Marine Life
Whale Wars, at Sea and on Land: Is the U.S. Set to Support Commercial Whaling?
Published February 09, 2009 @ 01:35PM PT
Whales, whales, and more whales in the news:
- From NRDC: The Navy’s An Equal Opportunity Deployer: Deadly Sonar Training Slated to Span Both East and West Coasts
- From Sea Shepherd: Response to the Media Release from the Institute for Cetacean Research and Sea Shepherd Returns From the Whale Wars (after being blasted with high-powered water cannons and a disorienting noise weapon with the potential to cause permanent hearing damage)
- And finally, the Animal Welfare Institute today sent out a disturbing e-mail alert.
Last year, we alerted you to the negotiations taking place behind closed doors over a whaling deal, with the U.S. front and center of the discussions. The “fruit” of the negotiations is a document that was released last Monday. Civil society is finally able to see that, as expected, a resumption of commercial whaling is part of this deal. . . .
The compromise, which is being circulated ahead of a special IWC meeting in March, is the result of the U.S. and others bowing to pressure from Japan, Norway and Iceland – the last three commercial whaling nations – and their IWC allies. . . .
A Deadly Deal for Whales
- The compromise would lift the two-decades-long commercial whaling moratorium that has saved the lives of many thousands of whales and has allowed whale populations to start to recover.
- Since the demand for whale meat is declining, the whaling nations have resorted to stockpiling it. In Japan’s case, the government is using the excess meat in school meal programs. Last year, Iceland and Norway, with no significant domestic market for whale meat, exported whale meat to Japan in violation of the intent of an international treaty that bans trade in whale meat.
- The current growing financial crisis has directly impacted Japan and Iceland, and with the whaling countries feeling the economic pinch, they are now vulnerable to pressure to stop whaling once and for all.
- Commercial whaling is an inherently cruel, outdated and unnecessary practice. Except for true aboriginal subsistence needs, there is no part of a whale that cannot be satisfactorily substituted with non-lethal alternatives. Whales are nowadays worth more alive than dead.
- Whales face greater threats today than ever before from climate change, overfishing of prey species, pollution, and other human-caused threats. The U.S. should be working to turn the IWC into a whale conservation body, not taking it back to the dark days of mass whale slaughter.
More Whales Will Be Killed, Not Less
Hogarth justifies his capitulation to whalers by claiming that it would reduce the number of whales being killed, and insisting that the moratorium would remain intact. This is not true.
- The compromise does not address the existing loopholes in the IWC rules that allow the whaling nations to kill thousands of whales every year allegedly in the name of “science.”
- The deal does not address the international trade in whale meat, which leaves the door open for any reduction in the number of whales killed in the Antarctic to be made up for by whales killed by Icelandic and Norwegian whalers with the meat sold to Japan.
- The compromise does not address whales targeted by Norway and Iceland, nor does it preclude other nations from whaling. In fact, the compromise may act as an incentive to other nations to begin whaling commercially.
- The package is non-binding and therefore unenforceable. Japan has a poor record of fisheries management, and so cannot be relied upon to self-regulate.
- Coastal whaling and “scientific” whaling are commercial whaling, because the resulting meat is sold. IWC approval of coastal whaling would overturn the moratorium.
For more details, see the full text of the alert. And keep an eye out for an action here at Change.org on this issue. I'll come back and update this post with a link when it's available.
Update: That action has now been created; see this post for more details.
So You Want to Be a Part of the Food Chain?
Published January 08, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
On Tuesday, when discussing the Florida incident in which a 663-pound hammerhead shark was killed ("A Celebrated Death and Why There's No Seafood in a Shark"), I mentioned that I now wanted to discuss something related here. If you haven't read the first post yet, go do that now, so that we're all on the same page, with the same information, as we move forward.
The MSNBC journalist who brought us this story, after reducing the shark to nothing but fins and "seafood," even went so far as to say what surely many said about this killing--that "it's a good thing that this one's out of the water too; Valusia County leads the country in the number of shark bites per year." Yes, it's best that we went into this animal's habitat and killed him when we didn't need to because there is an ever-so-slight chance that otherwise, when someone else entered into his habitat without killing tools, he might mistake that person for prey. (And the chance that this ever would have happened really is slight, by the way; hammerhead shark attacks are incredibly rare. The shark bites cited aren't results of hammerhead encounters.)
