Sea Shepherd Has Launched An Incredibly Graphic New Ad To Raise Awareness About Whaling
Warning: it features the guy from the chocolate milk ads suffering a very violent death.
Considering they regularly storm the seas on ships flying an angry version of the Jolly Roger with a crook and Poseidon’s trident, it’s no secret that the Sea Shepherd are pretty keen on drama. For around 30 years, the activist group has grown a huge support base with big campaigns protesting harmful commercial fishing operations, poaching and whale-hunting. Now, they’ve launched what’s probably their most striking yet.
Released yesterday, the following ad is intended to humanise the suffering whales face when being slaughtered. It features well-known Australian actor David Field — who’s no stranger to this kind of violence coming from films like Chopper and Two Hands — and it comes just a few days after 250 Pilot whales were killed off the coast of Norway.
Fair warning: the clip is really, really disturbing.
While the International Whaling Commission put forward a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1985, it’s still a fairly common practice in Iceland, Norway and Japan — and this most recent cull in the self-governing Faroe Islands is something of a tradition. Each year the locals herd the whales into shore and slaughter them by hand. As The Guardian reports it’s considered a “community-based use of a renewable, natural resource for food” and has been legalised accordingly. In fact, two Sea Shepherd volunteers are now facing the threat of two years imprisonment for attempting to interfere.
“The cruelty inflicted on whales is shocking and while most people abhor whaling I think many don’t realise just how brutally these sea mammals are butchered,” actor David Field said in a statement yesterday. “As a supporter of Sea Shepherd I want to bring this barbaric practice to the attention of as many people as possible in the hope that we can get it stopped.”
The condemnation of these practices is already pretty well established with the International Court of Justice regularly railing against the offending nations. Japan in particular has faced significant public outcry after their fisheries minister declared they would never stop eating whale, and it was proven they were falsely claiming the ongoing hunts were for scientific research. The Japanese market for whale meat may actually be the only thing keeping the Icelandic industry afloat.
Either way, the Sea Shepherd has launched a dedicated site for this new campaign and are currently raising funds to continue their efforts in these regions. Investigating the issue last year, ABC Fact Check figured out that around 22,000 whales have been killed between 1985 and 2012, with around 1,500 being hunted in that final year alone. Meanwhile the WWF classify 8 of the 13 main whale species as endangered. Things could be better.
–
You can read more about Sea Shepherd’s campaign here.