SAVE THE DOLPHINS FROM
HYPOCRISYRepresentative
George Miller (D-California) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California)
led the fight to prevent the Administration and its Congressional
supporters from opening the US market to a flood of "dolphin deadly"
tuna taken by foreign purse seiners fishing on dolphin. Following are
excerpts from their joint op-ed piece "Save the Dolphins from
Hypocrisy" published in the Los Angeles Times on June 17, 1999.
April 29, 1999: The Commerce
Department, pursuant to a law passed in 1997, announced support for
changing the popular "dolphin safe" label on cans of tuna sold in the
United States. Under the new ruling, fish caught by the previously
banned purse seine net method – by which fishermen encircle and harass
dolphins – could now be termed "dolphin safe" even though dolphins
would be chased down, caught in the nets, harassed and injured.
May 28, 1999: The same
Commerce Department declares that feeding and swimming with dolphins
is illegal. According to the department's National Marine Fisheries
Service, "The best way to protect dolphins is to observe the animals
at a respectful distance of at least 50 yards and resist feeding them.
In addition, people need to avoid any activities that risk harassment
of dolphins, such as chasing, touching or swimming with the animals."
Run that by us again? Hunting down,
chasing, encircling and harassing dolphins in tuna nets doesn't
necessarily have a significant adverse impact on dolphins, so it's
fine for fishermen to engage in these activities and call their
resulting tuna catches "dolphin safe?" But slipping Flipper herring or
patting his nose is "harassment" and could be "harmful?"
This disturbingly contradictory
position has nothing to do with what is safe for the still-depleted
dolphin populations. It has everything to do with international trade,
and specifically with the weakening of US environmental laws to
satisfy international economic partners....
Since passage of our law, dolphin
deaths have gone from more than 80,000 to fewer than 3,000 a year. So
why argue with success? The Clinton administration, pressed by foreign
tuna fleets who, unlike the US fishermen continue to use purse seine
netting, capitulated in 1997 and agreed to legislation that allows
tuna caught using purse seine nets to be sold in the US and labeled
"dolphin safe," unless scientists could prove it was the fishing
technique that was hurting dolphin populations....
Fishermen can subject dolphins to
severe stress and injury and enjoy the government's seal of safety,
but a citizen touching a dolphin swimming near their boat is subject
to up to a $100,000 fine for endangering the creature.
The Commerce Department's decision
should be reversed, allowing us to maintain the integrity of the label
that, since its introduction in the early 1990s, has only been allowed
on tuna that was not harvested using the techniques known to kill
dolphins.
US IWC
PRESENTATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS TO CETACEANS
by Ben White
On the third day of the International
Whaling Commission (IWC) conference, US Undersecretary of Commerce and
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief Dr. James
Baker flew in just to deliver a presentation on global environmental
threats facing whales and dolphins. Following the US lead, the IWC
voted for the first time to allocate 125,000 pounds sterling to study
this interconnecting web of threats over and above the harpoon. Just
to consider such a direction signals a potential change in the IWC,
moving away front managing the killing of whales to actually crafting
their protection.
The dramatic slide show was summed up
in its opening quote from newly retired IWC chief Peter Bridgewater:
"Global climate
change, pollution, and the hole in the ozone layer are greater threats
to the world's populations than whaling."
Punctuated
by grisly pictures of stranded whales and charts with ominously
climbing lines, Dr. Baker's presentation listed a long litany of
layered dangers including chemical contamination, global warming,
disease, and harmful algae blooms.
All of these severe and long-term
threats facing life in the oceans serve to strengthen our case as to
why the unnecessary killing of whales must cease. We applaud the
careful presentation by the American delegation at the IWC, and their
successful effort at convincing the body that the dangers are real and
worth exploring.
At the risk of appearing ungrateful,
however, it is important to point out one glaring omission in the
presentation's catalog of environmental threats: noise pollution. In
this arena it is the US government that is one of the worst offenders,
with several incredibly loud devices being tested both by the military
(ATOC and Low-frequency Active Sonar) and by the National Marine
Fisheries Service (devices aimed at driving seals and sea lions away
from sport fishing boats).
