BOOKS: Seal Wars

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Seal Wars: 25 years on the front lines with the harp seal by Paul Watson
Firefly Books (U.S.) Inc. (P.O. Box 1338,
Ellicot Station, Buffalo, NY 14205), 2003.
248 pages,
paperback. $16.95.

About the only good news for harp seals
off eastern Canada this year is that Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society founder Paul Watson,
Brigitte Bardot, and others of their old
defenders are still on the job.
Watson’s first crusades on behalf of
animals, as he recounts in Seal Wars, was
against sport fishing, during his New Brunswick
boyhood. Soon afterward his mother enrolled him
in The Kindness Club, founded by the late Aida
Flemming, still active under Jane Tarn. Not
long after that, Watson befriended a beaver
family, then avenged them after they were
trapped for fur, by becoming an avid trapbuster.
Watson became aware of sealing, and was
appalled by it, in 1960–at almost the same time
then-New Brunswick SPCA cruelty inspector Brian
Davies became aware of it. But the Watson family
moved to Toronto, and Paul Watson, after high
school, went to sea. While Davies founded the
New Brunswick SPCA Save The Seals Fund, which
eventually went independent and grew into the
Inter-national Fund for Animal Welfare, Watson
helped to found Greenpeace, and won renown for
derring-do against Russian whalers.

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Palau bans shark hunting at request of divers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

KOROR, Palau–Shark-hunting of any kind is illegal within 50
nautical miles of any part of the western Pacific island nation of
Palau, effective since mid-September 2003.
The shark-hunting ban is part of a new national marine
conservation law that also “protects reef fish, sea turtles, rays,
and any marine mammal from foreign fishing,” Agence France-Press
reported.
“A bold move for a developing nation struggling to balance
generating tax revenue with environmental protection,” Agence
France-Press observed, the new law may prove difficult to enforce.
Whether Palau has enough patrol boats and aircraft to intercept
alleged violators remains to be seen.
However, the new law is a sweeping first victory for the
Micronesian Shark Foundation, formed in April 2003 by Boston
University marine biologist Philip Lobel in partnership with Fish ‘n
Fins, a Palauan firm that outfits diving expeditions and promotes
diving tourism.

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Navy agrees to restrict use of SURTASS-LFA sonar

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth D. Laporte was at
press time for the October 2003 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE expected to
ratify an agreement by the U.S. Navy that will restrict peacetime
use of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System-Low Frequency Active
(SURTASS-LFA) to protect whales.
Settling a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the Humane Society of the U.S., the pact follows a
permanent injunction issued by Laporte on August 26 against any use
of the new sonar system within a 14-million-square-mile area,
constituting 40% of the Pacific Ocean.
“Under the injunction,” said Washington Post staff writer
Marc Kaufman, “the Navy can use the new sonar–which emits
low-frequency sound waves that travel for hundreds of miles–only
off the eastern seaboard of Asia, an area of about 1.5 million
square miles. Both sides said they could not discuss the reasons for
that exception. The agreement prohibits the use of SURTASS-LFA
within 30 to 60 miles of the coastlines of the approved area,

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Dolphin captures in the Solomons

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

CANCUN, Mexico; HONORIA, Solomon Islands–One of as many
as 200 dolphins who were captured in the Solomon Islands during a
lawless interim before the July 21 arrival of Australian peacekeeping
troops reportedly died on July 28, a week after 28 of the dolphins
were flown to the Parque Nizuc swim-with complex in Cancun, Mexico.
Twenty-eight dolphins arrived, anyhow. Greenpeace claimed
33 dolphins were actually loaded for the flight.
The chartered Brazilian-owned DC-10 carrying the dolphins
took off only hours ahead of the arrival of the 2,000 Australian
soldiers, who quickly ended 18 months of civil strife. Guadalcanal
island warlord Harold Keke surrendered to the Australian forces on
August 13. Keke led a coup attempt in 2000 that led to the deaths of
about 50 people and the destruction of 15 villages along the Weather
Coast of Guadalcanal, the largest island in the Solomons archipelago.
How many dolphins will die as an indirect consequence of
Keke’s insurrection is still anyone’s guess.

