This week in ocean news

Whales on treadmills and dolphin harassment

Posted by Andrew Sharpless (Guest Contributor) at 12:00 PM on 08 Dec 2007

Read more about: oceans | fishing | wildlife

New Zealand installed its first acoustic fish fence, designed to herd salmon smolt in the right direction during migration ...

... Polish fishermen who obeyed a ban on cod will receive up to $11,000 in revenue lost, but those who defied the ban will face fines up to $7,500 ...

... salmon returns for the year in Vancouver were called "dismal" ...

... for the first time, scientists were able to estimate how much a fin whale can swallow in one lunge for krill, finding that they engulf 2,900 cubic feet in a single gulp -- the equivalent of the volume of a school bus. Measuring the amount is tricky, said one scientist, because "you can't get whales to run on a treadmill in a laboratory" ...

... three weeks after a ship that collided with a bridge dumped nearly 60,000 gallons of oil, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lifted a ban on crabbing and fishing in the San Francisco Bay ...

... the first jetskier in Scotland was convicted of harrassing dolphins since it became a criminal offense in 1981. The 22-year-old was ordered to pay a �500 fine ...

... according to its auditor, the European Union has no reliable count of how much fish it catches ...

... the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service destroyed 718,000 Atlantic salmon eggs that were found to be infected with pancreatic necrosis ...

... a World War II-era ship that was sunk off the coast of Texas in November to create an artificial reef tipped on its side, blocking its entrance to fish and divers alike ...

... the stench of more than a hundred dead Olive Ridley sea turtles permeated a beach in the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary in India. The cause of death is unknown ...

... an Australian was caught with 200 times the legal limit of abalone. He could face three months in prison ...

... authorities in Australia reduced the quota for razorfish in an attempt to stem the population's decline ...

... and fishermen in the United Arab Emirates were caught selling an oyster known locally as "doch." The nearly-extinct oyster is banned from sale, but is traded on the black market because of its alleged aphrodisiac effect.

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jet-skis; beach-pups

The spokesman for the law in Scotland, commenting on the fine given to the young pig on a jet-ski, says the point is not to punish but to educate. Well put. And we hope the fine, over US$1,000, will indeed teach the pig a lesson. We cynics may doubt, however: jet-skis are already barely defensible, ethically, creating air and noise pollution, and wasting a fossil fuel.

As much as we sympathize with the dolphins, however, the purplish use of "torment" for "harass" is not recommended.

The purple report from Orissa, on the death of many Olive Ridley sea turtles, does not give us much information, really, for us to understand what happened, what killed them. Hopefully the cause of their death will be determined before long.

The pathetic detail, that the dead turtles on the beach are being fed upon by stray dogs, points to other problems: communities of stray dogs, many of them presumably feral, in poor and/or undeveloped regions of the world, are breeding grounds for dangerous communicable diseases, especially rabies, a serious public health issue, as well as a threat to wildlife -- to say nothing of the no-account life of the dogs themselves. Also, though, remembering the turtles again, we may suspect that the stray dogs who are now eating the bodies of turtles would likely eat the eggs of turtles following a successful arribada.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 3:36 PM on 09 Dec 2007

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