Monday 31 May 2010

Ask President Obama to reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling



Photographs by Byrant Austin
slideshow here and website gallery here

To get an image, Austin finds a pod of whales, and then stays at the surface of the water, waiting for one of the whales to approach him. When they do, he starts photographing them, swimming less than six feet away from them. After taking hundreds of high resolution images of a whale - all on the whale's terms - he pieces them together into one complete, life-size whole. He's the first artist to show photos of whales at life-size, and the impact is profound.

This week the Australian Government will commence legal proceedings against the Government of Japan in the International Court in The Hague, over the annual commercial slaughter of whales (including protected/ threatened species and females in calf) in the Antarctic conducted under the guise of 'scientific research'.

A petition to US President Barack Obama requesting that he reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling is now online for signing at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The International Whaling Commission meets again in June 2010 and Australia needs a strong ally in this fight - so use the NRDC link and personalise the message to Obama at the beginning of the online petition to let him know what the world thinks.

Now is the time to act!

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