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.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Adm. Robert F. Willard, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander appears to be in lock-step with with an administration that prefers to operate with the wool pulled over his eyes, or worse an administration that believes it can operate freely by pulling the wool over the eyes of its citizens.
In just one more example, that points to the fact George Orwell was a card-carrying-visionary, we are being asked to swallow ‘revisionist history’.
Willard has stated there is no scientific basis to believe navy sonar is having any affect on sea mammals! The U.S. navy is funding a portion of a $3 million dollar study to determine what if any affect their sonar has on the Beaked Whales, formerly around the Big Island of Hawaii. Formerly? Beaked whales were only spotted 2 times in 17 days off the Kona coast.
$3 million dollars is approximately the cost of 15 minutes…yes, 15 minutes of war in Iraq. Remarkably we are being asked to applaud a 3 million dollar study!
I challenge the twice-speak being dished out by Willard “The frustration and challenge is that we are being asked to put mitigating procedures into place, or to not operate and restrict our freedom of operations, without any foundation whatsoever,” There is a foundation, there is scientific evidence, there is solid and historic data proving military and commercial sonar does have a deleterious affect on sea mammals.
Any 5 year old, would be able to tell you he, wouldn’t make it through his preschool class wearing a blindfold.
It has long been known that whales navigate their terrain using a complicated system of sonar. Sounds are analyzed by a structure in their heads called the ‘melon’. We know for a fact that the sounds produced by whales are used to communicate as well as navigate. The water amplifies the sounds emitted by the whales and these sounds can carry for many hundreds of miles.
In 2005, after listening to the ’songs’ of the whale for 9 long years, Dr. Christopher Clark, Cornell University said, “We now have evidence that they (whales) are communicating with each other over THOUSANDS of miles of ocean….”
The whales use a ‘mental’ map of the sea beds they have charted by sonar, just in the same way ships map the unseen terrain of the sea.
The notion that navy and commercial sonar is adversely affecting all sorts of sea creatures in not a new one and in fact dates back several decades. For us to be asked to again swallow that this concept is one in its infancy is another insult.
If they say it, it must be so? Give us a collective break!
7 years ago several beaked whales washed ashore in the Bahamas. These whales were hemorrhaging blood into their skulls; they beached themselves and died. Why? Another unsolved mystery? The U.S navy was conducting exercises, at that time, in that area, using high intensity sonar!
Did the use of ‘high intensity sonar have anything to do with the injuries and deaths of those whales?
Ask a 5th grader, and save $3 million dollars.
Photo: © Frank Cippriano
Labels: Beaked Whale, Ocean Mammals, Sea, Sea Mammals, Sonar, US Navy, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Beaked Whales Being ‘Blinded’ by Sonar
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
According to a study published Monday in the National Academy of Sciences the success story of the Pacific Gray Whale seems not to have been a success at all, but a gross miscalculation.
So it seems the Gray Whale should never have been removed from the endangered species list. As we have written about before the Gray Whale really is being starved out of existence. Global warming is taking its toll on the whale’s food supply.
The study concludes the original population of the Pacific Gray Whale was probably underestimated and that instead of 20,000 to 30,000 Gray Whales there may have closer to 100,000 whales.
When scientists figured that a population of 20,000 was close to a normal count they removed it from the endangered species list in 1994. They were wrong when in 1999-2000 the Pacific Gray Whales began dying in their assumption it was nature thinning the herd.
Now we have 80,000 Pacific Gray Whales unaccounted for, Jeff Breiwick, from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle is left wondering what happened to the 80,000 gray whales mistakenly unaccounted for in the historic population numbers.
Breiwick says computer models and historic documents used to estimate the level of whale hunting since the 1600’s would mean about 3 whales a day had been killed for 4 centuries. He wants to know where the evidence of that mortality can be found.
Everyone does agree that the new estimates on past populations indicate something very bad is happening now.
Maybe this new research was one reason for the hold up on granting the Whaling waiver to the Makah tribe!
