Shark Finning Banned in Guam

Shark Finning Banned in Guam

After activist efforts on all levels, from school children around the world to almost 15,000 shark enthusiasts from Care2, Guam's governor signed bill 44 to ban shark finning after the proposal was unanimously passed by legislators.

Guam is the third country to put a bill into place that bans the sale, possession and distribution of shark fins. This practice has become more prevalent over the years because of the rise in popularity of shark fin soup, an Asian delicacy. More than 70 million sharks are killed by finning each year and often the shark's body is disposed of in the sea after the brutal process of cutting off the fin.

We hope that Guam can serve as a model for the future of shark preservation. Sharks are vital for the ocean's ecosystem and "as soon as you start to take out an important part of it, it's like a brick wall, you take out bricks [and] eventually it's going to collapse," states WildAid International director Peter Knights. It is essential that we preserve these amazing creatures and not let them be destroyed in this horrible practice.

Thanks to all of those helped get this bill passed. We are so proud of Guam's decision and hope other countries will follow in their footsteps.

Source and Related Stories:

Via http://paper.li/MrHolise/cyber-whale-warriors-6

Dead Dolphins and Whales in Gulf May Be 50 Times Higher

Number of Dead Dolphins and Whales in Gulf May Be 50 Times Higher

The baby dolphin lay on its side, one flipper pointed toward cloudy skies, rocking back and forth with the waves near Innarity Point, FL

“I looked and saw a baby porpoise, a terrible sight to see,” local resident Chris McCune told WKRG-TV News out of nearby Mobile, AL.

This young dolphin was one of the most recent of at least 138 dolphins that have died in the Gulf this year, nearly half of them premature or newborn calves.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, scientists say. Many more dolphins are dying in the Gulf than are officially counted. New research released today shows that the average number for most species may be 50 times higher than what’s reported now, a conservative figure according to the authors. more HuffPo

Doomsday Is Upon Us: Fukushima

Is Fukushima About To Blow?

By Mike Whitney

March 28, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- - Conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are deteriorating and the doomsday scenario is beginning to unfold. On Sunday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) officials reported that the levels of radiation leaking into seawater at the Unit 2 reactor were 100,000 times above normal, and the airborne radiation measured 4-times higher than government limits. As a result, emergency workers were evacuated from the plant and rushed to safe location. The prospect of a full-core meltdown or an environmental catastrophe of incalculable magnitude now looms larger than ever. The crisis is getting worse.




If spent fuel rods catch fire from lack of coolant, the intense heat will lift radiation plumes high into the atmosphere that will drift around the world. That's the nightmare scenario, clouds of radioactive material showering the planet with lethal toxins for months on end. And, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna, that deadly process has already begun. The group told New Scientist that:

"Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl. ("New Scientist", March 24 ---thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

So, volatile radioactive elements are already being lofted into the jet stream and spread across continents. What's different here is that the quantities are much larger than they were at Chernobyl, thus, the dangers are far greater. According to the same group of scientists "the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site" (while) "the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes." The troubles at one nuclear facility now pose a direct threat to humans and other species everywhere. Is this what Obama meant when he called nuclear power, "Safe and green?"

This from CNN:

"Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation."

And this from the New York Times:

"A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan said that there was a long vertical crack running down the side of the reactor vessel itself. The crack runs down below the water level in the reactor and has been leaking fluids and gases, he said....

“There is a definite, definite crack in the vessel — it’s up and down and it’s large,” he said. “The problem with cracks is they do not get smaller.” (Thanks to Washington's Blog)

The media has switched into full "BP Oil Spill-mode", making every effort to minimize the disaster and to soothe the public with half-truths and disinformation. The goal is to conceal the scale of the catastrophe and protect the nuclear industry. It's another case of profits over people. Still, the truth is available for those who are willing to sift through the lies. Radiation has turned up in the Tokyo water supply, imports of milk, vegetable and fruit from four prefectures in the vicinity of Fukushima have been banned, and the evacuation zone around the plant has widened to an 18 mile radius.

Also, monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and Europe...According to Reuters: "It's only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere," said Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research."

Here's more from Brian Moench, MD:

"Administration spokespeople continuously claim "no threat" from the radiation reaching the US from Japan, just as they did with oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf. Perhaps we should all whistle "Don't worry, be happy" in unison. A thorough review of the science, however, begs a second opinion.

That the radiation is being released 5,000 miles away isn't as comforting as it seems.... Every day, the jet stream carries pollution from Asian smoke stacks and dust from the Gobi Desert to our West Coast, contributing 10 to 60 percent of the total pollution breathed by Californians, depending on the time of year. Mercury is probably the second most toxic substance known after plutonium. Half the mercury in the atmosphere over the entire US originates in China. It, too, is 5,000 miles away. A week after a nuclear weapons test in China, iodine 131 could be detected in the thyroid glands of deer in Colorado, although it could not be detected in the air or in nearby vegetation." (Washington's Blog)

The smoldering Fukushima hulk is a perpetual death machine poisoning everything around it--sea, sky and soil. Here's a clip from the Collin's article:

"...The soil contamination is really high. Soil found 40 kilometers away.... the levels on the soil were very high—in fact, a thousand times iodine, 4,000 times the cesium standard. And we just got a report from the Kyoto Research Reactor Institute, Dr. Tetsuji Imanaka, that said that—he had to look a little bit more into the sampling of the Japanese government, but depending on how the sampling was done, this level of contamination in the soil could be twice the amount that was compulsory evacuation for Chernobyl. Aileen Mioko Smith, March 24 (thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

Twice as high as Chernobyl already, and the disaster is likely to persist for months to come. Things are getting worse, much worse.

