February 11, 2013

Dear Anthony, Flea, Chad and Josh,

My name is Jeff Hansen and I am the Australian Director of Sea Shepherd. I have been actively involved in the organisation since 2006 and served on previous Antarctic whale defence campaigns on board the Steve Irwin under the command of Captain Paul Watson.

It has been a great honour working with Captain Watson, a person I hold the outmost respect and admiration for. I have mostly been involved with Sea Shepherd as a volunteer, but I am now one of three employees covering Australia and I work from home where I am a husband and father to our beautiful daughter Abby who is two, which makes my drive and the importance for what Sea Shepherd does even stronger.

I just wanted to write to you and thank you on behalf of Sea Shepherd for your amazing passion and incredible support for Sea Shepherd. Not only for this tour, but all the years where you have enabled us to do what we do.

My first Antarctic whale defence campaign was operation Migaloo and we were in port in Melbourne and were waiting on funds to get back to Antarctica to defend the whales. Well, in came a donation from the RHCP, which enabled us to buy the fuel we needed to get back down there. In an area with beautiful icebergs and whales everywhere, we came across 3 targets on our radar. Two targets moving fast in the fog and what seemed to be trying to take us away from our position and another, a third, a much larger target and moving not as fast. We were confident this was the floating slaughterhouse, the Nisshin Maru.

In 10 hours time, in and out of the fog, our mission was complete, we had the Nisshin Maru, the factory whaling ship and for the next couple of weeks, not a single whale was killed and as a result over 500 whales saved on that campaign.

There are countless other campaigns and lives saved that would not be possible without your generous support over all these years, but know that over 3,600 whales are still swimming in our oceans, breeding, breaching and singing as they migrate past our beautiful coasts because of you.

We are a united front in the battle to save our life sustaining oceans and on behalf of all of us at Sea Shepherd, thank you!

Know that each life saved, each victory is as much yours as it is any of our crew.

For the Great Whales, For the Oceans, for Future generations,

Thank you Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Yours in defence of our beautiful planet,

Jeff

Jeff Hansen
Director, Sea Shepherd Australia