The John Paul de Joria was acquired by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in 2022.
It used to be a Scottish Sea Fisheries Protection Agency patrol vessel named Vigilant.
The vessel has been identified as a ‘research vessel’ on the Guernsey Harbours website.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation was set up after Captain Watson left the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2022.
Pictured: The John Paul de Joria in Guernsey yesterday.
The Foundation’s goal is to “aggressively and non-violently intervene and to stop illegal activities that exploit and destroy life in the sea” according to its website.
Paul Watson is an animal rights activist who has been heavily involved in anti-poaching activity for many years. He used to work with Sea Shepherds and Greenpeace.
He is known as a hardline activist and some of his work has seen him be accused of eco-terrorism. Greenpeace has since distanced itself from Captain Watson.
In 2012 Interpol published a ‘red notice’ or international wanted persons alert for Captain Watson, at the request of both the Costa Rican authorities and the Japanese government. Costa Rica has since dropped the red notice, but it’s still in effect for Japan.
A red notice is a request to worldwide law enforcement to provisionally arrest someone with a view to extraditing them back to another jurisdiction.
It’s understood that Captain Watson wasn’t on the John Paul de Joria while it was in Guernsey and a spokesperson for Bailiwick Law Enforcement has since said that it was aware of the ship but “had no concerns with it being here”.
What has the John Paul de Joria been used for?
The John Paul de Joria and its crew of ‘Neptune’s Pirates’ traverses the globe disrupting poachers and other similar activities that endanger animal life.
Most recently, in 2023, Captain Watson and a crew of 32 people travelled to Icelandic waters to disrupt a whaling fleet.
Soon after threatening to disrupt the whaling operation the Icelandic Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture made a decision to temporarily stop whaling, something which was deemed a success by Captain Watson and the Foundation.
You can read more about it HERE.