The Japanese government has been downplaying the crisis to make it look like they have matters under control, but it's all a sham. They control nothing. The rescue mission has been a flop from the get-go and now things are at a boiling point. The emergency effort has been overtaken by events and now it's a matter of "wait and see". We're approaching zero hour.

So why the cover up? Why is the media trying to soft-peddle the real effects of a nuclear cataclysm? Does the Japanese government really believe they can make things better by tweaking their public relations strategy? They should focus on saving lives and abandon "perception management" altogether. This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists website:

"Our assessment is that the Japanese government is squandering the opportunity to initiate an orderly evacuation from larger areas around the site–especially of sensitive populations, like children and pregnant women. It is potentially wasting valuable time by not undertaking a larger scale evacuation at this time."

The Japanese government is trying to protect the powerful nuclear lobby. The same is true of Obama, who continues to promote nuclear energy even while radiation belches from battered Fukushima. He's not thinking about the public; he's thinking about the deep pocket constituents who fill his campaign coffers.

Japanese workers are putting their lives on the line to regain control of the broken facility, but with little success. The probability of another fire, another monstrous explosion, or a full-core meltdown increases by the day. The Fukushima fiasco is gaining pace putting tens of thousands of people at risk of thyroid cancer, childhood leukemia and other life-threatening ailments.

On Saturday, Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, said the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant was ''serious''. That might be the understatement of the century. ICH

Denial Ain't Just a River In Egypt: Japan Seawater Radiation Threat: Volume Two

Someone else picking up on the telling it like it isn't.

Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

Dead horse long ago flogged down to a mere red stain

The situation at the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan was brought under control days ago. It remains the case as this is written that there have been no measurable radiological health consequences among workers at the plant or anybody else, and all indications are that this will remain the case. And yet media outlets around the world continue with desperate, increasingly hysterical and unscrupulous attempts to frame the situation as a crisis.

Here's a roundup of the latest facts, accompanied by highlights of the most egregious misreporting.

First up, three technicians working to restore electrical power in the plant's No 3 reactor building stood in some water while doing so. Their personal dosimetry equipment later showed that they had sustained radiation doses up to 170 millisievert. Under normal rules when dealing with nuclear powerplant incidents, workers at the site are permitted to sustain up to 250 millisievert before being withdrawn. If necessary, this can be extended to 500 millisievert according to World Health Organisation guidance.

None of this involves significant health hazards: actual radiation sickness is not normally seen until a dose of 1,000 millisievert and is not common until 2,000. Additional cancer risk is tiny: huge numbers of people must be subjected to such doses in order to see any measurable health consequences. In decades to come, future investigators will almost certainly be unable to attribute any cases of cancer to service at Fukushima.

Nonetheless, in the hyper-cautious nuclear industry, any dose over 100 millisievert is likely to cause bosses to pull people out at least temporarily. Furthermore, the three workers had sustained slight burns to their legs as a result of standing in the radioactive water - much as one will burn one's skin by exposing it to the rays of the sun (a tremendously powerful nuclear furnace). They didn't even notice these burns until after completing their work. Just to be sure, however, the three were sent for medical checks.

So - basically nothing happened. Three people sustained injuries equivalent to a mild case of sunburn. But this was reported around the globe as front-page news under headlines such as "Japanese Workers Hospitalized for Excessive Radiation Exposure". Just to reiterate: it was not excessive.

Reporters clamoured to know more - in particular how could the water in the basement of the reactor building have become so radioactive - no less than "10,000 times normal". One might note that in general radiation levels 10,000 times normal mean that you could achieve a tiny fraction of an extra percentage point of cancer risk by being exposed for a fortnight or so.

Japanese government spokesmen briefing the press obligingly gave a list of possibilities. Among these was the possibility that the suppression chamber at No 3 may be leaking water or steam due to damage (as well as doing so due to planned venting operations which are being carried out on purpose).

The suppression chamber is technically part of the core's primary containment, though in fact the core itself lives in its own central cocoon at the middle of the doughnut-shaped, water-filled suppression chamber. The plant owner, TEPCO, in conjunction with Japanese government officials, stated that the No 3 suppression chamber might have suffered damage well over a week ago: this possibility was well known. We here at the Reg reported it back then, and not being goldfish we still remember doing so.

And yet we hear "Japan fears nuclear site reactor damage", "Dangerous breach feared at Japanese Nuke Plant" - as if this was some grave new piece of news today.

Tokyo tapwater - THE NEW GROUND ZERO!!! Fallout!!! Chernobyl!!!

Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

Dead horse long ago flogged down to a mere red stain

Then there's the matter of the tapwater in Tokyo. Two days ago, levels of radioactive iodine-131 were found in the city's water which were above the safety limit for baby milk calculated on the basis of a year's consumption: in other words, if babies drank such water for a year constantly they would have a tiny, minuscule extra risk of thyroid cancer.

One should note that iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days: it disappears almost completely within a matter of weeks. The Fukushima reactors have not been generating any more of it since they scrammed nearly a fortnight ago, and the residual core heating which is causing it to be emitted has plunged to tiny proportions of that seen in the days after the quake.

There was never any chance whatsoever that levels of iodine-131 in the tapwater would remain noticeable for a year, which is what would be necessary for any effects at all on the city's babies. It was really quite irresponsible of the authorities to recommend that infants shouldn't drink it. (One can't help noticing that the first such recommendation reportedly came from the city authorities, belatedly followed by the national government. The Tokyo city governor is from the national opposition party and is facing a tough re-election battle. He had previously sought to use the Fukushima situation to cast his political rivals in a bad light over the deployment of Tokyo's elite Hyper Rescue firefighters.)

The spurious water announcement, of course, caused pretty much everybody to stop drinking from Tokyo taps and there was a run on bottled water. This was reported globally under such headlines as "Tokyo Water Works is new ground zero" (since retracted, but the Google cache will show you the guilty organisation for a while) even as the announcement came that, of course, the harmless minuscule iodine-131 spike had passed.

There is no sign of the madness abating: reporters are now in a desperate battle to breathe life into the Fukushima non-story, and are resorting to increasingly outrageous methods. Consider the latest work of veteran New Scientist scaremonger Deborah MacKenzie (selected previous headlines: "Pea sized bomb could clear a city" [no it couldn't], "BSE: it's not over yet" [yes it was], "Iran showing fastest scientific growth of any country" [utter bilge]).

MacKenzie tells us that "Fukushima fallout nears Chernobyl levels". Normally that wouldn't matter: unfortunately this article is now all over the internet.

The facts are that minuscule quantities of airborne radio-iodine and radio-caesium from Fukushima are now being detected by instruments all round the world - as you would expect, because radioactivity can be detected in incredibly tiny amounts. If you wanted to, you could examine weather records since the quake hit, concoct a simulation of how iodine and caesium might travel around the planet to be deposited at far-flung instruments thousands of miles away, and then plug in those final readings in order to extrapolate back to generate a figure for possible emissions from Fukushima. That figure would be highly uncertain, to put it mildly, but you could do it.

There wouldn't be a lot of point in doing so in the case of radio-caesium, as nobody has ever been able to show that this isotope has any health consequences at all: huge amounts were emitted from Chernobyl, but no discernible illnesses have resulted.

Radio-iodine, though, did have measurable (though very small) health effects after Chernobyl: if children and young people drank milk containing large amounts of it - thousands of times the levels seen in Japan to this point - their chances of getting cancer increased by approximately 0.02 per cent.

Anyway, one meteorologist has decided to try and work back from the worldwide readings to calculate possible emissions figures from Fukushima. It is these figures that New Scientist tell us are "nearing Chernobyl levels".

Fortunately we can go straight to the source here, and find that in the judgement of Gerhard Wotawa of the Austrian met office (and of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation) emissions of iodine-131 from Fukushima could be approximately 20 per cent of those from Chernobyl.

It should be needless to say there is not a hint of a suggestion that anybody will be giving milk with significant levels of iodine-131 in it to children, as happened to about 18 million youngsters after Chernobyl, causing them a tiny increased chance of later developing thyroid cancer (which, unusually for cancer, is easily cured - though you need supplies of radio-iodine from nuclear reactors to do so).

Sadly it does appear to be necessary to say that.

The "fallout" which is "nearing Chernobyl levels" is presumably the still more harmless radio-caesium, which Wotawa theorises may have been emitted from Fukushima in amounts "20-60" per cent of those seen at Chernobyl.

One should also add that in Wotawa's judgement all these substantial emissions of iodine and caesium have fallen into the sea: there is basically zero chance of verifying that they actually happened. Health consequences - of course - should be zero.

This is beyond ignorance now.
The Register

Denial Ain't Just a River In Egypt: Japan Seawater Radiation Threat

There is one reoccurring theme that few will fail to notice in this ongoing clusterfuck at Fukushima, and that is the inevitable backpeddling on just about every statement issued by every agency, and that includes the Japanese government, over the threat to, not just human safety, but to the marine environment as well.

Every statement, be it on the amount of radiation released, or regarding the integrity of the plant itself, has been followed, without exception, a day or two later by, eer well, things are just, perhaps maybe, a little worse than was initially reported. The latest being a possible maybe that there has been a breach of the containment vessels (reactors) themselves, just a possible maybe, mind you. One report touches on the problem of where plant officials are going to put all the water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor. Would you care to hazard a guess as to where the final destination of that little lot might be? No, me neither.

Of the four reports below, all relative to sea water contamination, three of them specifically so, are we to expect these any difference from previously issued statements? Of course not, and particularly not when we see the likes of the ''Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency'' included in the equation. They must think we are all mad, or simple, or something, but what, I don't know? but whatever it is, it must make us worthy of utter contempt.

