Marine Mammals
Oblivious to protest against the wholesale massacre of seals, the DFO on January 28 also responded to public concern about the shooting of one seal near Meadowbank, Prince Edward Island, by announcing that charges would be laid against two suspects. A DFO spokesperson called it "an isolated incident." Newfoundland fisheries minister John Efford sought a higher quota, claiming the industry has orders for 450,000 seal carcasses. The 1996 Canadian seal hunt, the largest since 1983, "yielded economic benefits of $11 million to $15 million," the Halifax Daily News reported, adding that, "Sales were primarily in Asia," where seal penises are sought as aphrodisiacs. The total included $2.3 million in federal and provincial subsidies to sealers, the sealing industry, and the Canadian Sealers Association, and about $4.3 million in sales of pelts and carcasses. The numbers work out to about $17.40 U.S. per seal retrieved, plus $6.59 in subsidies, for a total of $24.00 apiece. The primary buyers were the Carino Company, part of Reiber Norway; the Northeast Sealers Cooperative; Terranova Fisheries; India Bay Frozen Foods; and Gateway Maritime. Norway lifted a five-year ban on killing seal pups in December 1995, after Reiber Norway threatened to quit the sealing business. The Norwegian government claimed the resumption was to protect cod stocks. The Norwegian seal pup quota for 1997 is to be 17,050, the same as in 1995 and 1996, when 14,800 and 16,767 pups were killed. Namibia and Russia are the other major players in the sealing industry. A scandal broke in Namibia in mid-January when Henties Bay shopping mall owner Peter Whitham, investigating a strong stench in the neighorhood, discovered an illegal processing plant apparently operated with the complicity of the mayor, Alfred Liebenberg, which was allegedly making jerky for human consumption out of meat which was considered unfit.
Officially extinct in British waters since Scots whalers harpooned the last one in 1928, humpback whales have returned, reports Oxford University zoologist Peter Evans. According to Evans, the Sea Watch Foundation network of about 1,500 observers has identified a population of about 17 humpbacks who feed off Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset, and range as far north as Shetland. Alaskan and Hawaian scientists comparing whale photos on January 12 announced that a humpback dubbed "339" shattered all known records for swimming speed back in 1988 by traversing the 2,775 miles between Sitka Sound and the Kewalo Basin off Hawaii in just 39 days. The average time whales take to swim the distance is believed to be 102 days. Humpbacks were not previously believed to be fast. "If other whales are making such journeys," wrote Nick Nuttall of the London Times, "it means humpbacks are in Alaskan waters for at least nine months of the year," which increases the importance of protecting their Alaskan habitat. The whale "339" has also been seen off Mexico, said Janice Straley, whose Sitka Sound photo made the belated discovery of the quick journey possible. The chemical tribuyltin, or TBT, is more menacing to dolphins than PCBs, Kurunthachalam Kannan of the Skidway Institute in Georgia warned in the January edition of Environmental Science & Technology. Testing the remains of dolphins who died along the Florida coast, 1984-1994, Kannan found heavy build-up through the food chain. The chemical, banned from other use, is added to paint for large vessels and aluminum hulls to discourage barnacles. Russia might resume commercial beluga whale hunting to protect fish stocks in the Barents, Bering, Black, and White Seas, State Fishing Committee chair Vladimir Izmailov suggested on January 21, blaming belugas for the decline of White Sea cod. Izmailov said resumed beluga hunting might begin with indigenous people on the Chukotka peninsula. But Alexei Yablokov, head of the Interdepartmental Commission for Ecological Security within the Russian Security Council, told TASS a day later that, "There are no grounds for such speculations," since there is no evidence that the belugas are either increasing their population or eating cod. New Zealand Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission chair Sir Tipene O'Regan told media on December 24 that, "The commission supports the right of other indigenous people to customary use of whales on a sustainable basis, but does not––and never has––advocated Maori trade in whale meat." O'Regan, who in August 1996 said of fur seals that "the damned things should be culled and managed," said his own iwi, or tribe, is promoting whale-watching, and therefore has a "huge" interest in preventing whaling off New Zealand. O'Regan replied to remarks by commission analyst Sean Kerine that indicated the Maori might back Japanese and Norwegian claims to "aboriginal" whaling rights at the 1997 International Whaling Commission meeting. Japanese whaling industry brass on January 22 announced formation of the World Council of Whalers, a new pressure group to be based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with U.S., Japanese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Russian representation. The first WCW meeting is scheduled for November. Interfax reported in mid-January that Iceland had notified the IWC that after doing "research" whaling in 1996, it plans to resume commercial whaling this year, with a quota of at least 200 minkes. However, the IWC said it had received no such communication.
Scary shark incidents came February 1 near Kaenae, Hawaii, where Bhupenda Bhakta and Meghal Shah of Georgia were presumed eaten by sharks, possibly after drowning, and the next day in Sydney, Australia, where a shark knocked oarswoman Andree Mocsari, 49, out of her racing scull and, ignoring her, attacked the boat, but momentum seems nonetheless to be building toward helping sharks. Survivors for 350 million years, sharks as an order have been in rapid decline since trophy hunting competition and an Asian taste for fins sparked an ongoing shark-hunting boom circa 1970. On December 20, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed regulations to bar the keeping of basking, bigeye, sand tiger, white, and whale sharks, five of the largest species, although recreational hook-and-release fishing for white sharks will still be permitted; cut the commercial quota for big sharks from 2,570 metric tons to 1,285, with a bag limit of two sharks per boat per trip; cut the number of commercial shark permits from 2,700 to about 400; and put a quota for the first time on small sharks, initially set at 1,760 metric tons. NMFS also banned shark-baiting along the 360-mile central California coast, effective January 21, halting the growth of a shark-watching business developed by Jon Cappella, of Aptos, California, who has alarmed the Santa Cruz-based Surfers Environ-mental Alliance since 1994 by charging scuba divers $680 apiece to spend time in an underwater cage while he dumps slaughterhouse offal into the sea to bring sharks into the vicinity. Cappella began the practice about three years after great white sharks attacked two surfers five miles south of the renowned Ano Nuevo elephant seal breeding haulout, which is in the same vicinity. While Cappella claims to have been promoting shark conservation, opponents charged that another shark attack could provoke–– like those attacks––a burst of shark-killing. The immediate area lies within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, but sharks might have been vulnerable to the north, south, and farther out to sea. A parallel battle is underway at Mossel Bay, South Africa, where one Roy Portway operates a shark-viewing business, over the opposition of the town council. Although the last fatal shark attack near the community beach was in 1927, a woman diver was killed and a surfer injured in a pair of 1992 attacks by great white sharks farther out into the bay. Public concern about sharks in the bay has historically inspired several massacres, Portway acknowledged in a recent interview with The Cape Times, of Capetown. The state of New South Wales, Australia, having already protected the grey nurse shark and Herbst's nurse shark, meanwhile introduced a fine of $16,000 and/or six months in jail for anyone caught killing or possessing either a great white shark or white pointer shark. Queensland introduced similar legislation on January 31, while South Australia and Tasmania already had shark protection laws in effect. Slow to mature and reproduce, some Atlantic shark populations are down by as much as 80%, says the Ocean Wildlife Campaign, a coalition of six conservation groups. Besides the five species gaining specific protections, hammerhead, sandbar, bull, dusky, lemon, and nurse sharks are also down, National Coalition for Marine Conservation head Ken Hinman recently told Pat Leisner of Associated Press.