When we meet her in front of a vegetable chai latte, in Lorient, Tuesday November 5, 2024, Lamya Essemlali is packing her suitcase. His slim silhouette will head back to Greenland, for the fifth time in four months. A 48-hour journey, with stopovers in Paris and Reykjavik, to provide physical and moral aid to the founder of the Sea Shepherd movement Paul Watson, imprisoned there since July 21.
“Paul is only allowed ten minutes of telephone time per week with his wife and children. He experiences very difficult isolation. If I want to talk to him, I have to go to Nuuk anyway,” explains the co-founder of Sea Shepherd France with a determined look. Between Captain Paul Watson and the former Parisian suburb kid, child of an immigrant viscerally attached to the defense of wild animals, the bond is unbreakable.
His life for a whale
“Paul is my mentor, my friend, my spiritual father too,” recalls the one who was raised by a single mother, in the middle of the towers in Gennevilliers (Hauts-de-Seine). If Lamya Essemlali made her life a fight, it is also because there was Paul Watson. When she met him, after finishing her studies in 2005, she only knew the sea through her childhood vacations in Morocco. He questions her: “Would you sacrifice your life to save a whale? » Six months later, she experienced it in the middle of Antarctica, embarked with around thirty activists to block the path of the Japanese mega-whaler Nisshin Maru. The huge trawler will only turn around at the last moment.
At 45 years old, Lamya Essemlali has her life saved. But she still does not compromise on the defense of whales and the oceans. With a hat flanked by a skull screwed onto her skull, she tracked factory ships with “Ocean killers” in the English Channel, patrolled to save turtles from poachers' machetes in Mayotte, alerted to the destruction of species and protected habitats off the wind farms of Saint-Brieuc or Dunkirk (North). “I go where I am most useful. I have the feeling of doing what is right,” she tells us again in a calm and warm voice, which contrasts with the images of the “sea pirate”, who has always rallied to the radicalism of the movement.
We were tired of being hit by Sea Shepherd. For us, it was yet another eco-bobo-fundamentalist
In Brittany for Rewild
The activist arrived in Brittany one day in 2020. At the very moment we find her associated with the anti-speciesist Aymeric Caron and La France Insoumise in a municipal campaign in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. “Politics hasn’t been my thing. I didn’t like the LFI recovery,” she asserts today.
At the time, Sea Shepherd France was considering, with several NGOs, transforming the former Pont-Scorff zoo (56) into a “rewilding” center. An adventure financed by a prize pool of €740,000, boosted by the media Hugo Clément. Bad management and internal quarrels got the better of the Rewild project. “Sea Shepherd received nothing and even lost money in this story”, firmly justifies Lamya Essemlali.
From her adopted Morbihan, she never left and kept friends. “I had the image of a warrior and I discovered someone very accessible. A little piece of woman with a big character who makes us respect her,” says animal caretaker Ludwig Pastor of her. For a year he has been working for the new
“Sea Shepherd Rescue”, opened in the Kernascleden countryside, thirty minutes from Lorient. A new generation care center, which welcomes injured wild animals and of which Lamya Essemlali is very proud. “The Rewild experience allowed us to move forward. There, we control from A to Z. There are zero problems, zero war with the whole earth.”
I learned to channel my energy. Instead of imagining our debt to the oceans, I prefer to talk about responsibility. I don't want my driving force to be guilt anymore
Face to face with the fishermen
Facing the ocean, the defender of “aggressive non-violence” nevertheless raises a few hairs. Starting with those of fishermen, subject, at the beginning of 2024, to a temporary ban on fishing in the Bay of Biscay, in order to limit accidental captures of dolphins.
In March 2023, several groups arrived in front of Lamya Essemlali's home. “We were tired of being hit by Sea Shepherd. For us, it was yet another eco-bobo-fundamentalist,” comments David Le Quintrec today. The girl from the cities “did not give up”. Since then, they have had a joint meeting and talked to each other. The environmentalist deputy Damien Girard, then departmental advisor, was there: “There is the woman, discreet and reserved,” he describes. And then the activist, transcended by the fight and who shows incredible courage. “That she is in her role as a whistleblower does not bother me.”
It is 4:30 p.m. and Lamya Essemlali has to go pick up her daughter from school. It will nonetheless monitor the status of the legal case which opposes it to the international authorities of Sea Shepherd Global. Nor the latest “very political” information that Paul Watson’s nine lawyers will provide him. While seriously treating the migraine that is looming. “I learned to channel my energy. I still have anger but I feel lighter, more effective, she assures. Instead of imagining our debt to the oceans, I prefer to talk about responsibility. I no longer want my driving force to be guilt. »
France
