Shepherds of the Sea: The Pirate Practices of Marine Protection

This paper offers a historical and theoretical interpretation of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.  Established in 1977 by Paul Watson, a founding member of Greenpeace, the Society engages in direct action to protect marine species and environments.  The Society patrols the seas in its “Neptune’s Navy”, forcibly boarding whalers, seizing and destroying their drift nets, throwing stink bombs, disabling ships both in harbor and at sea, and, at the extreme, sinking commercial whalers. 

In this presentation, I will broach two questions:

How do the Sea Shepherds’ direct action techniques fit into the larger trajectory of radical environmentalism?

To approach this question I will contextualize the Sea Shepherds within U.S. radical environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s, looking at their organizational, philosophical and strategic interconnections with Earth First!, Greenpeace, and the Animal Liberation Front.  I will argue that the late 1970s witnessed the development of a coherent repertoire of direct action practices in response to environmental degradation of the land.  The Sea Shepherds expanded this repertoire within the marine environment.

How can the Sea Shepherds’ actions be understood within the history of naval conflict?

Although avowedly non-violent, the Sea Shepherds consider themselves modern-day pirates.   In their legal standing, strategic action, and ideology, they should be understood as such.  By integrating pirate practices and identity into a more recent environmental movement premised upon direct action, the Sea Shepherds engage in an international and transnational environmental politics.  By tracing this history, this paper will illustrate how the marine environment is, for humans, constitutively global and political.