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The CITES meeting and the recent IWC intersessional got me thinking today. What is Japan's and indeed others, overall strategy when it comes to marine species?

I was also asked today by a good friend of WDCS 'what is it that motivates Japan?'. Well in some cases it simply a Japanese custom, and I dont mean thr so-claimed custom of eating whale meat, but I mean the custom of 'dead man's shoes', or to be more correct in my language, the 'recently retired man's shoes'

However, if we wish to allocate a more sophisticated theory to the analysis, we could say that Japan, ably assisted by Iceland is in the business of rolling back years of international conventions and marine protection. Japan is systematically undermining and then gutting not just the world's fish stocks, but every marine regulatory convention that may affect its ability to buy and bully its way through the world's oceans.

If you wnat to see where whales will be in 20 years time, look no further than how the marine species fared at CITES this week.

I wish I had more convoluted and more elegant theory, but that's it. They don't agree with any form of controls on the exploitation of marine species. I could argue that they are fearful of what will happen when China and others start to fish on an industrial scale like Japan already does, and therefore they are in an oceanic land grab.

I would like to to speculate that the internal bureaucratic systems in Japan have locked them into this suicidal death plunge. But in many ways its simple. They want no fetters to hold them back, and the new deal on whaling is just that. It has no teeth, it cannot hold them to their 'promises' and simply opens the  door to them to unravel the IWC conservation measures of the last 25 years.

Continue reading "So what is Japan's long term strategy with ocean species?"

A couple of days ago, someone from Greenland involved in the whaling debate accused WDCS of being ‘food fascists’. This was in response to a news piece on Iceland and illegal exports of whale products, and was likely a result of our campaign asking for Greenland’s whaling be subject to international controls, rather than the ‘free for all’ they seem to want.  I can imagine the term “fascist” was thrown with some venom.  But rational parties campaigning for, or against, an issue should choose their words carefully.  Otherwise, the language no longer serves the cause for which one fights; it is simply becomes the rhetoric of a zealot.  
 
For most people the concept of fascism forbids openness in political systems; it does not allow for opposing views to be heard and it supports the use of violence to ensure that the single view is upheld - all concepts that WDCS abhors.  In fact, it is openness and accountability for the Greenland whaling proposal that we seek. 
 
I actually think the ‘pro-commercialization’ interests in Greenlandic whaling have a right to make their case. I just don’t agree with them.  I think Greenland’s interests are better served by pursuing a responsible Aboriginal or truly Indigenous Subsistence Whaling approach hand-in-hand with the world community through the IWC. But I also believe they have the right to make their case for anything they wish to call for. I also believe I have the right to make a case to oppose them. That’s democracy.
 

Continue reading "The Democracy of Campaigning, and the rhetoric of zealotry"

So when I wrote in "Whats in your Bacon?" I really thought that my first choice 'The Icelandic export statistics are wrong' was the most ridiculous suggestion, simply because Iceland is a rather smart and well run country when it comes to that kind of thing. Seems that Iceland is saying that someone slipped up.

Iceland claimed on Saturday that its exports to Denmark of whalemeal
(Hvalmjöl) was not whale meal and was a simple clerical error, by the fish exporter, twice, over two months apart, and was fishmeal (Fiskimjöl)- honest it was!

Continue reading "Iceland claims 'clerical error' for exports"

Whilst there is an increasing amount of evidence that whale products are not good for your health, it seems that the proponents of the whaling industry are 'blind' to the evidence. It’s a bit like the tobacco industry over the last fifty years ‘being unaware’ that cigarettes could be deleterious to ones health.

We know that in the Faroes, whilst state medical authorities have said 'don't eat cetaceans!' the population just can't stop, and some 310 animals were killed and eaten in 2009.

It would appear that baleen whales are now following toothed whales in terms of increasing concentrations of contaminants. In 1975 a study in Australia of pigs fed whale meal records ‘All the pigs fed whale products in this experiment had a concentration of mercury in their tissues greater than the health standard for human feedstuffs.’  The study in the Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry 15(74) 363 - 368 (1975) doesn’t say what the whale source was and I would assume a toothed species such as sperm whale, but it shows where the debate was going 35 years ago.

Regular readers will know that WDCS has been championing the position that the UK and other European countries as Members of the European Union should be free to vote independently rather than abstain when it comes to international environmental agreements where no consensus can be reached. 

Well having been told that the EU would bind every country to abstain on whaling, so assisting the resumption of commercial whaling if Denmark blocks consensus (Please see previous entry to see what Denmark appears to believe about whaling) we have the UK breaking ranks at the CITES meeting where the EU was unable to reach consensus on blue fin tuna.

Come on UK, that's the spirit. Stand up for our environment and what the British people want.

On a sad note the Blue fin tuna proposal to restrict trade was defeated at CITES. Opposition to the listing was led by that great bastion of marine conservation, Japan.

In the Caribbean, we hear reports that a humpback was killed by the whaler of Bequia.

In a follow up to my recent post on the issue of climate degradation I noted two features in this week's New Scientist Magazine that i thought might interest you.

Firstly, further evidence is coming to light that methane is being released from under the Arctic Ocean. Alaskan based scientists have discovered over 100 hot-spots where methane is leaking from seabed permafrost to form areas of seawater at eight times the level of expected dilution in surrounding Arctic waters. Estimates suggest that 7 million tonnnes are being released a year at the moment, but as the Arctic warms up this could accelerate, contributing to rapid climate degradation.

