Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Monday, October 6, 2008
The International Union for Conservation of Nature updated the “Red List” which may be the world’s most respected inventory of biodiversity.
On Monday, at the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona many experts agreed that the Earth is undergoing the “first wave of mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years go.”
Aggressive, commercial fishing techniques have more than tripled the amount of fish being harvested from the worlds oceans. Trawlers and factory ships using radar and sonar have been able to find fish with nearly pin point accuracy as they prowl the oceans stalking their prey. Using nets as large as jumbo jets has led to the extinction of some intended catches, and other unintended catches.
Over the past two decades an 89 percent decline in hammerhead sharks in the Northeast Atlantic have been attributed to bycatch. The Caribbean monk seal was officially, albeit woefully late, extinct in June of this year. Though the last reported sighting of this monk seal was reportedly in 1952.
I hope I’m not dead 56 years before anyone notices I’m gone.
The seals demise is also officially attributed directly to man. Will it be too late to save the last two monk seal species? There are now estimated only 1,200 Hawaiian monk seals, and only 500 Mediterranean Monk seals inhabiting the planet.
The photo was taken May 27, 2007 of two Hawaiian monk seals. One died from drowning after being tangled and trapped in fishing lines. The other followed his friend to shore barking at people for assistance at Makua Beach on Oahu.
The IUCN estimates that 25% of the planet’s known Mammals are at risk of disappearing forever and in reality that number could be as high as 36%.
Experts say the window of opportunity to save great apes and monkeys appears to be closing far more quickly than Scientists realised.
Can Mankind be far behind?
Ocean-dwelling mammals are reportedly dying at a rate of 1,000 per DAY, victims of mile-wide fishing nets, vessel strikes, toxic waste and sound pollution.
For many decades man’s hubris has increased as the quality of life in the world around him has decreased. If mankind has believed the world was his oyster, the Planet is setting out to prove him wrong.
Photo thanks Gordon Olayvar/ Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources.
Labels: IUNC, Mass extinct, Monk seal, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Ocean Mammals, marine mammals
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Tangled up and blue. Marine mammals and primates forecasted to be the first victims of mass extinction.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Rainforests cover only 2% of the Earth’s surface, or 6% of its land mass, yet they house over half the plant and animal species on earth. They originally covered at least twice that area.
By some estimates 137 plant, animal and insect species vanish everyday from the earth. 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. Less than 1% of the treasure trove of what is available has been tested by scientists. Think of all the possible cures for disease and possible future antibiotics that are being lost daily.
Achim Steiner, executive direct of of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) says,”the world is losing the intellectual patents of nature before we even have the chance to understand or unravel them.” Stiener also believes biodiversity is linked to the phenomenon of climate change.
The loss of biodiversity in our oceans is impairing the ocean’s capacity to provide food, maintain water quality and recover from stresses.
The depths of the oceans also hold untold treasures that are unexamined, making the loss of biodiversity in the seas even more heart wrenching. What has been lost with the extinction of species such as the southern gastric brooding frog, science is able to imagine. Having only been discovered in the 1980’s it has already gone extinct and with it a possible cure for peptic ulcers from which 10’s of thousands of people suffer. We are losing species everyday in our oceans we don’t even know about.
The problem with losing species we don’t even know existed isn’t just the loss of their existence and potential benefits to the environment and mankind, but not knowing what we have lost gives some sort of creepy credence to Donald Rumsfeld’s statement:
“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Photo thanks: Science News. New fish discovered off Ambon Island, Indonesia.
Labels: Biodiversity, Donald Rumsfeld, Environment, Extinct Frogs, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, UNEP
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
The loss of biodiversity and Donald Rumsfeld; the connection is creepy!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The West Coast fishery managers put it to a vote; suffer now or maybe suffer forever. They voted on Thursday to ban salmon fishing for one year hoping a rest will allow the salmon population to recover along the Oregon and California coast.
Two years ago the salmon catch was only at 80% of normal and the Commerce Department estimated the losses then at $16 million. This year with the catch being 0% of normal the losses will be unthinkable.
The loss of the king salmon is being billed as the “catastrophic disappearance” of the famous fish.
6 years ago the Sacramento River and tributaries had more than 800,000 salmon spawning. The predictions for this coming fall are a frightening 50,000. The reason for the vanishing king salmon (chinook) could be a ’sudden lack of nutrient-rich deep ocean upwellings. The sudden lack is thought to be caused by ocean temperature changes.