Shark attacks are awful. They are the stuff of nightmares. And my heart aches for every person who has survived one and for every family who has lost a loved one to a shark attack. But do I blame the sharks? No.
We cannot knowingly take the risk of entering the natural habitats of other animals and then demonize the animals who do only what they are naturally supposed to do in those habitats. We cannot put ourselves in such situations and then use the tragedies-for-humans that result as an excuse to go out and kill these animals without need or reason. When nonhuman animals attack humans, they don't do it for sport; they don't do it so that they can have our bodies hung on a tree or an underwater cave wall. They kill for food and in defense of themselves.
So it's interesting that we congratulate our own kind for going out into the waters (or forests or mountains) and killing these animals unnecessarily for fun, profit, and food--and for doing so with killing tools that make the playing field anything but fair--but then we cry foul when one of those same animals does what he or she is intended by nature to do, what he or she must do to survive: hunt and defend.
We justify our killing and eating of all animals with references to the food chain but then want to place ourselves outside of it. A mountain lion attacks and eats a human? Well then, we have the right--nay, the duty!--to kill any suspected mountain lions until the one whose stomach contains human body parts is found. A bear attacks a human? Well then, it's time for a state to open or increase hunting on those damn vicious bears. One rare pig or bull, after great abuse and a time of unbearable confinement and isolation that would make anyone go mad, turns on a human exploiter, and it's just proof once again that we are civilized, and they are not.
We commandeer and invade their habitats because we are humans, and we have decided it is our human right to do whatever we want with land and fellow animal alike. We kill and eat both free and domesticated nonhuman animals because we are humans, and it is our right as members of the food chain to kill and eat whatever and whomever we can. But when we become part of the food chain against our will, we insist we are suddenly outside it, and those animals who would dare try to drag us into it are savage, immoral, evil beasts.
And this thinking makes no sense. If you think you have the right to eat any nonhuman animal you can catch and kill, you must grant that any nonhuman animal who can catch you has the right to kill and eat you too. If your justification for killing and eating animals is that it's all a part of the cycle of life, I must assume that you would accept large free-roaming carnivores coming into your cities and neighborhoods and hunting you too.
A Celebrated Death and Why There's No Seafood in a Shark
Published January 06, 2009 @ 02:53PM PT
I spent some time catching up on the Huffington Post's recent animal stories this afternoon and came away both heartsick and fuming (a rare state for me, I know).
Did you hear about the 663-pound hammerhead who was caught and killed off the coast of Florida last month? If so, forgive me for repeating the story; I hadn't heard until just today. Commercial fishermen (read: profiteers from the destruction of the oceans and the mass, indiscriminate killing of its inhabitants) dragged from the ocean a stunning, magnificent, 663-pound, 12-foot hammerhead shark. I don't know the exact details of how they caught and killed him (though I can guess), but what I do know is that it was a needless, senseless killing. What I do know is that humans' response to it--the media's response especially--was unfortunate and wrong. Because embedding the video isn't working out so well for me, go watch it at Huffington Post and then come back here for the discussion. Go on--I'll wait.
. . .
OK, now let's deconstruct some of what the MSNBC reporter had to say. First, "the hammerhead is not known for its seafood, but its fins are valuable." Wow. At least we're not pretending we think this animal has any intrinsic value beyond the money we can make off killing him and slicing him into pieces. At least we're not pretending to care that he had a life once, that he had thoughts, that he had relationships with others of his kind, and that he suffered a cruel, premature death for no reason. It's quite clear that his life was worth only what parts of his body can now be sold for, that his life was meaningless and his death merely a matter of profit and pride-in-the-kill.