At the same time three US states, Texas, Louisiana and South Dakota, have told their schools that they have to teach climate change scepticism. In the land of the 'First Amendment' it appears that states can decide what science is relevant, and what is not, and dance closely with the Constitution to insist that a political view is promoted in schools. So, whilst UK schools can debate the issue, with all points of view able to be discussed by enquiring students based on the evidence they can find; in South Dakota the state legislature has decided that the science is 'unresolved' and is 'complicated and prejudiced'. The legislature bill also says that climate change debate is 'political'.

These phrases from our state governments are political in their own right and I charge that they challenge the fundamental concept of Freedom of Speech. How can our legislators, local, state, federal or inter-governmental, insist that the science is 'prejudiced' unless they have already decided it is 'prejudiced' against what they wish students and young people to believe.

I for one thought the USA was founded on the right to oppose tyranny; but the modern tyranny of thought control over our children is maybe of more concern than any British musket ever could be.

Stop telling us what to believe, and let us decide ourselves.

Our friends at Cetacean Society International and ourselves are trying to make sure that President Obama realises what the US is doing in his, and the American peoples', name at the IWC.

We are especially concerned that the US is encouraging the resumption of commercial whaling though the '' Deal". If you have not seen it, please take a look at the following video and let President Obama that we expect more of the US.

On occasions when we have talked about climate change the more skeptical of our ‘friends’ have suggested that cetaceans ought to be pretty robust to all this warming and cooling. Some have even suggested that cetaceans ‘did all right in the last ice age, so should be fine now’.

To that I say ‘poppycock’.

WDCS has note the growing impact of acidification an its potential impact on cetaceans, but a recent report has again highlighted the problem of the silent death that is creeping through our oceans.

Les Blumenthal, writing in the McClatchy Newspapers writes; ‘Far away from our casual sight, something is going wrong in our oceans.’ Off the Pacific Northwest coast of the Unites States,  areas of lower level of oxygen are alarming scientists and conservationists.

 The report notes that in some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.

Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean but in some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.



Scientists say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models.

'Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

 As ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water on the surface acts as a cap, which interferes with the natural circulation that normally allows deeper waters that are already oxygen-depleted to reach the surface. It's on the surface where ocean waters are recharged with oxygen from the air.
 
Water that's pulled up from the depths is poor in oxygen, it's rich in nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic organisms form the bottom of one of the richest ocean food chains in the world. As they die, however, they sink and start to decay. The decaying process uses oxygen, which depletes the oxygen levels even more.
'

Blumenthal reports further,  "It's a large disturbance in the ecosystem that could have huge biological changes," said Steve Bograd , an oceanographer at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Southern California.

Bottom-dwelling species could be at the greatest risk because they move slowly and might not be able to escape the lower oxygen levels. Most fish can swim out of danger. Some species, however, such as chinook salmon, may have to start swimming at shallower depths than they're used to. Whether the low oxygen zones will change salmon migration routes is unclear. 



So why are we humans so reluctant to accept something is going on? Well I suggest its not because the evidence is saying that there is not a problem. The blip of debate over the IPCC reports is just that, a blip. In a year’s time we shall see more evidence and this will be forgotten.

But the traditional environmentalists in our younger generations are also being swayed by the naysayers. Its concerning to see a report that suggests ‘Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are, for the most part, split on the issue of global warming and, on some indicators, relatively disengaged when compared to older generations.’

Is it that we do believe that man-made climate degradation is real, it’s just that by remaining skeptical to pollsters and the media, we put off having to take responsibility?

(Please note that I find using the phrase ‘climate change’ or climate warming’ can encourage a kind of positive view in some people’s minds; a view of a world of ‘gentle breezes blowing in over a Caribbean beach’ – not quite what it could really be – like a another frozen UK. Lets use a negative phrase to get people to understand what this could really mean)

Just as some people had ‘forgotten’ about whaling, and their governments have conveniently forgotten what a resumption of commercial whaling will do for whales and our oceans, - its just easier to ‘hope it will go away’ without having to do anything now.

The evidence in our oceans may be out of sight and therefore out of mind, but when these effects start to affect the cost of your fish, or mean that prey disappears for whales and dolphins and they themselves then disappear off your coastline, it may well be to late.

I for one don’t know what the absolute effects of man-made climate degradation will be. What I do know is that the possibilities are alarming, and I don’t want to gamble on those worse options happening for my children, but there again, maybe if I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears, and spin round three times, I could just ignore it…

If you have not read it yet, take a look at Richard Black's discussion entitled 'EU - bloc vote or blocked vote?'

Richard examines the EU voting system in relation to CITES and other agreements. As we experienced this first hand at the IWC meeting any clarity someone can bring to this subject is very welcome. Though having read Richard's piece, I am not sure the EU is clear about what it should be doing, either morally or legally.

Interviewed for the Orlando Sentinel, Neuroscientist Lori Marino tells of how she and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence.

Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among all ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It’s not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery, three-dimensional environment.

The article is well worth a read, especially as it references Lori Marino and Hal Whitehead, both friends of whales and WDCS