Paul Watson.

Somewhere in the Pacific, bodyguard of the seas Captain Paul Watson maneuvers the hulking Sea Shepherd as if he were cruising in a motor boat on a Sunday afternoon. Righteous glee brightens his face as he closes in on a Japanese fishing vessel and rams it hard, ripping its destructive driftnets off the side. This is one crew that won't be killing any more dolphins.

Watson is through talking to outlaw ocean harvesters. Instead, he confronts them where they do their dirty work and batters them into submission. After an estrangement from Greenpeace, which he co-founded, Watson started the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977. The society has taken credit for sinking eight whaling ships and for ramming seven whalers and driftnetters.

Watson, a Canadian-born former captain of international merchant vessels, empathized with besieged animals early on, destroying trap lines set for beavers after one he had befriended was killed. Watson takes no salary from Sea Shepherd, supporting himself by teaching and lecturing about the environmental movement. He is the role model of activists like the Animal Liberation Front's Rod Coronado, who in 1988 dismantled an Icelandic whale-processing plant and sank two whaling ships for Sea Shepherd before narrowly escaping the country. Sea Shepherd volunteers are so committed they pay up to $2,000 to go on anti-whaling missions. "None of my crew has ever been injured," Watson says.

As for Watson himself, that's another story. Sea Shepherd went to Canada's Magdalen Islands last March to demonstrate an alternative to "harvesting" seals for their penises. But the crew found that sealers had no patience with the idea of brushing molting Harp seal pups and selling the hair to a German textile manufacturer for insulation. Watson was seen as their nemesis, the man who once handcuffed himself to a sealing ship, calling worldwide attention to the seal hunt. Seething with decades of resentment, a few hundred sealers surrounded Watson's hotel, then burst in and pummelled him.

But Watson thrives on confrontation. He's not apprehensive about returning to the Magdalen Islands, nor is he worried about facing life in Canadian prison for the "criminal mischief" of driving Spanish and Cuban cod trawlers out of over-fished waters in 1993. Conflict means more news coverage, as Watson proved in 1994 during a standoff between Sea Shepherd's Whales Forever and a Norwegian warship over the 300 Minke whales Norway planned to kill for "scientific research." Norway's warning shots, depth charges and collision with Whales Forever didn't faze him. The footage ended up on international television, shaming the Norwegian government.

What battles will Sea Shepherd fight next? "Unfortunately, there's no end to the issues," Watson says. He's keeping an indignant eye on the Makah tribe of Washington state, now hunting gray whales with the encouragement of Japan and Norway and in defiance of International Whaling Commission (IWC) laws. Sea Shepherd will also buy a new ship to intercept Japanese whalers in Antarctica, and will use the Edward Abbey to investigate cruise ship damage to whale habitat in Alaska, as well as the fish war between the United States and Canada.

"The Dalai Lama defined our organization the best," Watson says of his friend, the Tibetan eminence. "He called it Hayagriva -- Buddhist rage. You don't really want to hurt anybody, but when they don't see the light, you want to scare the hell out of them."

Contact: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, 3107A Washington Boulevard, Marina Del Rey, CA 92092/ [phone].