O’Barry probes Latin whale-jails

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

MARACAIBO, Venezuela––
Working undercover for the World
Society for the Protection of Animals,
Ric O’Barry of the Dolphin Project
suspected he might be in trouble with
Colombian cocaine kings, whom he
alleged had invested in a traveling
marine mammal act, but was more
concerned with Pepsi Cola than coke
when he called ANIMAL PEOPLE
to share information.
Pepsi and Polar Beer, O’Barry
said, were evidently major sponsors
of a Latin American tour by WaterLand/Mundo
Marino, of Cali, Colombia,
which O’Barry and colleague
Helene Hesselager in a November 13
report to WSPA termed “probably the
last traveling dolphin show in the
world, and clearly the most abusive.”

Krill killing

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

The last paragraph of the
official summary of the 1997
International Whaling Commission
meeting in Monaco noted that the
IWC is funding two research cruises.
“One,” the summary said, “is
aimed at providing information on
blue whales and the other at providing
information on minke, blue,
and other whales in the Southern
Ocean Sanctuary. Japan is generously
providing the vessels.”
That paragraph worries
the Sea Shepherds as much as any
other development of the meeting,
as it suggests an opening for Japan
to reassert a frequent claim that the
blue whale population is not recovering
due to competition for krill,
the microscopic shrimp that are
their staple food, from the more
abundant minke whales that Japan
wants to commercially hunt.
Krill have declined precipitously
in recent years, coinciding
wih increased ultraviolet radiation
hitting the ocean through holes
in the Antarctic ozone layer––and
with escalated Japanese use of krill
as pig feed and fertilizer.

Sea Shepherds announce Norwegian whaler sinkings

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

OSLO, Norway––The International
Whaling Commission on October 23 gave the
Makah tribe of Washington state the okay to
kill gray whales––or at any rate the Makah and
U.S. government claim it did. Seal penis prices
in Asia, boosted by Norwegian and Canadian
governmental marketing, are reportedly at
record highs. Steinar Bastesen, the most notorious
whaler and sealer of all, in October won a
seat in the Norwegian parliament.
Marine mammal defenders took grim
comfort and inspiration, however, from the
apparent sabotage sinking of one of Bastesen’s
ships, the 45-foot Morild. The Morild sank at
dockside on November 11 in Bronnoysund,
430 miles north of Oslo, just 12 days after
intruders purportedly dressed in Halloween
pirate costumes scuttled another Norwegian
whaling vessel, the Elin Toril, at Mortsun in
the Lofoten Islands, six months after a third
Norwegian whaling vessel, the Senet, was
allegedly firebombed while in drydock.

One scientist who isn’t afraid

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

VANCOUVER––Most Canadian
fisheries scientists may be intimidated when
officials blame seals for fish scarcity, but not
University of British Columbia marine mammal
research director Andrew Trites.
Best known for his metabolic
experiments with sea lions at the Vancouver
Aquarium, which involve having them swim
in tanks that work somewhat like a joggers’
treadmill, Trites was outraged on October 2
when federal Department of Fisheries and
Oceans staff shot 17 seals near the mouth of
the Puntledge River, ostensibly to protect an
endangered chinook salmon run, as well as
cutthroat trout and steelhead. Another 23
seals were to be shot later.

Fishy business whirling

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

High-profile U.S. and Canadian efforts to restore endangered western
salmon runs have their counterpart in a restoration of native trout to
Yellowstone, announced in January 1997 by Yellowstone National Park
superintendent Mike Finley.
Like the salmon restoration, the trout restoration is driven by concern
for declining biodiversity––but unlike the salmon projects, is not associated
with actual scarcity of fish. The problem gripping the Pacific Northwest
is that the combination of heavy fishing, dam-building, and silted spawning
streams caused by logging not only annihilated salmon runs, but also built
industries whose very existence conflicts with the recovery of salmon, even as
fishing also depends upon having abundant salmon of the more coveted subspecies
[the less coveted pink salmon seem to be thriving by the absence of
their bigger kin].

Seals, whales, ESA and the Willys

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

MONACO, TORONTO, WASHINGTON
D.C. ––Close to losing 25 years of
activist gains through back door politics, the
International Fund for Animal Welfare and
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society rallied
opposition to sealing off Atlantic Canada and
whaling in any form as ANIMAL PEOPLE
went to press, while Defenders of Wildlife
used the Internet to assemble resistance to an
Endangered Species Act rewrite apparently
favored by both the Bill Clinton/Albert Gore
administration and the Republican majorities
in the House and Senate.
IFAW sent out an eight-millionpiece
mailing asking members and sympathizers
to call or write Canadian authorities to
remind them that seal slaughter is as offensive
now as in 1984, when three decades of
campaigning finally brought a 12-year suspension
of the offshore phase of the killing.

GREENPEACE GETS A WHALE

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

NOME––”Alaskan Inuit give warm
welcome to Greenpeace,” the Nunatsiaq News
headlined on August 8. “Members even
helped some villagers get a bowhead whale,”
added a subhead, “as a group of Greenpeace
activists visit Yu’ik and Inupiat villages to
gather information about global warming.”
Continued Nicole M. Braem of the
Arctic Sounder, as a guest contributor to
Nunatsiaq News, “One representative
explained the group does not oppose whaling
or subsistence hunting, and that they wanted
to hear about any changes in sea ice patterns,
snowfall, and animal abundance. ‘We’re here
to stop pollution, not whaling,’ Greenpeace
campaigner Sally Schullinger explained,”
according to Braem. “A community meeting
was postponed until the next day when
Gambell whalers decided to go get a dead
bowhead several miles from the village. The
village requested assistance from Greenpeace,
and crewmen in two inflatable rafts helped an
umiak skin boat tow the whale back to shore.”

BOOKS: Turtle Bay

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Turtle Bay
by Saviour Pirotta,
art by Nilesh Mistry
Farrar, Straus & Girous (19 Union Square
West, New York, NY 10003), 1997.
28 pages, hardcover, $15.00.

Turtle Bay, about old Japanese sponge
diver who sweeps a remote beach to prepare it for
loggerhead turtle nesting, might be the best way to
explain to a child why a favorite beach (or a part of
it) is off limits, whether to help sea turtles, piping
plovers, clapper rails, or any other animals whose
needs conflict with human recreation.

Marine life notes

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Researchers at Auckland University in Wellington, New
Zealand, in mid-August announced that DNA typing of 30 samples of
whale meat bought in Japanese supermarkets found remains of humpback
and fin whales, confirming cearlier findings by conservation groups that
contraband species are being killed and sold. Neither humpbacks nor fin
whales have been killed legally since 1986, when the International Whaling
Commission moratorium on commercial whaling began. Japan did later buy
whale meat from abroad that was frozen before 1986, a Japan Fisheries official
told the New Zealand Press Association, but the most recent purchase,
of humpback meat from Iceland, was in 1991. Similar DNA findings
obtained by EarthTrust scientists were published by the peer-reviewed journal
Science in 1994, but Japan Fisheries has repeatedly challenged the data.

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