ET TU AUSTRALIA

09/11/2022

Et tu Australia

Today Sea Shepherd Australia removed me as an editor on the Sea Shepherd Australia Facebook page and deleted a post by myself where I responded to Jeff Hansen’s vicious attack on me at a recent Sea Shepherd Australia meeting of volunteers and staff. They also removed my ability to comment to post by anyone. Effectively censored despite the fact that I am still a Sea Shepherd Australia Board member, well at least until the scheduled Board meeting on Sept 17th, when I suspect I will be dismissed.

I was not notified. No one from Sea Shepherd Australia contacted me. Jeff Hansen did not contact me.

It is strange to be purged from the organization that I founded and forbidden to use the logo I designed or the name of the organization I established in 1977.

All because I refused to submit to the radical change in priorities and direction. All because I refused to apologize for my controversial history and for the very tactics and strategies that have defined Sea Shepherd for four decades.

Our Ocean is dying. We don’t have the time for compromise with fishing corporations and governments. We should be taking a more aggressive stance in our interventions.

Sea Shepherd has always been confrontational, we have always been controversial, we have always chosen to put our clients first. We have never backed down – until now.

Sea Shepherd has always been the one organization that refused to conform for the International Whaling Commission, refused to back down in the face of criticism. We have always been proud of our Jolly Roger flag which some Sea Shepherd groups are removing because it offends some nations and some companies they want to work with and to receive support from. And yet at the same time they want to deny that flag from being used by me, to deny my wearing a shirt with that logo.

It seems the intent is to erase me from Sea Shepherd history.

Thankfully there are still Sea Shepherd groups that remain true to our basic ideals and continue to stand fast in their passionate, courageous defense of life and diversity in the sea.

Thank you to Sea Shepherd France, Sea Shepherd Tahiti, Sea Shepherd U.K., Sea Shepherd Austria and Sea Shepherd Brazil.

I am also hopeful that other Sea Shepherd groups like Italy, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, Greece, Spain and others will decide to reject the diminishment of what Sea Shepherd has always been by accepting the demands of Sea Shepherd USA to conform to the US agenda of changing the course of what has been the most effective marine conservation movement on the planet.