Please consider a Year-End Gift to support Sea Shepherd!

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 2017 End of Year Giving © Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

During the holiday season, attending office parties, and crossing items off your gift list has kept most of you especially busy. With so many things to keep track of, perhaps Sea Shepherd's work defending, conserving, and protecting the world's oceans may not be on the forefront of your mind.

However, you may check your social media news feed and see videos of Sea Shepherd assisting the Mexican Navy in arresting poachers in the vaquita refuge, or undercover photos documenting the brutal and inhumane pilot whale slaughter in the Faroe Islands. During these times, please remember that there is an organization out there that will not stop fighting for its clients in the sea. The reason we are able to do this is because of your continued support.

During these last few days of 2017, I urge you to keep all ocean life in your thoughts and give generously to Sea Shepherd. Make a gift today and your donation will be matched up to $40,000, thanks to a charitable supporter. This will enable us to continue making important strides such as the following ones we made this year:

Our lawsuit and political moves against Marineland in Antibes, France, has already struck a major blow to the captivity industry there with new legislation including banning the keeping and captive breeding of dolphins and whales. Mexico City also banned dolphin captivity in 2017. Your donations will help us build on this so we can reach families with the message that captivity is an evil slave trade that must be abolished. Our goal is to make the purchase of a marine park ticket socially and morally unacceptable.

The video below, using clips of our own footage taken in Taiji, Japan, demonstrates how dolphins go from swimming free to becoming enslaved entertainers:

Earlier this year, during Operation Milagro, Sea Shepherd came across a record-number 66 dead totoaba bass, trapped in illegal gillnets in Mexico's Sea of Cortez. Poachers and Mexican criminal cartels target the totoaba to export its swim bladder for sale on the black market in China and Hong Kong, where it can fetch more than $20,000 per kilo.

Fortunately, Sea Shepherd was able to pull these totoaba out of the water before the poachers arrived to collect the swim bladders, effectively stopping the sale and export of their fish parts.

Sea Shepherd delivered these carcasses to the Mexican government and we were on hand to witness their destruction by the Federal Agency of the Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) to make sure that no profits would ever be made from this endangered fish.

This summer on Operation Virus Hunter, we investigated open-net Atlantic salmon farms and found overcrowded pens filled with fish that were diseased, polluting the oceans with their feces and in many cases, dead.

The continued presence of these farms is a man-made hazard that wreaks havoc on the environment, human health, indigenous communities, and animals who depend on wild salmon for survival. Restoring these coastal waters back to health by getting fish farms out of the oceans can only be possible through your donations.

This spring, the R/V Martin Sheen recorded the first ever seen drone images of a mother and calf pair of Cuvier's beaked whales - the most extreme mammal divers in the world - while on a science expedition at Mexico's Guadalupe Island.

With your donations to Sea Shepherd, we have been able to conduct ongoing studies on these majestic creatures, increasing their photo-ID catalogue and gathering of data that will be instrumental in creating environmental policies to protect these cetaceans and the waters they live in.

In September, we helped East Timor police intercept ten Chinese fishing vessels where thousands of sharks were found in a raid, described by a Sea Shepherd's Asia Director Gary Stokes as "a scene out of a horror movie, just piles and piles of sharks in bags." Your donations to Sea Shepherd, helped expose operations that are wiping out thousands of sharks a year!

No matter what time of year it may be, Sea Shepherd is always there to help our oceans, and protect the animals in them. With you on our side, we can ensure the strides we made in 2017 continue in 2018. Please make a gift today and your donation will be matched up to $40,000.

For more information visit www.seashepherd.org.