Gail Alexan­der

Con­tro­ver­sial New Zealand con­ser­va­tion­ist Pe­te Bethune of the An­i­mal Plan­et's "Whale Wars" se­ries ar­rives in T&T to­mor­row to take part in a work­shop be­ing held by the Tri­ni Eco War­riors Group (TEW).

Head of TEW, Kyle de Li­ma, said on Mon­day Bethune would be among guests at the first in a se­ries of month­ly work­shops the TEW was stag­ing at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

De Li­ma, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Steven Broad­bridge and Marc De Ver­teuil have been in­ves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues af­fect­ing the lo­cal flo­ra, fau­na and coasts. De Li­ma added: "The up­com­ing work­shops will fa­cil­i­tate co-or­di­na­tion and co-op­er­a­tion among the var­i­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal NGOs through­out T&T to al­low them to be bet­ter in­formed as to ex­act­ly what is go­ing on with en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues lo­cal­ly.

"Mr Bethune will be ar­riv­ing in Trinidad on Fri­day (to­mor­row) to help Tri­ni Eco War­riors' ef­fort to raise aware­ness on our coun­try's hor­ri­ble track record re­gard­ing the pro­tec­tion of our sea tur­tles." TEW has called on Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment mea­sures to curb the in­dis­crim­i­nate hunt­ing of tur­tles which are vul­ner­a­ble at cer­tain times of the year when hunt­ing is al­lowed. Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said re­cent­ly he sup­port­ed leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect tur­tles and would pi­lot moves to­wards that in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, TEW has ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion at the pace of ac­tion. Bethune and a cam­era crew will spend a week in T&T film­ing the hunt­ing of sea tur­tles. He will re­turn to T&T lat­er in the year to ob­serve what takes place dur­ing the tur­tle nest­ing sea­son. A for­mer oil ex­plo­ration en­gi­neer, Bethune is an an­ti- whal­ing ac­tivist who holds the world record for the fastest trip around the world in a power­boat.

Bethune was as­so­ci­at­ed with the Sea Shep­pard an­ti-whal­ing group fea­tured in An­i­mal Plan­et's "Whale Wars" se­ries.

How­ev­er ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, the con­nec­tion with Sea Shep­pard was bro­ken last year af­ter Bethune's ves­sel, The Ady Gil, was sunk in a col­li­sion with a Japan­ese whal­ing ves­sel which caused con­tro­ver­sy in the an­ti-whal­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Bethune was said to have been charged by Japan­ese au­thor­i­ties for tres­pass­ing on the Japan­ese ves­sel af­ter he used a jet ski to board the boat and threw bu­tyric acid mis­siles at the boat.

The Japan­ese called it a pub­lic­i­ty stunt. Bethune said he want­ed to raise aware­ness of Japan's whal­ing and its ef­fects on his "back­yard" of New Ze­land. He was giv­en a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, banned from Japan for five years and de­port­ed to New Zealand. Bethune re­cent­ly launched his own or­gan­i­sa­tion, called "Earth­race."