I sincerely hope that the 2008 presidential election brings climate change/global warming to the forefront of US policy issues. The story below doesn’t surprise me one bit, but it does disturb me. This is no longer an issue up for debate, its an issue that needs to be addressed immediately and effectively for our future and for future generations. Continue reading
The following is a very informative interview with our very own Director of Marine Mammals, Erich Hoyt about Marine Protected Areas
(written by Elsa Cabrera for La Tercera, Santiago, Chile January 2007)
1. We tend to assume that effective marine protected areas for cetaceans alone guarantee the conservation of these marine mammals. Is this true or are there other actions/instruments that should also be considered?
A marine protected area (MPA) alone cannot guarantee the conservation of any whale, dolphin or for that matter, any species or ecosystem. Continue reading
To update my post on Amazon’s sale of shark fin soup, and to give credit where credit is due, I’m pleased to announce that Amazon.com is no longer selling shark fin soup.
Many of us who complained to Amazon received responses that indicated they did not plan to ask its 3rd party sellers to discontinue selling shark fin soup; however Amazon responded to public pressure after just a few days and removed the products. Wise decision.
The words “Japan” and “conservation” are being used in the same sentence. Tuna conservation talks began today in Japan to find ways to avoid commercial extinction of tuna species that have been exploited by the Japanese and others for far too long.
The meeting of the five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) is being held in Kobe, Japan to address the decline in tuna stocks worldwide. The agenda include plans to establish a global tracking system to identify the origin of every tuna sold commercially. This and other measures are being taken to reverse the damage done by illegal and unregulated fishing along with unsustainable tuna quotas. Adult Bluefin tuna populations in the western Atlantic are now less than one-fifth of what they were just 30 years ago. In the Indian Ocean, Southern Bluefin tuna stocks have decreased by 90 percent. Continue reading
A new Plankton Forums member recently posted that Amazon is selling two brands of shark fin soup. Here is the information he posted:
It seems that Amazon.com is carrying shark fin soup through two third-party vendors, Dragonfly Shark and American Roland Food Corp. With all the controversy surrounding shark fins and the horrible practices used to harvest fins, Amazon should be ashamed to be carrying shark fin soup and should rectify the problem immediately by pulling all shark fin products from their catalog.
What you can do: Continue reading
