Whale City

This is one persistent orca, and one clever penguin.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the US Navy can conduct sonar training exercises off the Southern California coast without restrictions.  The high court threw out a federal judge’s injunction that had required the Navy to take precautions when conducting submarine-hunting exercises.

“Environmental groups brought the lawsuit and said the intense sound waves can harm or even kill 37 species of marine mammals, including sea lions and endangered blue whales, by interfering with their ability to navigate and communicate.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion for the court’s conservative majority, said the overall public interest in the case tipped strongly in favor of the Navy.

In reading part of his ruling from the bench, Roberts agreed with the administration and criticized the judges in California for “second-guessing” the views of the Navy.

The Bush administration argued that there has been no documented case of sonar-related injury to marine mammals in the 40 years of exercises off the southern California coast.”

There was, however one voice of reason:

“In her written dissent, Justice Ginsburg cited the substantial and irreparable harm to marine mammals, saying sonar has been linked to mass strandings and hemorrhaging around the brain and ears.

She said the training exercises serve critical interests, but they do not authorize the Navy to violate the environmental laws.”

You can read the entire article here.

This ruling is very disappointing to whale conservationists, and it’s another sad reminder of what the US Government holds as a priority.  Our national security is important but so is the security of the wildlife that we trespass upon.  Hopefully with the incoming administrassion, some of these inhumane rulings will be reassessed.

Finally, the whales are getting the attention they deserve in the form of a TV series on Animal Planet called Whale Wars, and no it’s not about whales fighting with each other.  Whale Wars follows the efforts of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it battles to end illegal whaling in the icy waters of the Antarctic.

Paul Watson is captain and founder of Sea Shepherd, a radical environmental group dedicated to ending illegal whaling.  For several years, Watson and a group of staff and volunteers have engaged in a campaign every winter to find and stop Japanese ships that hunt whales in the name of research, attempting to stop them by any means necessary.  Last winter, the crew stopped the Japanese from slaughtering 500 whales, but not without confrontations including gunfire, flash grenades, a dramatic hostage situation and full-throttled chases through the Antarctic Seas.

“This is an opportunity for millions of people around the world to wake up to the fact that hundreds of whales are being illegally slaughtered under the guise of research and we as the human species have to say enough is enough,” said Jonny Vasic, Director of Video and Film Projects for Sea Shepherd.

We, at Whale Watch salute the Sea Shepherd for their brave efforts, and we hope many of you will tune in on November 7, on the Animal Planet network.

A couple of months ago, I published a picture depicting Sarah Palin clubbing an Orca and I thought it was pretty hilarious given the political climate and my over-all opinion of the Alaska Governor as the biggest threat to nature, wildlife, whales, polar bears, wolves, women, children (born and unborn), humanity; basically planet Earth. I also included a link to the Anchorage Daily News, as just one example of her attitude toward her native Alaska wildlife, where it was reported that Palin opposed placing the white beluga whales of the Cook Inlet under the protection of the Endangered Species Act because it would harm the local economy.

But, despite opposition from Governor Plain, the Bush Administration is placing the white belugas of Cook Inlet on the endangered species list. There has been a sharp decline in beluga population since the 1970s when there were over 1,200 of them, now there are only 375 belugas left in the region.

The Alaska Governor called the move “premature”. This editorial from the New York Times succinctly spells it out :

“Presumably, the time for listing the belugas will be mature when the gas-and-oil infrastructure in Cook Inlet is in place and the shipping lanes are running full and the fishing industry is going gangbusters. After humans have gotten everything they want out of those waters, then it will be time.”

The author concludes:

“What makes Ms. Palin an especially effective anti-environmentalist is that she comes from Alaska. She touches the expansionist chord, the ancestral American feeling that there will always be enough nature, although it is already clear that the systemic balance of nature is beginning to break down over much of the globe.”

Mrs. Palin touts herself as a hard-core pro-lifer, but it’s clear that her feelings about the protection of life don’t extend to animals (or those “without a voice”, as she likes to say). Her attitude about the environment and the animals who inhabit the world don’t count in Sarah Palin’s pro-oil and pro-gas-line-agenda.

