Jeff Pantukhoff has used his filmmaking skills to help alter a variety of ocean and marine animal fights, most notably with grey whales along the Mexican coast. He has also unabashedly relied on the media and committed celebrity spokespeople(including Pierce Brosnan and Hayden Panettiere) to draw attention to his causes, which he insists has made all the difference. An excerpt from, OCEANS, The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide.
I believe one of the best ways to get a message out to the public and to influence decision makers is to use the power of celebrity and the media to deliver the message. My experience is that you can put the brightest scientist or the world’s greatest expert on any given subject in front of people and more often than not, they will get glassy-eyed and lose attention. But put a passionate celebrity in front of them delivering the exact same message, someone that they think they know and someone they relate to, and they will pay attention.
But it can’t be just any celebrity. Merely lending their name to a cause – which many celebrities do – doesn’t often make a difference because they are only doing so to help improve their own image. To truly be effective, your spokesperson has to passionate, to truly believe in your cause and also be self-motivated and committed to the point of wanting to take direct action to help raise awareness be it through press conferences, television appearances, protests and more.
I believe one of the main reasons we were ultimately successful in stopping Mitsubishi from building the world’s largest salt plant in San Ignacio Lagoon was because Pierce went to the lagoon with us, witnessed its beauty and the amazing encounters with the friendly gray whales there firsthand. As a result, he was deeply moved and motivated to do whatever he could to help us take on and beat one of the world’s largest corporations.
When I first met Hayden Panitierre on set of a friend’s film, she was only fifteen years old. But I was immediately impressed not only by how talented she was, but by how she handled herself on set and the relationship she had with Lesley, her mother. As we talked I soon discovered that both were animal lovers. At the time I was looking for someone to spearhead our Save the Whales Again! Campaign. After showing them some of the our public service announcements and previous films I asked daughter and mother if they would be interested in getting involved and they immediately agreed.
The first place I took Hayden and Lesley was San Ignacio Lagoon to experience the gray whales and share our success story. The trip had a huge impact on them both. Later, when I showed them the footage of the dolphin slaughter in Taiji — Japan’s notorious dolphin killing cove — and asked if they wanted to go there and take part in an action that was being planned by my friend and fellow activist Dave Rastovich, they did not hesitate.
In October 2007 we traveled together to Taiji. Images from our visit were seen around the world, bringing international awareness to the issue later heightened with the release of the documentary film “The Cove”, which also included scenes from our visit.
HAYDEN PANETTIERE: The brutal practice in Japan of herding dolphins and small whales into coves and killing them is ongoing. The hunters blind and frighten the helpless animals by hammering on metal poles in the water, driving them into small coves where they are trapped in nets and then killed.
I experienced this slaughter first hand when Jeff invited me to join him on that 2007 trip to Taiji. Along with actress Isabel Lucas, our Australian spokesperson, we took part in a peaceful paddle-out ceremony. Along with four other activists, we paddled surfboards out into the blood red waters where over thirty pilot whales had already been slaughtered and we honored all the beautiful animals that had lost their lives there. During our peaceful ceremony, the Japanese fisherman, unprovoked, became violent and physically aggressive towards us. Though being hit with large poles and threatened with spinning boat propellers, which came inches from us, we held our ground. The resulting international media attention generated by the incident was massive, and the support from people around the world has been incredible.
The irony is that most of the Japanese public is unaware that these hunts even happen, that over twenty thousand dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered by Japanese fisherman every year
The reason I choose to focus my efforts on saving the dolphins and whales is two-fold. First, is because dolphins and whales are charismatic creatures, both intelligent and beautiful. The second is because dolphins and whales are also the barometer of the overall health of our oceans; I truly believe that as go the dolphins and whales, so go our oceans, and as go the oceans, so goes all life on earth. If we can save the dolphins and whales, we will save our oceans and ultimately, we will save our planet and ourselves.