I have taken the liberty of highlighting a few of the more outrageous examples of the establishments total disregard for potential casualties. The greatest casualty of course, already having occurred, the truth being the first to succumb.

Radiation Levels Soar In The Sea Off Japan
March 26, 2011

Radiation levels are about 1,250 times the legal limit in the ocean near Japan's stricken Fukushima 1 nuclear plant.

The levels of of iodine-131 reported several hundred metres out into the Pacific Ocean had increased ten-fold in just a few days, said the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which operates the plant.

"This is a relatively high level," nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said in a televised news conference.

Drinking 500ml of fresh water with the same concentration would expose a person to their annual safe dose, Mr Nishiyama said, but he ruled out an immediate threat to aquatic life and seafood safety.

"Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it," Mr Nishiyama said.

He added that because iodine-131 has a half-life - the time in which half of it decays - of eight days, "by the time people eat the sea products, its amount is likely to have diminished significantly".

Tepco also reported levels of caesium-137 - which has a longer half life of about 30 years - almost 80 times the legal maximum. Scientists say both radioactive substances can cause cancer if absorbed by humans.

Officials said they would check the seawater about 20 miles (30km) off the coast for radiation and expect it to show there is no need to be concerned about any possible effect to fish.

The latest data has increased fears that one of the six reactor cores at the the site may have been cracked after a huge tsunami on March 11 knocked out the site's cooling systems.

Urgent efforts were under way to drain pools of highly radioactive water near the reactors, after several workers sustained radiation burns while installing cables as part of efforts to restore the critical cooling systems.

There have been suspected meltdowns at three of the reactors as well as hydrogen explosions and fires.

Japanese leaders defended their decision not to evacuate people from a wider area around the plant, insisting they are safe if they stay indoors, but officials said residents may want to voluntarily move to areas with better facilities.

Radioactive vapour from the plant has contaminated farm produce and dairy products in the region, leading to shipment halts in Japan as well as the United States, European Union, China and a host of other nations. Sky




Engineers toil to pump out Japan plant
TOKYO (Reuters)
Mar 26, 2011

Japanese engineers struggled on Sunday to pump radioactive water from a crippled nuclear power station after radiation levels soared in seawater near the plant more than two weeks after it was battered by a huge earthquake and a tsunami.

Tests on Friday showed iodine 131 levels in seawater 30 km (19 miles) from the coastal nuclear complex had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal but it was not considered a threat to marine life or food safety, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

"Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior agency official.

Despite that reassurance, the disclosure is likely to heighten international concern over Japanese seafood exports. Several countries have already banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood.

Prolonged efforts to prevent a catastrophic meltdown at the 40-year-old plant have also intensified concern around the world about nuclear power. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime.

The crisis at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, has overshadowed a big relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan.

Engineers trying to stabilize the plant have to pump out radioactive water after it was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors.

On Thursday, three workers were taken to hospital from reactor No. 3 after stepping in water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor. That raised fear the core's container could be damaged.

An official from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a Sunday news conference experts still had to determine where to put some of the contaminated water while engineers were still trying to fully restore the plant's power.

TEPCO said it was using fresh water instead of seawater to cool down at least some of the reactors after concern arose that salt deposits might hamper the cooling process.

Two of the plant's reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke. However, the nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilized.

The government has said the situation was nowhere near to being resolved, although it was not deteriorating.

"We are preventing the situation from worsening -- we've restored power and pumped in fresh water -- and making basic steps toward improvement but there is still no room for complacency," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference on Saturday.

More than 700 engineers have been toiling in shifts but there's no end in sight.

Aftershocks that have jolted the region since March 11 have been tailing off. One on Sunday of magnitude 4.2 hit near the stricken plant but there were no reports of further damage. source





Tsunami and radiation may sink Japanese fishermen
TOKYO (Reuters)
March 26, 2011

The tsunami that slammed Japan two weeks ago wiped out homes, businesses and a fishing industry that was the lifeblood for thousands of victims on the northeast coast.

The tsunami erased aquatic farms just offshore along with low-lying seaside areas that are home to fleets fishing along the coast, while a nuclear plant in Fukushima leaking radiation has raised concerns about marine life in the region over the longer term.

"Fishermen lost their gear, ships and just about everything. About half will probably get out of the business," said Yuko Sasaki, a fishmonger in the tsunami-hit city of Kamaishi.

Sasaki has been cleaning the family store, where a water line at about five meters high marks where the tsunami struck. She expects to be back in business well before most fishermen from the area.

"The question remains: what did the tsunami do to the sea?"

In Iwate, it probably destroyed aqua farms for abalone, sea urchins, oysters, scallops and seaweed that the local government says account for 80 percent of the revenue for local fisheries.

Yuichi Sato, 66, a retired civil servant, said the Iwate town of Yamada, with a population of 20,000, has no other industry but fishing and aquaculture.

"The main industry is raising scallops and all the beds were completely wiped out," he said as he prepared a dinner over a wood fire at a makeshift home some 800 meters from the coast.

"The only way to bring it back will be with huge subsidies and investment from the government," he said.

