The Only Flag Worth Flying

This book is a rare achievement. It brings technical precision, sharp legal analysis of case studies, and political dynamics to the reality of marine law, which depends so much on international agreements and real action to protect the ocean. It tests international law at its edges — where enforcement collapses and NGOs must decide if they retreat or act. No movement has interrogated those limits as deeply as Captain Paul Watson and his founded NGOs Sea Shepherd and Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and no one has lived this paradox more intensely than Paul himself.

Laws are the last to be created — and the first to be ignored when political will collapses. They require courage and commitment from leaders to have any meaning in practice. The Only Flag Worth Flying reminds us, with a clarity that feels almost subversive, that states, boundaries, and laws are man-made fictions — fragile constructs that dissolve the moment sovereignty is used as a shield against international justice. Just as any man made concept, they can also be reimagined.

Ecology laws, by contrast, are created by no one. Life is a common right, and the ocean refuses to be domesticated by human rules. In this vacuum between legal rights and biological truths, a rare group of NGOs step into the breach. Our role is not only to fill the gaps governments leave open, but to push governments to close those gaps, to expose their inertia, and to insist that environmental law cannot live on paper.

The read also reminds us that regional and international NGOs can serve as defenders of life, also as allies — and amplifiers — of those who already defend it in their own terms: indigenous peoples who continue to embody the biocentric worldview modern society has abandoned. When indigenous guardians and direct-action organisations converge, the result goes beyond enforcing the law; it becomes the restoration of an ancient legal order, one rooted in reciprocity, responsibility, and the continuity of life.

The Only Flag Worth Flying is not a typical law book. It is a record of how one of the only actors willing to uphold nature’s law has forced the world to confront its own failures. It is another chapter in Paul Watson’s legacy: showing that when nations hesitate, the ocean still has defenders — and that legitimacy can come not from authority, but from the unwavering commitment for the defense of life itself.

Nathalie Gil, President of Sea Shepherd Brasil