fact, 920 of them
according to the New York Times

have been murdered over the last 10 years,

and, you know, we don't hear
much about that

but that really illustrates
the kind of courage

that these people all over the world
are making in order to make a difference.

People killed in Amazonia
protecting the rainforest.

People killed in Costa Rica,
you know, protecting turtles.

You know, these are
very, very courageous people

doing the work that needs to be done
that governments refuse to do.

And one of the reasons for that

is that governments are here
protecting the economics

of what I call
"the economics of extinction,"

that there's money to be made
by driving species into extinction.

A good example of that
is the blue fin tuna.

You now, Mitsubishi has about 10 to 15
years' supply in their warehouses.

They could stop fishing today
and still provide tuna to their customers

for the next 10 to 15 years,
but they won't do that.

Because they know that if they do that,
the fish will replenish in the sea,

and replenish in the sea,
that means that the prices will go down

because scarcity translates
into higher prices and into profits.

And if the species are to go extinct,

well, Mitsubishi's sitting on a warehouse
with 15 years' supply,

they'll be able to set
their own prices on that

and make billions of dollars.

And every fishing industry in the world
is in a similar situation.

It's where we are literally investing
in the extinction of the species.

And for that reason, you know,
it's going to be very difficult

to get change through government areas.

But there are laws.
Those laws can be enforced.

United Nations World Charter for Nature

allows for non-government organizations
and for individuals to actually intervene

and to make a difference.

Sea Sheperd's not a protest organization;
we're an interventionist organization.

We see the laws, we see that laws
are not being enforced,

and therefore we go out
and we physically enforce them.

Well, we also do it with a code of ethics.

That means that we do not cause
any injury to anybody,

and our history is completely
unblemished in that regard.

We've never caused a single injury.

We've never sustained a single injury

in nearly 40 years of operations
on the high seas

in very dangerous campaigns.

But we take extreme precautions
to ensure that this is done nonviolently.

We're accused of being violent,
but I call that - what we do -

aggressive nonviolence.

And I think that when
you destroy something

which is being used to take life,
like an harpoon or a gun,

that in fact is an act of nonviolence.

But in a culture where property
takes precedence over life,

there is this understanding, however,

that when you damage property
that that's violent,

when in fact, it's an act of nonviolence.

We need more of that.

The environmental conservation
movement is, in fact,

the single most nonviolent movement
in the history of the planet.

It's also the largest growing
movement in the history of the planet,

and it is a universal movement;
it affects everybody

regardless of their religion,
their politics, or their philosophies,

because if we don't save this planet,
we're not going to save ourselves.

We're basically at war with ourselves
to protect the planet from ourselves.

And we are doing this for the benefit
of all future generations of all species.

And if we don't win, then everybody loses.

Thank you.

(Applause)