Prominent anti-whaling environmentalist Paul Watson was arrested in Greenland on Sunday under an international arrest warrant issued by Japan, police and his foundation said.
In a statement, Greenland police said Watson had been arrested after arriving in Nuuk on the ship John Paul DeJoria.
He will be brought before a district court where police will request his detention “before a decision is made on whether he should be extradited to Japan,” they added.
Watson, who featured in the reality TV series “Whale Wars,” founded the Sea Shepherd and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) organizations, and has drawn attention for direct action tactics, including confrontations with whaling ships out at sea.
CPWF said in a statement that it believes his arrest is related to a so-called Red Notice issued over “Watson’s previous anti-whaling interventions in the Antarctic region.”
CPWF said in a statement that his ship had made port to refuel as part of its “Operation Kangei Maru, a mission to intercept Japan’s newly-built factory whaling ship Kangei Maru in the North Pacific.”
The 9,300-metric-ton whaler, which set off from Japan in May, butchers and processes whales caught by smaller vessels.
Activists aggressively pursued the Kangei Maru’s predecessor when, prior to 2019, Japan hunted whales in the Antarctic and North Pacific for “scientific” purposes.
That year Japan quit the International Whaling Commission and nowadays conducts commercial whaling, but only in its own waters, and on what it calls a sustainable scale.