We congratulate the US government for
their efforts, and look forward to the inclusion of the sonic war on
whales in their analysis of steps that can be taken to make the
world's oceans more hospitable to sustaining all life, including the
highly sensitive cetaceans.
Save the
Beluga Whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet
by Ben White
Even
though the population of beluga whales living in Alaska's Cook Inlet
has plummeted from over a thousand to about two hundred, it appears
that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) lacks the backbone
to follow through with an endangered species listing. They are leaning
instead toward the far less protective "depleted" listing under the
Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The reasons for the agency's
reticence have everything to do with big oil and big business and
nothing to do with the whale itself, or the requirement that the
government obey the Endangered Species Act.
It's easy to fall in love with
belugas. One of the smallest of whales, pure white when mature and
possessing flexible neck vertebrae; they can turn their head and look
at you. Called the canary of the deep, belugas have an amazing
repertoire of songs and calls, most of which can be heard by humans.
If we are ever able to verbally communicate with a whale, it will
probably be with a beluga. We had better act quickly or there won't be
anyone left to talk to in Alaska's Cook Inlet.
The main reason for the decline of
this genetically distinct tribe of whales is the native hunting over
the last decade – about
a hundred a year have been killed with untold numbers struck and lost.
The whales have been butchered and their meat sold at a local
Anchorage market.
Now some native former hunters are
petitioning for the NMFS to list the whales as endangered, which will
trigger all sorts of habitat protections. Those protections are
exactly what is causing big business in Anchorage to barrage NMFS with
calls and letters, all demanding that the whale not be listed as
endangered. Why? Anchorage has one of the few permits in the country
allowing the city to dump municipal sewage into Cook Inlet with only
partial treatment. The fifteen oil rigs dotting the inlet are
apparently the only ones out of fifteen hundred on the US continental
shelf given a variance to the zero-discharge rule. As part of their
normal operations, the rigs are allowed by the Environmental
Protection Agency to dribble lead, mercury, arsenic toxins directly
into beluga habitat.
To stop the poisoning of the last of
this unique population of belugas, there is but one legal remedy that
will give them a chance to recover. They need to be listed as
endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Dr. Baker, who just made such a
splendid presentation on environmental threats to cetaceans (see box
below) is a humane scientist in a powerful position to help.
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THEIR OCEAN HOME IN DANGER
At his IWC presentation,
Dr. James, Baker described specific environmental threats to
cetaceans.
Chemical
Contamination
Belugas stranded in St. Lawrence, Canada were found to have a rate
of small intestinal cancers much higher than that observed in
other animals, including people. The belugas had such high
concentrations of toxic substances in their bodies that they were
disposed of as toxic waste. In recent years contamination in
marine core samples has climbed astronomically to present levels
of about 400 nanograms of toxins per gram of sediment.
Global Warming and
Rising Ocean Temperatures
From the 1950s to the present, greatly increased concentrations of
dioxide and methane have been measured in the Earth's atmosphere,
causing what is known as the greenhouse effect. The
intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a 1 to 3.5
degree Celsius global temperature increase and a 15 -95 centimeter
sea level increase by 2100. Mean ocean temperatures recorded from
1950 to the present show oceanic hot spots spreading around the
globe.
Catastrophic
Outbreaks of Disease
Approximately 18,000 harbor seals and hundreds of gray seals died
as a result of a morbillivirus infection in northwest Europe in
1988. Similar infections killed striped dolphins in the
Mediterranean between 1990 and 1992.
Ozone Hole
The ozone hole is now larger than Antarctica the continent it
looms above. Cetaceans and their prey are being bombarded with
damaging UV-b radiation from the sun. The dramatic increase of
chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere between 1997 and
1998 has been linked to the expansion of the ozone hole.
Harmful Algae Blooms
(HABs)
Linked to global marine nitrogen contamination, (primarily from
agricultural runoff) algae blooms are considered to be an
increasingly significant source of marine mammal mortalities.
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The IWC
Meeting in Grenada
Thirty four countries
comprising the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met on the tiny
Caribbean island of Grenada in late May to vote, debate and grandstand
on a wide agenda of
resolutions pertaining to whale protection and whale destruction.
