Dave Currey (environmentalist)

rdf:langString Dave Currey (environmentalist)

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rdf:langString January 2018

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rdf:langString Dave Currey (born 1953) is a British environmentalist, writer and photographer. A minister's son, he was born in Sussex in the UK and brought up in London. He gained a BA in Photographic Arts in 1976 following a passion in communicating visually. In 1976, following another passion, he walked 1,000 miles across Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to help raise awareness of conservation issues for the World Wildlife Fund. On this journey his photographs, radio and television interviews were his introduction to a world of media co-operation that would steer his next thirty years in environmental activism. In 1979 he volunteered as a photographer on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior during its Icelandic anti-whaling campaign where he first met Allan Thornton, Greenpeace's director at the time. In 1983, while he was working in public relations photography and teaching, Thornton persuaded him to join another anti-whaling ship, "Balaenoptera". With Jennifer Lonsdale, another Greenpeace veteran, they carried out undercover work in the Norwegian port of Vado, posing as journalists to gain entry to whaling factories. They were able to truthfully insist they were not working for Greenpeace as the factory workers feared, but knew it was unwise to state they were on an independent environmental activist ship. The campaign was incredibly successful resulting in a two-thirds reduction in whaling quotas and huge embarrassment for the Norwegian government. From 1978 to 1986 he often contributed to Wildlife magazine and later when it became BBC Wildlife, for a while being their "roving naturalist" to places such as the Everglades National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Baja California, Mexico. He also acted as a book and television reviewer for the magazine. His nature photography was widely used during this period and he was described as "one of the new breed of naturalist photographers, with a commitment to conservation and the style of a photojournalist."