Category: Marine Animals

Jailed because she spoke out for dolphins

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

CANCUN, Mexico–Dolphin defender Araceli
Dominguez, chair of Grupo Ecologista del Mayab
(GEMA), was released from jail without charges on
April 28, 2005, five days after she was
detained on a libel writ filed by Bernardo
Zambrano, owner of the Atlantida dolphinarium
and Parc Nizuc Wet N’ Wild swim-with-dolphins
attraction.
Zambrano, son of CEMEX cement company
chair Lorenzo Zambrano, claimed Dominguez
defamed him by reporting that a dolphin recently
died at one of his facilities.
Dominguez “was released in the early
morning hours, just after a representative of
the Governor of the State of Quintana Roo went
around midnight personally to the prison,”
e-mailed Ntailan Lolkoki of Ecoterra
International.
“Zambrano was forced to drop all criminal
charges against Dominguez [and co-defendants] Sara Rincon, head of the Association to Protect
Animals of Cancun, Cecilia Navarro from
Greenpeace Mexico, Ben White of the Animal
Welfare Institute, five local reporters, and
Yolanda Alaniz from Comarino,” the Ecoterra
announcement continued.

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Japan looks to South Korea for help in restarting commercial whaling

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

ULSAN, South Korea–Japanese whalers expect a home town edge
when the 57th meeting of the International Whaling Commission
convenes June 20-24 in Ulsan, South Korea.
The IWC meeting will start 10 days after the end of a 12-day
series of preliminary meetings on scientific issues.
“Ulsan is opening a $6-million whale museum this month on an
otherwise dilapidated wharf across from a shabby strip of whale
restaurants,” Los Angeles Times staff writer Barbara Demick reported
on May 2. On an adjacent lot, groundbreaking is expected soon on a
site for a whale research center, which is to include a processing
facility for whale meat.”
“Dozens of speciality restaurants along the waterfront of
South Korea’s self-proclaimed whale capital” sell whale meat, Demick
explained.
Retired whaler Son Nam Su, 69, told Demick that hunting and eating
whales is a cultural legacy of the Japanese occupation of Korea,
1910-1945, and that at peak the South Korean whaling fleet killed
about 1,000 whales per year.

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Seal hunt ends with “thin ice” incidents

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

HALIFAX, ST. JOHNS–Sealers on the Labrador Front were
expected to complete their 2005 quota of 319,500 seal pelts, the
most in 50 years, in early May. The first phase of the 2005
Atlantic Canada seal hunt, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, killed
107,000. Another 103,000 were killed along the Labrador Front by
April 18.
The Sea Shepherd flagship, the Farley Mowat, tried to
monitor the Labrador Front killing, but was pushed away from the ice
by a storm that delayed the opening of the second phase of the hunt
for three days, and was obliged to give up the pursuit on April 15.
Confused by the delay, the Boston Globe on April 12
published a fabricated article about the Labrador Front opening by
freelance Barbara Stewart. Following an extensive apology and
retraction, the Globe published a long pro-sealing commentary by
indigenous sealing industry spokespersons Kirt Ejesiak and Maureen
Flynn-Burhoe.

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Fish boycott to save seals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

NEW YORK CITY–Legal Seafoods, a 31-restaurant chain with
anchor franchises in New York City and Boston, on May 9 joined
Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park and the 168-store Whole Foods
Market chain in endorsing a boycott of Atlantic Canada seafood called
by the Humane Society of the U.S. in protest against the Atlantic
Canadian seal hunt (see page 7).
The boycott targets snow crabs, lobsters. shrimp, mussels,
and ground fish.
The Legal Seafoods announcement coincided with the arrival in
New York City of Canadian ambassador Frank McKenna, who was to make
several prominent appearances.
While HSUS is promoting the boycott through a media strategy,
Anthony Marr of Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 13 set out on a
90-day “Terminate the Seal Hunt Campaign Tour” of the western U.S.
and Canada. Pushing the boycott through personal persuasion and
petitioning, Marr said he had 35 speaking engagements already
booked, with about 20 more still being finalized.
“Carmen Crosland, age 14, president of Youth Against Animal
Abuse, will display a web page at <www.YAAAonline.org> of all the
seafood merchants” who join the boycott, Mar said. Mar will also
post the list at his own campaign web site, <www.HOPE-CARE.org>,
and welcomes pledges and inquiries about his itinerary at either
<Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org> or 604-222-1169.

