Guest guest Posted February 19, 2002 Report Share Posted February 19, 2002 * SWK and List Info In Footer * ...... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... http://home.kyodo.co.jp/all/display.jsp?an=20020216076 Whales caught near Japan found contaminated with mercury FUKUOKA, Feb. 16, Kyodo - High levels of mercury were found in the meat of five sperm whales caught in the sea near Japan, preventing the meat from being sold to consumers, research institute officials said Saturday. More than three times the level of mercury allowed by the government was detected in the meat of the whales caught as a part of Japan's research whaling in the northwestern Pacific Ocean in fiscal 2000, officials of the government-commissioned Institute of Cetacean Research said. As a result, the approximately 16-tons of meat were frozen and preserved instead of being shipped to markets, they said, adding it was the first time that whale meat could not be shipped for consumption due to high-mercury levels. According to the Tokyo-based organization, 40 mink whales, five sperm whales and 43 Bryde's whales were captured as part of Japanese scientific whaling in the northwestern Pacific Ocean in fiscal 2000. A private research institute in Ehime Prefecture, commissioned by the institute to analyze the whale meat, found the average mercury level in the sperm whale meat was about 1.47 ppm, far exceeding the provisionally set environmental standard of 0.4 ppm, while the figure in the mink whale meat was only 0.21 ppm. Japan targeted mink whales as part of its research whaling in the northwestern Pacific Ocean from fiscal 1999, and included sperm whales and Bryde's whales from fiscal 2000. The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling stipulates that all possible efforts should be taken to process the meat of whales caught for scientific purposes for consumption. Such whale meat is usually distributed to each prefecture depending on past record of consumption. ''We expected a high level of mercury, to some extent, as whales including sperm whales, which feed on fish or cuttlefish, tend to accumulate chemical substances in their bodies compared with whales that feed on krill,'' an official of the Institute of Cetacean Research said.'' ================ http://www.unison.ie/southern_star/stories.php3?ca=38 & si=692490 & issue_id=691 4 Killer whales excite ! IRELAND Sightseers turned out in their hundreds in the Lower Harbour region over the past ten days to catch a glimpse of the three Orca Killer Whales who found themselves in the area, and caused a bit of a stir in the Cobh, Monkstown and Passage West areas. The three whales, a bull, cow and calf nicknamed Homer, Marge and Maggie, came into Cork harbour and were quite happy to remain there totally unaware of the activity they were causing on the shoreline on both sides of the river. During the first days, up to 60 boats were hassling the whales around the Cobh area, and since then, the Irish Navy and Gardai have enforced a ban of pleasure boats near the whales after reports that the whales were being hassled and chased around the harbour. The whales, with the largest up to 15 metres in length, first came into Cobh last Saturday week, and after spending the first weekend in Cobh, moved further into the Cork Harbour, passing the Glenbrook and Carrigaloe Ferry (which had to stop for the best part of an hour) and remained in the vicinity of the IFI chemical plant for some days. Crowds of people lined the roadway on both sides of the river, causing traffic congestion in Passage West, Monkstown and Rushbrook areas. Children from the nearby schools were taken down to vantage points to view the whales, while additional traffic caused congestion in the Passage West and Monkstown areas. Last Saturday morning, at around 2am, the whales ventured right into the heart of Cork City and remained in between Parliament Bridge and Clontarf Bridge in front of City Hall for the best part of an hour. Bemused late night revelers were treated to a front seat view of the whales that swam around the narrow channel much to the delight of everyone present. Sometimes they raced up towards the bridges with only a fin in sight, only to disappear yards short of the bridge similar to a scene out of Jaws. As the tide was fairly high at that time, the onlookers were literally feet away from the whales and could almost touch them as they passed underneath. That afternoon, they were seen around the quays and then further out towards the Passage West areas. The first and most likely reason why the whales have ventured this far is that the parents could be teaching the calf how to navigate narrow channels, and have remained in the harbour to feed off mackerel and mullet. Perhaps they are lost and confused, but they do seem to be quite happy swimming around in the harbour and do not seem to be ill in any way. There are also a number of reports that there is a school of whales about 20 miles off the coast, so perhaps this group decided to get away for a while and sample the Irish hospitality. Whatever their reason is for staying in the harbour, it is proving to be a wonderful attraction for hundreds of onlookers who would have never had the chance to see such wonderful creatures so close to shore before. ============ http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991940 Complete