The coastal fishing industry provides tens of millions of dollars a year to Iwate fishermen, a paltry sum compared with the estimated $300 billion damage in what is probably the world's costliest natural disaster.

The tsunami obliterated centuries-old fishing ports along the northeast coast, sending ships adrift in the Pacific Ocean, to the bottom of the sea, or depositing them on land, where they now lie among the splintered remains of homes.

"Our tourism and fishing industries were picking up before the quake hit. Now they are completely destroyed," said Yuji Shirahata, who heads a disaster relief team on the island of Oshima in Kesennuma in the coastal prefecture of Miyagi.

Even if fishing returns, it may be difficult to find buyers due to radiation concerns.

In Fukushima prefecture, radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the Daiichi power plant that was crippled in the disaster, Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Saturday.

"After this kind of disaster, sea urchins and abalones could be contaminated. So we need to collect all of those and start all over again. We have to reset the sea," said Masashi Sasaki, 40, a fisherman in Iwate. source




FISHING INDUSTRY OBLITERATED
TOKYO (Reuters)
March 26, 2011

At Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, workers took just four days to stabilize the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown. No one was injured and there was no radiation release above the legal limit.

At Chernobyl in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in the world, it took weeks to "stabilize" what remained of the plant and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

So far, no significant levels of radiation have been detected beyond the vicinity of the plant in Fukushima.

The U.S. Department of Energy said on its website (here)

No significant quantities of radiological material had been deposited in the area around the plant since March 19, according to tests on Friday.

In Tokyo, a metropolis of 13 million people, a Reuters reading on Saturday morning showed ambient radiation of 0.22 microsieverts per hour, about six times normal for the city. That was well within the global average of naturally occurring background radiation of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour, a range given by the World Nuclear Association.

The government has prodded tens of thousands of people living in a 20 km-30 km (12-18 mile) zone beyond the stricken complex to leave. Edano said the residents should move because it was difficult to get supplies to the area, and not because of elevated radiation.

Kazuo Suzuki, 56, who has moved from his house near the nuclear plant to an evacuation center, said neighbors he had talked to by telephone said delivery trucks were not going to the exclusion zone because of radiation worries.

"So goods are running out, meaning people have to drive to the next town to buy things. But there is a fuel shortage there too, so they have to wait in long queues for gasoline to use the car."

Radiation levels at the evacuation center were within a normal range of about 0.16 microsievert, according to a Reuters geiger counter reading.

In Japan's northeast, more than a quarter of a million people remain in shelters, and the impact on livelihoods is becoming clearer. The quake and tsunami not only wiped out homes and businesses but also a fishing industry that was the lifeblood of coastal communities.

"Fishermen lost their gear, ships and just about everything. About half will probably get out of the business," said Yuko Sasaki, a fishmonger in the tsunami-hit city of Kamaishi.

The double disaster probably destroyed aqua farms for abalone, sea urchins, oysters, scallops and seaweed that authorities say account for 80 percent of the revenue of the region's fisheries.

The tsunami obliterated centuries-old fishing ports along the northeast coast, sending ships adrift in the Pacific Ocean, to the bottom of the sea, or depositing them on land, where they now lie among the splintered remains of homes. source

Natures Great Events: The Sardine Run

A mighty army of dolphins, sharks, whales, seals and gannets hunt down the billions of sardines along South Africa's east coast each winter. This is the sardine run: an underwater Armageddon, the greatest gathering of predators anywhere on the planet, and the most spectacular event in the world's oceans.

However, in recent years the sardine run has become less predictable, perhaps due to the warming effects of climate change. If the sardine run does not happen, the lives of the animals caught up in the drama hang in the balance.

Pioneering a unique boat stabilised camera mount for surface filming, the Nature's Great Events crew capture all the high octane action as the predators compete for sardines, filmed with aerial, underwater and above water cameras. Super slow motion cameras also capture the very moment gannets plunge into the water, hitting it at 60 miles an hour.

A violent winter storm is the trigger for the sardines to begin their desperate dash. They are followed by a super-pod of 5,000 dolphins and further up the coast more predators gather. A shoal of sardines 15 miles long is pushed into the shallows and aerial shots show thousands of sharks gathering to feed on them.

The climax to the sardine run is a spectacular feeding frenzy as the dolphins round the sardines up into balls on which all the predators feast. Gannets rain down in their thousands, sharks pile in scattering the fish and a Bryde's whale lunges in taking great mouthfuls of sardines.

Life on the Run, the final 10-minute diary, tells how experienced underwater cameramen Didier Noirot, who worked with Jacques Cousteau, filmed the bait balls in shark-infested waters. His adventures include sharks nipping at his fins and a 16-foot shark lunging at his leg.

http://rapidshare.com/files/453880814/sar_run.mp4.flv.001
http://rapidshare.com/files/453880501/sar_run.mp4.flv.002
http://rapidshare.com/files/453880934/sar_run.mp4.flv.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/453885023/sar_run.mp4.flv.004

Join with http://www.hjsplit.org/ No pass. 344MB

Only in Ameriki

Mad.
Predicted mortality rate; lots.

Baring its teeth for the first time, personal submarine which boasts 'the agility of a dolphin' (but looks more like a killer whale)



A mighty beast rises out of the water, ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey.

