When did you start Sea Shepherd?

I started the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977, after leaving the Greenpeace Foundation. I felt that there was a need for an interventionist organization. I was tired of protesting. I'm actually totally apposed to protesting. It's sort of like "please, please don't kill the whales." You know? That wasn't getting us anywhere. Well, the thing that I'm most satisfied with is that since leaving Greenpeace, since '77, I haven't seen a whale die. That's what Sea Shepherd is good at, stopping the killing of whales — or seals, fish, sharks and sea turtles.

What does Sea Shepherd do?

Over the last 31 years, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been working to protect all marine wild life, everything from plankton up to the great whales. We have a full-time captain in the Galapagos, protecting sharks. We've intervened against long-line fishing, driftnet fishing, drag trolling and we protect the sea turtles, dolphins whales, seals all around the word.

I think that protesting... Coming from a sort of submissive position, it's always begging people to not do any thing. What we do in Sea Shepherd is oppose illegal operations. You don't beg criminals to stop what they're doing; you intervene. You physically, and aggressively, shut them down. That's what we do.

What led you to lose hope in protesting?

Back in 1975, when I was with Greenpeace, we came up with this idea to oppose whaling operations. We were reading a lot Gandhi at the time, and Bob Hunter thought that all we had to do is put ourselves between the harpoon and the whales and it'd miraculously stop the killing of whales.

So in June of 1975, Bob and I were in a little rubber boat in front of a Soviet harpoon vessel that was bearing down on us at full speed. In front of us were eight magnificent sperm whales that were fleeing for their lives. Every time that they tried to get a shot at the whales, I would maneuver the boat and try to block the harpoon. That worked for about 20 minutes, until the captain of the Soviet vessel came down the cat walk, screamed into the ear of the harpooner, looked at us, smiled and brought his finger across the neck like that. That's when I realized that Gandhi wasn't going to pull it through for us that day.

A few moments later, there was this incredible explosion, and this harpoon flew over our head and slammed into the backside of one of the whales, in front us, and she screamed. It was a very human-like scream. It sounded like a woman in pain. The whale rolled over on its side, blood pumping into the air. Suddenly the largest whale in that pod struck the water with its tail and disappeared. We've been told by all the so-called experts that that whale would attack us. So I can tell you, it was with a lot of anxiety that Bob and I sat in that little rubber boat waiting for 50 tons of a very angry animal to come underneath us. Suddenly the ocean erupted behind me, and I turned in time to see him hurl himself at the harpooner on the Soviet vessel to protect its pod... But the harpooner is waiting for him. He pulled the trigger and sent a second harpoon — at point blank range — into its head. That big, bold whale screamed and fell back into the water, thrashing blood everywhere.

As he was rolling on the surface of the water I caught his eye and he looked straight at me, and he dove again. Then I saw a trail of bloody bubbles come straight at us, real fast, and he came up and out the water, so that the next move was to come forward and fall straight on top of us. As his head rose high above us, and I looked up to into his eye — an eye the size of my fist — what I saw there was a life-changing experience, because I saw understanding. The whale understood what we were trying to do, because we could see the effort that the whale made. His muscles tensed. He pulled back and pulled away from us. I saw his head disappeared beneath the sea, go beneath the surface, and he died. He could have taken our lives and he choose not to do so.

Later when I saw them hauling away the whale away I said "why are we killing these whales? Why are the Soviets killing those whales?" They weren't eating the sperm whale meat; they were making spermicidal oil, which is used for.. as a lubrication oil, for heavy, heat-resistant machinery. And one of the things that they were using spermicidal oil in was the production and manufacture of inter-contenetal ballistic missiles. I said here we are destroying this incredibly intelligent, socially complex, gentle creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings. That's when it struck me: we were insane. Our entire species has to be insane.

It was at that moment when I decided that we work for whales. We work for the creatures of the sea, not for people. So that's why we really don't care for criticism. Our clients are whales, and sharks, and dolphins, and sea turtles.

What exactly did you see in the whale that day that led you to shift your way of thinking?

What I saw was understanding. I could see an intelligence there that understood what we were trying to do. I personally believe that whales and dolphins are more intelligent then people. We happen to measure intelligence by eye to hand coordination and technology. Or if an alien made of proto-plasma steps out of a space ship with a ray gun. we automatically assume that it's intelligent because it has technology. But we can't really fathom non-manipulative intelligences. The fact is the human brain is a 1,350 cubic centimeter brain when the orca brain is a 6,000 cubic centimeter brain and the sperm whale has the largest brain to ever evolve on the planet — a 9,000 cubic centimeter brain. All brains, from mice to human beings, are 3-lobed brains with the exception of the cetations, which have a 4-lobed brain. So the most highly sophisticated, highly evolved brain in this planet is the cetation brain. But we don't want to admit that.

Anybody that's ever taken Biology 101, they've put up all those brains up on the display, everything from a rat to a dog, to a chimp to a human. Then the biology professor will say by the larger brain size and the convolutions on the neo-cortex area that it becomes more progressively convoluted as we go up the scale. Therefore humans are more intelligent then chimps, chimps are more intelligent then dogs, dogs are more intelligent the rats. They never, ever stick an orca or sperm whale up there because it makes us look really stupid. Since we choose to decide who's intelligent or not, we don't put them up there.

How do you define intelligence?

Well I think that intelligence can be defined in many ways. I happen to believe that intelligence is best to find by the ability to live in harmony with the natural world, to live within the context of the basic laws of ecology, and by that criteria human beings are not that intelligent.

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