Greenland police said they arrested Paul Watson, a Canadian-American environmental activist and vocal opponent of whaling, on Sunday on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan.
Paul Watson was arrested when his ship docked in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, a police statement said.
The statement added that he will be presented before a local court with a request to detain him pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan.
Captain Paul Watson's foundation said more than a dozen police officers boarded the ship and took Watson away in handcuffs when it stopped to refuel.
The ship, accompanied by 25 volunteer crew members, was en route to the North Pacific on a mission to intercept a new Japanese whaling vessel, the foundation said.
The foundation said in an emailed statement that it “believes the arrest is related to a previous Red Notice issued regarding Captain Watson's previous interventions to combat whaling in the Antarctic region.”
“We call on the Danish government to release Captain Watson and not accept this politically motivated request,” Luke McLean, the foundation’s director, wrote in the statement.
Greenland is an autonomous region of Denmark.
Mr. Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian-American citizen, is the founder and former director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose direct tactics, including high-seas engagements with whalers, have attracted celebrity support and prominence in his reality series whale wars.
But this also brought him into conflict with the authorities. He was arrested in Germany in 2012 on an extradition warrant from Costa Rica, but escaped bail after learning that Japan had also requested his extradition, accusing him of endangering the lives of whalers during operations in the Antarctic Ocean. Since then, he has lived in countries including France and the United States.
Mr Watson, who left Sea Shepherd in 2022 to start his own organisation, was also a leading member of Greenpeace, but left the organisation in 1977 over disagreements over its aggressive tactics.
According to his foundation, Mr. Watson's current ship is the Mr. John Paul DeJoriaHe was to sail through the Northwest Passage into the North Pacific to confront a newly built Japanese whaling ship, “a deadly enemy devoid of mercy and compassion, dedicated to the destruction of sentient, self-conscious beings—even the most intelligent of the sea.”
