Category: Marine Animals

Indonesian net isn’t drifting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

As Indonesia prepared a successful
bid to host the 1999 meeting of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, Bill Rossiter of
Cetacean Society International forwarded
reports from scuba diver Steve Morris and
marine mammologist Peter Rudolph,
indicating “military and governmental
authorities” had allowed Taiwanese fishers
to suspend two huge nylon nets from
pylons in the Lembeh Strait, just offshore
from the Tangkoko Nature Reserve.
Paraphrasing Morris, Rossiter
said the nets went up in March 1996, and
in their first year caught 1,424 manta rays,
18 whale sharks, 312 other sharks, four
minke whales, 326 dolphins, 577 pilot
whales, 789 marlin, 84 sea turtles, and
nine dugong.

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Paul and the pirate

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

BREMERHAVEN––A pirate whaler is at large in the central
Atlantic, Captain Paul Watson is out of jail, and the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society has a ship and crew at Bremerhaven, Germany, almost
ready to sail. “We don’t know if we’ll be able to find it,” Watson told ANIMAL
PEOPLE from Washington D.C., after addressing the Animal Rights
‘97 conference and attending a banquet in honor of Animal Rights
International founder Henry Spira, “but we’re going that way anyway to chase
some driftnetters, and we might as well have a look.”
The Portuguese Navy was reportedly already looking with a warship––but
the last time there were pirate whalers in the region, the Portuguese
Navy protected them. The most notorious was the S i e r r a, operating from
Lisbon with impunity. On July 16, 1979, Watson, Peter Woof, and Jerry
Doran overtook the Sierra with the original Sea Shepherd vessel, then rammed
her twice as she ran for the protection of a Portuguese destroyer. The destroyer
apprehended the Sea Shepherd after a high seas chase, but Watson, Woof,
and Doran all eventually escaped, while inspired Sea Shepherd sympathizers
sank the damaged Sierra and three other whalers. The rest left the Atlantic.

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Scientists say Canada falsified data

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

NEWFOUNDLAND– – Memorial
University biologist Edward Miller, host of a
February 1997 workshop on how harp seals
affect the Atlantic Canada cod fisheries,
charged on June 24 that one of the four participants
from the Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans had privately disclosed
data indicating that as many as 500,000 seals
were killed in the 1996 offshore hunt, nearly
double the official count of 262,402.
Twenty-nine scientists from seven nations
took part in the workshop.
“DFO personnel found several
sealing vessels carrying the same number of
male seal genitals as pelts,” Charles Enman
of the Ottawa Citizen reported. “But the
number of pelts should have been roughly
double the number of male genitals, since
male and female seals are impossible to distinguish
before they are shot. This suggested
that sealers were collecting genitals and pelts
from the males, but discarding entire female
carcasses, pelts and all,” as there is little
market for pelts and reporting kills of females
would just deplete the sealing quota faster.

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Secrets of the Forbidden Island

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

NIIHAU, Hawaii––Conflict of
interest questions raised by the recent designation
of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback
Whale National Marine Sanctuary may go
well beyond the competing mandates of different
government agencies. The well-connected
heirs of Eliza Sinclair and their designated
agents could potentially make millions
of dollars through the lease or sale of the
island of Niihau to the U.S. Navy for inclusion
in the Pacific Missile Range––after
keeping it out of both the whale sanctuary
and, earlier, the Northwestern Hawaiian
Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which
includes all the islands north of Niihau.

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Watson awaits verdict on Norwegian extradition attempt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Judge Van der Pijl of the
Haarlem District Court in the Netherlands on May 26 rejected
Norway’s April 18 request to extradite Captain Paul
Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
to face charges of alleged “reckless navigation” and “illegal
entry into Norwegian waters” during a July 1994 clash with
the Norwegian patrol ship Andennes during which the
Andennes rammed Watson’s vessel, the Whales Forever.
Watson remained at the Lelystad prison pending a
ruling on a further charge of allegedly sending a false distress
signal. A ruling is due by June 10.
“Even if he’s found guilty of that charge,” Sea
Shepherd international director of operations Lisa Distefano
said, “the public will be reminded that Norwegian commandos
dropped four depth charges, fired on our boat with cannon,
and sheared the bow off our ship by ramming us.”

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River dolphin capture plans

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

DALLAS––Rumors flying since November
1996 that major aquariums are conspiring to capture
Amazon river dolphins, boto for short, were partially
confirmed by the mid-April disclosure that the Dallas
World Aquarium, not associated with the Dallas Zoo
and Aquarium and not accredited by the Alliance of
Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, has applied to
the National Marine Fisheries Service to import four
boto for display.
Representatives of at least 13 groups from the
U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Columbia, and Finland
had protested to NMFS and the aquarium itself by April
21––but as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press on May
28, the application had yet to be formally accepted for
publication, after which it will go through a 30-day
public comment period before NMFS announces
approval or rejection. NMFS spokesperson Catherine
Anderson said the application was “under review” to see
if it was complete, and that it would be released for
comment “possibly within the next few weeks.”

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SEALS AND SEA LIONS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Stellar sea lions in the Bering Sea and Gulf
of Alaska, officially threatened since 1990, drew U.S.
Endangered Species Act protection on May 1, after
declining by 85% in some waters over the past 30 years,
including an 18% decline since 1994. Gulf of Alaska
Stellar sea lion pup counts fell 40% between 1991 and
1994. The Stellar sea lions of southern Alaska,
Oregon, and northern California were not included in
the uplisting, as their numbers are slightly up.
Thirty-six members of the last surviving
Mediterranean monk seal colony washed up along the
coasts of Western Sahara and Mauritania between May
19 and May 24, apparent victims of toxic red tides.
The Mediterranean monk seal population may be as low
as 220 individuals in the Cap Blanc Peninsula colony,
plus scattered others living outside a colony structure.

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Sealing doesn’t pacify Canadian fishers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––The final
toll isn’t in yet from the 1997 Atlantic Canada seal
hunt, believed to be near the quota of 275,000, but the
only evident protest as it ended came from unemployed
fishers, whose militancy escalated with a May 12 occupation
of Canadian fisheries minister Fred Mifflin’s
office, seeking longer payments for loss of fishing privileges,
suspended since 1993 due to depleted stocks.
Moving to quell unrest on the eve of a federal
election, Mifflin on May 18 opened an experimental
commercial cod season in Placentia Bay and the northern
Gulf of St. Lawrence, against the advice of fisheries
biologists. The move was unlikely to win him as
much favor as his predecessor Brian Tobin curried by
reopening the seal hunt in 1995, just before resigning
to successfully run for premier of Newfoundland: more
than 5,000 fishers exhausted the 16,000-metric-ton limit
within four days.

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ODD BODKIN––HE SEEKS TO KILL SEA OTTERS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

ANCHORAGE––An “odd bodkin,” used in witchcraft
trials, was a telescoping needle used to prick the accused
without drawing blood, thereby assuring a guilty verdict.
Friends of Animals special investigator Carroll Cox,
formerly of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thinks the oddest
bodkin he’s seen lately was the application seeking to kill
sea otters that National Biological Service sea otter research
project leader James L. Bodkin of the Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage submitted to the USFWS on March 17. Bodkin
applied to shoot up to 20 endangered sea otters to recover surgically
implanted time depth recorders (TDRs) and VHF transmitters,
just 31 days after getting USFWS permission to capture
and implant the devices in up to 100 sea otters on the proviso
that none would be intentionally killed or lastingly injured.

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