But letting goats and dogs run free is one kind of problem; the cruel bashing of these sea lions is destructive behavior of a much worse and more reprehensible sort.

And anyway, do we know who the culprits are?  Ecuadorans, or visitors?

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

A balloon might very well have got to the ocean floor if it had been eaten by some animal, and when that animal died, its body drifted downward.  In this case, because the girl's note was still intact and legible, it is probably more doubtful that the balloon was ingested.

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

In the cold snap a few years ago we rescued 130 Green Turtles.  

30 passed plastic bags or balloons and half of those, 15, died.  

I saw them trying to poop them out and yes, it was gross (I helped clean it up).

The only other turtles that died were ones with advanced pneumonia from going into hibernation with their heads underwater, perhaps another 10.

Balloons and plastic grocery sacks should be illegal in all coastal communities.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

70% of the plants that treat cancer and found only in tropical rainforrests.

1. there are plenty of other diseases and conditions, besides cancer, that are treated by medicines derived from tropical organisms; and

2. not only do plants produce substances made into medicines; many fungi and animals do as well.  Venoms and secretions of animals seem to be of great interest.

Another, different kind of question inspired by this item is, how much of our knowledge of medicinal uses of tropical organisms depends on ethnopharmacology.  Traditional peoples, especially hunter-gatherers, have deep and ancient knowledge about almost all the organisms that they live near; and when the communication is good between them, ethnologists and us, we can learn things about those organisms that we would not have suspected or even imagined.

For that matter, I wonder where our knowledge of squalene came from.  Was it Polynesians, maybe, who had discovered that the livers of sharks were uniquely useful for certain applications?  Or was it just that there is some sort of chemical database indexing all kinds of substances found in animals?

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

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/travel/27green.html.

Notice the detail, that more and more Ecuadoreans are migrating to the islands in the hope of profiting from the ecotourism business.

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

<<
The fish dine on experimental diets that include fish meal and alternative protein sources such as plankton and soy meal pellets.
>>

I had thought of easily-raised insects, e.g. cockroaches, as a possible alternative protein source.  But if plankton and soy work, fine.  We notice that "fish meal" is still in the mix, though; but it would be best not to have to use fish at all as a food for farm-raised fish.

Later in the article, the expression "sustainable feeds" is used.  Elsewhere I have written that I dislike and mistrust the excessive, fashionable resort to "sustainable" and "sustainability."  In this case, the narrow business application makes it acceptable, though inevitably misleading.

Food chains are inherently fragile, mutable, impermanent things.  A position in a food chain can never be "sustainable."

The need (if it is a "need"!) to kill sentient beings in order to live is morally corrosive.  That conduct, and that relationship, can never be "sustainable."


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