Saturday, July 30, 2011

Faroes' Free Global TV Coverage

The Faroe Islands is about to get free international publicity!
Sea Shepherd’s Capt.Paul Watson hinted at this last year and now Animal Planet has confirmed it: the Whale Wars franchise is getting a spin-off series, which will focus on SS’s efforts to stop the annual pilot whale hunt in the Faroes.
The production company started filming for the Faroe Islands Project in mid-July. At that stage, SS was leaving the Channel Islands after the largely ineffective IWC meeting...but then, as you know, the campaign ran into trouble with the detainment of their ship Steve Irwin in the Shetland Islands (a Scottish court is holding the ship over a claim filed by a Maltese company, saying SS caused damage when they freed hundreds of bluefin tuna from the company’s nets off Libya in 2010). SS says it needs $1.4 million to release the ship or face its permanent seizure.
Steve Irwin in combat livery
PS: 03 August 2011 - Steve Irwin is now on its way to the Faroes, having just paid a reduced bond.
For the last four years, Whale Wars has been highly successful because of the passion of the SS crews, the risks they take when harassing the nasty Nippon whale killers, and the magnificent dangerous beauty of the Southern Ocean. Now they're filming their efforts again, this time in a lush and unfamiliar corner of northern Europe, where the customs are different but the butchery is the same. If they are able to document a grindadráp at the same time, it will make compelling if horrendous viewing - and will certainly open the eyes of those around the world, who find it incomprehensible that any civilised country would continue such barbarism in the 21st century.
It's the sort of global publicity the Faroe Islanders do not need - but which they've brought upon themselves.

[Read also about what SS has recently discovered along the coast of the Faroes...]

No comments: