A press conference is to be held today by Sea Shepherd Global, Sea Shepherd USA, Sea Shepherd France and actress Pamela Anderson, who will be visiting the Faroe Islands to show her support for Sea Shepherd’s “Operation GrindStop 2014,” a multi-national land- and sea-based campaign featuring hundreds of Sea Shepherd volunteers who are there to protect pilot whales and other cetaceans from the brutal and archaic mass slaughter known as ‘grindadrap’.
Pamela Anderson, actress and star of Baywatch, is a lifelong animal advocate. A longtime Sea Shepherd supporter and friend to the organization’s Founder and iconic conservationist Captain Paul Watson, Anderson has greatly helped to further Sea Shepherd’s mission to defend ocean wildlife worldwide. In 2012, she traveled to Germany to draw global attention to Captain Watson’s plight when he was held under house arrest in that country due to politically motivated charges from Costa Rica in relation to his efforts to stop an illegal shark finning operation.
Along with joining Sea Shepherd in the call for an end to the senseless ‘grind’ slaughter of marine wildlife, Anderson has also been a vocal advocate for the establishment of a resolution in Denmark that would ban this ritual cetacean massacre.
For hundreds of years the people of the Danish Faroe Islands have been driving pilot whales and other small cetaceans into shallow water and slaughtering them. Entire family units are destroyed. The Faroese claim that without the meat from these cetaceans, the people would starve. Whether or not people would have starved in the past without eating whale is irrelevant. There is certainly no one in the Danish Faroe Islands who would go hungry today, much less starve, if no more whales were killed.
Today, the ‘grindadrap’ (whale slaughter) or ‘grind’ is a barbaric and cruel relic of history that has no place in modern civilization. The wholesale slaughter of entire family units and the unimaginable horror inflicted upon these sentient, intelligent beings is unconscionable. The continued pillage of the oceans is causing disastrous consequences. Even the meat of these creatures is dangerous to consume. The European Union does not allow such activity, but the Danish Faroe Islands manage to side-step EU restrictions with their overfishing and harm to marine mammals. Sea Shepherd has led the opposition against the grind in the Faroe Islands since the 1980s.
WHO: Speakers at the press conference will include:
• Pamela Anderson, actress, activist and long-time animal protection advocate
• Lamya Essemlali, Pres., Sea Shepherd France, Offshore Campaign Leader, GrindStop 2014
• Rosie Kunneke, Onshore Campaign Leader, Sea Shepherd USA, GrindStop 2014
WHEN: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 at 1:00 pm in the Faroes (and London)
2:00 pm Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome
5:00 am PST USA / 8:00 am EST USA
WHERE: Hotel Foroyar
45 Oyggjarvegur
Tórshavn 100
Danish Faroe Islands
The conference can be watched via live stream here.