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Iceland plans to start “research whaling”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

REYKJAVIK–Iceland fisheries minister Arne Mathiesen and
International Whaling Commission delegate Stefan Asmundsson announced
on August 6, 2003 that Iceland will emulate Japan by starting a
“research” whaling industry. Iceland last hunted whales in 1989.
The announcement confirmed a statement to Japanese news media
by Iceland prime minister David Oddsson in January 2003, while in
Tokyo seeking investment and foreign aid.
Japan has often economically assisted smaller nations in
quid-pro-quo for political support in trying to resume commercial
whaling and thwart further international protection of ocean species
and habitat
Soon after Asmundsson spoke, U.S. State Department
representative Philip Reeker reminded news media that the U.S. could
impose sanctions against Iceland under the Pelly Amendment to the
Fishermen’s Protective Act of 1967. The State Department again
denounced the Icelandic resumption of whaling in a separate written
statement less than 24 hours later, but the written statement did
not mention sanctions.
European Union Agriculture and Fisheries Commissioner Franz
Fischler personally took EU objections to the planned resumption of
whaling to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, said Agence
France-Presse.

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Five pilot whales regain freedom off Florida

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

MIAMI–The Florida Keys Marine Mammal Rescue Team on August
10 returned five pilot whales to the edge of the continental shelf,
12 miles offshore, where they frequently swim and feed. The four
adult female pilot whales and one yearling male were among a pod of
28 who became stranded on April 28. Eight died, six were
euthanized, and nine eventually were able to swim away, Florida
Keys Marine Mammal Rescue Team director Becky Arnold told Associated
Press. Approximately 1,000 volunteers helped to nurse back to health
the five who were judged capable of recovering in temporary
captivity. Tracking tags will allow researchers to follow them by
satellite for about eight months.

Canada cancels help for whales, dolphins caught by accident–308,000 worldwide

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2003:

CAPE BROYLE,  Newfoundland;  BERLIN,  Germany;  LIMA,
Peru–Environment Canada has ceased funding  Whale Release &
Stranding,  a nonprofit organization that frees trapped whales and
other marine mammals from fishing gear,  and the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans and Parks Canada have not picked up the slack,
Dene Moore of Canadian Press reported on June 15.
Whale release & Stranding received 55 reports of marine
mammals caught in fishing gear during 2001-2002,  director Wayne
Ledwell told Moore.  Ledwell and assistant Julie Huntington are the
only two paid employees of the group,  which was partially funded by
the Canadian Coat guard until 2000,  when Environment Canada took
over.

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“Flushing Nemo” & the soaring threat of “101 Snowy Owls”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2003:

OAKLAND,  California– “Sadly,  audiences are missing some of
the most important messages in Finding Nemo,”  says Action for
Animals founder Eric Mills,  suggesting that activists should leaflet
theatres to help ensure that what the Disney film actually says is
absorbed.
“This popular animated film has a strong vegetarian theme,”
Mills points out,  “and one of the characters says that ‘Fish don’t
belong in boxes.’  Nonetheless,  there has been a tremendous increase
in the demand for clown fish by hobby aquarists.”
“Everyone who comes in says they want Nemo,”  confirmed
Michael Diaz,  manager of Jewels of the Sea in West Palm Beach,
Florida,   to Jill Barton of Associated Press.

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Humans, whales, and the ghosts of high seas drifters

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2003:

The Whaling Season:  An Inside Account of the
Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling,  by Kieran
Mulvaney
Island Press (1718 Connecticut Ave.,  NW,  Suite
300,  Washington,  DC  20009),  2003.  349 pages,
hardcover.  $26.00.

Between Species:  Celebrating the Dolphin-Human
Bond,  edited by Toni Frohoff & Brenda Peterson
Sierra Club Books (85 Second St.,  San Francisco,
CA  94105),  2003. 361 pages,  hardcover.  $24.95.

From the title,  and from the longtime
role of author Kieran Mulvaney as the main
Greenpeace media liaison at annual meetings of
the International Whaling Commission,  one might
guess that The Whaling Season:  An Inside Account
of the Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling is an
exposé or defense of backroom politics.

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