This update isn't breaking news. Sea Shepherd and CPWF try to keep up appearances but have long been weakened by grifters such as Omar Todd. From the beginning, red flags were obvious with the fake church and his fake filmmaker credentials on the IMDb site. Todd was only able to get as far as he did thanks to the easily manipulated egos of Paul Watson and his wife Yana.

It's telling when the public today sometimes confuses "Sea Shepherd" for a clothing brand instead of a conservation NGO. The CPWF campaign for Rice's whales is not even a campaign. It's rhetoric without specific goals. Paul Watson is no longer in charge.

The latest corruption is the collusion between Sea Shepherd in France and ZooParc de Beauval to "temporarily" house twelve dolphins from the defunct Marineland Antibes. Years ago the zoo owner Rudolphe Delord was prevented by ARAs from building dolphin tanks. Now that hard work will be erased with the aid of Lamya Essemali and Sea Shepherd in France as they unwittingly help Delord greenwash his image to become a "dolphin savior". The 4000 other animals from Marineland Antibes were shuffled off to other European zoos, not animal sanctuaries--and some animals were euthanized. Perhaps Essemali's embarrassing colonization of the ayahuasca experience in South America has led to this muddled decision to sell out the poor dolphins.

For years the Aegean Marine Life Sanctuary in Greece has been bogged down by the bureaucracy of its opponents. Essemali paints a rosy ayahuasca-fueled fantasy of the twelve dolphins later relocating there. But it can perhaps only accommodate ten dolphins. She knows this but isn't being honest--or she can't do math.

If the unlucky dolphins fall into Delord's hands, they will never see freedom in the ocean. The stay at the zoo will become permanent. Delord won't have dolphin shows, but eventually he will exhibit the dolphins to his customers in the guise of "education" and "conservation"--perhaps by then with Sea Shepherd's full endorsement. The aim of dolphin rehabilitation is to return dolphins back to their real home the ocean, not keep them in captivity as reluctant "ambassadors". There was also never a plan for the two Marineland orcas. Even Essemali's dubious "ally", Agnès Pannier-Runacher, admitted this to journalists.

Does it matter what Paul Watson does or doesn't do? Not to dolphins, not to whales. Because none of what he's currently doing changes their miserable plight caused by human apathy and corruption. Sea Shepherd Global isn't the answer either. There will always be suckers for cinematic marketing campaigns to support them. But the rest of us need to do whatever each of us can to defend animals, land, and ocean. It's on us ordinary citizens, as it's always been. Time has run out. It's most practical to invest in environmental efforts in our local community where we see results firsthand.

Nearly every NGO today with more than a million dollars in revenue and assets becomes part of the problem. This is how hypercapitalism neutralizes rebels and kills efforts to protect Earth. The legacy of Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd will be seen as a conservation milestone that ended in an all too predictable and common tragedy: dedicated activists who once saved ocean life by risking their own lives but lost their way as they succumbed to become B-list celebrities gone corporate.