Grand Isle, Louisiana – A long thin two-lane highway connects central Louisiana with the Gulf. The channels that paralleling the hundred mile drive are filled with fishing boats parked in single file, shrimpers mostly. On my way to the road’s end I stop and visit with men polishing boats and repairing gear. News over the weekend from Terrebone Parish that a first fishermen had returned with oil-tainted shrimp had dampened an already dark mood.
But even before the oil spill these fishermen were growing disillusioned by their chosen profession. “Actually it’s almost not like I chose this life,” John “Winnie” Winsted tells me, sitting in the back of his shrimp boat thirty miles north of the big oil town of Port Fourchon. “I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager. Now, it’s in my blood.”
Pre-spill the fishermen had a handful of complaints: High fuel prices. A dead zone that grows in the Gulf each spring/summer thanks to fertilizers washed down from the north, forcing them to go further out to sea thus costing more to operate. Trade policies which they see as favoring foreign fishermen, allowing foreign companies to “dump” seafood on the U.S. market at below production costs, mostly from Thailand, Indonesia, Ecuador, China, Vietnam, Myanmar and India.
But fishing has never been an easy way to make a living, even without several million gallons of oil mucking up the fishery and a growing public perception that all fish from the Gulf are now polluted. Despite improved technology like sonar and GPS which make finding fish much easier, the markets just get tighter and tighter, and the fish fewer and fewer. For the rest of my dispatch, see takepart.com.
Breaux Bridge, Louisiana — I’ve been coming to the Gulf coast of Louisiana every few months since July 2008, making a film about the relationship between man and the water in a place where everywhere you look there is glimpse of a river, creek, bayou, basin, swamp, the Gulf or the Mississippi River. Coincidentally, in light of recent events, one of the first things we filmed upon arrival 22 months ago was an oil spill. At the time when an oil tanker t-boned a barge in the middle of the Mississippi River at midnight on July 28 it seemed catastrophic. Now I know that it was in part business as usual.
Zydeco breakfast, Cafe des Amis, Breaux Bridge
That 400,000-gallon spill, in the heart of New Orleans’ drinking water source, quickly coated both banks of the river for 80 miles, all the way to the Gulf. We filmed crews in white hazmat suits power-washing oil off the rocks in New Orleans from the tourist promenade lining the river. In an interview with the Department of Environmental Quality official in charge of the state’s waterways he admitted without hesitation that “this kind of thing happens often in Louisiana, given the massive oil and gas industry that controls things here.”
In the months since we have traveled with, interviewed and filmed a half-dozen of Louisiana’s crème-de-la-crème of environmental activists and environmental ills. My original intent was to try and understand and explain the Dead Zone that grows off the mouth of the Mississippi every summer thanks to fertilizers washed down it from 31 northern states. But one interesting character led to another, one mess to another, and we just kept coming back. For the rest of my dispatch from Breaux Bridge, see www.takepart.com ….
Professor and author, Callum Roberts has written exhaustively and eloquently about the rapacious history of man when it comes to the world’s ocean. In the final chapter of his critically-acclaimed book Unnatural History of the Sea he suggests there are ways to change the future for fishes, that catching the last one in the sea does not have to be an inevitability. An excerpt from OCEANS, The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide.
We have much to do to realize a vision of the world where the oceans and seas are spangled with mosaics of marine reserves. With just three-fifths of one percent of the ocean currently protected, we need fifty times more reserve areas to do the job well, spread across the waters of coastal nations and the high seas. This is far more than many politicians, fishery managers, and even some people in conservation agencies are willing to countenance. I have spoken to hundreds of them in my career. Even in unguarded moments, the most that many are willing to concede is that a few percent of the sea should be protected as reserves. The rest would either continue to be used as it is now or would be zoned to exclude certain kinds of activities, like dredging for aggregate or drilling for oil.
