Unfinished Business in #Taiji

Martin Luther King said, "In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends." 

It's been a while since I last blogged, more than 8 months in fact despite closing my last musing with this paragraph:

"I thought that I was fully prepared for the experience of actually being a Cove Guardian but I now know that nothing prepares you for Taiji, there is always going to be a surprise around the corner. One pleasant surprise has been the warmth and pleasantness of the Japanese people we have encountered and I have no doubt that as more and more Japanese nationals become aware of what is going on in this village of hell that we are approaching the start of a credible solution for this solvable problem. I will explore that much more fully in a day or two when I am in a calm place and able to focus on the positive. For now, please accept that there is a lot of positive and it does give great hope for the future."

Let me tell you that I thought I was fully prepared to continue blogging in "a day or two" but I just couldn't bring myself to push the "publish" button. Too many of my friends were still silent and it upset me too much to realise that.  I also found myself increasingly unable to calm down as I realised more and more that the only people who really understood the true horrors of Taiji were either still in Taiji or were other returned Cove Guardians and Cove Monitors all of whom were resident outside Scotland.  To date only two of us have traveled to Taiji from Scotland and we don't need to talk to each other about what is still happening there, we just need to look at each other to know. It is a dreadful place. It leaves permanent mental scars.

But it doesn't need to be a dreadful place. It could be a beautiful place sharing moderate wealth from eco-tourism amongst all three and a half thousand residents rather than its present status as a capture/kill machine concentrating extreme wealth in the hands of a greedy, murderous few. Meanwhile the remainder live on in that village in relative poverty and their children leave for University in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, never to return. Why would they?

But I am returning. Very soon.

I do still have far too many friends who choose to be ignorant about what is going on. Far too many friends who can discuss the best way to play Candy Crush or buy stuff from each other for an imaginary farm in cyberspace but haven't got a clue what is really going on in the physical world. Far too many friends who are so consumed with their own importance that they think it worth sharing their latest achievements in [insert latest facebook game name here]. Far too few who are prepared to make any sacrifices at all to change the entrenched mindset in Taiji.

I do still know far too few who are willing to give up even the cost of a pint of lager to support those who might be willing to make personal sacrifice of their own.  To support those who are willing to accept divorce or redundancy or bankruptcy or to do whatever else it takes to stop the killings, stop the live thefts, stop the blatant barbarism and to drive and support whatever effort it takes to replace the captures and killings with something better.

To those who are and always have been supportive, I thank you. You are making a difference. the mindset is changing. Slowly for sure but it is changing and that change is gathering momentum.

There are now Japanese nationals campaigning in Taiji - a fabulous reward for years of investigation, education and intervention from some of the most courageous individuals I have ever had the privilege to meet.

Now is the time to add your own weight to that building momentum. Now is the time to make a difference.

Please support the Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian Campaign.

For Japan.  For the dolphins.  For us all.

Thank you for reading.

New Traditions are NOT Traditional

This blog should have been written 24 hours ago but I couldn't see the keyboard for tears.

Yes, it does say Glaswegian at the top of my blog. Yes, I am tough. But I'm not tough enough to see mums and babies being driven into a killing zone; I'm not tough enough to hear the death throes of those same mums and babies being slaughtered directly below our vantage point; I'm not tough enough to then hear the bodies of those mums and babies being loaded into the killers' barges; I'm not tough enough to see the bodies of those mums and babies under the tarpaulins as the barges emerge into plain view; and I'm not tough enough to see the meat sale after those mums and babies have been delivered to the butchering shed in Taiji town. I'm not tough enough to experience all of that without emotion. So I cried.

I'm not ashamed and I'm damn sure not going to apologise even though I am clearly not as tough as the big, brave, hard, macho men of the Taiji Fishermen's Union who laughed and joked as they slaughtered those mums and babies.

I am not as tough as the male and female dolphin trainers from the Taiji Whale Museum who were present throughout the slaughter and who I am convinced are aiding and abetting some kind of grand scale "dolphin laundering" so that the captive industry can claim that "their" dolphins did not come from Taiji.

I am not as tough as those trainers who must have known what the outcome was going to be when they decided not to purchase any of those dolphins for their captive dolphin slave trade.

I am not as tough as the trainers who watched the barges being loaded with the bodies

I am not as tough as those trainers who then rode the same barges back to Taiji harbour with the killers and disembarked at the butchering shed calmly walking past the bodies of those mums and babies who they had condemned to slaughter and had seen transported a matter of minutes earlier.

I never want to be that tough.

I am not weak though and I am aware that the more my heart aches, the stronger my resolve is becoming. I have faced significant physical challenges and many moral tests in my life, this is simply a mental challenge without any moral test whatsoever. You see, I already know the difference between right and wrong and what I saw yesterday was as wrong as it is possible to be.

Let me describe Thursday 20th December 2012 in Taiji to you.

The banger boats left as normal at first light and scattered to the horizon in search of dolphins.

We now know that they had a specific order for the live capture of at least one striped dolphin (Stenella Coeruleoalba), a beautiful animal: sleek, graceful, fast.

Within a couple of hours they were back in view, clearly in drive formation: they had found their prey and were chasing it back towards the killing cove.

From around 5 miles out we could see through our long-range lenses that they had found a very large pod and waited in fear lest they had found another super-pod of 200+ bottlenose dolphins as had happened last week. (See the chilling end to that horrible capture in my last blog 101 Damnations.)

The tell-tale puffs of black smoke appeared as killers on the helm slapped engines from full ahead to full astern and back again, chasing the pod and creating walls of sound to drive the dolphins ever onward to their certain doom.

Whether by accident or design, by the time they got closer we could see that the pod had split, a large group ahead of the southernmost banger boats and a smaller group seeming to draw the hunters close attention at the Cove end of the line of death.

With more experienced Cove Guardians amongst us we were warned not to rejoice too quickly when we saw that one of the groups had escaped. These hunters were not chasing for food, as they claim they have been doing traditionally for centuries even though the dolphin drive hunt was never a tradition, indeed as practiced by the Taiji dolphin killers it would be impossible without modern technology, powerful engines and long-range communications equipment.

No, these hunters were chasing the big cash prize - live dolphins for sale to the entertainment industry. Live dolphins to be sold into a life of slavery, made to dance for and swim with human parents and children who must not know the horror which produced that experience for them and the ongoing misery which accompanies it.

Surely no parent could allow their children to participate in this international web of death and exploitation firmly tied to the evils of Taiji if they were aware of the evils of Taiji, could they?

Could you? Could you still give money to dolphinariums now that you know what is going on?

The boats got closer and closer and eventually we were able to identify their intended victims: a group of around 25 to 35 striped dolphins many of which were very young juveniles.

The murderers drove them ever onwards, no longer needing to hammer the metal tubes which produce that sickening taung, taung, taung, taung sound interfering with dolphin senses, stopping them communicating and chasing them to harm. Instead they were now throwing slap-sticks from the smaller skiffs which had joined the banger boats.

And so the pattern continued all the way into the killing cove where we watched them drop net after net to confine them ever closer to the beach, hidden from our cameras under tarpaulins erected each morning in anticipation of a capture.

So desperate are the authorities to keep us from viewing what is going on and exposing it to a still mostly unaware World that they commit a Coastguard cutter to the operation as well as an onshore police deployment which would not be unimpressive at a full scale riot involving an aggressive mob of hundreds.

All this to monitor our slack handful of vegan pacifists armed with nothing more deadly than a camera, carrying nothing more offensive than a bottle of water and a packed lunch.

We don't break laws here but it is very obvious that no-one has any fear of us breaking any laws, they are just terrified that we get the one picture which horrifies the World into action.

The Taiji fishermen know that if the World becomes fully aware of what is happening here that they will be forced to stop. They also know that, like Governments the World over, the Japanese Government is scared to stand up to them, a minority for sure, but a powerful and vociferous minority in the fishing community.

These men are the controlling kingpins who have the biggest boats, the biggest houses, the most expensive cars and the greatest unfair influence on how funds are distributed amongst a community which claims to offer fairness to all who go to sea but which patently fails to deliver on that promise. These men pander to the captive entertainment industry who are the main source of BIG income for them, not the dolphin meat sales which they claim as their "traditional" raison d'être.

I don't have that iconic image yet but if a picture paints a thousand words then I hope and pray that my thousand words paint a picture and that you will share them far and wide. Share them with anyone you think does not yet know about this. Share them especially with any Japanese friends you have because even a few miles away we are aware that Japanese people are simply unaware, they just do not know what is being permitted in their name.

But we are aware, and, like my fellow Cove Guardians I already have impressions of the most awful horror represented by images like this:

When the dolphins were eventually brought all the way into the Cove and herded under the tarps, we were told that the trainers from the Taiji Whale Museum had rejected them all as unsuitable for their dolphinarium. Very simply, the babies were too young to survive without their mothers and the mothers were no use to these evil people.

So the slaughter began. Their way of dealing death is by using a spike t-bar to stab through the dolphins spine. The death throes are lengthy and horrific to listen to. Again and again and again.

The photo above shows the last dolphin which tried to escape that slaughter by throwing herself onto the rocks lining the cove. She was dragged off and sent back to her death.

This photo shows a youngster leading a mum and two babies from the same family group and was taken less than 10 minutes before that slaughter began, less than 20 feet from where that slaughter took place. There was no escape, there was no mercy. They were not wanted by the dolphinarium so the fishermen had to kill them.

These evil men could not let them go or else people would question their "traditional hunting to feed their families," although no-one seems to question why so many of the actual "fish" fishermen in this town are having to scratch a desperately poor living while the dolphin salesmen get rich beside them.

Despite the horrors of Taiji I am nevertheless falling in love with the rest of Japan. It is a beautiful country and her people are mostly wonderful, friendly, warm-hearted and generous. She also has the most magnificent diversity of marine wildlife and the scenery has to be seen to be believed.

Taiji is a problem though. It must be one of the few regional main fishing ports in the World which doesn't feature in any published English language tourist guide books.

That is insane given the hotels in the town and the potential of this area to compete with the best wildlife tourist resorts in the World. Taiji's negative impact on the entire prefecture, indeed on the entire Kii peninsula cannot be ignored either; nobody wants to be tainted by association with what is happening here but everybody is. So we see a familiar pattern again, a few wealthy men become even more wealthy and the majority have to offset the cost of that wealth with undeserved damage to their own reputations and the obvious impact on their own earnings.

If like me you think this is wrong. If like me you think that killing dolphins in the 21st Century is blatantly wrong. If like me you think this needs to stop then please encourage everybody you know to read this blog and to visit these links:

Sea Shepherd Cove Guardians on Facebook Cove Guardians Page (Official)

Cove Guardians on Sea Shepherd Web Taiji Dolphin Defense Campaign

New traditions are NOT traditional. They are changeable. Changeable for the better.

Thank you for reading.




Addendum:

Apparently the 20th December was International Human Solidarity Day. Not sure what that meant for the rest of the World exactly but I damn sure didn't experience any solidarity whatsoever with the malicious dolphin killers here in Taiji. There are a growing number of wonderful Japanese people who I do feel solidarity with, some of them even in Taiji, but they are people with whom I have a strong common bond - like me, they detest the killing. Like me, they want it to stop as well. Please help their voices be heard.

101 Damnations

This is my first post as a Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian, having been in Taiji, Japan for just over 24 hours, partnering my very best friend Anna as a team from Scotland in support of this most important campaign.

It has been one of the most emotional full days of my life so far, and I do mean full!.

I had to laugh when I logged onto Facebook this evening and it asked me to review what it thought were "my" top 20 highlights of 2012. There can be little doubt after today's events that my top 20 most memorable events of 2012 will now happen during the next 2 weeks.

No one comes to Taiji under any illusion that it will be a holiday and that was particularly true for Anna and myself having had the benefit of first class briefings on what was happening and what to expect during the first day or so. We also had the benefit of excellent reporting on the Cove Guardians' Facebook Page and knew that in the few days before our arrival somewhere in the region of 200 bottlenose dolphins (the "Flipper" dolphins most prized by the captive facilities) had been hunted and driven into the Cove to await an uncertain fate.

We were told that dolphins netted into the Cove means we should expect one of 3 things: either capture and processing into a life of captivity performing tricks for the entertainment of the unaware, or, just as bad, slaughter to turn beautiful life into unwanted meat or, hope against hope, we might see them being released back into the wild from which they were stolen in the first place.

Today we experience all 3 and I am feeling completely wrung out.

Let me pause for a moment and tell you our experience of the Japanese people since arriving in Osaka and travelling South to Wakayama Prefecture - most famous for the Nachi Waterfall at Kii-Katsuura, a ten minute drive from where we are staying during our sojourn in this part of the World.

I only mention that because people seem to know all about the waterfall and lots of people have recommended that we visit it but nobody knows about Taiji and they find it hard to believe when we tell them.

Regarding the Japanese, we had been told to expect hostility from the outset. We had been told that, "[They] are cruel and callous."  We had been told that they hated foreigners. We had been told that they especially hated Sea Shepherd. None of this came from Sea Shepherd sources of course and I am not surprised because none of it was true.

Without exception we have been met with friendly smiles, pleasantries and courtesy of the sort that makes you feel so uncomfortable because you know you have never been as gracious to perfect strangers as the grace and dignity being offered to you. We have received gifts twice already as random acts of kindness from complete strangers in a land where gift giving is imbued with the greatest significance. We have seen hard-work and effort, courage and citizenship to the highest degree. We have even had our first interview with the police by torchlight on a cold and windy dockside in the small hours of the morning and that interview ended with smiles and laughter and best wishes for the day ahead.

I love Japan and I love her people. Well, almost all of Japan and almost all of her people, there is, after all, still the issue of Taiji and the Dolphin Drive Hunts. Not tradition, just a bloody, an oh so very bloody, excuse for extreme profit from extreme disregard of the difference between right and wrong. Not a Japanese trait, not an any nation trait, just a sad and all too common trait amongst evil, selfish and greedy men the World over, in this case they just happen to be in this country where I am still just a temporary visitor.

The evil men (and women) capturing and killing dolphins in Taiji have surpassed themselves in diabolical design this week, cynically attempting to win a propaganda coup with the release back into the wild of between 80 and 100 dolphins, perhaps hoping that no-one would notice the 23 bottlenose dolphins which earlier today they slaughtered for meat.

The full tally for the last week was 25 beautiful dolphins which transferred to the butcher's slab when you add the 2 which had earlier died by horrible drowning trapped in the nets of the Cove.

Most dreadful of all though has been the total of 101 bottlenose dolphins sold into captivity.

101 Damnations

Let me go straight back to the wonderful Japanese people we have met. Kind, generous, hard-working - extremely hard working - and, like kind, generous, extremely hard-working people the world over earning just about enough to cover the bills with not a lot left over.

Contrast them with the wealth that is now plainly evident to me as I have been moving around Taiji today and consider that 101 captured and sold into slavery dolphins could represent as much as $1 million per day for each of 6 days work and that will be shared amongst just 30 or so men and women.

I will be returning to the theme of captive dolphins a lot over the next few weeks because in just 1 single day here it has become crystal clear to me that the dolphinarium industry is THE problem at Taiji, not any kind of "traditional" indigenous means of putting food on the table for an otherwise starving family. That isn't and they are not.

I also need to get my head round the dolphin trainers - men and women from all over Japan and beyond who stood by watching whilst 23 dolphins were ruthlessly, bloodily and noisily slaughtered.

Dolphin trainers who then dragged their own live prizes through the blood fouled waters to start earning a return on their investment in the marine parks which paid their expenses for this mission of evil.

I can't write about that at the moment, I am still too shocked at their calculated refusal to acknowledge any sort of moral responsibility by the very act of participation in a bloodbath such as the one we were forced to witness.

Following today's events my emotions are still all over the place but I am trying so desperately hard to bottle my anger at the theft from their families and from the wild of those 101 dolphins, temper my rage at the cold-blooded and wholly unnecessary murder of 23 dolphins from that same family, suppress my fury at the pointless and avoidable deaths of 2 more members of that dolphin family in the nets which were used to hold them all in the killing Cove and instead try to ignite the spark of comfort from the remaining 80 or so dolphins who we saw swim to freedom this afternoon.

I think that is the happy thought I would like to end this blog on today.

Thank you all for reading, thank you all for your support.

Haiku for Taiji

Evil men killing

My heart bleeds as dolphins die

Stop it. Stop it now!

More Haikus for Taiji at the end of today's blog.

The blood of a pilot whale slain in Taiji, Japan
Picture courtesy of Sea Shepherd Cove Guardiians

Taiji, Japan, is a place of horror. A place where they butcher several thousand dolphins and small whales every single year.

If you are reading this then you probably know that already. Therefore, the task for us all now is to spread the word as far as we possibly can because as anyone who has seen The Cove knows, the one thing the dolphin killers of Taiji fear most is exposure, "If the World finds out what we do here, we will be shut down..."

Every day this task becomes easier as Sea Shepherd's amazing Cove Guardians discover more and more innovative ways to get the message out to those of us who are desperate to offer support of our own, providing videos, pictures and commentaries for us all to share as far and as wide as we possibly can.

Here is a great example of just that:

Regularly our onshore volunteers and other supporters come up with other innovations of their own so today's blog is dedicated to Steve Jack (follow him on Twitter here) who came up with #Haiku4Taiji (clickable link) as another string to the ocean defender bow.

There is never going to be "THE" solution to the problem of raising awareness about the horrors taking place every day in Taiji but there are many, many "A" solutions. This one got popular, it got popular real quick and its popularity continues to grow. I hope this blog will help it grow again and I truly hope that between us all we manage to open even more eyes amongst a disbelieving public about just how awful Taiji really is.

I can't copy all of the Haikus for Taiji, there are many hundreds but do please click on the link above and see for yourself how powerful this initiative has been. And do please tweet some of your own adding the hashtag #haiku4taiji  If you have never written a Haiku before here is a useful guide How to Write Haikus

Meanwhile, here are some of my favourites from the last month on Twitter:

@stevejack3

Peace now dolphin souls
Still and deep, flying from those
Who bring harm; deal death

@stevejack3
When they've gone, what then?
Oceans die slowly leaving
A blue cove ~ bereft

@stevejck3
Tonight it's too hard
Tears and words spilled and dried yet
Guardians endure

@SeaShepherdScot

Dolphins wild and free

Exactly where they should be

Not dead in Taiji

@SeaShepherdScot
The Taiji Livestream
Keeps me awake at night
But I have to watch

@frenchmix
They watch and mourn
Breaking hearts make stronger wills
Brave guardians of the Cove

@FeeScott
Hunters on the prowl
Death and murder on their minds
Conscience they have none

@WeManifestPeace

Dollars for dolphins

Children squeal; audience claps

They don't know the truth

@WeManifestPeace

Skiffs in formation

Early morning procession

Taiji's wake of shame

@WeManifestPeace

News reports protests

War, injustice, poverty

Dolphins need your voice

Dolphins need your voice.

Thank you for reading.

Swim Wild, Swim Free Part 2

I promised everyone in the Taiji Action Group on facebook a video of dolphins bow riding so please read on and you will find it at the end of today's blog.

Gilli from England, Chris from Wales and David from Scotland
under the watchful eye of youngest ship's crew member, Chloe

Last summer we sailed to Galway, Ireland with a 3 nations crew from Scotland, Wales and England to support our great friends and colleagues at Sea Shepherd Ireland during the finish of the Volvo Ocean Race. It was a long, hard sail: 73 hours in mostly challenging conditions but we had the crew and the boat to get us there and had been building the sea miles in advance to prepare the crew for the journey.

I am particularly proud that 2 members of that crew - Chris and Gilli in the picture right are now crewing onboard the MV Steve Irwin defending whales from the hunter-killer boats of Japan's pirate whaling fleet. If you read my blog a few days ago about Passion, you better believe they have it and they are using it.

I am even more proud that 2 other members of that crew will very soon be in Taiji, Japan as Cove Guardians. One of those crew members is Anna and I would love you to visit her campaign page as she is still hoping to raise enough funds to be self-funding for the trip, link to page: Anna's Taiji Campaign Page

Gilli with the crew of VOR Race Boat Groupama

As well as support for Sea Shepherd Ireland we were there to spread the message that there are far, far better things to do with the ocean than kill everything that either swims in it or is dependent on it for survival, sailing being an obvious example, and I will return to that in a future blog.

During our stay, as well as meeting most of the crews from the race fleet, we were hosted at a gala dinner by JCI Galway and had many meetings with politicians and dignitaries from all over the world including Ambassadors from countries known to be friendly to Sea Shepherd. But what really impressed us all the most was the fabulous welcome which we received from the people of Galway who treated us like visiting royalty. It was a pleasure meeting everyone who stopped by to say hello or who stopped us in the street to say hi and I know that all of the crew very much look forward to a return visit.

The real highlight of the trip didn't happen on land though, it happened at sea off the Connemara coast when these common dolphins came to visit. It is just a short video, enough to show you how these wonderful animals choose to interact with their land-based cousins, but not so much that we interfered with the obvious pleasure they were taking in playing with us.

Something worth thinking about:

That video lasted only 40 seconds during which time the dolphins swam a greater distance than they could have swum in even the world's largest dolphinarium. In the wild they swim for miles and miles and miles in a straight line and range over thousands of square miles. These are not animals which should be held in captivity. Not ever.

Thank you for reading.

