Sealers charge HSUS observers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I.–The 2006 Atlantic Canada harp seal
slaughter started on March 26 with a quota of 325,000 landed pelts,
5,000 more than in 2005.
Up to 91,000 seals are to be pelted in the Gulf of St.
Larence, in the first phase of the hunt. The remainder will be
pelted later along the Labrador Front, where the hunt will start
about April 10. The Canadian Depart-ment of Fisheries & Oceans does
not announce the exact dates for each phase of the hunt until just a
few days beforehand.
Violence by sealers against protesters flared in earnest on March 27.
“I normally observe the hunt on foot,” wrote Rebecca
Aldworth, a Newfoundlander who directs Canadian campaigns for the
Humane Society of the U.S. “The ice floes are usually strong enough
to support several helicopters,” Aldworth said. “This year the ice
was fragile, so we were forced to base ourselves on a larger vessel
and deploy small, inflatable boats.”

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Greenpeace, Sea Shepherds chase whalers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

SOUTHERN OCEANS WHALE SANCTUARY–Neither Australia, New
Zealand, nor the United Nations defends the Antarctic whale
sanctuary declared in 1974 by the International Whaling Commission,
so Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society did it
themselves in December 2005 and January 2006, while the Japanese
whaling fleet sought to kill 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales
within the sanctuary limits –which Japan does not recognize.
Greenpeace pursued the whalers with two ships, the Esperanza
and the Arctic Sunrise, a helicopter, and combined crews of 60
people, including two photographers and two videographers. For
Greenpeace, wrote Geoff Strong of the Melbourne Age, “the most
important weapon is not the water spray designed to confuse the
harpoonists’ aim,” a new tactic used to reported great effect, “but
the new satellite Internet link that allows them to send fresh
broadcast-quality images.
“Sea Shepherd has a different method of disseminating the
message,” Strong continued. Aboard the Farley Mowat were “an
embedded contingent of independent media, including representatives
from Australia’s Seven network, National Geographic, and
documentary filmmakers from the U.S., France, Brazil, and Canada.
“The whalers have a public relations machine too,” Strong
noted. “For the first time they too have been releasing images.”

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Marine Mammal Center gets new HQ

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

SAUSALITO, Calif.–The Marine Mammal Center on November 10
broke ground for a new $18 million head office and hospital, to open
in 2007 on the site of the aging original facilities.
Handling marine mammal strandings from Mendocino to San Luis
Obispo, the Marine Mammal Center has treated more than 11,000
California sea lions, sea otters, elephant seals, whales,
dolphins, and porpoises since opening at a former Nike missile base
within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, north of San
Francisco, in 1975.
“Retired founder Lloyd Smalley started out using bathtubs,
children’s wading pools, and chicken wire to create makeshift pens,”
recalled San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Jim Doyle. “Volunteers
and staff have worked out of buildings composed of freight containers
that were welded together. The pens are too small for the animals
and not large enough for volunteers to maneuver safely around them.
The water filtration system constantly breaks down.”
“The center has been patched, added to and cobbled together
over 30 years,” Marine Mammal Center executive director B.J. Griffin
told Doyle. “We have learned what works and what doesn’t.”
The Marine Mammal Center also has facilities in Anchor Bay,
Mont-erey, and San Luis Obispo, plus a gift shop and interpretive
center in San Francisco. Together, the five sites host about
100,000 visitors per year.

BOOKS: Japan’s Dolphin Drive Fisheries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Japan’s Dolphin Drive Fisheries: Propped up by the Aquarium Industry
& “Scientific Studies”
by Sakae Hemmi (Supervised by Eiji Fujiwara)

Elsa Nature Conservancy
(Box 2, Tsukuba Gakuen Post Office, Tsukuba 305-8691, Japan), 2005.
33 pages paperback, no price listed.

Sakae Hemmi and the Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan
published this expose of “The reopened dolphin hunts at Futo on the
Izu Peninsula in Shiuoka Prefecture and the dolphin export plan of
Taiji Town in Wakayama Prefecture” just before the 2005 dolphin
drives were to begin, on the eve of an international day of protest
against the dolphin killing led by Ric O’Barry of One Voice.
Hemmi, campaigning against the Futo and Taiji dolphin
massacres since 1976, nearly nine years ago wrote A Report on the
1996 Dolphin Catch Quota Violation at Futo Fishing Harbor. That
report served chiefly to alert the international marine mammal
activist community to the longtime existence of committed opposition
to dolphin slaughter and commercial whaling within Japan.
Capturing dolphins for use in exhibition and
swim-with-dolphins attractions had already emerged as a lucrative
secondary market for the dolphin-killers, whose primary motive has
traditionally been attempting to exterminate competitors for fish.