Labels: Global Warming, Gray Whale, Grey Whale, Makah, Ocean Mammals, Sea Mammals
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Gray Whale Update!
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…
Monday, September 10, 2007
As is common when stories break there are several conflicting sides to this one. More information coming points to the fact that the Gray Whale that was shot by Makah tribe members was in fact intangled in fishing lines at the time it was shot.
As explained at the Makah website, modern day hunting is done with a spear from a 36 foot canoe.which is carved from a single cedar log. A harpooner in the bow of the canoe uses a steel harpoon mounted on a wooden shaft about 7 feet long. This is connected by ropes to buoys and then to the canoe. A rifleman using a .50 caliber rifle is then expected to ‘dispatch’, immediately kill, the whale by shooting it in the back or base of the skull.
Clearly the manner in which the Makah’s have outlined, as their methods for taking a whale, are the same reasons conflicting reports are being recounted by witness’s.
In aerial photos taken of this incident there are clearly orange buoys strings behind the injured Gray Whale, also a harpoon is clearly visible. Are these buoys in fact those that would be connected to the actual harpoon, and not a fishing net?
Also are the reports of the whale being shot with a .50 caliber machine gun in fact in error and did the shots come from the Makah chaseboat and a .50 caliber rifle?
In any case reports are that the whale lived an agonizing 10 hours after being shot before dying. Was the slow death of the Gray Whale due to the interrupted hunt by the Coast Guard? All is speculation at this point, but one thing is clear; the whale should never have been allowed by any party to suffer a 10 hour death.
One thing is clear: This is a bad deal for all involved.
Photo Credit: Barney Burke/Special to the P-I
Labels: Gray, Gray Whale, Grey Whale, Makah, Ocean, Ocean Mammals, Sea Mammals, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Conflicting Stories Over Makah Tribe and Saturday’s Killing of Gray Whale
Sunday, September 9, 2007
The AP is reporting that a Gray Whale had been shot by a machine gun near the western tip of Washington State.
The Coast Guard believes members of the Makah tribe shot and harpooned the Gray Whale on Saturday morning. The Whale after having been attacked did not die and is now limping its wounded way back out to sea.
As the Makah’s are happy to tell you at their own website “Whaling has been one of our traditions for over 1,500 years and is a right secured to us by treaty…”
The Makah’s also believe that many of their health problems come from the lack of Sea Mammal Meat in their diet. Give the Makah the genetic link to ‘needing blubber’ in their diet, but take the right to their 50-caliber machine guns away from them if this story turns out to be true.
The Makah are allowed to take 5 Gray Whales per year as part of their ‘cultural and subsistence rights’. I’m no expert on Makah Culture, but I’ll guarantee 1.500 years ago the brave hunters of the Makah Tribe were NOT using machine guns to bring in their hunt.
It seems to me the term ‘culture’ needs to be revisited and revisited in a HUGE way!
The Makah website is also happy to point out in their FAQ section “We will conduct it (the hunt) in a way that is as consistent as possible with our traditional manner of whale hunting, but also with the requirement of the International Whaling Commission and the Marine Mammal Protection Act that the killing of the whale be done in as humane a manner as possible, and at the same time with as much safety as possible for our hunters.”
Sadly many people have been trying to turn up the ‘RACE CARD’ when it comes to the Makah and whaling. The problem with stirring a pot of waste until it comes to a boil is that more often than not, that waste will splatter back upon the one that is stirring the pot. Cruelty is not owned by any particular Race and should be chided when and where ever it is found.
We can only hope that the initial reports of this incident are in error.
Just as shooting fish in a barrel is part of no ones culture, machine gunning down and wounding an animal without killing it is one of the cruelest acts imaginable and hopefully not a part of any ones culture. We hope this act was committed by ’street gangs running rampant’ in the waters off the coast of Washington State.
Labels: Gray, Gray Whale, Grey Whale, Makah, Ocean, Ocean Mammals, Sea Mammals, US Coast Guard, Washington State, accident at sea
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
California Gray Whale Shot by Machine Gun?
