WDC Blog - From the Front Line

It seems the statements of the US National Aquarium and Merlin Entertainments against the proposed import of belugas by the Georgia Aquarium are creating quite a stir.

In the past the display industry has seemed to hold its tongue even when some may have disagreed with what colleagues in the industry were up to, but now some have the courage and the willingness to distinguish themselves as being different and in pursuit of a different vision.

Fingers crossed that their vision is a foundation for a future without live captures of whales and dolphins and eventually, even an end to all cetacean captivity.

http://timzimmermann.com/2012/11/06/aquariums-split-over-wild-beluga-import/

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/plan-to-import-beluga-whales-sparks-opposition/nS2bh/

You may have mixed opinions on the Wikileaks US cable releases, - whether they are in the public interest or just publicly interesting - a concept responsible journalists wrestle with all the time. However, there have been some 'revelations', or confirmations to some of us, of the true negotiating positions of several country delegations.

Of particular note is the backroom negotiating style of the US Government. It appears that the US, in trying to appease Japan into accepting a 'deal' that would allow for the legitimising of commercial whaling, sought to trade northern hemisphere humpback whales for Japan's compliance.

Despite being fully aware of the increased commercialisation of the Greenland hunt the US was willing to campaign for the killing of humpbacks in the northern hemisphere.

The US was desperately trying to get Iceland to reduce its self-allocated quota and was looking for issues that may engage Japan to ‘help’ deliver a deal.

The Cables report that Japan stated that there were factors outside the current ‘Future of the IWC’ [the deal] negotiations that would influence Japan's negotiating position and that the ‘First, a negative outcome in the vote at next year's [2010] IWC intersessional meeting on Greenland's proposal to catch ten humpback whales could derail the work of the Support Group. …and another rejection at the IWC plenary meeting could make the overall compromise being discussed impossible.’

The US IWC Commissioner appointed by President Obama, Ms. Medina, is reported in the cables to have said  that ‘she hopes to work out differences with the EU on Greenland's proposal on humpback whales prior to the March 2010 IWC intersessional meeting and include the issue in the overall agreement.’

Indeed, as the IWC meetings then revealed, the US played an important role in driving through the final Greenland whaling quota that included humpbacks.

What is also striking on reading the cables is that the US appears to have been mistakenly staking its negotiating position on the fact that Iceland was the only blocking player in their campaign to achieve a resumption of commercial whaling and  Wikileaks reports that the US requested of the ‘MOFA [Japanese Fisheries Agency] State Secretary Fukuyama and Fisheries Agency Deputy Director General Yamashita to press Iceland to lower its proposed quota for whaling in order to facilitate an overall agreement on whaling’.

The US negotiating position was that for a resumption of whaling to be achieved, all that was needed was for all countries ‘to take [a] reasonable approach’ - very different to their public anti-whaling position.

The US negotiations with Japan about Iceland appear to have been predicated on the argument that Japan could not absorb all the whale meat that Iceland was taking, not that the hunt was irresponsible and should stop.

Whilst we welcome the recent moves in the US that may result in the USA certifying and sanctioning Iceland, one must question why the US, which has been publicly opposed to resumption in whale meat trade, appears to have been willing to open up discussions on trade, and we have to ask, were they implicitly ‘agreeing’ to accept future trade in whale products? Indeed, the US is reported to have said that it ‘did not recommend Japan take any measures to restrict trade’.

Humpbacks, future trade, one must question what was the US was not willing to negotiate away? Read the cables and see what you think.

World Oceans Day, 8 June 2010. Eulogy for the Gulf of México. Let us now remember and celebrate the life of what was one of the most species diverse and productive corners of the world ocean: the now beleaguered Gulf of México, its brilliance long to be stained by the reality and the legacy of one of the world’s largest ever oil spills.

Supposedly now being contained on the north side of the Gulf, the spill was last compared to the size of Luxembourg but that doesn’t account for the three-dimensional penetration of the mile-plus water column.

The human addiction to oil — and corporate greed shouting out in its willingness to take extraordinary risks for profit —has much to answer for.

Of course, the Gulf itself is not dead. But sadly the world will now think of oily destruction whenever they hear “Gulf of Mexico”. How long it will take the Gulf to get back to “normal”?

