Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The MS Explorer is sunk. It didn’t take very long for her to go down either; less than 24 hours after she hit some ice and began taking on the frigid waters of Antarctica, she had disappeared from sight.
According to the Associated Press Chilean navy vessels lost sight of the Canadian owned MS Explorer. “Our units in the area aren’t seeing anything” “The Explorer is not visible any longer.”
This isn’t the first time this year that a ship has been in distress in Antarctica. Last February the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling factory ship caught fire, and was dead in the water for 10 days. The Norwegian cruise ship MS Nordkapp ran aground off a a small island in Antartica.
The Nisshin Maru lost one crew. Fire on the whale meat canning ship was steeped in controversy and accusations of terrorism and sabotage. Luckily there was only the loss of one human soul in 3 potentially horrific incidents. All these incidents took place in 9 months leads me to question the sanity of ‘tourism’ in one of the most ecologically precarious places on the planet. 9 months is really a misrepresentation when November to April are the accessible months in the Antarctic.
The fact that ship emissions represent a major portion of global nitrogen and sulfur, both known to contribute to global climate changes, it’s makes no sense to beef up the emissions in Antarctica buy hauling in ship load after ship load of tourists compounding emissions in this vulnerable area.
Emissions aside, accidents just such as the one that befell the Explorer today are environmental disasters waiting to happen. This ship was rated 1A1 ice A with a double hull. What good did that do her?
PSMI at this time doesn’t know how much fuel and what type of fuel the MS Explorer was burning. We’ll try to find more information as the night progresses.
In the mean time…Things aren’t adding up for me.
Labels: Antarctic, Climate Change, Cruise Ships, Global Warming, MS Explorer, Nisshin Maru, Sinking
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Antarctica Takes An Environmental Bullet, the 3rd fired in 9 months. MS Explorer Sinks!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The meat from the slaughtered whales is sold to restaurants and supermarkets and the profits are used to fund future hunts. Nice work if you can get it! But, read further for the catch.
The Nisshin Maru has left Japan and is now heading towards the coast of Antarctica to begin the largest hunt for whales since 1963. Japan still uses the tired ‘Scientific’ whale hunt label to continue bringing death and destruction, mutilation and torture to the giants of the sea. But, so does Iceland. Norway on the other hand doesn’t try to mask it’s whaling behind the transparent sham of science. They just call their whaling ‘commercial’.
Let’s face it. The claim that Japan has made over the years that whaling is a Japanese tradition going back to the early 1600’s is a poor excuse. Defecating in a hole was a tradition dating back even longer. I don’t see anyone making a claim they should return to their old traditional toilet habits.
Adding insult to the injury that is about to take place, the SeaShepard is reporting that as the Nisshin Maru pulled out of port while crowds of well wishers were flying balloons with smiling whale pictures and cheering. One more nice touch was a brass band that played “Popeye the Sailor Man” on the dock!
Killing more than 1,000 whales will only serve to partially satiate some people’s desire to eat whale sandwiches at fast food restaurants. I contend that anyone that would find a whale sandwich desirable dinning fare, just might consider eating their own grandmother on a bun. Not before, however, they examined her earwax to determine her true age. Before you think I’ve gone bonkers, the examination of the whale’s earwax to determine age is one of the scientific probs said to be done by Japan.
Japan has killed 10,500 whales since the moratorium on commercial whaling took effect. Greenpeace has said Japan has close to 4.000 tons of whale meat in cold storage.
Iceland and Norway are also whaling. In 2006 Norway increased its quota from 797 to 1,052 whales in what was considered to be a political statement. Apparently that ’statement’ backfired because demand for the meat by the Norwegian public is down. Sue fisher from the Whale and Dolphin conservation Society said ‘Middlemen can’t see the meat already caught and have run out of storage space.”
Iceland still using the scientific exemption for their actions would, however, like to export their ’science’ to Japan. Japan is still the world’s largest market for whale meat. All of this flies in the face of ’science’.
Iceland announced plans to export whale meat from it’s scientific whaling program to the Faroe Islands. Apparently they’ll eat anything there too. The Faroe Islands maintain they are exempt from regulations prohibiting the importation of whale meat.
Arni Finnsson from Iceland Nature Conservation Association says “There is no market for this meat in Iceland, there is no possibility to export it to Japan; the government appears to have listened to fishermen who are blaming whales for eating all the fish.”
Photo thanks arigon.multiply
Labels: Iceland, Japan, Nisshin Maru, Norway, Whaling
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Is Japanese Whaling a sustainable industry?
