MARINE MAMMAL NOTES

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

The U.S. Navy plans to shut down

14 of its 18 Sound Surveillance System

(Sosus) underwater listening posts, perma-

nently disabling much of a $16 billion network

of more than 1,000 microphones linked by

30,000 miles of seabed cables. The Sosus

budget has been cut from $335 million in fis-

cal year 1991 to just $60 million for fiscal year

1995; staffing is to drop from 2,500 in 1993 to

750 in 1996. Set up 40 years ago to monitor

Soviet submarines, the system was used in

1992-1993 to track whale migrations––and

proved sensitive enough to follow one blue

whale for 1,700 miles. Hoping to keep using

Sosus to help check compliance with interna-

tional fishing and whaling treaties, Commerce

Secretary Ron Brown on May 17 asked the

Defense Department to keep what remains of

Sosus intact, pending completion of a joint

study into retaining it via interdepartmental

cost-sharing. However, The New York Times

reported on June 12, a National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration internal memo

indicates NOAA is not willing to contribute to

the upkeep costs.

Endangered Species Act package includes wolves for Yellowstone

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Fish-

eries and Wildlife subcommittee of the U.S.

Senate Environment and Public Works

Committee opened discussion of reauthorizing

the Endangered Species Act on June 15 amid

a flurry of actions by the Clinton administra-

tion designed to mitigate objections to the

ESA from landowners while convincing envi-

ronmentalists that the key goals of the act will

not be yielded for political advantage.

Most notably, Interior Secretary

Bruce Babbitt announced June 14 that effec-

tive upon publication of new ESA regulations

in the Federal Register, it will institute peer

review of species listing and recovery deci-

sions by panels of three independent scien-

tists; produce multispecies listings and recov-

ery plans for species sharing the same ecosys-

tem, to expedite the regulatory process; pub-

lish land use guidelines spelling out what is

and isn’t allowed in the habitat of each new

species listed; and most symbolically impor-

tant, add landowners and business representa-

tives to endangered species recovery planning

teams. The latter comes close to building into

the listing process the cost/benefit analysis

that the George Bush administration argued

should be part of endangered species decision-

making back when the ESA first came up for

renewal in 1992.

Fish wars erupt worldwide

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Fishing vessels don’t fly the Jolly Roger, but fish piracy is increasing from the

Grand Banks to the Bay of Bengal, where crackdowns are underway. Related violence is up

as well. Malaysian marine fisheries head Abdul Hamid Syukor on May 18 disclosed the

seizure of a rocket launcher, five assault rifles, and 600 rounds of ammo from two

Vietnamese trawlers allegedly caught in the act of fish-poaching. The Russian news service

Itar-Tass reported June 5 that a Russian patrol boat “was forced to open warning fire” just

after midnight on June 4 to drive six Japanese vessels out of the Kunashir straits.

Norwegian coast guard ships on June 15 cut the nets of four Icelandic trawlers they caught

fishing in Artic waters and fired a warning shot to keep three others away. One Icelandic

captain claimed the Norwegians tried to ram his boat. Norwegian newspapers predicted an

imminent cod war. On June 18, meanwhile, a French destroyer broke up a net-cutting fight

among several dozen French and Spanish trawlers off the Azores. Violence is also close to

the surface on the Caspian sea, where caviar poachers affiliated with organized crime fight

with the fishing fleets of five nations for the last of the once abundant beluga sturgeon.

Whales for missiles: SANCTUARY CREATED––BUT WHALING GETS THE GO-AHEAD TOO

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, and WASH-

INGTON D.C.––As whale defenders cheered the May 26 cre-

ation of the Southern Whale Sanctuary around Antarctica, the

International Whaling Commission on May 27 unanimously

approved a U.S. motion to provisionally accept the Revised

Management Plan, a formula for setting renewed commercial

whaling quotas. Mexico, Ireland, and India voiced reserva-

tions but did not formally oppose the consensus.

The Southern Whale Sanctuary starts at the 40th par-

allel south latitude, dipping to the 55th parallel around the

lower tip of South America. It connects with the extant Indian

Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Although the IWC has no policing

power, the sanctuary designation means that whaling is per-

manently illegal in approximately half of the world’s waters,

protecting––on paper––about 80% of the surviving baleen

whales, an estimated 80% of the time.