The decline in the salmon isn’t something that happened overnight in spite of the sudden lack of upwelling. There can be problems in the ocean that affect the salmon populations, or problems in the rivers that do the same. This year there are problems in both and that spells catastrophic.
As gas reaches $4.00 a gallon in the U.S. a lovely salmon entree any favorite eatery could reach $40.00 a portion.
This has to be good news for the salmon aquaculture business. For the consumer trying to stay clear of Malachite Green, Ciprofloxacin and Enrofloxacin just to name a few known toxins in aqua-farmed fish this ban on salmon fishing is bad news.
The list of reasons for the down turn in salmon populations could be a foot long. For years juvenile salmon have been turning up in irrigation ditches and in some cases dead juveniles have turned up in fields that are irrigated by those ditches. The laws requiring screens that hold back young salmon have not been enforced and the regulations are not uniform.
Diseases that spread quickly through high density farmed salmon populations can spread to adjacent waters. Some salmon often escape and compromise nearby native salmon habitat.
This news release from the Pacific Fishery Management Council indicates just how bad the situation really is for the salmon population. It also indicates this news came rather suddenly after a very successful rehabilitation of the Chinook previously known as the “work horse”.
Labels: Ciprofloxacin, Enrofloxacin, Global Warming, Malachite Green, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Salmon, aquaculture, upwelling
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Salmon Season Canceled; Oregon and California take steps to protect the species.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Plastic doesn’t pollute, people pollute?
It’s no surprise that a member of the American Plastics Council was quoted in 2004 saying the reason plastic is everywhere is because it’s such a good material that does so much so well.
Plastic does do so many things so well. One of the things we are finding out it does so well is cause Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS) which has been increasing daily. Plastics that contain Phthalates can migrate into the foods they come into contact with and be ingested and absorbed into our systems.
The chemical BPA, Bisphenol A, which has been used in the manufacturing of some plastics since the 1950’s is now being shown to cause ‘gender confusion’.
BPA has been found to actually pass from generation to generation in utero. This is a topic of conversation best left to other forums, but cosider the fact that there may be less gender confusion in underdeveloped countries where less plastic has been used customarily in every aspect of life for generations.
We have now been exposed to so much plastic that we are urinating the stuff!
Why would anyone be surprised to find there is a bundle of trash, estimated to weigh 3.5 MILLION tons of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. 80% of this heap, larger than twice the size of Texas, is made up from plastic debris. Debris that is blown washed and flooded out to sea.
Tons of plastic that doesn’t find its way into land fills finds it way to the coastlines and is carried out to see into a giant vortex of currents.
Shame on you, shame on me. Shame on all of us.
We are being told at this point cleaning this mess up isn’t an option. Continuing to live as though there is no tomorrow, and letting the petroleum and plastics industry continue to dictate our futures isn’t an option.
Not anymore.
Labels: BPA, Bisphenol, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Phthalates, Plastic, Trash, Urine, ecosystems
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
3.5 MILLION tons of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean!
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The only US-Indian treaty that expressly gives a tribe the right to hunt whales as well as seals is the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. In the late 1920’s the Makah themselves suspended whaling because the population of Gray Whales had become so diminished from commercial whaling that began in the mid-ninetieth century,
The Gray Whale was placed on the federal endangered species list essentially banning the hunt for Gray Whales by anyone. The Makah’s had already stopped whaling in the 20’s so the ban had no relevant point to the tribe at that time.
When the Gray was removed from the endangered species list, in 1994, the point became one of the US federal government’s responsibility to live up to the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. As it was determined that the population of the Gray Whales was at a healthy number, a lawsuit was brought against NOAA fisheries in 1997 which led to the Makah’s being granted a quota of 5 ’strikes’ per year until 2002.
The quota of 5 was set by the ‘whaling commission’.
The Makah resumed whaling in 1998. It is widely recognized that the tribe has only taken one whale since then, which was an adult female taken in 1999. An agreement was reached that after the quota period expired in 2002 the Makah would have to obtain a waiver before a hunt. So in February 2005 the Makah did just that…The US government is ‘reviewing the Tribe’s request’.
Is it reasonable for the federal government to take more than 3 1/2 years to review the Makah request to grant or deny the waiver?
