All posts tagged: Sea Shepherd

Vegan food at hardcore festival IEPERFEST, Ypres

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Ieperfest is a 3-day hardcore music festival, just outside Ypres (Ieper, 75km from Bruges, Belgium). Since day one, more than 20 years ago, all the food at Ieperfest is vegan! It was two years ago that we went to Ieperfest (see our blogpost here), and it was a wet edition in 2014. This time, it was a beautiful Summer weekend, and we went again one afternoon to try out the vegan goodies and enjoy the atmosphere. We tried to taste something from each foodstall, but by the end of the afternoon were too stuffed to accomplish that plan 😉 Payment for food and drinks was with tokens: we paid 66 euros for 30 tokens in total. Our plan was to start our food trip with the Flemish stew with seitan and potatoes from the Ieperfest Hardcore Foodstall, but it was announced it was only available from 5PM onwards. Bummer! So we started with a Dutch weedburger and some ‘Wish ‘n Chips’, that latter being a new ‘algae’ based dish from TDW. Nice! Here’s an overview of the food and drinks we had:   …

Sea Shepherd in Antwerp: a look on board the Sam Simon

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One of Sea Shepherd’s ships docked in Antwerp a couple of weeks ago. The Sam Simon anchored near Antwerp’s city museum MAS and during that couple of days crew offered guided tours on the ship. Sea Shepherd is international marine wildlife conservation organization. They use direct action tactics to protect marine life, for example disturbing whale vessels and seizure and destruction of drift nets. I visited the ship with a Dutch friend. It was fascinating! Some information that was shared during the tour: there are a lot of signposts with Japanese language on board the ship, that’s because the ship was originally a Japanese vessel new volunteers start out as sailors, cleaning, doing the simple on board tasks and can later on take on more responsibilities life on board is taken very seriously, no fooling around, and no alcohol on board. If you fool around you leave at the next harbour! The Sam Simon has participated in several operations (see the stickers) The Sam Simon is named after American television producer and writer Sam Simon (co creator of the Simpsons), who donated the money …

I won the lottery! Dinner with Sea Shepherd crew and Tom Waes on board Sam Simon, Antwerp

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Sea Shepherd is international marine wildlife conservation organization. They use direct action tactics to protect marine life, for example disturbing whale vessels and seizure and destruction of drift nets. One of their ships, the Sam Simon, embarked in Antwerp for a couple of days and was open for public visits. I visited the ship with a Dutch friend earlier in the week (review with many more pics of the Sam Simon will follow here). On that visit, I gave a donation to Sea Shepherd, and as such entered the lottery to win a dinner for two on Saturday evening on board the ship, with the crew and Tom Waes. As it is with lotteries, one never expects to win … But this time, I did! 🙂 I got a call on Saturday afternoon and of course I gladly accepted the dinner invitation for two. We had the opportunity to talk to the crew and some volunteers from Sea Shepherd Belgium. And we also met Tom Waes (Belgian actor, director and TV-presentor), who is an ambassador for Sea Shepherd and Captain Alex Cornelissen (CEO …

Our visit to Vegan Summer fest in 50 photos! Belgium’s first vegan festival

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Yesterday BE Vegan hosted Belgium’s first* vegan festival in Gentbrugge. Ghentbrugge is near the city of Ghent, about 40km from Bruges, so it was only about a half hour drive for us. We decided to go early. Partly because the weather forecast warned for possible thunderstorms in the late afternoon. Also because the inscriptions on the FB event led to suggest there was going to be a huge turnout (more than 4000 people). So we wanted to avoid the ‘big crowd’ and we arrived a little bit before noon. The festival was mainly inside one of the halls of KERKGent. Inside the hall were stalls of organisations like Bite Back, Animal Rights and host organisation BE Vegan, and also several shops selling mainly shoes, books and food. In one shielded corner of the hall were some seatings for the scheduled talks (about vegan activism, vegan bussinesses etc). The big foodstalls were outside and next to that was a tent where the food demos took place.    Although we were there early, the queues for the main foodstalls outside were getting longer rapidly. We …

Demo to close Boudewijn Seapark (dolphinarium), Bruges

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The annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, has received a lot of international media coverage. Hundreds of dolphins have been killed. It’s a massacre. The dolphins’ anguish is horrible. Watch this video from CNN Some dolphins are ‘spared’ and caught alive, to be sold in the entertainment business. Imprisoned for live. These highly intelligent sensitive animals are doomed to spend the rest of their lives in small swimming pools and perform tricks day after day after day…. Dolphins don’t fare well in captivity. Dolphinaria worldwide are also guilty for what is annualy happening in Taiji, Japan. Boycot dolphinaria. It has nothing to do with nature conservation and even less with love for animals. Unfortunately, Bruges has a dolphinarium: Boudewijn Seapark. We hope it will be closed soon. Animal rights organisation Bite Back is holding a demonstration for the closure of the dolphinarium in Bruges, this coming Sunday afternoon, January 26, 2014, at the entrance of Boudewijn Seapark. See the facebookpage of Bite Back for more details about the demo! LINKS Sea Shepherd, facts about the drive hunt …