Category: Nature

Dolphin Slaughter In Peru

Credit: BlueVoice.org

Via BlueVoice comes word of extensive dolphin slaughter in Peru that could easily exceed Taiji:

As many as 15,000 dolphins are killed yearly for use as shark bait and human consumption by Peruvian fishermen.

A BlueVoice/Mundo Azul expedition has returned with damning evidence of a massive hunt for dolphins carried out by Peruvian fishermen. This expedition follows an earlier expedition conducted by UK-based Ecostorm in collaboration with Mundo Azul.

BlueVoice provided full funding for the Mundo Azul expedition and partial funding for the Ecostorm effort.

Both expeditions brought back graphic video and photographic evidence of massive dolphin killing by Peruvian fishermen. Dolphins are harpooned, clubbed to death and then butchered to be used as shark bait. Dolphins are also killed for human consumption.

Based on the size of the Peruvian fleet and interviews with the fishermen Austermuhle estimates as many as fifteen thousand dolphins are killed for bait and human consumption by the Peruvian fishing fleet in this manner. An unknown additional number are killed in the driftnet fishery.

This fishery is doubly damning, because the dolphins are being killed so the fishermen can kill sharks, which are under enormous pressure as fishermen everywhere slaughter millions of sharks every year in an effort to feed the enormous demand for shark fin from Asia. And it shows that even in a globalized, wired world, there are corners that are engaged in slaughters that we know little about.

The Ecostorm report about the Peruvian dolphin/shark fishery can be found here, and the story of how Ecostorm got the video and photos can be found here.

Credit: Jim Wickens/Ecostorm/ITV News

Human populations scrapping for a subsistence living will always hunt and kill if that is a path to even small profits. So as sad as this news is, it is also a reminder that human poverty probably kills more animals (think elephant and rhino poaching, as well) than any other global phenomenon. And until we come to grips with that reality, there will always be profoundly cruel and wastefl slaughter.

Credit: BlueVoice.org

Saving The Oceans

We’re used to seeing lots of bad news about how poorly the oceans are faring. Naturalist Carl Safina went in search of more positive stories, in a PBS series. You can now watch the entire first season online here.

It’s encouraging to see the people and ideas who are working to reverse, or at least combat, the decline of our seas. But somehow I feel like we’re all going to have to get a lot more radical to make a real difference.

Here’s the trailer for the series:

Moose Mystery

A species in trouble, and no one is sure why (beyond the probability that something we are doing is a proximate cause). And it seems to be an increasingly frequent phenomenon that mostly gets noticed when a large, charismatic species, like moose, is involved:

CHOTEAU, Mont. — Across North America — in places as far-flung as Montana and British Columbia, New Hampshire and Minnesota — moose populations are in steep decline. And no one is sure why.

Twenty years ago, Minnesota had two geographically separate moose populations. One of them has virtually disappeared since the 1990s, declining to fewer than 100 from 4,000.

The other population, in northeastern Minnesota, is dropping 25 percent a year and is now fewer than 3,000, down from 8,000. (The moose mortality rate used to be 8 percent to 12 percent a year.) As a result, wildlife officials have suspended all moose hunting.

Warm, wet weather, and ticks, appear to be involved. It’s a good example of how complex the web of life is and how the smallest things can set of a chain reaction that somehow ends up threatening a large, keystone species, like moose.

Everything Is Connected

Yes, it is. And NPR and TED Talks collaborate on a great hour of radio to explore what that means:

Every species plays a crucial role in our natural world. But when humans tinker with the equation, a chain reaction can cause entire ecosystems to break down. In this hour, TED speakers explain how everything is connected in nature, with some bold ideas about how we can restore the delicate balance and bring disappearing ecosystems back.

One scientist featured is Bernie Krause, whose recordings of the natural world are a powerful reminder of how much we can learn if we stop making so much noise and simply…listen. And how changes in natural soundscapes can tell us how much humans have changed, or destroyed, the underlying ecosystems.

Can Drones Save Elephants?

I’ve been interested in that question, along with other creative and technical solutions to rhino and elephant poaching. And Chris Spillane has a nice piece at Bloomberg that investigates:

“It’s pretty grim,” Goss, a 28-year-old Kenyan who manages the Mara Elephant Project, said as he stood 50 meters (55 yards) from the carcass. “It’s an elephant without a face. It’ll be eaten by Hyenas now.”

Poachers had speared the pachyderm in her back. Its ivory would be worth more than $8,000 inAsia. The carcass was the third found in four days, an unusually high number, Goss said. One was shot with an automatic rifle and the other animal was also pierced.

