Racing Extinction Page #2

But there's also something

bigger going on.

We heard that

the Obama administration

was in closed-doors negotiations

with the Japanese

to go do commercial whaling again.

And I thought,

"Well, if we could prove

"that endangered whales

are being served right here,

"on the shores of America,

"we would stop

that conversation."

Stop the murder!

Stop the death!

Hump restaurant is to blame!

The animal-rights community

took it up,

but the restaurant

didn't close down.

There's this one guy

I'd never heard of before,

his name is Ady Gil.

He took some gear and put it out

in front of the Hump restaurant,

as people are going in.

So, what are you doing?

I'm protesting.

Yesterday, there were like

200 people here, protesting,

and l thought, you know,

somebody needs to keep

the pressure on.

If you look at the Academy

Awards and the Golden Globes,

those are his screens,

and that's all his projections.

And, so, he parks this Ferrari

right next to the van,

and the owner comes out

and tells Ady, he says,

"How long

are you gonna be doing this?"

And he thought that

I was just some hippie, you know,

gonna be here for

a day or two.

I said, "Listen, man.

"I can be here for a month or two

or a year or whatever.

"How long can you survive

while I am here?"

Ten days later,

the restaurant closes down.

To me,

it was a beautiful moment.

Everybody had gone home,

and this one guy with

this big, bright light,

and keeps the light shining

on this subject.

Shut it down!

There are thousands of people

all over the world,

willing and able and changing

their careers to save species.

They go to some of

the darkest, grimmest,

most unsafe places

on the planet.

Let's save the shark!

Let's save the shark!

Over 800 environmental activists

have been killed

in just the last decade.

So these guys are doing

the tough work,

and we never hear about them.

They're not household names.

Shawn Heinrichs,

I live in Boulder, Colorado.

You can't get any more

landlocked than Colorado.

And I found out that there's

this incredible ocean activist

living right down the street

who quit his job as a CFO

for a tech company

so he could help save

endangered species.

Shawn's doing some of the best,

most groundbreaking work

that I've seen anywhere

in the world.

Isla Mujeres was

the largest shark-fishing island

on the east coast of Mexico.

At least 20,

if not more, long-liners...

...were targeting sharks

each and every single day.

Shawn helped turn

this hunting ground...

...into one of the top places

in the world

where you can actually

go and watch sharks.

Now you have this

community of ex-shark fishermen

who are making much more money

taking tourists out

to swim with whale sharks

than killing sharks on long-lines.

It's just simple economics.

Shawn often works

with his buddy, Paul Hilton,

an investigative photojournalist.

They can't help but to get themselves

into dangerous situations.

Traveler's paradise.

Paul's a photojournalist,

like me,

focused on endangered species.

He's brilliant at what he does.

Paul and Shawn try to bust rings

selling endangered species.

We're gonna blow the lid

off this place, right?

Shawn's pretty full-on.

I love his enthusiasm.

He talks far too much

when we're on assignment.

There's always that issue

of me having to go to him

and say, "mate, wind it up."

I think it's

the American in him.

l'm rolling. l can distract.

And a lot of the situations

we go into,

it's always nice

to go in as teams,

because you're going

into situations where

you get caught up

in the moment with the camera,

and you'll actually

photograph it, and

there's no one

watching your back.

Ask for the toilet.

Where's the toilet?

Paul and Shawn

have this technique

of... They have a camera

sitting around their neck,

and most people think you

have to put it up to your eye

to look through it and to shoot.

And it's actually a video camera,

and it's rolling the whole time.

So many.

And this is the Jaws,

movie Jaws?

Don't push it too much, Shawn.

Okay, cool. Very cool.

I don't know about you. That's the

most fins I've ever, ever seen.

How did you find out

about this?

Facebook, basically.

I mean, colleagues, mates...

We just walked straight in, basically.

Wow.

How long were you there?

Ten, 1 5 minutes.

You did all this

in ten, 1 5 minutes?

Oh, yeah, mate.

Yeah.

Are we almost there, Paul?

Yeah, so, it's the next block.

I didn't think that

the illegal-wildlife trade

would be so overt.

You can go down streets,

and every other shop will be

full of endangered creatures.

Look at this one right here.

It's not just shark fins.

It's just about

everything endangered

in the world is for sale there.

With the explosion

of demand in China

for shark-fin soup,

it was estimated

that 250,000 sharks

are caught for the fin trade

every single day.

Probably no other species

illustrates what's going on in

the oceans right now

better than sharks.

Sharks predate dinosaurs.

They survived four

mass-extinction events.

And just this one generation

that I've been alive,

we've cut down their ranks

about 90%.

I was following

a group of shark finners

in Indonesia, and they were

moving around camp to camp.

And, then, one morning,

I saw something reflecting

off in the coral reef

in the shallow water.

And what I discovered

was just horrific.

There's this beautiful

tawny nurse shark,

but it had all its fins cut off.

And it was trying to swim,

but it couldn't swim.

And it was heartbreaking,

'cause it's like... This is

what the reality is.

This is the thing that nobody gets.

Now, are we gonna get... Any

luck with us getting in there?

Okay.

Shawn has an interpreter.

I don't want to say her name,

but she's been doing

undercover work in China

for several decades.

The first place she took us

was a place

that they couldn't ever

get into before.

Basically, the Walmart

of the endangered-species trade

in Hong Kong.

Over the years,

I've actually worked really hard

to get into this facility.

So has Paul

and so has his friends.

And we've managed to maybe

step in the door for 30 seconds.

Hey!

What's wrong?

His staff would come out

and push us away,

threaten to call the police.

Hands, machete,

kicked out the door,

"don't ever come back."

Here's what we'll do.

We have a car waiting

with all the stuff in it.

I brought along a couple of

colleagues from the Hump bust.

Heather Rally, who does

undercover work for us.

And Charles Hambleton,

who's sort of my director

of covert operations.

In the alley here,

on the right-hand side?

We invented a cover.

We pretended like we were

on a culinary tour

and we were looking for

exotic product.

I think we stick to plan.

We're going as culinary tourist

interests of Mr. Sawyer,

and we're all here, learning

and taking pictures of culinary.

You can get into

about as much trouble

as you can possibly get into

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