Animal Planet’s ‘Whale Wars’ featuring Atlantan Andrea Gordon debuts June 4

Atlanta native and Lovett School graduate Andrea Gordon certainly didn't fit the bill based on her background. But she has joined the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and will be seen on the third season of Animal Planet's popular series "Whale Wars," in which the conservation group battles Japanese fishermen trying to kill whales in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. (The Japanese say they are doing so for research purposes and are not doing anything illegal. The Sea Shepherds beg to differ.)

Gordon is part of a new ship called the Bob Barker, named after the famous "Price is Right" host and animal rights activist who contributed $5 million so Sea Shepherds could procure the ship. She barely shows up in the season debut airing Friday at 9 p.m. because her ship has mechanical problems. But we'll see her later. The ship has a reinforced hull that their primary Steve Irwin ship does not, enabling them to clear through ice easier.

Gordon never spent much time on the ocean as a kid, though she lived near the Chattahoochee River and swam in Lake Lanier. “I loved animals but didn’t necessarily see myself at sea,” said Gordon, 32, who now lives in Brooklyn and recently left Legal Aid as a public defender. “But I love doing this, just being able to save lives and preserve these species for future generations.”

She first read about the Sea Shepherd organization in a magazine article in 2002. She remembers the group’s founder Paul Watson saying whales and seals are his clients. “Being a client-centered lawyer,” she said, “that resonated with me. He was willing to take such dramatic steps to save animals. He was putting whales and seals first.”

She spent six months in 2005 after law school with the Sea Shepherds stopping baby seal slaughters in Canada. They’d also drop steel contraptions to prevent ships from trawling the bottom of the ocean. “Hundreds of thousands of these baby harp seals were being killed,” she said. “It’s such an atrocity.”

After three years plus as a public defender in New York, she decided to join the Sea Shepherd group full time.

On the Bob Barker during the winter campaign, she was in charge of the deck team, overseeing  general maintenance of the ship and launching small boats into the water. She said it wasn’t necessary to be physically strong but crucial to be mentally strong “and passionate about protecting whales.”

She said they spent several weeks harassing the Japanese whalers, saving hundreds of whales. “It was a really successful campaign,” she said. The whalers, as we will see later in the season, collided with and sunk one of the Sea Shepherd’s smaller ships. (Each side blamed the other for the incident.) Fortunately, the crew escaped. “It was just absolutely astonishing,” she said. To keep the Sea Shepherds away, the Japanese whalers would use water cannons and sirens.

It’s a rather nasty game of cat and mouse that makes for dramatic television.

On TV

“Whale Wars,” Friday nights at 9 p.m. on Animal Planet.