collapse of North Atlantic fishing predicted The entire North Atlantic is being so severely overfished that it may completely collapse by 2010, reveals the first comprehensive survey of the entire ocean's fishery. " We'll all be eating jellyfish sandwiches, " says Reg Watson, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia. Putting new ocean-wide management plans into place is the only way to reverse the trend, Watson and his colleagues say. North Atlantic catches have fallen by half since 1950, despite a tripling of the effort put into catching them. The total number of fish in the ocean has fallen even further, they say, with just one sixth as many high-quality " table fish " like cod and tuna as there were in 1900. Fish prices have risen six fold in real terms in 50 years. The shortage of table fish has forced a switch to other species. " The jellyfish sandwich is not a metaphor - jellyfish is being exported from the US, " says Daniel Pauly, also at the University of British Columbia. " In the Gulf of Maine people were catching cod a few decades ago. Now they're catching sea cucumber. By earlier standards, these things are repulsive, " he says. Off limits The only hope for the fishery is to drastically limit fishing, for instance by declaring large portions of the ocean off-limits and at the same time reducing the number of fishing ships. Piecemeal efforts to protect certain fisheries have only caused the fishing fleet to overfish somewhere else, such as west Africa. " It's like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic, " says Andrew Rosenberg, at the University of New Hampshire. He says the number of boats must be reduced: " Less is actually more with fisheries. If you fish less you get more fish. " Normally, falling catches would drive some fishers out of business. But government subsidies actually encourage overfishing, Watson says, with subsidies totalling about $2.5 billion a year in the North Atlantic. However, Rosenberg was sceptical that any international fishing agreements currently on the table will turn the tide in a short enough timescale. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the OECD have initiatives but these are voluntary, he says. A UN-backed monitoring and enforcement plan of action is being discussed but could take 10 years to come into force. Pauly says only a public reaction like that against whaling in the 1970s would be enough to bring about sufficient change in the way the fish stocks are managed. The new survey was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2002 annual meeting in Boston. Kurt Kleiner, Boston 10:30 18 February 02 ============== http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s484814.htm Officers shoot beached whale after failed rescue efforts Conservation officers say they were left with no alternative but to shoot a young sperm whale that was beaching itself near Albany in Western Australia's south. The four-metre calf was repeatedly heading for shore, despite attempts by residents in the Nanarup area to move it out to sea on Sunday evening. With all other options exhausted, the reluctant advice of a whale expert in Perth was to kill the animal before its condition deteriorated further. Senior regional officer with the Department of Conservation and Land Management, Peter Bidwell, says while it is not understood exactly why the whale was acting that way, it is likely to have been for one of two possible reasons. " One is that it may have been disoriented from its pod from the very rough seas that we had on Thursday, " he said. " Or it could just been a sick calf anyway that was discarded by its mother. " ============== Unusual Virus Identified in Aborted Calf, Say Oregon State University Researchers Story Filed: Friday, February 15, 2002 10:38 PM EST CORVALLIS, Ore., Feb 15, 2002 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- A group of viruses that can move from one animal species to another and cause a wide range of diseases has been found in the lungs of an aborted calf fetus. The findings by researchers in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University were reported today in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. As one part of the larger viral family of caliciviruses, these " vesiviruses " are so named because they are indistinguishable from viruses of ocean origin that from the 1930s to 1950s caused repeated outbreaks in the United States of a disease in pigs called vesicular exanthema of swine, or VES. The VES-like viral group is still classified as a " foreign animal disease agent " in the U.S., in part because some of the disease symptoms they can cause - blistering of the mouth, nose, and feet - mimic those of foot and mouth disease, a highly contagious and costly disease for many agricultural animal species. The proven recurrence of this group of viruses in an aborted calf, along with the larger body of knowledge about how these viruses can spread, mutate, cross interspecies boundaries and occasionally cause major disease outbreaks, is a cause for concern, according to Dr. Alvin Smith, professor and head of the OSU Laboratory for Calicivirus Studies. " We are well aware of the importance of reporting a possible new virus of bovine abortion, " said Smith and other researchers in their study. " However, we assign much greater importance to the urgent