The waters of Whiskeytown Lake, in northern California, apparently have a new master - but on closer inspection this is no killer whale, it's a hi-tech submarine.

Capable of speeding across the water at 50mph, the Seabreacher X is an underwater vessel which boasts 'the agility of a dolphin'.

The most advanced submersible watercraft built by Innespace Marine, the X is a more extreme take on the company’s Seabreacher J model.

According to Innespace Marine, the Seabreacher X comes in an array of largely threatening colours and ‘can sustain high speed dives and then breach the surface, launching the entire vessel clear out of the water.

‘The new fully vectored thrust system mimic the tail articulation of real aquatic animals like sharks and dolphins,’ the website adds.

‘The custom tuned exhaust system also gives the vessel a more throaty growl as it tears across the surface.’

And if its 260 horsepower supercharged engine and top speeds of 50mph (surface) and 25mph (underwater) weren’t exciting enough, the Seabreacher X has all the modcons of a high-performance car.

It’s got an onboard stereo with an iPod dock, GPS navigation, colour schemes customised to your design and even a snorkel-mounted video camera that transmits live footage to LCD screens for passengers.

Predictably, such power and luxury doesn’t come cheap.

Seabreachers are built to order for a standard price of $65,000 and watersports enthusiasts who want to speed across the surface in a top-of-the-range model can expect to pay around $85,000.

But for such expense, you could own a vehicle that’s, as AOL’s Bradley Hasemeyer put it, ‘about 27 per cent dolphin, 37 per cent shark, 47 per jet boat – and 100 per cent awesome’. more video

Ripping Yarns: Tristan Jones - 'Ice'

And Ripping Yarn is the only way to describe Tristan Jones 'Ice'

Jones, I can't call him quintessential Englishman because in fact he was Welsh, so let me call him quintessential old time Brit who put more than a mile or two under his keel and could spin a yarn, and probably never thought to spoil its telling by sticking to the truth.

Logging more miles single handed than any other person, living or dead, and often in what might be described in the trade as a plank, is testament to Jones' remarkable tenacity and seamanship. http://www.tristanjones.org/meet_tristan.htm

If you have never had the pleasure, do give yourself a treat and read Jones at his best in 'Ice.'

If you do get into the man, just a word of caution. I found the 'Improbable Voyage' not to be confused with the 'Incredible Voyage' quite poor. As Euan Cameron readily admits below in Jones' obit, Jones wrote in order to finance his travels, the Improbable Voyage being just that, a means to and end.

Work Boat World, April 1997:

“The now-deceased author and character, Tristan Jones, has had some amazing adventures at sea. A most unconventional character who lived in a very unconventional way, he seemed to delight in putting himself into complicated and uncomfortable situations.

“This book records a voyage undertaken by Tristan Jones from southern England to Spitzbergen from 1959 to 1961. Jones sailed via Iceland and the coast of Greenland and managed to remain trapped in the ice for a full year somewhere between Greenland and Spitzbergen.

“Among other experiences, Jones' boat and crew were attacked by a hungry polar bear, which was finally dispatched by firing a flare into its mouth.

“It really is a crazy story of what not to do, but an interesting one, nevertheless, in its finest traditions of British eccentricity.”

Western Morning News, August 1996:

“Tristan Jones was another complete one-off singlehander, adventurer and above all seaman. He was forced to swallow the anchor and beach himself in not altogether idyllic surroundings in a cottage in Puke after eventually both legs had to be amputated due to a medical condition.

“He died just a year ago, but his legacy is a series of books of his adventures, ranging from a voyage from the lowest sea on the planet to its highest waters – an Andean lake – and achieving the northern most penetration of the Arctic by a solo-manned craft.

“That two-year odyssey is retold in Ice!, the book that really begins the Jones saga, from his discharge from wartime hospital berth to fitting out an old RNLI lifeboat converted to gaff ketch rig and slipping out of Falmouth 36 years ago on his first sailing epic. It's a classic tale raking with the greatest seafaring adventures…”


Sailing Inland & Offshore, April 1996:

“In Ice!, he sets out in summer from Iceland in CRESWELL and holes up in a Greenland Fjord near an Eskimo village for winter. Trapped by a violent snowstorm, without adequate food or cover, he spends a week trying to dig himself out before being rescued.

“While moored to an iceberg his boat is attacked by a ravenous polar bear.

“In the second winter he is trapped in the middle of an ice pack in the Arctic Ocean. For 366 days they are trapped there, marooned in the bleak murk of the polar winter, with tons of ice above them, hoping the ice pack will drift far enough to enable them to achieve the world's record for northernmost penetration by a solo-manned craft. Under the lights of the Auroa Borealis, Tristan grapples with loneliness and despair and finally, when the ice shifts, crushing CRESWELL like a matchbox, with death itself! Ice! has now become one of the classic sea tales of all times.”


Yachting World, May 1996:

“Another magnificent tale of derring-do from the indomitable Welsh adventurer. …this is Tristan Jones's attempt to sail a boat further north than anybody else.