In many ways, the embarrassment that is her VP candidacy has a been a blessing in disguise. Now that she is in the spotlight, so is Alaska, as are issues of environment vs. human impact. And, if you ask me, so too should be her filthy, dirty record.

Check out this amazing video of humpback whales shot by the Greenpeace Esperanza crew in the frigid waters of the Antarctic.

In the Arctic Ocean of Alaska, whales are at the center of a political battle.  But this isn’t the usual conservationists vs. big oil debate. What’s really at stake here is the future of traditional whaling, and depending on who wins this week’s elections for mayor, so is the future of the Arctic coast.

According to this article in the Anchorage Daily News, whalers who want to keep their traditional way of life, fear that if the oil industry is allowed off-shore this will adversely affect whaling.  They fear that the noise and pollution will drive away the whales they hunt for subsistence.

But it’s not that simple, the economy of the region is reliant on the oil industry and it’s only a matter of time for the off-shore drilling to go into effect.  The oil company is down-playing the effects of noise pollution and environmental pollution that it has on the whales, making it that much harder for the political leaders to make a desicion on the matter.

This is a disheartening situation because the parties involved are only looking out for their own interest.    The only clear-cut losers are the whales.  They will continue to be hunted by the whalers if off-shore drillling is not approved (though that’s very unlikely), and if drilling is allowed they wil be subjected to all sorts of threats.  My question is: Is anyone looking out for the whales?

Sarah Palin is bad for whales?  Need we say more?

We all know that the oceans are getting more and more polluted by industrial waste and other human pollutants, and that this is contributing to the dessimation of many marine species, but did you know that our waters are also polluted with noise? 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare says that underwater noise from ships, oil drilling, naval sonar, and other industrial-related noise is affecting the lives of whales.  According to IFAW, the noise levels in the water are disruptive to the whales when feeding and mating.  In some regions, the noise is deafening. 

Scientists are working with governments to try to reduce the speeds of ships in order to elliminate some of the noise in the waters.

Maybe that’s what whales are trying to communicate to us.  Recently, whales have been singing their whale songs near the New York City harbour, much to the excitement of scientists.  Check out this story.

The butchers scientists at the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo have revealed the findings of their more than twenty years study of minke whales. The study was published by mainstream publication Polar Biology, after being rejected by two other scientific journals. Check out this story for more details.

So after brutally slaughtering more than 4,500 minke whales, what did the research show:

Whales are losing blubber due to climate change.

The scientists justified the killings by saying that it was the only way to accurately study the animals. Some of the animals were unusable in the research because of the damage to their bodies from explosive harpoons and other crude methods used to kill them.

The researchers claim that krill, the main source of the minke whale’s diet, is in decline in the oceans. The study argues that global warming, over-fishing of krill for fish harvesting and competition from humpback whales are the culprits. Many in the scientific community fear that Japan will use this as an excuse for allowing commercial whaling of the humpbacks and other larger cetaceans.

Luckily, researchers in New Zealand and Australia plan to launch their own study, but without the gruesome slaughtering. Read more here.

Whale meat is making a come-back in Icelandic kitchens. Whale-meat was once a popular staple of the Icelandic poor-man’s diet because of how inexpensive it was, but when commercial whaling was banned for twenty years, people adapted and began eating normal food.

But now that the ban has been lifted for a couple of years some daring restaurateurs are taking a gamble by incorporating whale-meat into their menus. Restaurant chefs are having to be creative because it’s proving to be hard sell for the younger generation who didn’t grow up on the stuff. I would imagine it’d be hard to eat knowing what we know about whale’s intelligence and that they are dwindling in numbers. And for the old-timers who did grow up eating whale I’m sure it’s a reminder of harder times when you’re choice for meat was whale. Yuk! It seems that the tourists are the ones eating the stuff up, imagine that.

The whale eaters claim that the minke whales that are hunted for human consumption are plenty in numbers so there is no worry of extinction. That’s all great and dandy, but does that justify the mass slaughter of whales? Is it worth killing them so some tourist said he ate “Moby on a Stick”?