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Hurricane Katrina helps captive marine mammals make a jailbreak

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

An inadvertent release of dolphins from the Marine Life
Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi ended on September 20 when a
capture team led by former Free Willy/Keiko Foundation trainer Jeff
Foster retrieved the last escapees from the Mississippi Sound.
“Before Katrina hit the coast on August 29,” explained
Valerie Bauman of Associated Press, “the dolphins were moved to a
pool at the Marine Life Oceanarium that had withstood the destruction
of Hurricane Camille in 1969. Katrina destroyed that pool and pulled
the dolphins out into the Gulf of Mexico. Biologists located the
dolphins on September 10 by performing aerial surveys. They were
monitored and fed from boats, and four were rescued within days,
but the other four had left the area.”
Marine Life Aquarium owner Moby Solangi said three of the
eight dolphins “were born at the facility, and had never been wild.”
“So far, none of the media have investigated Solangi’s
background,” complained longtime dolphin freedom advocate Ric
O’Barry, who now works for One Voice, of France. O’Barry took
time out from organizing an October 8 day of international protest
against coastal dolphin massacres and captures for the exhibition
industry to elaborate.

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How to protest the Taiji dolphin killing by Ric O’Barry, One Voice/France

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

In response to our call for October 8 to be an international
day of protest at Japanese consulates and embassies against the Taiji
dolphin slaughters, we have received much correspondence suggesting
that we should either hit Japan with an all-out boycott, or just
meet quietly with Japanese officials.
Both approaches have already been repeatedly attempted, and
both were big mistakes.
Having witnessed the dolphin slaughters myself, I can report
with absolute certainty that the Japanese people are not guilty of
these crimes against nature. I saw only 26 whalers in 13 boats drive
dolphins into a cove and slaughter them. The vast majority of the
people in Taiji and surrounding villages were exceptionally friendly
toward our small group of protesters, and should not be targeted and
punished for something they are not guilty of.
The Japanese people don’t need a boycott. They need the
information that we take for granted. If they knew the truth about
the dolphin slaughter, they would help us to stop it.

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Marine mammal activist Ben White, 53, dies of abdominal cancer

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Ben White, 53, died on July 30 in
Friday Harbor, Washington, after a six-month
struggle against abdominal cancer.
White “cut open dolphin-holding nets in
Japan, scaled buildings to hang anti-fur
banners, jumped in front of naval ships in
Hawaii to stop sonar tests, and slept atop
old-growth trees to protest logging,” recalled
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter M.L. Lyke.
“In Seattle, he protested the capture of sea
lions at Ballard Locks by locking himself to the
cage used to hold them. In 1999, he marched as
head turtle at the 1999 World Trade Organization
protests [in Seattle]ŠThe turtle costumes became
the international emblem of opposition to the
WTO.”
White claimed to have informed on the Ku
Klux Klan for the FBI at age 16, while still in
high school. He joined the 1973 American Indian
Movement occupation of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs offices in Washing-ton D.C., and
traveled for a time with the Rolling Thunder
medicine show, which popularized Native American
causes and spirituality during the 1970s and
1980s. He was accused of fomenting strife within
both AIM and the Rolling Thunder entourage.

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Dog round-up & shark fin controversies bite Hong Kong Disneyland

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

HONG KONG–Hong Kong Disneyland had barely found a
face-saving way to retreat from serving sharks’ fins at weddings when
Hong Kong Dog Rescue founder Sally Anderson complained to South China
Morning Post reporter Simon Perry that Disney management had lethally
purged several dozen dogs she was trying to capture at the theme park
and offer for adoption.
“Dozens of stray dogs adopted by construction workers on the
Disney site have been rounded up and killed in the run-up to the
park’s opening in September,” Parry wrote on July 25, 2005.
“Forty-five dogs, some believed to have been used as unofficial guard
dogs on the site during construction, have been caught by government
dog catchers at Disney’s request.
“Disney last night denied the strays had ever been officially
used as guard dogs and said it had called in dog catchers because the
animals were roaming in packs and posing a threat to staff.”
Reuters sent the story worldwide.

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Japan still killing whales, but moratorium holds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

SEOUL–Japan is still killing minke, sei, Bryde’s and sperm
whales in the name of research, and will kill humpbacks this year
as well, with a total self-set “scientific” quota for the year of
935.
Norway continues killing minke whales in coastal waters, and
Iceland has resumed whaling, but all still without world approval,
as the 57th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission
ended in Ulsan, South Korea on June 24 with no major successes for
the pro-whaling faction.
“We entered the week with a strong fear that the balance of
power within the IWC would shift to a pro-whaling majority,”
summarized Whalewatch Coalition leader Philip Lymbery. His
delegation represented the Royal SPCA, Earth Island Institute,
Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society, Whale Watch, and Humane
Society International.

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