At the COP30 conference in Brazil, a Canadian activist against whaling who had avoided arrest in Japan for over a decade vowed to continue his fight for marine protection – focusing on deep-sea mines and Norway's krill industries.

Paul Watson, a U.N. climate expert in the Amazonian city of Belem this week, urged the delegates to remember to look beyond forests to the oceans that also limit climate change. Phytoplankton produces much of the oxygen we breathe.

Climate change is warming ocean temperatures, and melting polar sea ice. This puts many of these photosynthetic creatures as well as other ocean creatures at risk.

Watson said in an interview on his boat, John Paul Dejoria, that if phytoplankton disappeared from the ocean, we would all die. But it's out of sight and out of mind. You can see a rainforest, but not the phytoplankton.

Watson, an influential member of Greenpeace during the 1970s and 1980s, founded Sea Shepherd in order to protect oceans. The activist group gained international attention by chasing whaling and trawler ships across the oceans and for other stunts designed to disrupt ocean exploration. Watson hailed the end of Japan’s whaling activities in international waters after the International Court of Justice ruled that the hunt in Southern Ocean was illegal. In 2022, he established the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

Watson said that he will now focus on protecting smaller creatures, specifically the tiny krill which are the main food source for certain types of whales. Watson will challenge Norway's use of ocean krill as feed for its salmon farms when the High Seas Treaty takes effect in January.

He said, "We will confront the Norwegian Krill Fishery on that date." "They are taking 620,000 tons of krill from the Southern Ocean right into the mouths whales and penguins." He wants to stop the mining of rare earth minerals on the ocean floor, a practice that scientists warn could destroy ecosystems. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has ordered that deep-sea mines be accelerated.

Watson was arrested in Brazil two weeks after he arrived at Belem. Japan had sent the request for his arrest because of Japanese charges of trespassing relating to an alleged injury to a shipwhaler and damage to a whaling vessel.

Watson isn't worried. Watson has been to a number of public events in the past few days with Brazilian officials, including Environment Minister Marina Silva.

Watson will not be pursued by the Brazilian government, according to a source. "Japan is following me everywhere." "They try to arrest me everywhere I go," he said about his 14-years of avoiding Japanese authorities. Interpol cancelled a 2012 arrest warrant in July for Watson who denies the Japanese charges. Reporting by Lisandra paraguassu in Belem Brazil, with additional reporting by Anderson Coelho. Editing by Nia Williams and Kat Daigle.

(source: Reuters)