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Turn clock back 25 years to legalize commercial whaling? 2,039,621 whales killed, <3k fin escaped hunting, protector in cell
Left: Captain Paul Watson & 'Steve Irwin'. Top R: Skipper Pete Bethune. Ignoring 6 crew in sight, the 750-ton iron-and-steel ship Shonan Maru 2 sliced 17-ton fiberglass ecoboat Earthrace/Ady Gil into two when it was idle in the water, waiting to be refueled, 6 crew sitting on the deck, chatting.
Fin whale, the 2nd largest mammal on earth: size comparison against an average human. Scientists calculate that 2,039,621 whales were killed in Antarctica's Southern Ocean during the decades of industrial whaling, including roughly three quarters of a million fin whale.
Top L: In 2006, Iceland killed the endangered fin whale for the 1st time since the 1980s. Top R & Bottom R: free & imprisoned Pete Bethune, skipper of Ady Gil / Earthrace.
Captain Paul Watson leads Sea Shepherd, volunteers & ocean guardians, spending 8 months per year at sea, fighting illegal whalers, sealers, and shark and dolphin fishermen. The latest Sea Shepherd Whale Defense campaign cut Japan whalers’ quota in half & saved 528 whales. 750,000 fin whales, the 2nd largest creature, were killed in the S. Hemisphere alone between 1904-79, & less than 3,000 currently remain. IWC's compromise would legalize commercial whaling. The endangered fin whale would continue to be a target. read more »
Photos: Worst floods in more than 100 years hitting US east coast, 2-3ft waters swamp local mall, roads cut off, cars submerged
Flood waters engulf the cars and offices of Village Collision and Automed Auto Sales on Aster Road in West Warwick, Rhode Island on April 1, 2010. The state received record rainfall earlier in the week causing flooding in many areas.
You’ll need your boat inside the mall, too.
The Rhode Island Mall in Warwick was flooded Wednesday by 2 to 3 feet of water. The mall's owner told the Providence Journal that the building, which houses about 70 stores, has never flooded in 40 years, and the retailers had very little time to protect the merchandise.
The Pawtuxet River spilled over its banks. A state of emergency was declared in Warwick, residents in Cranston are being evacuated, schools are canceled, and people were told not to flush their toilets.
Sushi-cide tragedy. Eat bluefin tuna (97% gone) to extinction? Oceans at our mercy. We have a choice...
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The Economist magazine calls CITES suppress- ion of debate on bluefin tuna dis- honorable: IT WAS a moment of some drama when delegates assembled in Doha came to vote on a ban in the trade in bluefin tuna on March 18th. The previous evening many represent- atives of the 175 member nations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) had been at a reception at the Japanese embassy. Prominent on the menu was bluefin tuna sushi. On the agenda the next day at the CITES meeting was a proposal to list the bluefin tuna as sufficiently endangered that it would qualify for a complete ban in the trade of the species (The Economist supports such a ban). read more »
Hoping Earth Hour visits often. Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Poet in darkness" "Leaves closed beneath kisses of night"
"A poet is a nightingale,
who sits in darkness and sings
to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
"A Defence of Poetry," 1840
A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The Sensitive Plant," 1820
Photo courtesy of WWF / geoffwilson2010 - Earth Hour before & after: The Westminster Palace. On each side of the palace rise the Victoria Tower and the Clock Tower, which shelters Big Ben, universally famous bell.
Ocean pollution. Sea "dead zones", oxygen-deprived, fishless: 1st recorded in 1970, 417 in 2008, largest covers 70,000 sq km
A new global study of Earth’s oceans shows a rapid rise in the number of “dead zones” - areas of seafloor with too little oxygen to sustain most marine life. The oxygen-starved waters have proliferated since the 1960s and now rank as one of the world's most pressing environmental problems.
Clocking in at over 8000 square miles (21,000 km2) this year, probably the largest dead zone today stems from the Mississippi River delta in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a site at the confluence of significant farming in the midwest and significant fishing (and shrimping) in the Gulf area. The dead zone spans east to west along the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
Several visible sites with expanding dead zones. Mississippi Delta at the top, with Yangtze River in the bottom left and Pearl River in the bottom right. The dead zones are the tinted clouds swirling at the coastal edge.
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Methane (greenhouse gas 25x potent as CO2) bubbles out 5x faster. Warmer air thaws Arctic soil, 50 bil tonnes may be released
Researchers believe the Arctic Ocean seabed is thawing in patches and releasing greenhouse gases. Methane, trapped in the permafrost, 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is bubbling out of the frozen arctic faster than expected.
Researchers ignite a bubble of methane on Alaska’s Steward Peninsula.
Methane is leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. The amount leaking from this locale is comparable to all methane from rest of the world's oceans put together. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Left: Researcher ignites a pocket of methane. Right: methane bubbles trapped in lake ice in Siberia in early autumn.
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"Earth and Nature suffer grave ruin, destruction instead of construction, when Technology is in the hands of Greed." - LuCxeed
Earth and Nature suffer grave ruin, destruction instead of construction, when Technology is in the hands of Greed.
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