One is something of a soft-handed dilettante who vigorously fights against political hypocrisy and whose principle weapons are the resources of the cyber-world through Wikileaks. The other is a tough, no-holds-barred sailor who prides himself on being almost piratical in his approach to environmental outrages, flying a Sea Shepherd flag that closely resembles the Jolly Roger of the legendary pirate days.

Sea Shepherd is an initiative of Captain Paul Watson, while Wikileaks is the creature of Julian Assange. Watson's activities have brought him into open conflict with some of the world's cruellest despoilers of the environment, particularly of the Japanese whalers in the Great Southern Ocean, where Watson now boasts that, "We're celebrating another victory in the Southern Ocean! Operation Divine Wind is now over and for the second year in a row, the illegal Japanese whalers have left the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary early and with only a fraction of their quota. 768 whales are alive and swimming free because of our direct-action marine conservation efforts!"

Watson's organisation has mounted several campaigns to the Southern Ocean to defend whales, a campaign to the Mediterranean to defend blue fin tuna, a campaign to the Faeroe Islands to defend pilot whales, a campaign to Namibia to defend South African fur seals, a campaign to Taiji, Japan, to defend dolphins and an on-going campaign to stop poachers in the Galapagos Islands.

Captain Watson has particular concerns, however, about Australia's Coral Sea which is a virtually untouched and pristine place while much of our global waters are fished to the brink, polluted with toxic water or littered with oil and gas developments - and is truly a special place which is extremely vulnerable.

Through WikiLeaks Julian Assange has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: "That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are - rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media" Assange said, and it is a major achievement that Wikileaks has made public so much politically suppressed information.

Captain Paul Watson himself has just been arrested in Germany and may be extradited to Costa Rica where he will face a politically motivated, unfair trial on trumped up charges. Julian Assange is similarly placed after being held in the UK for a year and a half - without formal charges - and will shortly know whether he'll be extradited to Sweden where he is to face similarly questionable allegations after a Swedish police request in relation to an alleged sexual assault after which Assange voluntarily attended a police station and was arrested and taken into continuing custody.

Each of them, in their very different ways, is a crusader against the injustices that they see in the world and much to be admired for the stands they have taken.