Swim Wild, Swim Free

These common dolphins are swimming wild and free, where every dolphin should be

I took the shot so it isn't a "professional" wildlife shot, it is what I call a "happy memory" picture.  It won't win any photography prizes but it has won a place in my heart forever.

The background to this story might be of interest to you, I am not particularly religious but it sure felt like someone gave us a reward that day.

We were on a delivery trip, taking a yacht from the Solent, up through the Irish Sea, to its home port in the Clyde and we had just come out of some horrendous weather - big waves, big winds (very big winds) and more than a few big scares as we wondered just how much more the yacht could take before it, or the people on it started to break.  The sea is a fickle mistress, she can change her mood as fast as you can change your sails to match it but as long as you never take her for granted, she can turn from hard to gentle to comforting and she does.  Maybe there's a lesson for life right there?

There wasn't much food on board; we had only enough for another couple of days and, thanks to much poorer weather than forecast, we had already been on the go for a few days more than expected. Everyone on board was tired.  Close to Dun Laoghaire (Dublin's main stopover port for small transit traffic) we had a choice; get ashore for a day's rest and a provision run or we could just keep going and make the most of the new flat-calm conditions we found ourselves in.

We kept going.

Four hours later we were well past the decision point as going to Dun Laoghaire would have meant turning back and we were just at the changeover point for night watch with all 3 of us on deck enjoying the last hour of daylight.


And then we got our reward.

This is even less of a prize winning snap than the first pic but if you look just to the left of the yacht, slightly to the right of centre you will see there is a dolphin there.  A common dolphin who appeared from nowhere (we were at least 20 miles from nearest land) leapt clear of the water and, just to give you an idea of how fast these magnificent animals travel, from a series of 10 snaps this is the first one that showed anything other than an empty sea.

What the snap could never show you is that he was not alone, we had just been joined by a pod of not less than 30 common dolphins and they were a big family group.  There were youngsters no more than a metre in length swimming close to their mums.  There were also adolescents and I now know that dolphin "teenagers" are as cheeky and daring as human teenagers and that their parents give them just as big a ticking off!  These youngsters were the ones leaping highest out of the water, without a doubt in showing off mode.  I am torn between regret that we did not have a video camera or a sixth sense telling me when to press the shutter on the still camera and absolute delight that my memory of those first five minutes of the encounter were shared just between people and dolphins, each in their own environment but coming together by the conscious choice of the dolphins and not the people.

What happened after that though was the most moving experience of all.

For the next 40 minutes those dolphins joined us with mums and babies swimming alongside whilst the dads and adult singles were bow-riding, often stacked 8 deep on either side of the bow, swimming at an average 6 kns (according to the log when we checked it afterwards) and regularly rolling on their sides while still swimming, obviously watching us, watching them.

There was solid communication there but I suspect the dolphins have a much better idea of what that communication was.  There can be little doubt they find it easier to understand our species than we understand theirs.

Please forgive me for we hardly have any photos, we were too busy living the moment...

Let me fast forward a year to the time when I first heard about Sea Shepherd and through that amazingly powerful organisation was introduced to the movie, The Cove, a very deserving Oscar winner.

The Cove changed my view on life.  On my sailing adventures I have had the enormous privilege of sharing the ocean with magnificent marine mammals, not just on this occasion but on many similar occasions since.  I cannot sit quietly by whilst other so-called human beings murder dolphins for profit and if you have ever watched any of the Cove Guardian videos from Taiji it is increasingly likely that a few, even more disgusting humans, murder dolphins and pilot whales for some kind of sick pleasure.

So what could I do to stop this?  What can any of us do?

There is a ten word phrase I have been living my life by for a while now.  A phrase unusual in that it is composed entirely of two-letter words:

If it is to be, it is up to me.

That does not mean it is all about me though, it means exactly the opposite.  I am proud to be a Sea Shepherd and hope and pray that I never become a  "Me Shepherd" because, frankly, our world has far too many of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.

I blogged last month (Physician, Heal Thyself) that we have 2 choices when faced with a horror such as Taiji.  You either go there yourself, or you dig deep and give someone else the funds to do so.

I am proud to be supporting my very best friend in her journey to Taiji and hope that you will click this link and Help Send Anna to Taiji to support Anna yourself.  The link will tell you her story, it is a moving one.

There is a 3rd option and that is to do nothing.  But if it is up to me, it must be up to you too...

Thank you for reading.