If we stick to that management paradigm, I am convinced that marine life will continue its long slide toward jellyfish and slime. A handful of special places protected by reserves might remind tourists of what has been lost. But these scattered reserves could sustain only a fraction of the species that live in the sea because in the long term they will not be sufficient to maintain viable populations of the largest, most vulnerable, and most mobile species. Diving in them would be like looking at a Roman fresco where great pieces of plaster have crumbled away. Do we really want to have to imagine what has been lost?
I believe that we need to flip this paradigm on its head. Rather than thinking that marine reserves protection should be afforded to only a few species or out-of-the-way places, we need to view reserves as the foundation and underpinning for all other management. According to this view, reserves would cover some 30 percent of the sea, perhaps more in some places. They would be complemented by other kinds of marine protected areas that allow a range of low-impact activities such as certain kinds of fishing. Added to this would be areas zoned for other uses, such as bottom trawling. The aim would be to contain the impacts of more invasive activities and keep them away from sensitive areas. Places that are given no protection would make up a small minority of the sea, not the large majority that they constitute now.
Opinion surveys show that the public is ready for such a change in thinking. For example, when Americans were polled on their attitudes to the oceans a few years ago, they were surprised to find so little protection given to the sea. On average, they thought that 22 percent of the sea was already fully protected from all fishing in marine reserves and were upset and angry to discover that most national marine sanctuaries allowed fishing. The name “sanctuary” was a sham. At a conference in 2003, I picked up a leaflet put out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that proclaimed “Discover Nature’s Bets Hunting and Fishing: The National Wildlife Refuge System.”Clearly, even some conservationists have trouble with the concept of “refuge.” One of my students has also polled public opinion in Britain. On average, people thought that 16 percent of Britain’s seas were already protected in marine reserves (at the time of the survey the correct answer was 0.0004 percent). When asked how much of Britain’s seas they thought should be protected this way, the average answer given was 54 percent. Ninety-five percent of people thought more than 20 percent should be marine reserves.
People love the sea. Some of our most cherished early memories are of trips to the seaside, gathering shells, paddling, fencing with seaweeds, and gazing into rock pools. The sea inspires and soothes us; it can rouse us to rapture and terror. It is in constant motion but never seems to change. The whisper of rising tide over sand is the same today as it was when Dampier and his companions rocked at anchor in some Caribbean bay. The radiant blue of the Mediterranean dazzles in the same way as it did when Hannibal set forth with his fleet to conquer Rome. But many of the animals that sported around their ships are rare today or already in deep trouble and need our help to make a comeback.
A starting gun has been fired to change all of this. In 2000, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order, later endorsed by the Bush administration, charging government agencies to create a national network or marine protected areas. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, coastal nations of the world pledged to create national networks of marine protected areas by 2012. Meanwhile, European nations had already committed to create a Europe-wide network by 2010. However, these pledges remain vague on targets for numbers or size of protected areas and how they should be managed. Marine protected areas must offer genuine refuges. The World Conservation Union’s World Parks Congress of 2003 recommended that at least 20 to 30 percent of every marine habitat should be protected from all fishing, and that marine protected area networks should straddle the high seas as well as national waters. Moves are afoot at the United Nations to develop a mechanism that would allow the establishment of marine reserves in this global commons, for which there appears to be widespread support.
Several countries have made good progress. South Africa has committed to protect 20 percent of its waters. Eighteen percent of its territorial waters are already res and the network is being expanded offshore. In Australia, a third of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, more than 100,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of reef, sea grass, and swamp, was protected from fishing in 2004. This network of reserve zones is representative of all the different habitats in the park and sets a shining example for others to follow. Britain’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended in 2004 that 30 percent of the country’s waters should become marine reserves. We are on the path to a global network of marine reserves that could restores the oceans to much of their former glory. But we have to be bold and move rapidly if we are to achieve success.