GATT panel says U.S. can’t protect dolphins

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

On May 23, one week before the U.S.

Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibition on the

import of tuna netted “on dolphin” took full effect,

a General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs panel

ruled for the second time that the prohibition vio-

lates GATT because GATT does not allow trade

bans based on commodity production methods.

As in 1991, the U.S. ignored the GATT

ruling, bringing the ban on non-dolphin-safe tuna

into place as scheduled on June 1. The previous

ruling was brought on behalf of Mexico, which

did not seek enforcement to avoid jeopardizing the

North American Free Trade Agreement, then

before Congress for approval. The May 23 ruling

was brought on behalf of the European Union,

and was slightly more favorable than the 1991 rul-

ing in that it did recognize––in theory, if not in

practice––the legitimacy of national attempts to

mandate international environmental protection.

COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Activism

The U.S. Supreme Court on

June 13 upheld federal court and Court

of Appeals rulings that communities

cannot consititutionally ban the display

of political signs on citizens’ own prop-

erty. Issued on behalf of anti-Persian Gulf

War protester Margaret Gilleo, of Ladue,

Missouri, who is now a Congressional

candidate, the ruling applies as well to

people who have been ordered to cease

displaying signs on behalf of animals.

Friends of Animals in early

June won a judgement against the State

of Alaska for attorney’s fees incurred in

defending itself against governor Walter

Hickel’s failed attempt to sue FoA for libel.

The Hickel suit was filed in June 1993 in

an apparent attempt to prevent FoA from

further publicizing the Alaskan plan to kill

wolves in order to make more moose and

caribou available to hunters.

BOOKS: New wildlife titles

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

The Zoo Book, by Allen W. Nyhuis. Carousel

Press (POB 6061, Albany, CA 94706-0061), 1994. 288

pages, 79 photos. $14.95 paperback.

Exhaustive but not definitive, The Zoo Book will give

zoogoers a general idea of what to expect at approximately 100

institutions, including 53 major U.S. zoos plus many aquariums,

foreign zoos, and other venues for observing captive wildlife.

Assessing each zoo from a tourist’s perspective, The Zoo Book

unfortunately gives good ratings to some whose animal holding

conditions and programs for the benefit of wildlife are poor to

mediocre. It also overlooks most small zoos. This justly penal-

izes the notorious roadside zoos, but may also tend to steer visi-

tors away from some outstanding small zoos, such as the

revamped collection at Watertown, New York, where a few

REVIEWS: North Atlantic Humpback Whales

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

N o rth Atlantic Humpback Whales, recorded by Paul

Knapp Jr. Compass Recordings (POB 8173, Bridgeport, CT

06605), 1992. $10.00.

As the do-wop chorus behind Paul Winter, Mannfred Mann,

Country Joe and others, whales have a CV comparable to that of the little-

known Diana Love, who sang on even more hit albums than the Beatles

before getting a star billing in her 29th year of rock-and-roll. Paul Knapp

Jr., an active member of Cetacean Society International, rectifies the

musical injustice to whales with his tape North Atlantic Humpback Whales.

The whales sing uninterrupted and unspliced on side A, picking up a back-

ground chorus of popping and crackling pistol shrimp on side B.

Birds

July 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Bald eagle recovery in New

York and New Jersey reached milestones

this spring, as the former had 24 nesting

pairs and the latter five, up from one

apiece when DDT was banned in 1972.

Before the introduction of DDT, which

built up in the food chain and caused the

females to lay brittle eggs, New York had

75 pairs; New Jersey had 20 to 25. The

current population are descended from 198

eagles imported from Alaska between

1976 and 1988, plus 60 from Manitoba,

who were released between 1983 and

1988. Of the original 198, 32 are known

dead––half of them shot by vandals––and

another 32 are known to have reached

maturity and paired at least once. Eagles

from that group have now settled in seven

states. Curiously, half of the pairs who

have nested within New York state have

chosen trees that were documented nesting

sites around the end of the 19th century.

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