a real whale tail, maybe.Ter­ri­ble head­line pun lift­ed direct­ly from the Hutt News, which this week reveals more about the man behind the fake whale tail that is cur­rent­ly flip­ping and flap­ping amon­sts the waves in Welling­ton Har­bour.

Turns out Phillip Wadding­ton, a not­ed local potrait artist, cre­at­ed the fake tail (made of bam­boo, inner tubes and black PVC) to protest Japan’s bid to increase their annu­al kill-for-food quo­ta. He just did­n’t both­er telling peo­ple about it until now. Very sub­tle protest­ing. Phillip posi­tioned the tail in the har­bour last Mon­day night with a lit­tle help from friends, after which the ‘wind­surfer in dis­tress’ sto­ry came out in the Domin­ion Post a day or so lat­er. As Philip says…

He obvi­ous­ly did­n’t put the binoc­u­lars on it.

Indeed. The cur­rent plan is to move the tail a bit clos­er to shore, so as to make it more vis­i­ble to peo­ple walk­ing along the shore­line. Dis­cus­sions with the har­bour­mas­ter have estab­lished that it’s not going to be a mar­itime haz­ard, so it’ll prob­a­bly remain until wear-and-tear do their bit and it all falls apart.

What a great thing to have cre­at­ed. Phillip Wadding­ton, we salute you!