written by John Mans | Image Gallery

Whale Wars is a one-hour weekly American documentary-style reality television series that premiered on on the Animal Planet cable channel.

If follows the activities of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which disputes Japanese claims that whaling performed in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is legally accepted research rather than banned commercially-based whaling.

The society's founder, Paul Watson, persuaded the Discovery Channel to make a reality show documentary which follows Paul and his crew aboard the MV Steve Irwin in their attempt to deter Japanese ships from hunting whales off the coast of Antarctica. The result would be a ten-part series.

The biggest challenge was in pre-production. Equipment and personnel had to be dialled in precisely, right from the beginning. There were many cinematic requirements to consider. We were to shoot everything HD or HDV so all of our handheld cameras had to be top of the line. And our POV cameras had to be true POV in the sense that we could put the heads into waterproof housings or tight spaces, or be able to use HD POV footage continuously as running footage during encounters.

Wexler helped us out by providing us with 17 cameras in all. There were five cameramen so I assigned everyone a camera that was theirs to baby during the expedition. We all did our best to protect our cameras from the elements. The guys who kept theirs alive would put emblems and stickers on them, even sleep with them.

When the encounters became really intense, the Japanese whalers were hitting us with water cannons and projectiles from their ships while we were on our fast boats. Meanwhile we were constantly battling sea spray and Antarctic weather. It is amazing that the cameras held up for as long as they did. All of us ended up getting hammered by water cannon during the encounters, and we all ended up damaging our primary kit. Some of them came back to life after a bit of tenderness but in the end we killed five out of seven of our Z7 cameras.

The cold was fierce. I™fm used to dealing with that in Colorado while filming skiing and mountaineering but sea spray was the thing that wiped us out. We had Petrel rain covers for most of the boat action and we also would have a back up Z7 in a water-tight splashbag but the cameras were so difficult to control inside the bags at sub-zero temperature that they became almost useless. The best footage we got was from our cameramen staring down a water cannon until the last second, then covering the camera the best he could with his body.

Every time we went outside, we were dealing with potentially lethal danger. The small boats were the worst; they were difficult to handle during normal operations, but add big sub-zero-temperature waves and the boat crashing over the swells, then you™fre going to come back a wreck with very little usable footage.

None of the cameramen was keen to go into the small boats so we mostly went by rotation, with the exception of our Sea Shepherd/shooter Simeon who would happily operate even in the most questionable circumstances. He was the one guy who was always willing to suit up and head out. His footage of the encounters with the Japanese fleet was outstanding.

We had the luxury of putting some special equipment aboard too. I brought my Polecam system and we were able to get some incredible footage with it. The Polecam provided a perspective that was somewhere between our handhelds aboard the ship and the boats or helicopter shots from farther away. No other jib system could have given us the kind of footage that Polecam provided. It was lightweight and manoeuvrable enough to get shots from various positions around the deck, even in the pitching Antarctic seas. Production was begging us for as much Polecam / POV footage as we could get. We crossed the Antarctic ocean four times and the conditions were at times insane.

The ship's rigging gave us lots of headaches. With adjustments to the Polecam length, we could get a camera in the most unusual places. I even attached it to myself and climbed 30 ft up the mast to get some crazy perspectives.

The Polecam was also instrumental in getting us hero shots of the crew from high-to-low angles that would otherwise have been impossible. There is literally no other way to get a remote-head jib shot off of a moving deck. I™fm not going out there with my CamMate!

Because we could get the Toshiba HD heads out on the end of a 20 foot pole, we could give the viewer an accurate idea of what the Sea Shepherd ship looks like when we™fre bearing down on the Japanese fleet. It is an intimidating ship when coming out you through the frozen seas.

Visually, the show proved easy to shoot. We all put our most cinematic eyes to the viewfinders. Antarctica's beautiful scenery was ours for the taking though occasionally that meant really putting ourselves on the line to capture the natural beauty around us. We shot many dramatic beauty shots from helicopter and fast boats.

We had round-the-clock watches and would venture out onto the frozen bow or climb up the mast for dramatic camera angles. While the vessel was crossing from Antarctica, we headed straight into a major storm. I went out on the bow with Australian cameraman Jamie Holland. We donned our survival gear with harnesses, webbing and carabiners, hooking ourselves into the bow-rails while the ship was crashing into 70 foot waves. Jamie and I rode these insane waves for seven hours from all kinds of perspectives, but every shot only shows him or me in the foreground. We were out there alone, but it was well worth it for the shots.

Whale Wars Season II is spectacular. As producer Monica Martino and I watched the raw footage, we were awestruck by the quality. We have every major conflict covered from multiple angles, many of them very unusual.

The actual encounters that the Sea Shepherd had with the Japanese whaling fleet this year were beyond any experienced during their 30 year history of confrontation . We filmed them during every aspect of the horrendous harpooning and processing procedures. What we witnessed in the Southern Oceans will inspire viewers around the world to demand and end to the slaughter of whales. For me, that™fs the best outcome.