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Black Market Extended Commentary Transcript
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Shark Fin Soup
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago at a wedding party, bride and groom's family would have shark fin soup, and everybody would stand around in awe and go, they're all eating shark fin soup.
Now because of the nouveau riche of Asia everybody has shark fin soup.
It doesn't taste of anything. It is just cartilage. It's like cooking the cartilage in your nose.
There's been a large campaign trying to stop people from eating shark fin soup. And that's where I first really started to get to know Steve.
He was a very integral part of this project.
Steve Galster: Nature can rebound. You just got to give it a chance. But if you wait too long, in some cases it cannot rebound, so that's the key. We're buying time here. Conservation organizations buying time for governments with much more authority, power to come in and then start taking care of the problem.
You can't stop the illegal wildlife trade, but you can make it more difficult, less profitable and higher risk, and you can start to disrupt it. And that essentially means people will be trading less, and if you're trading less that means fewer animals are being killed. So hopefully their reproduction rate starts to go above their destruction rate.
Clothing
To wear exotic animals is seen as a status symbol. It places the person in a position of stature. These are quite engrained things into the human psyche.
The question is why do we do it? This is a question I want the viewers to ask themselves.
Chemists
They are practicing chemists as much as they are in New York or London or Paris. The majority of these ingredients are roots, leaves. Some do have animal products added into them, but if you took the animal product out it's not, it doesn't make any difference.
This one particular chemist is in prime real estate in the center of town. They have lots of natural products for sale.
Then you go around to the expensive section and then I start to see the sea horses, the penises. You use that for an aphrodisiac. The prices for the tiger penises were $900 Hong Kong dollars, which is about $100 US.
This is mythology that has been imbedded for centuries and this is what this project is up against. It is up against hundreds and hundreds of years of indoctrination.
Exotic Food Restaurant
I went up to the restaurant, ordered a beer and then they brought me the menu. And the menu was turtle, snake, pangolin. There was many things on the menu.
And I realized I backed myself into a situation where I had to buy something. I had to take part in it. Didn't want to do that.
Then a group of drunk guys turned up at a table across from me and they went to town. They bought a turtle. They bought three snakes. They milk all the blood out of it and drain it into a mug, and then that is split up between the guests.
And I was the guest of honor. I was the only white guy. I was the foreigner.
So I was given the heart and blood. The heart was still beating on the plate. Umm... I asked if they could actually cook the heart for me if you wouldn't mind cooking the heart. That would make me feel a little bit better. So the waitress was a little bit - why do you want a heart cooked? It's still beating. Everybody wants it to. Anyway, cooked the heart - then I drank the blood.
Crocodile
Went to a restaurant in Southern China, an exotic food restaurant, which are quite common. There was a crocodile in a cage at the back of the restaurant.
He didn't kill the animal. He wounded it incredibly bad. Just on the back of the neck and let it drain of blood. I saw something that I don't wish to see again. He left the heart in the animal, pulled its lungs out and let it die slowly. And the animal stayed alive for about 15 minutes. That was, that was very, very surreal.
The Entertainers
The consumption of the animals at the rate of what is happening is quite alarming, but the entertainment value, that's also alarming.
Quite a rare Burmese Python.
Midday sun she is baking hot and all they have got is a little towel and they just move it around on her body to keep her cool. She is there to get your photograph taken with. But she's also there for sale.
It's just another platform of us consuming and looking at animals as entertainment. We do it in the West as well.
Monks and Tigers
This particular monastery is very close to the River Quai. It's a good place for domesticated tigers to retire so to speak. Nobody can take care of them anymore. And the Monks will say Look, we'll look after them. But on the flip side of that they are able to raise revenue to look after the temple, which looks after the tigers. So they all need each other.
One of the most amazing things I've seen on this project, even to this date, it still flabbergasts me.
A group of tourists ride up, and each one slowly takes their turn. Who has got the nerve to go stand next to the tiger? A couple of people do it and then this one guy goes there and he wants to get the tiger so its' sitting upright. So it's basically when he's crouching the tiger's head is roughly about the same level as his. But the tiger is having a nap. So he gets his friend to get the camera in the right place, and he grabs the tiger, a Bengali tiger by the ears and tries to lift the tiger's head up so it's level with his head. The tiger turns his head, looks at the guy in the face and just roars like the MGM thing. This guy levitates for about 4.5 milliseconds and disappears. He just vanishes. Meanwhile, myself and the other people I'm with are trying to find some escape route out of this because the tiger is now a little bit annoyed. All the monks thought it was one of the funniest things they'd seen in years. But I was, I mean, it's a tiger.
