Hayden Panettiere, My Hero November 2, 2007

You may remember a few months back I told y'all about Hayden Panettiere's passionate crusade to save the whales. Well, the Heroes star is taking on the Japanese fishermen once again, only this time it's to save dolphins, and it's in person. Man, I love her.

Hayden and five other surfers tried to disrupt the annual Japanese dolphin slaughter, in which more than 22,000 of the gentle animals are killed yearly. The brave six paddled out on their boards to try to reach a pod of dolphins before they were forced into a cove to be killed but were blocked by the fishermen who even tried to whack them with a boathook.

After heading back to the beach, the surfers gave a brief interview before quickly heading to the Osaka airport. "It was really frightening," Hayden told reporters. "Some of us were hit by the boathook. But in the end all we really worried about was the dolphins."

"It was so incredibly sad. We were so close to them and they were sky hopping, jumping out of the water to see us." It gets worse. At this point she tried to hold back the tears and added, "One little baby dolphin stuck his head out and kinda looked at me and the thought that it's no longer with us is really hard to take." How could you kill a dolphin???!!! Let alone a baby dolphin...they are heartless monsters if you ask me.

Most of the time you're lucky if you can find someone who'll take five seconds to sign a petition, but Hayden flew across the world, paddled out into the sea, and took on a mob of angry fishermen...she's awesome. This hero is the real deal. Check her out in action.

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