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How's this for some Hollywood activism:

With video cameras and tiny microphones, the team behind Sunday's Oscar-winning documentary film "The Cove" orchestrated a Hollywood-meets-Greenpeace-style covert operation to ferret out what the authorities say is illegal whale meat at one of this town's most highly regarded sushi destinations.

Their work, undertaken in large part here last week as the filmmakers gathered for the Academy Awards ceremony, was coordinated with law enforcement officials, who said Monday that they were likely to bring charges against the restaurant, the Hump, for violating federal laws against selling marine mammals.

It's Hollywood's animal lovers vs. sushi lovers!

In the clash of two Southern California cultures -- sushi aficionados and hard-core animal lovers -- the animal lovers have thrown a hard punch.

"This isn't just about saving whales," said Louie Psihoyos, the director of "The Cove," a documentary that chronicles eco-activists' battles with Japanese officials over dolphin hunting. "But about saving the planet."

How did they do it?

Video of their meal shows the two activists, both vegan, being served what the waitress can be heard calling "whale" -- thick pink slices -- that they take squeamish bites of before tossing into a Ziploc bag in a purse.

The samples were sent to Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. Professor Baker said DNA testing there revealed that the samples sent to him were from a Sei whale, which are found worldwide and are endangered but are sometimes hunted in the North Pacific under a controversial Japanese scientific program. "I've been doing this for years," Professor Baker said. "I was pretty shocked."

Once an activist, always an activist, Oscar or no Oscar!

Director Louis Psihoyos's team -- a far-flung band of activists who use film making to highlight environmental causes -- knew they would be together in Los Angeles for the Oscars, and so sting operations two and three were hatched. On Feb. 28, team members split up between the sushi bar and a restaurant table and ordered sushi and communicated via text message with Mr. Psihoyos, who waited in a car in the parking lot. Mr. Psihoyos served as an electronic envoy between the investigators at the sushi bar, who were witnessing the chopping of fish and whale, and those sitting at a table:

"They're eating blowfish!" read one of the text messages. "Toro and sea urchin, nothing exciting," another said. "Whale coming now!"

Mr. Psihoyos, a former photojournalist who heads a nonprofit through which he makes his films, said that environmental action is more motivating to him than awards.

"Once you become sensitized to these animals you want to save them," he said over breakfast Monday, still bleary from his big Oscar night.

Wow! Did he have a fantastic weekend or what?!

4/15/10: Follow up from the NY Times:

One element of negotiations now under way to try to reduce the number of whales killed is the proposed creation of a central registry of whale DNA to improve efforts to track whale populations and monitor the international trade in whale meat.

A mixed plate of whale sashimi sold at the Seoul restaurant came from an Antarctic minke whale, a sei whale, a North Pacific minke, a fin whale and a Risso's dolphin, the researchers found.

Only the Japanese have killed sei whales, found in waters surrounding Japan, since the imposition of an international whaling moratorium in 1986.

Such tracking is already being conducted on a limited scale by academic researchers and the makers of the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove." These researchers, using hidden cameras and sophisticated DNA analysis, uncovered the illegal sale of whale meat at a Santa Monica restaurant and at a sushi restaurant in Seoul.

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