Was Saturdays strike on the Gray Whale by some members of the Makah tribe a direct result of the frustration felt by having to wait more than 43 months for the thumbs up or down from the government?
The Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr, is afraid Saturday’s killing of the Gray Whale will affect the Makah’s case to be granted their waiver, and reaffirms the tribe did not authorize the killing of the whale over the weekend. He promises to prosecute ‘those responsible’.
Of the 5 men detained and later released on bail 2 of them were participants in the legal 1999 hunt. One of the men said he wasn’t ashamed of what he had done, and he was feeling ‘kind of proud’ and that he should have done it years ago.
Brian Gorman, A spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that has taken 43 months to review the Makah request for a waiver said he does not believe Saturday’s whale killing will affect the tribe’s application.
What a sad state of affairs. The whale, now at the bottom of the sea, serving no one and 5 men facing fines of up to $20,000.00 each and a year in prison.
Photo: Museum of History and Industry
Labels: Gray Whale, Makan, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Ocean Mammals, Sea Mammals, US Coast Guard, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
The Makah’s, the Gray Whale and the Waiver…
Friday, July 13, 2007
The Gray whale that died June 3, in Metchosin after beaching himself probably died from starvation. This young guy was the 5th dead whale, 3 of which were Gray whales, to show up in the area. It was a bad month for the Gray whales.
Dr. Stephen Raverty told The Vancouver Sun he didn’t believe there was a pattern of whale deaths emerging and that it was probably a coincidence…Probably because their bodies weren’t sinking…Probably because they were showing up in more accessible places. Raverty said, “this animal is quite emaciated. It probably starved…”
Probably. I’m not a rocket scientist, I’m not a Gray whale or Grey whale expert, but how many dead gray whales or other species does it take to make a pattern? Pattern or not, one thing is certain; the sea is not a safe place for sea creatures.
A Gray whale washed up in Boundary Bay on May 17th, and a few days later another Gray whale died on the beaches of the Oregon coast.
The dead Oregon Gray whale was a female 5-10 years old. She may have starved to death too. Adding insult to injury, this poor thing was stripped of her baleen on the right side of her jaw after she died. Someone also took parts of her body and skin proving some people have no respect for the dead, let alone the living. In the USA taking marine mammal parts is a federal crime.
Biologists have speculated the emaciated Gray whales had reached their ‘carrying capacity’. Their migration back and forth from Baja California to breed and birth, to the Arctic Circle to eat, requires a huge amount of energy. They need refueling that used to come from the previously nutrient rich, shallow waters of the Chirikov Basin in the north Bering Sea.
Global Warming is having a huge impact on marine health, and the future doesn’t look rosy for the Gray whales. Loss of habitat for food sources are only one cause for alarm, there may loom an even bigger threat from the US, Canada and even Russia to the Gray whale. We’ll look at that tomorrow it’s a biggy.
Labels: Environment, Global Warming, Gray, Gray Whale, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Sea, Sea Mammals, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Lost habitat in the Sea as well as on Land make living risky. Gray Whales may be Starving!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Something strange has been sucked out of its ocean habitat from 3,000 feet under the sea.
Is it a squidopus? Is it an octosquid?
What ever ‘it’ is ‘it’ was found caught in a filter in one of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority’s deep-sea water pipes. These pipes are pumping ice-cold seawater up from 3,000 feet down for desalinated bottled seawater.
The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) is currently hosting 3 desalinazation bottled water companies, with 4 more companies slated to tap into the NELHA pipeline soon. The Koyo USA Corp., is now the largest.
The claim to fame this water has is that it’s thousands of years old and free of modern impuritites. The desalinated water is marketed as a stress reducer, a weight loss aid, skin tone enhancer and digestive aid. Wow!
Deep sea desalinated bottled water is a multi-million dollar market recently developed. Until this year the market for ‘unsweetened’ water was tasting pretty sweet, but sales of the desalinated water have fallen 5% in the first three months of this year. While the same three months of 2006 showed a mind blowing 700% increase.
The decline may not indicate a lack of takers on the seawater market, but several other countries are breaking into this latest trend in bottled drinking water.
The octosquid or squidopus was found along with three rattail fish and half a dozen satellite jellyfish, and it stayed alive for three days. The little guy is now being examined at the University of Hawaii Manoa campus.
