This week in ocean news

Tracking whaling ships and whale sharks

Posted by Andrew Sharpless (Guest Contributor) at 11:02 AM on 01 Mar 2008

Read more about: oceans | wildlife | fishing | whaling

Anti-whaling activists planted tracking devices on Japanese whaling ships as part of a campaign to disrupt the annual hunt, and the Australian customs ship that had been monitoring the hunt returned to port with photographs and video to use for future legal action ...

... a study showed that commercial fishing forced fish to evolve into meeker, less active creatures that carry fewer eggs. Bolder and more adventuresome fish were more likely to be caught by gillnets ...

... the butterflyfish, a common resident of coral reefs, was in danger of extinction because it could only eat one species of coral, Acropora hyacinthus, which is highly vulnerable ...

... researchers concluded that "reefs without people" were healthier than corals near fishing grounds ...

... a new United Nations report entitled "In Dead Water" warned that oceans are at grave risk from climate change in addition to pollution and overfishing ...

... several weeks after they washed up on the Florida shore during a red tide bloom, nine sea turtles were released back into the sea ...

... whale sharks were tagged off the coast of Kenya for the first time. After six months, the tags will pop off and transmit data back to the lab ...

... a dolphin died during Navy sonar testing off the coast of California. While excess fluid was found in the dolphin's ears, the cause of death was unknown ...

... and mosquito fish demonstrated that they could count to four.

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Sea Shepherd and Navy sonar...

...while Sea Sheperd's efforts are valiant, it might not have been the best idea to actually alert the media that they had planted tracking devices on the ships. Not only does it raise legal questions, but more importantly, it alerts the whaling vessels to the fact they have been tagged...and thus they may find and remove the tags.

And an appeals court has upheld the restrctions on sonar use by the navy. Of course, how they actually enforce such a thing remains to be seen.

by Tasermons Partner at 4:08 PM on 01 Mar 2008

Oh, les japonais!

Well, TasPar, I see your point. But Paul Watson is historically quite shrewd and resourceful, and he must have thought a few moves ahead in this game. After all, he was the one who announced to the world that the GPS devices were secured; presumably he is confident that they are very well hidden; or else, he is calculating that even if the Japanese find them, it will have done some sort of damage to Japanese morale to have announced their presence.

As for legality, it is interesting also that the Sea Shepherd people are formally emphasizing the illegality of Japanese whaling, not its immorality. Of course, they are really involved in this activism for ethical reasons, not legal ones; but they have decided, probably rightly, that the legal emphasis will pay off.

Although I am a Greenpeace supporter, I cannot help admiring the Sea Shepherd people's pluck and cleverness. Naming their new Australian ship the "Steve Irwin" was absolutely brilliant.

As for the Japanese, on the other hand: Whether it is true that world history has lately been seeing a renewed episode of a "clash of civilizations" between Christendom and Islam, it seems certainly true that many Japanese are radically defensive about their cultural and ethnic uniqueness, including their "traditional" cetaceanivory. Consider this not altogether unrelated news item, on the rejection by many Japanese of Guide Michelin's recent very learned and very culturally considerate attempt to rate the restaurants of Tokyo:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/business/worldbusiness/ ...

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

by caniscandida at 3:40 PM on 02 Mar 2008

whale sharks

It is a pity that the Africa Science News service in Nairobi cannot juggle their advertisers' space better. The article is long, and took a lot of work, and yet much of it is obscured by the advertisement column.

Whale sharks are among the most beautiful animals on Earth. The more we learn the mysteries of their lives, for the sake of protecting them, the happier this community of living creatures will be.

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

by caniscandida at 8:52 PM on 02 Mar 2008

Hmmm,

"...a study showed that commercial fishing forced fish to evolve into meeker, less active creatures that carry fewer eggs. Bolder and more adventuresome fish were more likely to be caught by gillnets ..."

Sounds like a case of parallel evolution with office workers.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 9:14 PM on 02 Mar 2008

The meek will inherit ...

Culturally, we are disposed to admire and heroize the strong, the active, the forceful, the assertive, the aggressive. And yet, the way of the meek, the thoughtful, the doubtful, the reserved, the hesitant, the questioning, may be the way of wisdom.

Both in Farley Mowat's "Never Cry Wolf," and in the movie based on it, the Inuit aetiological myth is recounted, that the Creator intended in her scheme of things that the wolves should pursue the sick and the weak among the caribou; that way, the caribou as a whole would be mostly strong and healthy.

I do not think that the observed gillnet phenomenon is a reversal of that, in spite of our prejudices in favor of leadership potential, etc. Boldness, adventuresomeness and those other qualities are not at all in themselves signs of greater health. Nor are the relevant genetic factors absent from the gene pool, whatever has been happening to the most recent generations.

That said, the use of the gillnet is a horribly cruel means of catching and killing a sentient creature. Is there a "humane" way of killing a fish? Certainly the gillnet is not it.

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

by caniscandida at 9:15 PM on 02 Mar 2008

"red tide," and sea turtles

I was impressed by how small -- and, dare I say it, cute -- that sea turtle in the photo was, who was being carried into the surf by a helpful human being.

I was also impressed by the assertion that we do not know all that much about the toxins produced by red tide blooms. I would have thought that was well understood.

Of course, it is probably true that we do not know nearly as much as we would like about the digestion, and internal defenses, of turtles. Last year, during the Chinese pet food scare, it came as a surprise to many of us that cats were much more likely to get sick and die than dogs -- because, we were told, cats have a more highly specialized digestive system than dogs. As for sea turtles, who are in general rather mysterious animals, who knows where their peculiar vulnerabilities may lie? The evolutionary history of turtles suggests that they are indeed remarkably hardy, and successful at adapting to all sorts of difficulties. But that hardly makes them immortal.

I was also impressed -- but by no means for the first time -- by the paradoxical behavior of the human beings. Some of our species in Florida put themselves out with sincere interest, self-sacrifice and even love, for the sake of this handful of little sea turtles. And yet, by and large, we tolerate such anti-sea-turtle activities as beachfront development. And in general, we tolerate all kinds of anti-animal activities.

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

by caniscandida at 9:36 PM on 02 Mar 2008

Well, in all fairness...

Some of our species in Florida put themselves out with sincere interest, self-sacrifice and even love, for the sake of this handful of little sea turtles. And yet, by and large, we tolerate such anti-sea-turtle activities as beachfront development. And in general, we tolerate all kinds of anti-animal activities.

...it si generally much easier to mobilize resources, time, and power to fight specific and easily identifiable causes rather than things that rely on a little bit of a broader and possibly more vague spectrum.

Like how it's easier to fight point-source pollution as oppsed to non-point source.

Still, in the case of development, the best way to regulate that is through stricter building, zoning, and civic codes. In the case of turtles, probably codes that require certain setbacks from the beach, and possibly certain restrictions on types/amounts of lighting used.

by Tasermons Partner at 1:48 AM on 03 Mar 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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