When he started using the drones, Goss thought they would help mainly with providing aerial footage of the landscape and tracking poachers armed with rifles and the Maasai who sometimes killed the animals when they interfere with the grazing of their cows. He soon discovered they could help by frightening the elephants, keeping them out of harm’s way.

“We realized very quickly that the elephants hated the sound of them,” said Goss, whose week-old beard goes white near his temples. “I’m assuming that they think it’s a swarm of bees.”

Goss and his team have put collars with global positioning system devices on 15 elephants so they can be tracked on a computer overlaying their paths on Google Earth. That way the animals, who have names such as Madde, after Goss’s wife, Fred, Hugo and Polaris, can be followed to see if they’ve strayed into areas at risk of poaching or human conflict.

Goss hopes to buy 10 more drones and to modify them by adding a mechanism that releases capsaicin, the active component in chili pepper, when elephants stray near dangerous areas.Paint balls loaded with chili pepper are being used in Zambia’s lower Zambezi region to deter elephants from high-risk zones.

“Drones are basically the future of conservation; a drone can do what 50 rangers can do,” said James Hardy, a fourth-generation Kenyan and manager of the Mara North Conservancy. “It’s going to reach a point where drones are on the forefront of poaching. At night time we could use it to pick up heat signatures of poachers, maybe a dead elephant if we’re quick enough.”

It’s always interesting to see the different and surprising ways in which technical solutions will take you. And as depressing as it is that saving an elephant from poachers means harassing it with a drone and chili pepper, I guess an annoyed or uncomfortable elephant is better than a dead elephant. You do what you gotta do in this fight.

More Whale Fantasies

Whales are beautiful and transfixing. So it’s no surprise that increasingly they star in lots of videos. And the videos are sometimes pretty great to look at.

But I have to admit to a feeling of unease when I watch these sorts of videos. I like that we hear from the thought-provoking Alan Watts.

But what are these videos really about?

Do viewers come away more knowledgeable about the plight of whales, or simply gratified and ready to move onto the next viewing experience?

Do they notice the dying coral, dappled with algae, and connect it to human culture, or is their attention entirely consumed by bikini-clad divers?

Do they wonder what the whales think of having their tranquil spaces invaded by video production teams?

Are the whales anything other than props for a slick GoPro promotion?

Sorry to ask. But I have a hard time watching all the ways in which we use the natural beauty of the world and its creatures for our own purposes. Because our preoccupation with our own lives, our own commerce, our own feelings, and its impact on everything else on the planet is the backdrop I increasingly see in all these whale videos.

Expedition Gyre

The ocean is so full of trash, it’s easy to create an entire art exhibition from it. Expedition Gyre hopes that the resulting display will get people who view it to think about their consumption and how so much of the stuff humanity uses or throws away ends up in the oceans.

More here, here, and here.

It’s heartbreaking to see the reality of our consumption culture. So more power to the Expedition Gyre team. They are certainly getting lots of media play. However, in my view there is one thing, and one thing only, which will make a real difference: levy an environmental tax on every item of packaging and plastic, and charge for any garbage that is not recycled. Art can inspire. But make people pay, and they change their behavior. Fast.

The Beauty Of Baja

Sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves of the stunning and inspiring ecosystems that we have been endowed with. They are worth protecting and fighting for.

This is Erick Higuera’s short film, Baja, which is the Ocean Geographic Pictures of the Year Winner of the Howard Hall Award for Outstanding Achievement 2013.

Connecting To Nature

A Harvard professor commits to using the natural world to find his way, and discovers something important:

After a year of this endeavor, something dawned on me: the way I viewed the world had palpably changed. The sun looked different, as did the stars. While the ocean didn’t accommodate my “human” need for meaning, a different sense emerged from the wave patterns that conveyed the presence of winds, shoals, coastlines and distant storms.

Is this akin to what people describe as spiritual awakenings, or perhaps the experience of improvising music with others, in which individual notes no longer take prominence and a larger meaning emerges in a wordless communication among the performers?

The longer I live the more I regret and fight our modern culture’s pressure to disconnect us from the natural world by inundating us with technology and media. When I was a kid entertainment involved going outside and finding something fun to do with the world at hand. My kids could spend all their days indoors if we let them.

I don’t think we even begin to understand what we are losing as we lose touch with the natural world. Not least of all we lose our understanding of how important it is for us to protect it.

Palm Oil Plague

Palm oil is so pervasive, it’s not easy to keep it (and dead orangutans, among other species that suffer when forests are cut down to grow palm plantations) out of your food.

It’s annoying that the food industry makes us work so hard to do no harm. But here’s the best set of guides I have seen so far if you want to make the effort to eat without a nagging, palm oil-soaked, conscience.

The guides are broken down in to different categories. For example, here is the guide to palm oil free soaps/shampoos/beauty products: