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In 2004, we were invited to speak at Telluride with our first book, Lost Africa: The Eyes of Origin. Marie was pregnant with our son, Lysander, who would join us on all our research trips in the wild. Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd spoke about the time he failed to save a whale from a Russian whaling ship.
As she was dying in a pool of blood, the whale shot a look of pity not for herself but for the entire human species. He eventually found out that the Russians were using sperm whale oil to lubricate ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles. The human species had totally lost its mind.
Watson has been in jail in Greenland for several months because the Japanese have launched their latest whale killing ship in the Arctic and want him behind bars forever. This is a travesty of the human condition. He has done more than any single animal activist on the planet for several generations, screaming out against the seal massacre in Canada and the cetaceans' destruction by the “civilized” world.
Researchers are slowly learning the supreme sophistication of cetacean culture and language, but we humans continue to blow them up. Watson recently wrote the intro to our latest book dedicated to childhood, Wonder and the World: A Childhood Among the Species (Verlag Kettler). He wrote that “children are born with an intuitive affinity to animals.
This reverence and empathy not only strengthen our connections with animals but also extend to our relationships with one another.” Where would the Little Prince be without his fox? Watson took time out for us because he recognized a like spirit, as we railed against the elephant massacre last decade when one third of Africa’s greatest beings were destroyed because of Chinese penchant for ivory and the 2008 economic downturn. We had faxed Hillary Clinton, sent our book, Walking Thunder , to Prince William and his father, the King of England, so they could lend their voice to the struggle and to Teresa Heinz, who reminded her husband, John Kerry, of the killing.
That resulted in the conference, Ivory and Insecurity, in the spring of 2012. We persuaded National Geographic and Vanity Fair to do the first film and the article of our time Agony and Ivory (August 2011) hand-delivered to Chinese officials igniting the fuse to stop the ivory trade. Watson’s activism in our time is second to none.
The killing of whales, beings with a conscience equal to ours, is one of the greatest scourges of our kind. He continues to fight behind bars and his spirit still soars upon the sight of icebergs and whales outside his jail window. Watson’s liberation cannot come too soon.
He has fought the killers of the greatest beings on earth his entire life but has never hurt a single human. People must choose between salvation or oblivion, and it starts with the salvation of its greatest titans, the elephants and whales. Our son once said,” We’ve landed on the moon, but we haven’t landed on Earth yet.
” It is time we landed, or the children of earth will have nothing to look forward to, because nothing will be left to experience. That is the message of our film, Walking Thunder: Ode to the African Elephant, now on Amazon. Jane Goodall declared the film "mesmerizing" and can be seen on Amazon.
Without the other beings, we cease to be human. This, Paul Watson knows only too well. As the greatest animal activist on earth, he needs to be freed.
Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkson and their son Lysander’s documentary, endorsed by Jane Goodall, is now available on Amazon Prime. Wonder and the World: A Childhood Among the Species was published in March, with a preface by Paul Watson..