Can the world afford to protect the oceans? One estimate, made in 2004, put the cost at US $12 to $14 billion per year to run a worldwide network of marine reserves covering 30 percent of all oceans and seas. Initial one time set-up costs would be about five times this amount. These sums seem like a lot but are put into perspective when we consider they are less than the US $15 to $30 billion we currently spend on harmful subsidies that encourage excess fishing capacity and prop up over exploitation. Most countries offer fishers tax breaks on fuel, for example, or free nets, and many countries pay for access to fish in another country’s waters. Compared to global defense spending, estimated at US $900 billion in 2004, the sums needed to keep our oceans healthy are trivial. The costs are also less than the US $31 billion that Europeans and Americans collectively spend on ice cream, and roughly equate to the US $15 billion we spend on perfumes or US $14 billion more than a million permanent jobs for managers, wardens, and administrators. Much of the running costs of coastal reserves could be recouped from visitors. Some reserves, like the Saba and Bonaire marine parks in the Caribbean are already self-funding, based on modest payments made by visitors. The costs could also be offset by the very large contribution reserves networks can be expected to make on fs. It would take only 10 percent uplift in fishery productivity in Britain’s Irish Sea and 2 to 3 percent in the North Sea for reserves there to cover all their management costs. The world can certainly afford marine reserves. What it can’t afford is to be without them any longer.
Barataria, Louisiana – It is the perfect blue-sky, humidity-less spring day in bayou country that makes you feel like everything should be all right in the world.
The intercoastal waterway leading to the Gulf of Mexico is calm, the canals that host fishing boats behind each neat suburban home reflect the midday sun and a cool breeze washes away extraneous sounds and smells.
But despite the bucolic day fisherman Mike Roberts is angry. “Osama bin Laden couldn’t have done a better job of destroying a part of the American economy. This oil spill? It’s like the ultimate act of terrorism. And these guys …” – BP and Transocean executives, and the federal agency that was supposed to police them but appears to have been very cozy with the oil industry (Mineral Management Service) – “should be treated like terrorists.”
As we talk, a leftover shrimp lasagna heating in the oven, we watch soundless oil company heads testifying before Congress on headline news. Mike, and his wife Tracy Kuhns, glimpse at the television as we talk. Their house, a pair of fishing boats tied up on the canal just feet from the backdoor, is a hub this morning for neighbors, friends and relatives looking for information. When this fishing community went to bed last night they thought they were going to be able to shrimp today in the fresh waters of the bayou. But they woke to learn that all fishing along the coast had been shut down. For my full report see takepart.com.
No one ocean person is more ready to fight on its behalf than Captain Paul Watson. Each season for the past several he has sailed his ship the Steve Irwin to the icy waters off Antarctica to harass Japanese whalers, who insist on continuing their hunt despite international protest and pressure, using “science” as their lone defense. The popular Animal Planet series “Whale Wars,” filmed aboard the ship during its offenses, has brought Watson to an international audience and people either love him or hate him; with Paul, it seems, there is no middle ground. An excerpt from OCEANS, The Threats To Our Seas and What You Can Do to Turn the Tide.
Jon Bowermaster: Has your current campaign in the Southern Ocean been successful?
Captain Paul Watson: I believe it has been successful. Our strategy is an economic one. I don’t believe the Japanese whalers will back off on moral, ethical or scientific grounds but they will quit if they lose the one thing that is of most value to them – their profits. Our objective is to sink the Japanese whaling fleet – economically, to bankrupt them and we are doing that.
We have slashed their kill quotas in half over the last three years and negated their profits. They are tens of millions of dollars in debt on their repayment schedule for Japanese government subsidies. The newly elected Japanese government has pledged to cut their subsidies.
I am actually confident that we can shut them down this year. They are on the ropes financially.
JB: How do you measure success? Fewer whales taken by Japanese? Other signs??
CPW: Of their quota of 935 Minke whales last year they fell short by 304. Of their quota of 50 Fin whales, they took only one. The year before they only took half their quota and in the last three years did not kill enough whales to break even so have been operating at a loss. We have also exposed their illegal whaling activities to the world and initiated a controversy and a discussion on whaling in the Japanese media.