“Accompanied by only a one-eyed, three-legged dog called Nelson, he battle through leads in the ice off Greenland, gets trapped, is attacked by a polar bear, spends a winter with the Eskimos, tries again, is locked in a precarious ice field north of Spitzbergen for an entire year and is finally towed free by his own ice floe.”


Classic Boat, February 1996:

“You know, you can take life too seriously, spending all your reading time pouring over instruction manuals and books of rules and regulations. At least once this winter, take a warming dose of an author who had little time for either: the recently departed Welsh fount of nautical high jinks, Tristan Jones. Now that ‘the last flicker of light has left my weather-wracked soul,’, as he wrote, Tristan's books will bring a second tide of revenue to his publishers. He was one of the great story-tellers of the sea, a real-life adventurer of the sort portrayed in good old fashioned boys' annuals. This book, first published in 1978, tells of Jones' 1959-1961 attempt to sail further north than anyone else, along with Nelson, an inherited three-legged one-eyed Labrador.

“Before sailing solo, Tristan Jones had crewed on an old boomie ketch, served in the Royal Navy and delivered boats from Holland to the USA, so he was already a veteran of long-distance sailing. Only he could have chosen as his shake-down ship for the Arctic voyage a smuggling caper, taking Scotch Whiskey to France. he went on to rub shoulders with characters in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Greenland. One of them turned nasty: a Polar bear. Nature, too, tested him to the limit as he was variously trapped by ice, capsized and all but crushed. He did it all in a 1908 ex-RNLI lifeboat called CRESWELL, a 32-footer with a double-diagonal mahogany-on-oak hull and gaff ketch rig, which he bought for ‘325 nikker’ from a dockyard worker.

“Describing the interior he reveals his inspiration: “Then there were pictures of Shackleton, Nansen, and Scott, all cut out of the old London Illustrated News magazines, and one of the Queen at the forward end of the cabin.’

“His tales are richly illuminated with nautical history, and explanations of the role of craft as diverse as the Norwegian knarr to the Eskimo umiak. ‘I had always been conscious that I was a direct link between the past centuries of sail-in-trade and the future, when sail will come into its own again. I can't wait for the oil wells to run dry,’ he wrote.

“We can only hope that when the oil wells do run dry there will be someone who has Tristan Jones' wit, wisdom and the skill to convey both to future generations of readers and salty stories.



Obituary: Tristan Jones

Euan Cameron

Tristan Jones, sailor, author, adventurer: born off Tristan da Cunha 8 May 1924; died Phuket Island, Thailand 21 June 1995.

Tristan Jones's life was a series of adventures. Since he was a Welshman, a sailor, a romantic and a story-teller in the best seafaring tradition, the adventures were so plentiful that they filled eight books of autobiography and were sometimes so improbable that they defied belief.

It all began with a breach birth in a full storm, aboard a British tramp steamer, 150 miles north-east of Tristan da Cunha - hence the Christian name - in May 1924. Mrs Jones was the ship's cook and both she and Tristan's father came from a long line of Welsh master mariners. "By God, this one will always land on his feet!" the ship's mate was reported to have said, as he delivered the baby from the 10-hour ordeal. "He may be a candidate for hanging one day, but he'll never drown!"

Before he was 18, Tristan Jones had been rescued from the sea three times. He left school at the age of 13 and worked as a "nipper" aboard a coastal sailing ketch, but at the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy, serving on convoy duties to the Soviet Union from Iceland. After the war he transferred to the Royal Hydrographic Service, but in 1952 in Aden an inshore survey vessel he was on was blown up by guerrillas and his spinal injuries were so severe that he was told he would never walk again.

On his discharge from hospital, he bought and converted an old lifeboat and decided he would set a new record for taking a sailing boat further north than the 84 degrees N achieved by F. Nansen. His improbable, Baron Munchausen-like exploits in the Arctic, accompanied by his one-eyed, three- legged Labrador dog, Nelson, were to be the subject of his second book, Ice! (1979).

His next venture was the eccentric notion of conquering the "vertical sailing record of the world". Having sailed his boat on the earth's lowest stretch of water, the Dead Sea, at 1,250 feet below sea-level, Jones determined to sail the highest, Lake Titicaca, 12,580 feet up in the Andes. His account of this six-year journey was published in The Incredible Voyage (1978), which became a best-seller in Britain and the United States.

As a writer, Tristan Jones's work varied greatly. He could reel off rip- roaring yarns, such as Saga of a Wayward Sailor (1980), but he could also produce reflective and highly literate work such as the account of his boyhood in his best book, A Steady Trade (1982). As his British editor, I often pleaded with him to settle down and devote himself to serious, unhurried writing, but a few weeks in New York or London, where his advances on royalties could disappear with liquid celerity, were more than his seafaring soul could stand.

Up until 1985, one could never be quite sure where Jones was living at any given moment. His boats were his home. Letters or faxes might arrive from the uttermost parts of the earth: a request for money to be cabled to Bahia Concha in Columbia, say, or an urgent request for some vital part of an outboard engine to be obtained from a trusting chandler and despatched with all haste to Constanta on the Black Sea.