need for differential diagnostic reagents for vesicular diseases. " Foot and mouth disease, the researchers said, is not zoonotic, or able to be transmitted from other animals to humans. But some infections by vesiviruses do make that leap. " The need for prompt and accurate diagnosis of vesicular diseases in livestock is not only important for the control of foot and mouth disease, but is also important because of the human health implications involving caliciviruses, " the report said. " This public health issue is given even greater imputes by our recent reports of vesicular disease in humans, and possibly abortion and hepatitis, involving this pathogenic class of VESV-like caliciviruses, genus vesivirus, (which are) endemic in certain ocean species and U.S. livestock. " According to Smith, research has shown for 30 years that ocean mammals are a vast reservoir of different calicivirus strains, including the VESV group that caused a major animal health epidemic in the United States. For at least 15 years, he said, it's also been clear that these viruses are still endemic at high levels in the nation's livestock populations. They should no longer be considered a foreign animal disease agent, Smith said, which by statute means they must be eradicated if they are diagnosed in U.S. animals. Researchers at OSU, in collaboration with a private biotechnology company, have developed various assays and tests that can more accurately diagnose vesiviral infections. Those tests, if more widely used, could improve the diagnosis of diseases caused by this viral family and aid in their control, the scientists said. Caliciviruses are characterized by their ability to survive in a broad range of environments, from the deep ocean to family farms, infect a wide range of species, cross from one species to another, and cause disease symptoms that vary from mild to deadly. Vesiviruses have been shown to infect swine, seals, cats, dogs, cattle, snakes, whales, primates and humans, among others. The diseases they have been associated with include blisters, hepatitis, diarrhea, abortion, pneumonia, encephalitis, myocarditis, and fatal hemorrhage. A single strain of calicivirus has been shown to have at least 21 animal hosts, ranging from oysters to sea lions, whales, horses and humans. One of the most deadly of the calicivirus strains, closely related to vesiviruses, causes rabbit hemorrhagic disease, a highly infectious and deadly disease that has killed hundreds of millions of rabbits around the world, in some cases up to 95 percent of local populations within 24-48 hours of exposure. That strain, Smith said, was one not known to exist prior to the 1980s. It probably evolved through mutation, he said, or was perhaps brought to rabbits through the most common reservoir for many caliciviral strains, marine animals. ============== DJ. Moscow Court To Hear Suit Seeking Sakhalin Oil Ban-Report ---------- ---- Story Filed: Friday, February 15, 2002 4:13 AM EST MOSCOW, Feb 15, 2002 (ODJ Select via COMTEX) -- (Dow Jones)--A Moscow court will hear a lawsuit on Apr. 9 filed by Russian environmental groups seeking to ban oil and gas projects off Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Friday. The groups claim that the Sakhalin projects endanger rare gray whale colonies in the region. If successful, the lawsuit could lead to the closures of the Sakhalin 1 and Sakhalin 2 offshore projects, led by ExxonMobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch/Shell (RD) respectively. The two projects could eventually become the largest foreign investments in Russia, with investment planned to reach more than $20 billion. Some 14 Russian environmental and social groups named the Russian government and the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources as defendants in the suit. Exxon Neftegas Limited, a Russian subsidiary of ExxonMobil and in charge of the Sakhalin 1 project, and Sakhalin Energy, a consortium 55% owned by Shell that is developing the Sakhalin 2 natural gas project, are listed as third parties in the lawsuit. Russian and international environmental groups have waged a campaign against the energy projects off Sakhalin for years, arguing the oil companies have used loopholes in Russian legislation on protecting the colonies of gray whales breeding in the area. The companies have denied the allegations, saying that they went beyond international standards on protecting the whales. Last September, Exxon was forced to halt seismic surveys amid pressure from the World Wildlife Fund and other groups. Exxon officials in Moscow couldn't be reached immediately for comment. " To my knowledge (Sakhalin Energy) hasn't received any official letter about the lawsuit, " said Maxim Shoob, a spokesman of Royal Dutch/Shell in Moscow. Sakhalin Energy officials couldn't be immediately reached for comment. ============= _______________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com To change list options, or , go to http://www.topica.com. Or send e-mail to swk-, swk-. Visit our site: http://www.stopwhalekill.org .... Ask a friend today to join our list! ... ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: tacitus EASY UNSUBSCRIBE http://topica.com/u/?b1demT.b1jvh4 Or send an email to: swk- T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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