The Red Hot Chili Peppers are headlining Australia’s biggest music festival of the year Big Day Out festival. Big Day Out is held in 5 cities starting in Sydney, Fri. Jan. 18^th then moving to the Gold Coast, Sun. Jan 20^th, Adelaide, Fri. Jan 25^th,Melbourne, Sat. Jan 26^th, Perth, Mon Jan 28^th. Those Aussie’s sure know how to party. Vampire Weekend, The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Bloody Beatroots (Live), Grinspoon, Band of Horses are all part of the opening day in Sydney.

This year in addition to the parties, music and fun, Red Hot Chili Peppers are bringing a special message to the event. Australian is an island and the beaches and the sea are a close reminder of the close connection to the ocean. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have long been advocates and supporters of Sea Shepherd and its initiatives to stop the slaughter of whales. Lead singer Anthony sits on their board. They are stepping up their public involvement by dedicating their shows at Australia’s Big Day Out to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society initiatives. Why now? And who is Sea Shepherd?

Sea Shepherd and high profile leader Paul Watson have braved many dangers over the past 25 years to try to protect the diminishing ocean ecosystems and sea creatures including the whales. Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 by theInternational Whaling Commission as a result of public outcry, but Japan was allowed to go on slaughtering whales at the rate of 1000 per year under the pretext of “scientific research.” Even Japanese people are disgusted and most (88%) do not buy or eat whale meat. Japan says it is just collecting data on the whales’ age, weight, diet and birthing rate before packaging and selling the meat. Australia has initiated proceedings against Japan at the international court of justice (The Hague) in an effort to end Japan’s Antarctic whaling program. Sea Shepherd is actually out in the Antarctic waters (since 2005) in their vessel the Sam Simon, donated last year by the co-creator of The Simpsons.

“The goal is to find the factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, and to pin the bow of this ship on the stern of that factory ship throughout the duration of the campaign, and send them home without any whales killed.” Skipper of the Sam Simon                                  Reuters

The Sea Shepherd Group is now made up of four ships, one helicopter, drones and more than 120 volunteer crew from around the world. Sea Shepherd acquired non-weaponized drone aircraft to assist in their surveillance of the whaling ships. In 2011 Sea Shepherd managed to block the whaling enough so that the Japanese went home with 1/5^th of their hoped for whale catch.