Fifty-three years ago at its
inception, the IWC had 14 member countries, all active whalers. After
the commission allowed
the decimation of one
species of great whales
after another, more and more countries opposed to whaling joined. Some
longtime whalers like Australia became the staunchest of whale
defenders. This new blood became strong enough to pass a global
moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982, to take effect in the
1985-86 season and last indefinitely until a whole new framework is
agreed upon.
Meanwhile, whalers have exploited the
remaining legal ways to whale: by taking exception to the moratorium
(Norway), by calling their whaling scientific research (Japan), and by
tucking their whaling under "aboriginal subsistence whaling"--even
when no aboriginals are involved, the meat is fed to fur-farm foxes,
or sold locally (St. Vincent, Russia and Greenland, respectively.)
Now, the balance has shifted once
more. Japan provides economic assistance to seven small island nations
(including this year's venue state of Grenada) in exchange for
pro-whaling votes within the IWC and CITES (Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species). When Japan and Norway are
counted, that adds up to a solid pro-whaling core of nine votes. This
is enough to deadlock the IWC into virtual parity between the pro- and
anti-whaling forces, with many swing votes in between.
Despite an amazing string
of insults, threats and
bluster from Japan, when the dust settled on the final day
of proceedings, the whalers had
little to show for their efforts.
Notably:
- The motion to allow secret ballots
(so Caribbean countries could hide their Japanese-leveraged votes)
was defeated.
- The motion to open up small-scale
coastal whaling in Japan was defeated for the twelfth year running.
- No advance was made on a
framework to open up
commercial whaling. The Irish proposal failed again to make headway,
although it retains a faint pulse. This so-called compromise would
drop the commercial moratorium on shore-based whaling within a
country's economic zone in exchange for banning "scientific
whaling," high seas whaling, and the international sale
of whalemeat.
- The US environmental threats
presentation (see article on pages 10 and 11) and the successful
drive to win IWC funding to study the problem, put whalers on the
defensive to justify yet another level of
assault on beleaguered populations.
Makah Kill Gray Whale
A whale was hunted down and killed
from the continental
United States for the first time in over fifty years on May 17, 1999.
The Makah Indian tribe, tucked into
the misty northwest corner of Washington State, exercised their long
dormant treaty right to whale by harpooning and shooting a migrating
California gray whale.
With four news helicopters hovering
overhead and broadcasting the kill live across the country, harpoons
towing floats were thrown from a canoe and fifty caliber bullets fired
from a motorized support vessel. The three year old female appeared to
be acclimated to people, approaching the canoe and even taking care to
avoid upsetting it when she was shot repeatedly.
A
huge celebration broke out in the native Neah Bay community when the
whale was finally towed in and beached. Some people prayed, some sang,
some did backflips off the whale into the frigid water. But a mistake
was made beaching the whale at low tide. After only about a third
of the whale had been cut
up and distributed to the tribe – and almost everyone had gone home –
the whale started to be reclaimed by the rising tide. Although
eventually winched higher
on the beach by trucks and cables, most of the whalemeat was allowed
to spoil.
The resumption
of Makah whaling after over
seventy years has been vigorously opposed within the International
Whaling Commission (IWC). The Makah and their sponsor, the United
States government, claimed they won an aboriginal subsistence quota of
five grey whales a year for the tribe at the 1997 IWC meeting in
Monaco, even though they did not demonstrate nutritional need as
required by that quota. This year's IWC meeting, held just after the
Makah kill, appeared to codify the deadly precedent of "cultural"
whaling through tacit consent. No charge of infraction or even a
comment from the floor was lodged in protest of the Makah killing
without IWC permission.
The danger is not only the killing of
California gray whales. It is the opening up of yet another loophole
for whaling: non-nutritional culturally based whaling. Several tribes
along the Canadian British Columbia coast are currently petitioning
the Canadian government to allow them to take the lead from the Makah
and resume their own ancient whaling.
AWI Quarterly, Summer 1999,
Vol. 38, No. 3 | Back to Whales page |
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