Dolphin captures planned in Panamanian waters

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
“The dolphin brokerage operation formally known as Wildlife
International Network is moving closer to capturing 80 dolphins in
Panama,” In Defense of Animals warned in a May 2, 2007 “Action
Alert,” based on findings by Panamanian activists and Dolphin
Project founder Ric O’Barry, who began exposing the operation in
March.
“WIN is now known as Ocean Embassy,” IDA said.
“If Ocean Embassy is successful,” O’Barry told ANIMAL
PEOPLE, “they will be able to supply dolphins to just about any
place that wants them.

Melamine fed to fish

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
VANCOUVER–The potential for global ecological disaster as
result of cheating in international trade was illustrated on May 8,
2007, when the Vancouver-based Canadian division of Skretting
International recalled fish food sold to 25 Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife hatcheries because it contained melamine.
As melamine is water-soluable, it does not accumulate in the
bodies of fish, unlike heavy metals such as mercury and chemical
compounds, such as PCBs.
“We do not believe this poses any significant human health
threat,” said FDA food safety chief David Acheson.
But melamine itself was not the cause for worry. The greater
concern was what if the contaminant had been more volatile,
longer-persisting, or biologically active?

BOOKS: Whalewatcher: A global guide to watching whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild

May 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2007:

Whalewatcher:
A global guide to watching whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild
by Trevor Day
Firefly Books Ltd.
(66 Leek Crescent, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada L4B 1H1), 2006.
204 pp., paperback, illustrated. $19.95.

Though Whalewatcher is structured as a field guide, armchair
travelers will probably spend more time with it than marine mammal
observers seeking to compile a life list.
More than 10 million people per year watch whales, dolphins,
and porpoises or about as many as watched birds a generation ago,
before the recent global explosion of interest in birding.
However, while anyone can watch birds from anywhere, few
people have any opportunity to watch marine mammals from their homes,
workplaces, or during a commute, and even those of us who do have
the opportunity rarely manage many sightings.

Mother Nature fights the seal hunt

May 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2007:
ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland– Climatic
conditions appeared likely to do the annual
Atlantic Canadian seal hunt more economic damage
in 2007 than all the protests and boycotts
worldwide combined.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press on April
25, sealers were still assessing the combined
cost of a sealing season that was almost without
ice in much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while
drifting sheet ice trapped and badly damaged
sealing vessels along the Labrador Front,
northeast of Newfoundland. A dozen crews had
abandoned their boats after ice cracked the hulls.
“Two Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers,
the Ann Harvey and the Sir Wilfred Grenfell, are
trapped in the ice along with the sealing
vessels. Helicopters are flying food and fuel to
the stranded crews on the ice,” reported Paul
Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
As many as 90 sealing boats were trapped
in ice, as of April 23, up from 60 ten days
earlier, according to the St. Johns Telegram.
The icebreakers had managed to free only about 10
boats in five days of effort, before becoming
stuck themelves.

Fire aboard Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru ends Antarctic killing early

March 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:
Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research whaling within
Antarctic waters ended for the winter on February 24, 2007–far
short of meeting a self-assigned quota of 935 minke whales, 50
humpback whales, and 50 fin whales. The latter are both
internationally designated endangered species.
“At around 17:30 today,” posted the crew of the Greenpeace
vessel Esperanza, “the expedition leader of the Japanese
government’s whaling fleet radioed, informing us that the Nisshin
Maru–disabled nine days ago by fire–plans to sail in three hours.
“This is a relief,” the posting continued. “After nine long
days, the whaling fleet is finally leaving the Ross Sea, and the
unsullied environment of the Southern Ocean.”
The Nisshin Maru on February 15 caught fire in a below-deck
processing area. Most of the 148-member crew were evacuated,
leaving 26 to fight the blaze. One crewman, Kazutaka Makita, 27,
was killed by the fire.

Watson acquittal reversed

January 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
Prince Edward Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Cheverie on
November 29, 2006 overturned the April 2005 acquittal of Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson for allegedly too
closely approaching a seal kill.
Eleven other Sea Shepherd crew members were convicted of the
charge, filed after seven of them were beaten on April 1, 2005 by
members of the crew of the sealing vessel Brady Mariner. Watson
escaped conviction under an exemption for people who witness seal
kills from their homes, by contending that the Sea Shepherd flagship
Farley Mowat was his permanent home.

Mercury poisoning may save whales

January 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
TAIJI–Three days after Christmas 2006, a long-anticipated
confrontation between the two-ship fleet of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society and the Japanese whaling fleet inside the
International Whaling Commission-designated Southern Oceans Whale
Sanctuary had yet to develop–but Ric O’Barry took the fight against
Japanese whaling right into Japanese supermarkets, and on Boxing Day
2006 scored a second round knockout against the Taiji coastal whalers.
Taiji coastal whaling little resembles high seas whaling.
Instead of shooting great whales with harpoon guns and butchering
them aboard the factory ship Nisshin Maru in the name of scientific
research, the coastal whalers drive small whales into shallow water
where a few are selected for sale to marine mammal parks.

Sea Shepherds don’t get fast ship after all

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Two months after Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder
Paul Watson announced the $2 million purchase of the former Canadian
patrol boat Lady Chebucto, believed to be as fast as the Japanese
whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru, the deal fell through, reported
Andrew Darby of the Melbourne Age on October 11, 2006. “It was
registered in Antigua,” Watson explained, “and Antigua would not
allow us to sail it as a yacht.”
Registering Sea Shepherd vessels as yachts reduces regulatory
requirements–but registering in Antigua was problematic, Watson
indicated, because Antigua receives foreign aid from Japan, and has
supported Japanese efforts at International Whaling Commission
meetings to reopen commercial whaling.
“I am confident that we will have a second ship for the
[winter] campaign [against Japanese whaling in Antarctic waters],”
Watson said.

BOOKS: Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild
by Kenneth Brower
Penguin Group (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2006. 288
pages, hardcover. $26.00.

Freeing Keiko is a biography of the captive orca whale who
rose to stardom as “Willy” in the Hollywood movie Free Willy! and
sequels. Author Kenneth Brower, son of the late Earth Island
Institute founder David Brower, had uniquely privileged access to
effort to rehabilitate Keiko for release, from the 1993 beginning of
Earth Island Institute negotiations to obtain Keiko from the Mexico
City aquarium El Reino Aventura until the Humane Society of the U.S.
took over the project shortly before Keiko finally broke from human
feeding and supervision in September 2002 and swam to the coast of
Norway to spend the last 15 months of his life.
Captured off Iceland in 1979, Keiko spent two years at
Marineland of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Sold to El Reino Aventura in
Mexico City, he remained there until 1996, when the Free
Willy/Keiko Foundation formed by Earth Island Institute moved him to
a newly built super-sized tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. More
than 2.5 million visitors came to see him before he was airlifted to
a sea pen in the Westmann Islands of Iceland in September 1998, to
learn again how to be a wild whale.

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