Plants and Animals

Almost thirty long-finned pilot whales were stranded on Strahan’s Ocean Beach, Tasmania, on Friday. Five animals were saved.

According to the Sunday Tasmanian:

“Rough surf made it impossible to return the whales to the water in the same place they were stranded, so a massive rescue mission was launched early yesterday morning to transport them by trailer to Macquarie Harbour.

The whales — the biggest weighing about two tonnes — were each lifted by an army of 10 people on to the back of a trailer, which was lined with mattresses donated by a local hotel.

The whales were then driven 11km away from Ocean Beach — a well-known spot for whale strandings — and returned to the water in Macquarie Harbour in an operation that took almost six hours.”

Bravo to the volunteers.

See some pictures of the whales here: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,20862210-3462,00.html

Hi Jennifer,

Since 1999 Greenpeace has not conducted an anti-whaling campaign at sea against Norwegian whalers.

According to Greenpeace, such campaigns are now considered “counter productive”.

One has to wonder then, why Greenpeace considers actions against Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean “productive”?

With this season’s Greenpeace anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean almost upon us, I thought I´d look at a couple of the previous actions against Norweigan whalers.

In 1994 Greenpeace activists boarded Norweigan whaling ship the Senet and obstructed the vessel. Here’s a photograph of the Senet and Greenpeace’s Solo.

A Greenpeace activist cut loose a dying minke whale, before the whaling crew could deliver the coup de grace. Eva Egeberg, a veterinary surgeon and state inspector on board, commented, “What the activists actually achieved was to prolong the animal’s suffering”.

Greenpeace said that the cutting of the line to the minke whale was an individual action by one of the demonstrators and “not in accordance with the principles by which Greenpeace carry out their demonstrations”.

Greenpeace was sentenced in 1995 to pay 17,000 UK pounds (UKP) in damages and 11,000 UKP to cover the legal expenses of the whaling vessel skipper. The Senet continued whaling during the 1994 season and eventually took their full quota.

Whales saved = 0.

In 1999 Greenpeace conducts actions against the whaling vessels Vilduen and Kato.

During a coast guard chase of the Greenpeace rubber duckies, Greenpeace activist Mark Hardingham is seriously injured during a collision, resulting in serious breaks to one arm, a fractured pelvis and serious back injuries.

The Greenpeace ship MV Sirius is arrested by the Norwegian coast guard and towed into Stavanger harbour. A Norwegian court imposes a fine of US$35,000 dollars and a US$2000 fine for each of the activists in a rubber ducky attempting to cut loose a not yet dead minke whale next to the Kato. The whaler attempting to deliver a coup de grace to the dying Minke fires a number of shots into the head of the Minke, and a Greenpeace rubber ducky is struck by at least one of the shots.

Total value of fines and confiscations (three rubber duckies) was US$130,000. Greenpeace contest the judgements.

Kato skipper Ole Mindor Myklebust commented, “The Greenpeace inflatable then placed itself right into the side of our boat, with its bow close to the whale.

“Putting human safety first, I confirmed that nobody was close to the whale’s head. Nobody was sitting in the bow of the inflatable. I was only a few metres away from the animal when I fired three shots at it with the rifle. One bullet apparently made a hole in the bow of the Greenpeace boat because it was so close to the whale.
There is a very good reason for having a safety zone.

“This is a killing zone, not a playing zone. We are killing big animals, using heavy weaponry like explosive penthrite grenades and high-calibre rifles intended to kill Minke whales weighing up to 10 tonnes as quickly as possible.”

Whales saved = 0.

Will it take someone to be seriously injured or even worse killed in the Southern Ocean this winter before Greenpeace re-evaluates it position on battling the Japanese at sea?

Cheers, George McCallum

Greenpeace Ship Esperanza at dock in Tromso, Norway

I received a note from a reader of this blog, Lamna nasus, last Wednesday in which he suggested that the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales are currently threatened by the start of the commercial lobster fishing season in the Bay of Fundy in Canada. He repeated this concern in a recent comment and that we should be more concerned about Right Whales than minke whales.

The commercial lobster season was scheduled to start in the Bay of Fundy last Monday, and about 50 right whales were yet to leave the area as part of their annual migration. It was feared the whales would become entangled in lobster fishing gear.

But by the time I received the note from Lamna, it appeared the start of the lobster season had already been delayed, not by the whales, but by bad weather. It also appeared that the Canadian fisheries department was well aware of the situation and was keeping an eye on the whales.

I agree with Lamna that North Atlantic Right whales are more deserving of our attention and a concerted conservaton effort, than the very common minke whale which captures our attention every year because Greenpeace likes battling the Japanese on the high seas. There are perhaps just 350 Right whales in the North Atlantic while there are perhaps more than a million minke whales in the earth’s oceans.

Boat strikes seem as much a problem for Right whales as fishing gear. So what is the future for this species of whale?

Hi Jennifer,

Six Japanese whaling ships have set sail for their annual hunt in south Atlantic. Japan’s fisheries agency says the fleet has a target of 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales.

As usual we are waiting for the annual outcry from anti-whaling countries against this hunt in the Southern Oceans Sanctuary.

So why does Japan support whaling? Here’s an analysis from a Japanese political scientist: http://www.csun.edu/~kh246690/whaling.pdf .

Best regards,

Ann Novek.

PS. We have a heatwave in Sweden this weekend, temperaure about 10C.

Rhinoceros are usually associated with the African savannah, but interestingly there are species which also occur in rainforests in Indonesia. The one-horned Java Rhino and the two-horned Sumatran Rhino are the rarest rhinos on earth.

Here’s a picture of a rainforest rhinoceros from one of the many camera traps Richard Ness has had set:

There are only a few hundred Java and Sumatran rhinos remaining in the wild.

Interestingly in Africa, white rhino numbers increased from about 200 individuals in 1904 to over 11,000 in 2004 thanks to conservation programs. In contrast, black rhino numbers dropped from perhaps 60,000 sometime before 1970 to may be 15,000 in 2004 no thanks to poaching.