Around 100 years ago people realised that the number of whales in the world was going down quite rapidly, this was due to hunting. Whales could be used to make soap, umbrellas, handbags, shoes, lipstick, shaving cream, tennis racket strings and pet food. Although a highly useful animal, its numbers were declining so something had to be done. So a number of organisations were put in place to help stop, or slow down these huntings. Eventually in 1994 all of the countries got together to decide to stop hunting whales. Everyone agreed apart from Norway, Japan and Iceland who said they needed to hunt whales for ‘scientific reasons’. They have since been hunting whales every year in the hundreds, so the people at Greenpeace decided to try and do something.
They decided to tag a humpback whale, and follow as it enters the Southern Oceans, otherwise known as the hunting grounds. They decided to get the public involved so they introduced a competition so that people could name the whale. ( I mean if the whale ended up getting murdered the public could scream ‘YOU KILLED JEFF’ or whatever). The competition got around 11,000 names, which was reduced to 20, one of those included Mr Splashy Pants. The name gained a lot of attention. Sites such as BoingBoing.com posted the story. Reddit even changed their logo to include Mr Splashy Pants in the title. Eventually, over 130,000 people voted, 78 per cent of them for Mr Splashy.
There are now SAVE MR SPLASHY PANTS petitions all over the web, and the Japanese will get more than an outcry if he ends up being made into an umbrella. That I am sure of.
MR SPLASHY PANTS!
