Welcome welcome one and all to the finale of Operation Kibou! First of all I want to thank each and every one of you guys who have read this blog throughout the fall and winter months. To say it was a wild ride is an understatement. I never in a million years expected this blog to continue to take off as it has and looking back at the charts, well I can say that this campaign is by far the most successful yet! Again, thank you thank you thank you! So here we are at the end of Operation Kibou. Lets take a look back at some of the major events that had happened during this campaign and take it from there shall we?
On September 1st, 2013 Operation Kibou was launched. The title literally translates to Operation Hope as Kibou is hope in Japanese. On the very first day of the campaign Japan rounded up between 60 and 70 bottlenose dolphins at the cove in Taiji, Japan. It was certainly a grim way to kick off a campaign that was originally going to be about holding onto hope for these animals, but that grimness would only last for so long. During this campaign, the documentary Blackfish aired on CNN and I did my first reaction to a documentary on it. Of course Blackfish continues to be shown around the world and more and more pressure is being placed on Sea World, but my focus has always been on those animals in the wild, so as a late add in to Operation Kibou, I added the Orca to the campaign. Due to a ton of other stuff coming up which I could simply not forsee happening, only two blogs would actually be about the orca. November marked the first time that I had done over 10 blogs in one month. Simply put, a lot of stuff happened in November. The Carolina shark was named, Anonymous's Operation Killing Bay kicked off, New Zealand decided to ban shark finning, and Sea Shepherd's Operation Relentless began to undergo it's final preparations. From then on Operation Kibou was focused largely on dolphins while things remained largely quiet on the shark and whale fronts. The campaign also featured two blogs by another author (Chelsey) who did a fun Christmas blog and a interesting blog on overfishing. Something I'm hopeful she will like to add to Operation Bleeding Seas II.
December was a month that had a nice mix of blogs including a blog about orcas and also contained the first mentions of a possible shark cull in West Australia. Something that we now know is all too real. Just before the holidays, this blog had it's 100th post! Talk about a milestone I never thought this blog would make. Just goes to show you never really know what is going to happen right? 2013 came to an end with the number of blogs in this campaign at 33. For an idea as to how large this campaign becomes, there were 19 blogs in the entire previous campaign. 2014 kicked off with a few updates on Sea Shepherd's Operation Relentless and protests over a potential shark cull in West Australia. Operation Killing Bay was still raging on and a shark that was thought to be extinct was rediscovered! February I feel was the darkest month of the campaign. Operation Killing Bay came to an end as the members of Anonymous refocused on other human issues such as the situation in Ukraine and other countries. February also saw the launch of West Australia's shark cull, a cull which has now claimed the lives of over 100 tiger sharks. As things started to wind down on the fronts of whales and dolphins, one thing became apparent. That one thing was that the West Australian Government meant business with their shark cull and it continues today. Elsewhere in the world, the states of Illinois and California have shown that their shark fin laws are not to be messed with and more and more countries are looking into defending these animals. So that leads us up to today. Today marks the final blog of Operation Kibou and what an Operation it was!
I don't know about you guys, but for me, this fall/winter I have a renewed hope. Take a look at what has happened over the past few months. Yes dolphins, sharks, and whales were all slaughtered, but look a this. Throughout each of these respective slaughters, more and more people became aware of what was going on. Anonymous brought an entire new breed of person into the fight to save the dolphins of Taiji. They brought in hackers and other computer enthusiasts who may have had zero idea as to what was going on in the cove. Sea Shepherd continued to bring attention to the issue of commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean and have also helped to, along with West Australians for Shark Conservation and other groups, bring mass attention to the shark cull in West Australia. Rallies continue around the world for these slaughters to end and I still have a ton of hope that they someday will! Until those days come though I still have much work to do. At 57 blogs long, Operation Kibou is officially my largest campaign to date. So with that Operation Kibou is now officially over! It has been an incredible ride and again, I have to thank you guys for reading and spreading the word about these real world issues. I now look forward to Operation Bleeding Seas II.
In case you missed my Bleeding Seas II preview blog, the campaign will focus largely on sharks, manta rays, and the annual pilot whale slaughter of the Faroe Islands. I will also be doing some blogging about the bluefin tuna as well. Look forward to the official Operation Bleeding Seas II introduction blog sometime tomorrow night or Wednesday!