But you know, the last time I checked, neither hammerhead sharks nor any other fish species were made of "seafood." The hammerhead couldn't possibly be "known for its seafood" because sharks don't have any seafood in them. Fins? Check. Heart? Check. Eyes? Check. Brain? Check. Seafood? Where exactly in a shark's anatomy is that? "Seafood" is a human word for the flesh of a dead animal humans intend to eat. "Seafood" is not anything that belongs to, or is found in, an animal.
But as this shark's lifeless body was hoisted into the air by a forklift in the news video, with passersby gleefully looking on, the reporter couldn't even give this animal the respect of acknowledging that this scene she was narrating still featured a complete, recently living being--even before his "valuable" fins were sliced off and his body gutted so that someone could stuff his corpse and hang it on a wall, she was already referring to him as nothing more than "seafood," nothing more than the dollars for which his body parts would be sold.
And that is so very sad.
This story, including some other remarks from the reporter, leads me to want to talk about something else involving our attitude toward wild animals too, carnivorous wild animals in particular; keep an eye out for that post tomorrow.
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Update: That promised post appears here.
Supreme Court Chooses Navy Over Whales
Published November 12, 2008 @ 10:12AM PT
Everyone together now for a big, collective "What the hell?!"
Remember this post: The Whales vs. the Navy at the Supreme Court? Well, the decision is in. And it stinks. Like what, you ask? Like a Supreme Court with two too many Bush appointees, for one thing.
AP (via SFGate.com):
The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast. . . .
The overall public interest tips "strongly in favor of the Navy," Roberts wrote. He said the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals.
In the Supreme Court hearing, the majority opinion written by Justice Roberts stated that these federal courts [who had restricted sonar to protect the whales] abused their discretionary power and felt Navy operations were more important than marine mammal health.
Treehugger: "Whales 0, Navy 1"
San Francisco Chronicle: "Court rules for Navy in dispute over sonar, whales"
Whale Wars on Animal Planet--Tonight!
Published November 07, 2008 @ 05:26AM PT
I meant to post on this yesterday, but you still have time to plan for this tonight or set your DVR to record when you get home from work. If you were paying attention to last week's roundup of blog posts, you read that I have a big sloppy crush on the whole Sea Shepherd operation. It's still true. And I'm not the only one--they're like the rock stars of the animal rights movement. And now they're TV stars too.
Starting tonight, at 7 PM E/P, Animal Planet is airing a seven-part weekly series titled Whale Wars. Following (after the jump) is a blurb from Sea Shepherd's Web site, and below that is the trailer (more video clips can be viewed here):
Humane Society Observers of Seal Hunt Not Guilty
Published October 17, 2008 @ 12:45PM PT
Activists who were arrested after observing the 2006 seal hunt in Canada, for allegedly getting closer to the hunt than the law allows, were found not guilty today by a Canadian court.
The Canadian Press: Judge Finds Animal-Rights Activists Not Guilty of Getting Too Close to Seal Hunt
HSUS: Court Declares Seal Hunt Observers Innocent
More info on the annual barbaric seal hunt:
Canadian Seal Hunt
Sea Shepherd's Seal Campaign
HSUS's Campaign to Stop the Seal Hunt
The Whales vs. the Navy at the Supreme Court
Published October 09, 2008 @ 08:04AM PT
The Navy--which, with the Bush administration's blessing of course, wishes to ignore laws and overturn court rulings protecting whales--headed to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, and good ol' Scalia and Alito, among others, so far look to be leaning toward giving the Navy priority over the whales. The Navy has repeatedly decided that the laws governing protection of whales don't apply to them, and this is just the latest instance.
You might recall this from just under two years ago, for example:
Facing Suit, Navy Declares Itself Above the Law in High-Intensity Sonar Fight
With the U.S. Navy in litigation aimed at stopping its illegal use of high-intensity sonar, the Pentagon today unilaterally declared the military exempt for a period of two years from the basic law protecting whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals.
My question then was--and my question remains now--what is the point of passing laws to protect wildlife and the environment when the groups and institutions that cause them the most harm are exempt from obeying those laws? What's the point of passing laws, period, when those high up in the government can disregard them whenever they see fit? (Oh, how I could go off on tangents here.)
