A fascinating TED tale by oceanographer Edith Widder that begins:
The Kraken, a beast so terrifying it was said to devour men and ships and whales, and so enormous it could be mistaken for an island. In assessing the merits of such tales, it’s probably wise to keep in mind that old sailor’s saw that the only difference between a fairytale and a sea story is a fairytale begins, “Once upon a time,” and a sea story begins, “This ain’t no shit.”
Nice to know they are still out there (if you want to dig deeper, of course there is one book you have to read):
After using cutting-edge technology (for the time) to hunt and slaughter North Atlantic right whales to the brink of extinction, humans are using cutting edge technology to try and save them.
The latest tool in the game is an underwater robot that can hear and find whales, and then transmit their positions in near-real time:
Last month, two 6-foot-long (1.8-meter-long), torpedo-shaped robots from theWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts used digital acoustic monitoring equipment to detect 9 North Atlantic right whales(Eubalaena glacialis) in the Gulf of Maine—the first-ever detection of baleen whales from these types of autonomous vehicles.
“Recording the sound creates a spectrogram, which to a scientist is almost like a sheet of music that visually represents the sounds you’re hearing,” explained WHOI researcher Mark Baumgartner.
The gliders process and classify these acoustic signatures, then surface every two hours and transmit evidence of whale calls to shore-based computers while the animals are still nearby. “We can use this information to very quickly draw a circle on the map and say, hey, we know there are whales in this area, let’s be careful about our activities here. The government can then alert mariners and ask them to reduce their speed and post a lookout.”
The effort to save right whales is a battle that pits scientists and conservation groups against all the oceanic intrusions of modern human culture, with its shipping, fishing, and pollution. It is an incredibly close battle, in which single lives count. So every technological wrinkle can make a difference.
When rhino horn has increased in value from $4700 a kilo twenty years ago, to $65,000 a kilo today, radical strategies are needed to address the poaching that is driving the rhino rapidly toward extinction. Kevin Charles Redmon takes a look at the possibility of rhino farming:
As parties to the international Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meet in Bangkok this week, a team of Australian conservationists are presenting an unusual—and controversial—proposal: in order to save the remaining African rhinos, farm them for their horns.
The economic logic goes like this: demand for horn is inelastic and growing, so a trade ban (which restricts supply) only drives up prices, making the illicit good more valuable—and giving poachers greater incentive to slaughter the animal.
“Rhino horn is used for dagger handles in Yemen and has been used in Chinese traditional medicine for millennia as a presumed cure for a wide range of ailments,” explains Duan Biggs, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland, in a March issue of Science. “Rapid economic growth in east and southeast Asia is assumed to be the primary factor driving the increased demand for horn.” Conservation managers have even tried preempting poachers by de-horning animals in their care, to no avail; the stubs are simply too valuable to pass up. (As documented in the 2012National Geographic article, “Rhino Wars,” African wildlife conservation has become as militarized as America’s “war on drugs,” with the same miserable failures.)
But horn harvesting need not be an all-or-nothing proposition.
“Rhino horn is composed entirely of keratin and regrows when cut,” writes Biggs. “Sedating a rhino to shave its horn can be done for as little as $20.” A white rhino produces about a kilo of horn per year, and the current global demand could be met by “farming” as few as 5,000 animals on a private, well-guarded preserve. (Natural rhino death “would also provide hundreds of horns annually,” even as the herd continues to grow at a rate near 10 percent.) The millions of dollars generated by the legal enterprise could be used to fund further conservation efforts, such as wildland preservation, sustainable rural development, and field research.
It’s not a solution that feels good. But it is a practical proposal that might actually make a difference, and the times we are in demand progress more than philosophical purity.
From a high school reviewer in Missouri:
This masterpiece is a movie that made me want to go out and help make a change. It made me feel connected to other individuals in a uniquely original way, and not all of them were human.
That’s about all you can ask for when you make a documentary. The whole review is worth reading.
That’s what a shark trader in Hong Kong who was interviewed by the BBC says:
Mr Ho says that the anti-shark fin campaigns are starting to hurt traders as he points to dozens of bags of processed shark fins that line the front of his shop. He says that a few years ago, the fins would have been sold immediately after they finished cleaning them. “Now they’re stockpiling in the shop. It’s tough to sell them,” he says, claiming that his sales dropped by 60% in 2012.
Shark fin traders say their sales have been hurt amid protests by environmental groups. And it is not just Mr Ho who has seen a decline in sales. Statistics from the Hong Kong government show that imports of raw and prepared shark’s fin between 2006 and 2011 ranged from 9,400 to 10,300 metric tonnes a year.
Much of the imports are consumed in Hong Kong or re-exported to mainland China. Conservation groups say that the Chinese territory accounts for half of the global trade. However, last year imports into the territory dropped by a third to 3,350 metric tonnes.
At the same time, Chinese authorities are also clamping down on lavish banquets, which traditionally served the shark fin soup. “That is hitting the shark fin industry hard,” says Mr Ho. Meanwhile, the anti-shark fin campaigns have resulted in some five-star hotels in the Chinese territory removing shark’s fin from the menu. Even flagship carrier, Cathay Pacific Airlines, has banned shark fin on cargo flights.
I’ll take any stats reported by a trader and Hong Kong officials with a grain of salt. But, if even partly true, it is an encouraging trend. Especially if the global take of sharks is indeed in the 100 million range.
In the ever-shifting world of social media platforms I realize that I am increasingly posting and sharing links, news, and short commentary on my Facebook page instead of here. It’s quicker, easier, and more “social.” Thinking it through, I realize that makes sense.
So in terms of daily content and energy, the Facebook page will be where the action is, and if you are interested in daily news, links, and updates, I urge you to “like” my Facebook page and follow via your Facebook news feed. Or, if you prefer to follow via an RSS reader, just click on this RSS link. Or copy this URL into your favorite RSS Reader:
https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=418183151574142&format=rss20
If you are not on Facebook, apologies (and I’d urge you to try it–it is incredibly useful and will connect you with many worlds).
I will still post here on WordPress, but I will use WordPress for longer, reported, posts and analysis.
As always, thanks and stay tuned…
You may think that all that driving you do, or air conditioning your house, is your biggest contribution you make to global warming. But how about all those air miles?
For many people reading this, air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates about 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10.
So if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create. “For many people in New York City, who don’t drive much and live in apartments, this is probably going to be by far the largest part of their carbon footprint,” says Anja Kollmuss, a Zurich-based environmental consultant.
It is for me. And for people like Al Gore or Richard Branson who crisscross the world, often by private jet, proclaiming their devotion to the environment.
Though air travel emissions now account for only about 5 percent of warming, that fraction is projected to rise significantly, since the volume of air travel is increasing much faster than gains in flight fuel efficiency. (Also, emissions from most other sectors are falling.)
Tax carbon at $20 a ton, which is roughly the tax that many economists believe would be required to have an impact on human behavior adequate to slow warming, and suddenly you will understand how big a climate change driver air travel is. And you will also think more carefully about how often, and how far, you fly.
Another alternative is to sell carbon offsets along with air travel tickets.
Folks in orca forums have been suspecting this for a while, but as Blackfish continues to roll out, I thought I would confirm that Takara is indeed pregnant.
Following the failure of her last pregnancy, she was AI’d again last summer, presumably again with sperm from Kshamenk. Takara is the dominant orca at SeaWorld Texas, and she tends to be on more of a hair trigger through the early hormonal surges of pregnancy. So for a while the Texas orca group had to be managed carefully to minimize the likelihood that Takara would rough up other whales. Interestingly, part of the strategy was to keep the whole group of orcas together in one pool whenever possible, on the theory that Takara’s mobility would be limited and that for Takara a confined space limits her inclination toward aggression during the early stages of pregnancy. Separating her was believed to make her more anxious to affirm her dominance when she got a chance.
Apparently, Kasatka, Takara’s mother, also has similar issues with hormones and aggression during early pregnancy. But while conscious of Kastaka’s propensity for increased aggression during the early stages of pregnancy, the California park did what it could to manage the aggression without reducing Kasatka’s space.
Not sure what is happening with Kayla, who last year was also on the AI list…
After almost two years of shoots and editing, Blackfish was finally shown on a big screen, in front of an auditorium full of normal people who don’t obsess about orcas. There were some gasps and murmurs during the viewing, when some particularly stunning footage of trainer injury, or orca captures, came on the screen. And most of the audience stayed after to listen to the former SeaWorld trainers featured in the movie answer questions.
Now, we wait to see if a distributor picks up the movie, which is the next step to getting it in front of a general audience. Whether and how that happens will depend in part on how Blackfish is received by the critics. And here is the first review, from Indiewire:
Nobody from SeaWorld agreed to an interview for “Blackfish,” Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s searing take on the theme park’s mistreatment of killer whales and the dozens of deaths that have resulted from it. Instead, the majority of its subjects are ex-SeaWorld trainers frustrated by the negligence they witnessed up close and willing to speak out. Nevertheless, based on the evidence on display in “Blackfish,” Cowperthwaite’s case against SeaWorld would change little with an opposing point of view. The movie makes a strong case against the captivity of killer whales under sub-circus conditions, but the stance is made even more horrifying because so little has changed in the history of the organization. “Blackfish” is less balanced investigation than full-on takedown of a broken system.
My only quibble is that the former trainers in Blackfish are not “disgruntled.” They are “disillusioned.” But it’s a review that we are pretty happy with.
Here’s one more moment from last night’s premiere that was pretty cool. Sundance Institute’s Director Of Programming, Trevor Groth, did us the honor of introducing Blackfish and Gabriela. And he talked about how it impacted him. You can’t really see him, but you can hear him:
The Earthist Chronicles 