OPS Team In Chile
Armed with cameras, questions, and a four-minute public service announcement, OPS finds itself in Santiago, Chile this week.
Although the full-length documentary (The Rising) is still in post production, OPS found it difficult to resist the call of the 60th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission, as the fate of whales, dolphins and ourselves (mercury rising!) is being determined.
In conjunction with the Chilean environmental group, Center for Cetacean Conservation (CCC), Louie Psihoyos held a press conference noon, Thursday hoping to highlight Japan’s continued efforts to overturn the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
Since the ban, Japanese whalers have slaughtered nearly a million small cetaceans, dolphins and porpoises, many in a secret cove in the southern coastal town, Taiji, a whaling town that Japan’s IWC delegation has been trying to revive since the moratorium. The Japanese Deputy Director of Far Seas Fisheries, Hideki Moronuki and Joji Morishita, Japan’s representative for the IWC, claim the marine mammals are killed in a humane and instant manner, yet OPS’ footage shows a very different picture.
The PSA, which is available in low and high resolution, in English and Spanish, is being widely distributed to the press, IWC delegates and non-governmental organizations, in Chile, the US and around the globe. A press release accompanies this package which hopes to shed light on this key issue as it is being deliberated.
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