JB: How do the Japanese continue to get away with the whale hunt when so many things say they shouldn’t, i.e. the Antarctica Treaty forbidding commerce below sixty degrees south latitude and the International Whaling Comission’s ban on all whaling?
CPW: There is a lack of economic and political motivation on the part of governments to enforce international conservation law. The Japanese whalers are targeting endangered and protected whales inside the boundaries of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty that prohibits commercial activity south of sixty degrees and they are in contempt of the Australian Federal Court for continuing to kill whales in the Australian Antarctic Economic Exclusion Zone. There is no difference between Japanese whale poachers in Antarctica and elephant poachers in East Africa except that the Africans are black and impoverished.
JB: Do you know what the reaction among Japanese people – not scientists, not government – is towards the continued whale hunts?
CPW: I’m not actually concerned. I’m Canadian and the majority of Canadians are opposed to the commercial slaughter of seals but the Canadian government subsidizes it nonetheless. I believe it is a myth that once the people of a nation oppose something that things will change. First, most people are apathetic and could not care one way or another. Secondly, the pro-whalers have an economic motivation to lobby for continued whaling and thirdly in Japan it is considered inappropriate to oppose government or corporate policy. I’ve always felt that educating the Japanese public was a waste of time and smacks of cultural chauvinism. The fact is that whaling is illegal and we intervene for that reason and the key to ending it is the negation of profits.
JB: They are showing The Cove in Japan now, and most Japanese interviewed said they had no idea these dolphin hunts were happening. Are the Japanese aware of “Whale Wars”?
CPW: I am not sure nor do I care. I know that the Japanese government and the whalers are aware of it. I know that the people of Taiji are aware of the dolphin slaughters. I think that the controversy over the film is allowing many Japanese people to become aware of it, despite that the killing of dolphins continues. The Cove has been most valuable in raising awareness outside of Japan, which motivates outside pressure on Japan.
JB: How are whale populations doing around the world? Growing? Shrinking?
CPW: The oceans are dying. Every single commercial fishery is in a state of economic collapse. We have destroyed some ninety percent of the population of the large fishes. All life in the ocean is threatened. And if the oceans die, we die. This is a simple fact that humans choose to ignore. If you eat a fish you are part of the problem. If you eat pork or chicken raised on fishmeal, you are part of the problem. If you throw plastic garbage into the ocean you are part of the problem. All whales are endangered although some populations are slowly recovering, but this may not save them from an overall marine ecological collapse.
JB: Are you optimistic or pessimistic in regard to how man is treating the ocean and its marine life? The World Wildlife Fund, for example, predicts all bluefin tuna will be gone by 2012 and that every species of fish we currently know will be gone by 2050.
CPW: The World Wildlife Fund is part of the problem. I wish they would use their vast resources to actually do something instead of constantly warning us how dire the situation is. Critics call conservationists doom and gloom “Cassandra’s” forgetting the fact that Cassandra may have predicted doom and gloom but she was right and Troy could have been saved if King Priam had simply listened to his daughter. We are the Cassandra’s and no one is listening.
We are about to launch a major campaign to defend bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean but it may be too late. Companies like Mitsubishi are literally investing in diminishment and extinction to raise the price of the tuna they have stored in vast refrigerated warehouses in Japan. The answer to this question is that the solutions are all impossible BUT sometimes the impossible is the answer, in other words, the impossible solution is simply a solution no one has conceived of yet.
JB: How do you counter critics who suggest Sea Shepherd’s methods are “too extreme?”
CPW: Criticisms from people don’t concern me. My clients are whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, fish and seabirds. We have never injured a single person and we have never been convicted of a single felony therefore there is nothing extreme about what we do. There is nothing extreme about intervening to uphold international conservation law and there is nothing extreme about defending the lives of endangered species and defending the integrity of endangered habitats.
In today’s socially challenged world it does not matter if you are running for President of the United States or saving whales, the accusation of the times is “terrorist.” In a world where the Chinese government can label the Dalai Lama a terrorist I have no problem with the Japanese whalers calling me the same.
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