Two years ago NELHA filters trapped a fish that had never before been seen. NELHA cleans their filters every two to three months, but a more frequent cleaning may be in order these days.
This little creature had the ability to light up or glow while trying to frighten off predators. Sadly that tactic didn’t work on the NELHA pipes. DNA testing will be done at The Ohio State University.
Great! Mankind has discovered one more way to violate one more untouched portion of the planet. Now a whole new species can look forward to being sucked out of it’s ocean habitat in a new form of ‘bycatch’!
If these undersea creatures figure out how to avoid stationary pipes sucking in water, they will have to develop another skill-set; Avoiding moving pipes.
DSH International Inc., operating as Deep Ocean Hawaii began harvesting deep-sea drinking water from a ship positioned 3.4 miles west of Ko Olina.
This may be one more ‘good idea’ that will ultimately have devastating consequences to the environment. Decades from now we may discover we unintentionally wiped out the last hope to cure cancer…It was washed out of pipe filters as bycatch.
Meanwhile, we will discover all kinds of ‘new species’.
Labels: Bottled Deep-sea Water, Desalinated, Japan, NELHA, New species, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, octosquid
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Desalinated Bottled Water is Finding New Markets and New Bycatch: Octosquid!
Friday, July 6, 2007
It would be easier to list product that don’t contain any type of phthalates. This Class of toxic chemical is being found in nearly everything that is tested for its presence.
In our environment everything from literally, from below the ground to the air we breathe, up to the clouds held in that air, contain some amount of phthalates.
Building materials, all types of flooring PVC pipes and even household dust contains phthalates. Kitchen utensils and packaging of all types of products that contact both you and your food are found in our environment.
In hospitals, besides the building materials and plastic pipes phthalates are found in blood-bags, medical tubing ans all sorts of medical equipment. This is especially disturbing when considering people in hospitals generally have compromised health situations thereby perhaps making them more susceptible to the dangers of this class of chemical.
Cosmetic products are replete with phthalates. Products such as perfumes, hair spray and nail polish. Women between the ages of 20-40 years were found to have the highest levels of phthalates of any group tested. This is especially disturbing when considering woman in that age group in the main child bearing years. Given the fact that phthalates are endocrine disruptor and estrogen stimulators; no wonder birth defects of males reproductive systems are on the rise.
Also commonly found in foods, phthalates are easily absorbed by fatty foods such as cheese and meat. Restrictions placed on plastics contain phthalates coming in contact with food were meant to reduce the exposure and absorption of these chemicals. But, these chemicals are entering food from a variety of ways, not just from being wrapped in plastics.
Phthalates are being found in food before processing, suggesting they are so prevalent in our environment there may be no way to escape them.
Vast amounts of products containing phthalates plastics such as PVC, toiletries and cosmetics are being literally washed down the drain into sewage and wastewater systems. From wastewater it then goes on to rivers, estuaries and the sea. Ocean habitat, marine mammals and everything in the middle are being affected and poisoned by runoff tainted with these chemicals.
Plastics being incinerated are distributed into the atmosphere where they are then rained down upon the oceans and land. Crops are being irrigated with water that contains phthalates and then is run through pipes that contain them. Crops are then harvested and fed to animals that we then eat that are processed in plants that use equipment that cnatinas phthalates…We are getting the picture!
There isn’t any way for me to put into words the totality of this situation, other than saying “it’s even in our urine”.
How can we protect ourselves from the ubiquitous phthalate? One government website suggests we vacuume regularly. How ridiculous!
Labels: Feminization, Nonylphenolthoxylates, Ocean Habitat, PVC, Phthalates, Plastic, Poison, Sea Mammals, Sewage, TDS, endocrine, estorgen
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Phthalates are Literally Everywhere
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The old joke ‘if you want to feel like a real woman, then wash this shirt and get me a beer’ may actually have more truth to it than we previously thought.
I don’t mean to imply men don’t do laundry. But, the constant contact with household cleaners usually does fall upon the human female. So it’s remarkable to find a connection between a class of toxic chemicals widely used in household detergents and the feminization of male fish.
This development has been studied for about the last 10 years. Nonylphenol ethoxylates, (NPE) known as estrogenic, means contact with this chemical will actually stimulate the production of estrogen.
There’s some irony! Maybe washing shirts really does make me feel more like a woman.