Animal exhibitions in the Islamic world

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Bear-baiting

“Punjab [Pakistan] authorities have stopped an illegal bear
baiting event from going ahead for the first time in twenty years,”
World Society for the Protection of Animals publicist Jonathan Owen
announced on April 8, 2005. “The event, to have climaxed a
week-long fair at Pir Mehal in March, famed for bear baiting, was
disbanded after WSPA representatives warned police and wildlife
officials. Mehmood Ahmed, Secretary of Forests & Wildlife in Sindh
state, Pakistan, on March 7 announced at a ceremony in Hyderabad
honoring staff for successful actions against bear baiting with dogs
that his department is seeking amendments to the Sindh Wildlife
Ordinance that will ban bear baiting entirely. Mehmood Ahmed thanked
WSPA for “controlling bear baiting up to 80%,” the Pakistan Times
reported. Repres-enting WSPA, Animals’ Rights in Islam author
Fakhr-I-Abbas told the gathering that while the wild bear population
of Pakistan is in jeopardy, exhibitors of dancing bears and
promoters of bear baiting hold as many as 850 bears captive. In 2002
WSPA donated to the Pakistani government a bear sanctuary at Kund
Park in the North West Frontier province that WSPA built in 2000.

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Norwegian effort to push “trophy sealing” flops

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

OSLO–The Norwegian government opened the
2005 Norwegian sealing season to foreigners,
anticipating a trophy hunting bonanza, but “Only
17-18 foreign hunters signed on,” reported
Aftenposten on March 14, while protests against
the hunt were held outside 22 Norwegian embassies.
Pitching the hunt to tourists was not
popular with Norwegian tour promoters.
“It is completely unnecessary to provoke
world opinion with something as marginal as
tourist seal hunts,” Destination Ålesund &
Sunnmøre head of travel Terje Devol told
Aftenposten.
“If the media focus remains on the seal
hunt, we will see it in our tourist statistics,”
Norwegian Hospitality Association director Knut
Almquist told the rival newspaper Dagsavisen.

BOOKS: Keiko Speaks: Keiko’s True Story

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Keiko Speaks: Keiko’s True Story
Based On His Communication
With Bonnie Norton
by Bonnie Norton & Keiko
Animal Messenger (P.O. Box 275, Elgin, OR 97827), 2004. 195
pages, paperback. $15.00.

Bonnie Norton told ANIMAL PEOPLE that she had never heard of
the late science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton (obituary on
page 20), but she could pass for an Andre Norton character.
“In 1996 an Animal Communicator came to my riding stable and
talked with several of my horses,” Bonnie Norton opens.
Fascinated, Norton studied Animal Communication herself.
“When I realized I could help many more animals and people,”
she writes, “I sold my barn and horses so I could become a full-time
Animal Communicator.”

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Rough weather slows 2005 Canadian seal hunt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

CHARLOTTESTOWN, P.E.I.– Pack ice and
rough weather reportedly kept Gulf of St.
Lawrence sealers from killing more than 40% of
their quota of 90,000 seals, in the first phase
of the annual Atlantic Canada seal massacre, but
the 56,000 seals they didn’t kill will be added
to the Labrador Front quota.
The full 2005 quota of 319,500 seals is
the largest in 50 years–although the sealers
overkilled their quota last year, pelting
365,971 seals in all, 97% of them under three
months old.
The 2005 protest effort, including
rallies in 27 cities worldwide, was the biggest
in 22 years, but was upstaged by nature.
“The sealing vessel Sandy Beach was
abandoned 30 miles north of the Magdalen
Islands,” recited Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society founder Paul Watson from the bridge of
the Sea Shepherd Farley Mowat on March 30, as
the hunt got started. “Her crew were airlifted
by a Coast Guard helicopter. The Yankee Point
was abandoned, is listing heavily in the ice,
and will most likely sink. The crew were rescued
by the Cooper Island. The Cooper Island is now
listing heavily with 40 sealers aboard. The
icebreaker Earl Grey is en route to rescue them.
“The Horizon I was under tow by the Coast
Guard ship Amundsen when the tow line broke. The
vessel is reported abandoned,” Watson continued.
“The Jean Mathieu has called for help. Two
distress signals came from unidentified sealing
vessels. Some sealing vessels reported having
their bridge windows blown in and their
electronics damaged.”

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Indian ocean marine life less hurt by tsunami than was feared

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

COLUMBO, CHENNAI, PHUKET–Concern for marine life after the
Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 centered on sea turtles
and coral reefs.
Sea turtles, just beginning their nesting season, and usually
drowned by the thousands in trawler nets, appeared to be among the
few beneficiaries–other than fish–of the destruction of fishing
fleets and beachfront development.
Thirty olive ridley sea turtles hatched on February 16 at
Tanjung Beach on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for example, a
tsunami-struck resort area where sea turtles had not nested
successfully in more than a decade.
But U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service coral reef expert
Tom Hourigan told Paul Recer of Associated Press that reefs badly
damaged by the regional El Nino effect of 1997-1998 were likely to
have taken a further pounding.
“It is very likely that the tsunami would damage the coral
and some of the worst damage would come from debris thrown up against
the reefs,” Hourigan told Recer.
“Some entire reef ecosystems could have been buried by
sediments flushed into shallow environments,” added coral reef
division chief Russel E. Brainard of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.

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