Category: Marine Animals

Catch-22 and Canadian sealing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––Atlantic Canadian
sealers are ready to smear the ice with the blood and brains of
285,000 harp and hooded seals, the biggest sealing quota in 15
years, unleashing the frustrations of yet another year idle
because they fished cod to commercial extinction, elected
politicians who let them do it, blamed seals for falling catches,
and remain representatives of the corner of Canada with the
least economic prospects, the lowest average level of education,
and the most alcoholic violence.

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A “FINAL SOLUTION” IS PROPOSED FOR WHALES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

REYKJAVIK, Iceland––Apparently hoping to lure
Iceland back into the International Whaling Commission, IWC
secretary Ray Gambrell on March 1 in Reykjavik proposed a
“final solution” to the stalemate within IWC over permitting the
resumption of commercial whaling. So-called “traditional and
cultural” whaling would be permitted within the 200-mile
Economic Exploitation Zones that nations maintain over fisheries,
while high seas whaling would remain forbidden.
According to High North Web News, published by
the pro-whaling High North Alliance, “Gambrell explained that
his optimism was based on the closed and informal IWC commissioners
meeting in Grenada in January.”
Politically, the Gambrell “final solution” might work.
It would authorize the present unilateral Norwegian commercial
whale hunt, a similar hunt off Iceland, the coastal hunt Japan
seeks to revive, and all existing and proposed aboriginal hunts,
including those of the Makah off Washington and the Maori off
New Zealand. If high seas fishers killed some whales too, then
transferred the corpses to whalers inside the 200-mile limit
before heading to port, no one need know about it.

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REVIEWS: Blue Rage

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Blue Rage
Video by Peter Brown, starring Laird Hamilton, Gerry
Lopez, Craig Kelly, and Captain Paul Watson.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
(POB 628, Venice, CA 90294), 1996. 56 minutes.
$28.25 including shipping. Californians add $1.81 sales tax.

“This video answers the
burning question, what do snowboarders,
surfers, and high seas ecological
crusaders have in common?”
says Captain Paul Watson. “We produced
it as educational outreach––a
call to arms to all young people
––especially dudes.”

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WHALES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Four baby gray whales and a
young male pygmy sperm whale washed
up on California beaches between
December 17 and February 1––a possible
warning of a depleted food chain. The
pygmy sperm whale was only the fourth to
wash up in northern California since 1969,
but the third to beach in California during
1996. The other two beached far to the
south, in the same vicinity as the grays.
Sea World San Diego reported that the
one grey whale calf it was able to rescue
was recovering, and would be returned to
the wild when able to survive. Sea World
San Diego previously rehabilitated and
returned a gray whale to the wild in 1971.

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CANADA KILLS SEALS FOR CHRISTMAS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

OTTAWA––Canadian fisheries minister
Fred Mifflin on Christmas Eve raised the
Atlantic Canadian harp sealing quota to 275,000,
up from 250,000 last spring, when 247,000 carcasses
were retrieved and thousands more washed
up on Newfoundland beaches. Although newborns,
called whitecoats, were and are off limits,
about 2,200 whitecoats were killed.
Mifflin left the quota for adult hooded
seals at 8,000, as in 1996, with juveniles, or
bluebacks, still off limits––but last year sealers
actually killed as many as 22,800 bluebacks. The
Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has
charged 101 sealers including former Canadian
Sealers Association president Mark Small with
illegally killing whitecoats and bluebacks.

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Trying to save the Florida Keys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

TALLAHASSEE––Florida governor Lawton
Chiles on January 28 approved a plan to restrict fishing and
keep large ships out of the 2,800-square-mile Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary, created by Congress in 1990 but
stalled in debate over management plans ever since. The
agreement to ban fishing in 19 specific sensitive areas completed
a pact that also includes restrictions on reckless boating,
protection of the sea grass beds that furnish habitat to
manatees, and the funding of research to find out why coral
around the Keys, forming the only living coral reef in the
Northern Hemisphere, is fast dying off.

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CANADA’S NOT THE THIRD WORLD, EH?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

VANCOUVER––Animal advocates in Canada often
liken the Canadian animal protection situation to that of the
Third World, noting scarce funding, weak laws, low public
awareness, and heavy government involvement in animal use
industries such as fur, sealing, and the production of Premarin,
based on pregnant mares’ urine.
Yet the Canadian humane dilemma is distinctly First
World, in that disagreements as to definitions of “humane” are
more often at issue than the basic idea that animals should be
treated humanely–– whatever that is.

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A kinder, gentler seal hunt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

by Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Since 1993, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society has
tried to work with the Canadian
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
to create an industry using naturally
molted baby harp seal hairs.
After four years of
research, we have discovered and
demonstrated the following results:
1. Molting hairs from harp
seals can be brushed or plucked from
three-week-old seals without causing
injury or trauma to the animals. This
observation is backed up by Dr.
David Lavigne of the University of
Guelph––one of the world’s foremost
experts on harp seals.

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