I don’t know if the mature male fish that carry eggs in their testes exhibit female behavior, but eggs in the reproductive system is definitely a female trait.
Canada and Europe have tighter restrictions imposed on the use of NPEs than the US.
In the US the answer to the use of these toxic class chemicals appears to be awarding certificates, maybe bronze plaques to companies that voluntarily commit to the use of safer substitutes for NPEs. How’s that for feminization? Why not a nice scrapbook page for their memory book too?
Voluntarily reducing the use of toxic chemicals is a ‘good thing’ as Martha Stewart would say. Procter & Gamble and Unilever have voluntarily substituted NPE’s with other chemicals in their products. Wal-Mart is still trying to hop on the green-train by rewarding companies it does business with that find alternatives to NPEs.
The Sierra Club thinks it’s time the EPA takes action to restrict or ban the use of this class of chemical.
Feminized or intersex fish have been found nearly everywhere. This leads me to agree with the idea that more than on estrogen stimulating, endocrine blocking chemical is being introduced into the environment and in more than one way.
Meanwhile, male salmon are loosing their urge to swim up stream, and becoming more amiable to staying home with the kids and keeping house.
More tomorrow on Phthalates, Nonylphenol ethoxylates, the Feminization of Marine life and the Human Male.
Labels: Canada, FDA, Feminization, Nonylphenol ethoxylates, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, PVC, Phthalates, Plastic, Poison, Polar Bear, Polar Bears, Salmon, Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome, USA, Wal-Mart, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Feminized Intersex Fish, Deformed Male Penis, Hermaphroditic Whales. Linking estorgen stimulating, endocrine blocking chemicals.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Overseas Shipholding Group Inc., Donates $9.2 Million to Marine Environmental Projects!
Okay, no they didn’t. Donate is the wrong word. Overseas Shipholding was fined $37million for criminal activities; $9.2 million was ordered community service payments to fund community marine environmental projects. Wilmington; Boston; Portland Maine; Los Angeles; San Francisco and Beaumont Texas all of which were harmed by the illegal dumping of waste oil by Overseas Shipholding Group Inc.
The US Coast Guard says Overseas Shipholding Group was deliberately polluting by dumping waste oils in the above ports. The Department of Justice agreed.
Let’s cut to the chase here and make a long story short. OSG’s management failed to stop this dumping after allegations were brought to them several times. They in fact failed to stop this activity even after the government started its investigation.
Acting on a tip from Canadian Officials an investigation was launched and it was discovered that Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. had offloaded more than 150,000 gallons of oil-contaminated waste in the waters between only Maine and Massachusetts. Adding insult to injury they falsified log records to cover-up their dirty deeds.
OSG company officials admitted in court that its “motive for the crimes was financial” “OSG was saving the cost of offloading waste oil in port and the time it would take to comply with the law,”
There is no way to read anything other than it was cheaper to pay any fines than it would be to comply with environmental regulations.
This tells me, the fines being brought are vastly too low. If this penalty is supposed to serve as a deterrent for other companies attempting to circumvent the law, it’s not going to work.
Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. is one of the largest publicly traded tanker firms in the world and according to William Mercer, Acting Associated Attorney General, Overseas Shipholding Group “has engaged in repeated and deliberate pollution of our oceans,”
In April 2007, the Company completed the acquisition of Heidmar lightering business from Heidmar, Inc. which is a subsidiary of ‘Morgan Stanley Capital Group, Inc. OSG (Overseas Shipholding Group) completed the acquisition of Maritrans Inc., a US Flag crude oil and petroleum product shipping company.
On August 6, 2006 OSG announced a strategic partnership with TransCanada CNG Technologies Ltd.
Are you investing in publicly traded corperations that are commiting evil acts? If while you are planning your future and your childrens future, your investments are assuring your future demise, wittingly or not, you are contributing to global warming, and distrution of ocean habitat.
Please take a hard look at your investments and see where you stand.
It’s interesting to note; OSG’s address is listed as 666 Third Ave. New York, NY.
Kick save and a beauty, you can’t make this stuff up!
Labels: Canada, Fined, Global Warming, OSG, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Overseas Shipholding Group Inc., US Coast Guard, illegal dumping, oil, oil spill, oil tanker, ports, waste oil
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
What Color is Your Money? Are you unknowingly funding lawless ‘brown pirates’ or ‘green jeannies’?