For now, the bodies pile up: seabirds, turtles, fish, dolphins. The fishing boats lie rusting in the marinas. The beaches are near empty. And all over the world, the people who trusted the can’t-miss blue chip BP with their pensions and investments, will suffer, too. Even the oil workers on other rigs in the Gulf have been choking on the fumes, and many have been evacuated. Spare a thought for those species that have nowhere to go but to try to live, and sooner or later die, in the mess.

Let us now remember this sea of gold. Please remember the gold was never the oil; it was the fish, shrimp, dolphins, whales, the sea itself. This golden sea will long be tarnished.

Let this at least be a warning to those who may become similarly blinded by the promise of false gold beneath the sea, eager and willing to risk our future, and our children’s future. We can’t let it happen again.

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.

Just before Ebenezer Scrooge is left by the jovial Ghost of Christmas Present, he notices that the spirit had something hidden in the skirts of his festive robe. Perhaps unwisely he asks what it is and the ghost moves his robe to reveal two child-like but nonetheless fiendish figures. He names the girl as ‘Want’ and the boy ‘Ignorance’.

‘Are they yours?’ says Scrooge but the ghost replies ‘They are man’s!’

‘A Christmas Carole’ is Charles Dicken’s fantasy morality tale and Scrooge is given a chance to redeem himself. He becomes a better man and Tiny Tim, the crippled son of his long suffering clerk, Bob Crachit, is also given a reprieve. He will live, thanks to the new generosity of the reformed miser.

'Man', as Dicken’s called us (or humankind as we might prefer now), is at a cross roads. We can let Ignorance and Want continue to guide us (and perhaps ‘Greed’ would be a better modern word for Want), or we can wake-up to the seriousness and stupidity of our current situation and act. The time-line is brief. In fact, the wake-up and the action need to come this very next week and Copenhagen – the United Nations 15^th Climate Change Conference – is the place.

As the media goes into frenzy over this crucial meeting of the world’s nations, there will be many confusing and conflicting reports of both the issue and the meeting. As I write, the news in the UK is already dominated by a story that some scientists have allegedly misrepresented some of the key evidence about climate change. This will add wind to the argument preferred by many that human-driven climate change is neither true nor dangerous (despite all the evidence to the contrary).

To be frank I much prefer this argument too. It makes me feel a lot happier. It let’s me hope that all I hold dear, my family and friends, the whales, the dolphins, and much more besides, is going to be fine.

Sadly it is not true. And this story of misuse of evidence may even obscure what will happen in Copehagen.

I have followed the climate change issue for many years. I first wrote about the threat of climate change to cetaceans when we were still dealing in broad theories. However, I felt then that the risk for them (and us) then was too great to continue in our 'kamikaze mission’ to over-exploit the world’s resources, irrationally expand our populations, and pump climate-changing gases into the atmosphere. But I also thought at that time (some twenty years ago) that this was a slow process. I thought it was going to be more a threat to future generations. The news, however, is that things are happening fast; more than swiftly enough to threaten the current human generations as well as those yet to come.

I have no doubt that climate is changing. No doubt that we are to blame and no doubt that this is the most serious threat to all living things. Not everything is perfectly worked out yet, no one is saying this (although predictive powers are improving) and please don’t be confused with descriptions of previous periods of global warming and cooling. That’s all true, but what we are now facing is unprecedented. (This is rather like the argument that species have always gone extinct in the past and it is a perfectly natural process; also true but again the current rate of extinctions is outside any natural range and it too is human-driven.)

Dickens was a kind man. He gave the eponymous miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, a second chance and, in this fine fiction, the old man understood and acted. We are in that same position but this is no fiction. Some suggest we need to stabilize climate gases by 2015 – only five years away - and this will clearly require a major re-think in the way that we all live. The emissions of climate changing gases have to be reduced not just by a few percent, they have to be radically curtailed and this is going to cause real pain in the developed nations.

The signs for the Copehagen meeting are not good. It seems unlikely that the major polluters will agree to something that significantly handicaps their economies. However the US is now taking part at the highest level and that’s an enormous change of approach from their position in recent years.

WDCS will not be at the meeting in Copenhagen, but we will be watching closely like many others. We know how big meetings works and we will be willing the negotiators to make real progress; and willing our species to renounce the Ignorance and Greed that we have been shackled to for too long. If you want to read more about the issue click here. The Copenhagen conference also has its own website here.

Mark Simmonds, WDCS International Director of Science