Tiger Mauling
The Sunderbunds is where the largest tiger population is in Asia.
What happened was, he was laying a trap. A tiger had seen them doing this. And the tiger jumped out of the bush, grabbed him by the back of the neck and shakes him as a cat does with a mouse.
Basically it was an eight-hour journey from the incident to a medical center in India. And this medical center basically had two Panadol and a saline solution. And a miracle he survived.
I asked him, Do you have any problems, do you have any numbness? And he said no, I just have really bad dreams now. That'll serve you right for hunting for tigers.
Poachers
What actually is on these poacher's around their necks is their name, their age, the area where they were caught, and the crime that they've committed.
Poachers I have the utmost empathy for. I really do feel for them. They are in very dire situations. Most of them are not educated. They're in poverty. They're only doing exactly what their fathers, their grandfathers, what their ancestors did and that was go hunt. They know how to hunt.
The person I dislike the most is, is the middleman, the guy that encourages him to take the risk, because he or she is no - they're not, they're nowhere near the scene of the crime.
Scotland Yard Enforcement
Andy Fisher, the gentleman in the picture with the tiger's head, he is one of two people who are in charge of the animal protection units in Scotland Yard. They are both civilians. They have no jurisdiction of any sort. So Scotland Yard is one of the biggest employees in Europe. It's got a huge task force. But when it comes to animal protection, or the trafficking or the policing of animals, they had two civilians who were in charge. Now what happens is they get information, intelligence from the street, from police officers who are not very knowledgeable about the animal trade. That gets referred back to Andy or his counterpart. Then, they decide to take action. He has to go to another department to get some men go out and do the raid. By the time all that has happened the animal products usually moved on. So he has - they have their arms tied. They've got them behind their back. It is a real-they're an uphill battle there that they're dealing with in London.
Body Language
When I first started taking pictures of this project I had a lot of problems. I kept hitting brick walls. I wasn't getting the material that I knew that was out there. I wasn't getting it. And what I was doing, I was trying to be covert about it. I was trying to be subtle and quiet because I'm doing something wrong. They're doing something wrong, so they know. It didn't work. It didn't matter what I did. It just didn't work. And I just got to the end of - I just lost patience and one day I just said, Well, what about if I dress as... just dress a normal tourist?
What I did was I - I had my camera out. I wore a loud tee shirt. And I went into these situations totally naive because realistically I had no idea what was in the back of the shops, because I hadn't been there before. I realized that my naivete to the subject was my gateway in. They - the people I was photographing realized that my body language gave a signal out that I was harmless to them. I had disarmed them by showing them everything I was. And that got me into the back of the shops, and I was able to talk to them, charm them and get further and further into the situation.
One of the first scenarios of trying to get into the back of the shop was up on the Thai-Burma border, They were selling certain animal parts at the front, but I could see down the hallway there was skins and then a motorcycle pulled up and dropped off two bear paws and I said, Oh, that's really interesting, we don't have - people don't sell bear paws in Australia. That's really quite strange. And the guy said, So you think that's really strange, I should show you what's in the back. And that's how I got in the back.
Open Markets
I've have had a few incidents where people have realized what I'm doing and tried to stop me.
And in most cases they're just shop owners and they put their hand up and tell you to stop taking pictures.
This woman was selling tiger paws. I pushed it to a point where she had enough and picked up the tiger claw and hit me with it.
Goals
What I would really like to see happen is the breakdown in the commercialization of endangered species.
The objective is awareness. It is totally. I mean, that's why photographers do what they do. It is to - so people see my pictures, people take note of them, learn more about the subject and then will take action. I think that's what I was really looking for is the ground swell of knowledge and information out there, that will get out, and slowly, hopefully stop this.
The illusion that you are what you eat is something that I would - I would dearly like to break the camel's back. Now if this project is able to do that, then I have achieved my objective. But, one of the sad elements to that really is the people that really need to be - have this information are in remote villages in China. They are an audience that aren't really going to be looking for this information.
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