Tonight we are going turn briefly from the Ukraine crisis and President Obama's Asia pivot to look at an issue that people around the world feel passionate about. On the one hand, a majority of the world's people oppose whale hunting. On the other, people in a handful of countries consider whaling an essential part of their cultural heritage. Our guest tonight, because he was intimately involved with filming Whale Wars and is now a scholar studying traditional whale techniques in what amounts to the capital of Japanese whaling, is now himself an object of controversy.
Simon Wearne is a cinematographer who participated in the filming of the first season of Whale Wars, which followed the activities of the American non-profit Sea Sheppard, a group dedicated to - and I quote from their mission statement: "ending the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species." Today Simon Wearne is a scholar at Japan's Wakayama University, and is studying traditional Japanese whaling techniques.
How did Simon go from cinematagrapher on Whale Wars to a student of whaling tradition at the heart of Japanese whale culture? We'll ask him tonight.
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