Watson, a 74-year-old Canadian-American, returned to France on Friday after spending five months in detention in the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland due to an extradition demand from Japan.
"One way or the other we are going to end whaling worldwide," Watson told reporters in central Paris where several hundred supporters had gathered to greet him.
"We need to learn to live on this planet in harmony with all those other species that share this world with us.
"If Japan intends to return to the Southern Ocean we will be there," said the founder of the conservation group Sea Shepherd and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF).
"We are not protesting Japanese whaling. We are simply requesting they obey the law."
Under international pressure, Japan, one of three countries to conduct commercial whaling along with Iceland and Norway, abandoned these hunts. Since 2019 it has only caught whales in its own waters.
But in May, Japan launched the Kangei Maru, a whaling mother ship.
Activists believe this means Japan intends to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean, although the company operating the vessel has denied this.
"If the Kangei Maru goes to the North Pacific or the Southern Ocean then we will intervene against their illegal operations," said Watson.
He also said he would oppose attempts by Iceland to resume whaling in 2025.
- 'Enormous campaign' -
In the 2000s and 2010s, Sea Shepherd played cat and mouse with Japanese ships that sought to slaughter hundreds of whales every year for "scientific purposes".
But in July, Watson was arrested and detained in Greenland on a 2012 Japanese warrant, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship and injuring a whaler.
He was released on Tuesday after Denmark refused the Japanese extradition request over the 2010 clash with whalers.
Watson told reporters he had turned his incarceration into an "enormous educational campaign".
"Every situation provides an opportunity," he said.
"And we've had five months to focus attention on Japan's illegal whaling operations and also Denmark's continued killing of pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands."
On his release, Watson said he wanted to return to France, where his two young children attend school. He was looking forward to spending Christmas with his family before resuming his campaigns, he said.
His detention generated a high-profile campaign in his support that included prominent activists such as British conservationist Jane Goodall.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among those who spoke out for him and he also enjoyed massive support from the French public.
Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, said Watson had received more than 4,000 letters while in detention -- more than 3,000 of them from France.
"He has received more letters of support from Japanese citizens than from Australians," she added, pointing out that "less than 2 percent of Japanese people eat whale meat".
Watson told reporters: "I am absolutely overjoyed with the support that we received from France.
"But most importantly, I am so happy that so many people in France care about the ocean."
Paul Watson: eco-warrior on the high seas
Paris (AFP) Dec 17, 2024 -
Veteran anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson, released from detention in Greenland after Denmark refused a Japanese extradition request, has spent decades battling harpoonists and seal hunters in high seas confrontations.
For years a bete noire of Japan, one of the last three countries along with Iceland and Norway to practise commercial whale hunting, Watson was arrested on July 21 in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
His first comment on being released was that his five-month detention had brought attention to "illegal" Japanese whaling.
Watson was arrested on a Japanese "red notice" international warrant when his ship was on its way to "intercept" a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.
Japan accuses Watson of injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers' activities during a Sea Shepherd clash with the Shonan Maru 2 vessel in 2010.
Jean Tamalet, a lawyer for Watson, told AFP that "the fight is not over."
"We will now have to challenge the red notice and the Japanese arrest warrant, to ensure that Captain Paul Watson can once again travel the world in complete peace of mind, and never experience a similar episode again," Tamalet said.
The 74-year-old American-Canadian has received the support of Brigitte Bardot, the French screen legend turned animal rights activist, who accused the Japanese government of launching "a global manhunt" against Watson.
France's President Emmanuel Macron also pressed Danish authorities not to extradite the campaigner, who has applied for French nationality.
Watson devoted himself to saving marine life in 1977, forming what would become the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He was dismissed from the group in 2022 after infighting, which he said left a bitter taste. Some branches of the association, including in France, continue to support him.
Before then he had spent time with the Canadian Coast Guard and Norwegian and Swedish merchant marine ships.
- 'Pirate of compassion' -
Over the years he has become a media personality, appearing in the reality TV series "Whale Wars" and gaining notoriety for his direct-action tactics: chasing, harassing, scuttling and ramming illegal whaling and fishing vessels.
"We are pirates of compassion hunting down and destroying pirates of profit," Sea Shepherd's website quotes him as saying.
He uses acoustic weapons, water cannon and stink bombs against whalers.
Employing these methods, he has sunk more than a dozen boats and raided just as many.
As a campaigner, he has drawn on a degree in communications, galvanising support and funding from stars including longtime patron Bardot, Sean Penn, Pierce Brosnan and Pamela Anderson.
Born in Toronto in 1950, the eldest of seven children, Watson grew up in a fishing village in New Brunswick in eastern Canada.
His mother died when he was 13 and two years later he left home after falling out with his father.
His passion for whales was sparked in 1975, he says, when he was caught in a standoff with Soviet whalers and looked a dying whale in the eye.
"If we cannot save the whales, turtles, sharks, tuna, and complex marine biodiversity, the oceans will not survive," he said in one 2017 interview.
"And if the oceans die, humanity will die, for we cannot survive on this planet with a dead ocean."
- 'Eco-terrorist' -
Over 45 years, the intrepid Watson has carried out spectacular operations from Siberia to Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Japan.
With his crews he has saved thousands of whales and spotlighted the illegal activities of whalers.
In 2010 Sea Shepherd clashed with Japanese boats, leading to the sinking of the organisation's high-tech superboat Ady Gil in the remote Southern Ocean. He regularly says in interviews "we've never injured anybody".
At the time, Japanese ships hunted whales in the Antarctic and North Pacific for what it said were scientific purposes.
The white-bearded father of three claims in his biography to have co-founded Greenpeace in 1972 but said he parted ways with the group over arguments about protest tactics.
His ex-allies and the Japanese government label him an "eco-terrorist" because of his radical tactics.
He was detained for several months in the Netherlands in 1997 and lived in exile on the high seas from 2012 to 2014.
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