Occasionally, if his publisher paid his fare, he would turn up for publication of a new book, as he did for the launch of A Steady Trade in 1982. Such visits could be hazardous, however, and on this occasion Jones held his own among such distinguished television chat-show guests as Sir Laurens van der Post and Patrick Leigh Fermor, only to finish the evening draining the BBC's hospitality room of its entire stock of liquor.

Although he was proud to receive a Welsh Arts Council Literature Award for The Incredible Voyage and to have an entry in The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, the success of his books and the tributes he received from fellow writers and explorers meant little to him. He wrote in order to go on sailing, and, when his leg was amputated and he could no longer sail solo, he set out to show the world that disability need not preclude a life of adventure. He acquired a trimaran, mischievously named it Outward Leg, and set off with a crew of two to make his 20th Atlantic crossing in a small boat.

He arrived on the south coast of England in the summer of 1984 and when he reached Brighton Marina (how he sneered at words like "marina": "That's a name for smart Kensington ladies walking their poodles in the park"), I travelled down to take him some money and buy him lunch. He persuaded me to "come for a sail" and I spent a sleepless night bumping along the Channel, but it gave me an inkling of how this courageous seadog had survived his many lives.

No sooner was the anchor hauled up than the jokes and drinking stopped and Tristan was transformed into a strict disciplinarian, barking orders at his crew, charting courses and ceaselessly surveying the horizon. I was deposited in the dawn light at the foot of a dock-side in Folkestone, and as the sea surged Tristan issued orders to jump, cling to a metal hand-rail and climb the 57 vertical steps to the top. Terrified, but relieved to be on steady ground, I looked down to see him waving and giving a thumbs- up sign. It was almost the last time I saw him.

From Britain, he sailed his trimaran the lengths of the Rhine and the Danube to the Black Sea and eventually across the Indian Ocean. For the last 10 years, he lived on Phuket Island off the coast of Thailand, still writing and, even after the loss of his other leg last year, teaching disabled young people to sail. He was a true original and an immensely brave man. He had no known relatives, but he had friends and drinking companions in ports all over the world. Independent

I was rather hoping to find an interview with Jones, but this is all I could come up with. I have vague recollections of him being asked if he ever got pissed off with just his dog for company, to which I think the reply was, 'Only when it beat me at chess.'

Paul Watson I'm Disgusted With You

You sound no different to Gerry bloody Falwell and Pat fuckin' Robertson, and you say you don't do supernatural, what an insensitive cunt you are.

And the same goes for all you luvvie cunts that 'liked' it.

You're no better than these callous cunts featured here.

Captain Paul Watson
Tsunami

Neptune’s voice rolled like thunder thru the sky
Angrily he smote the deep seabed floor
From the shore echoed mankind’s mournful cry
......The sea rose up and struck fast for the shore

From out of the East with the rising sun
The seas fearful wrath burst upon the land
With little time to prepare or to run
Against a power no human can stand

Here is Paul Watson's disclaimer. What I can believe is, that poetry is an eruption from the heart, how much more of it I can, I don't know. But whatever I believe, I believe your judgement and your timing suck.

"Captain Paul Watson: This was simply a poem about the power of nature. It was not anti-Japanese. People, I wrote this poem when five of my crew were lost. We did not know for over 40 hours if they were alive or dead. This poem was not written out of insensitivity to the people on shore. No it was written because I felt the need to understand and express my deep concern for my crew and all the people in the path of this tsunami. For those who say this is karma, all I can say is that you do not understand the concept of karma. Nature does not discriminate. My people on shore and the average citizen of Japan on shore were equals in the face of this tragedy. Japan did not deserve this disaster nor would I ever imply that they did. But we must acknowledge that we take the awesome power of nature for granted and thus we are shocked when that power is unleashed. Let's remember that famous line, "ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." I had friends on that forlorn shore and I was not insensitive with my poem - the words came in response to the tragedy and I have long accepted that poetry is an eruption from the heart and is not to be denied. Those words came to me in response to the threat to my friends. From the shore mankind's cry was indeed heard. And before such power no human can stand. This is simply an acknowledgement of the truth and not anti-Japanese in any way. A good poem provokes thought and discussion and stimulates the reader emotionally and each person sees and feels what their heart leads them to see and feel and we all see and feel things in different ways. I make no apology for my two verses - they are words delivered without any intent to offend but with the intent to provoke an emotional response. The comments on this thread have shown me that my poem accomplished just that".

Which is all very well,but how can you, even given poetic licence, quote the supernatural, knowing what I know of you? And it is the supernatural that you are quoting, because for the love of me, I can't see how you can quote/equate this very real event with the mythical.


Update: For all that has been said, be me and many others, let me just re-affirm my position.

I stand by Paul Watson, SSCS and Sea Shepherd Org, as firmly and as unequivocally today, as I have ever done.

Whaling has ceased in the Southern Ocean because of the tenacity of one man and one man alone, and of course those that came forward and said, "Thy will be done"

As unchanged as my position is Regarding Paul Watson, it is equally unchanged regarding whalers, shark finners and dolphin killers. Remaining as they are in my opinion, unfit to be included in any group people who are worthy of the tag, civilised human being. If not indeed, belonging to a sub-species of homo sapien unique to themselves.

For the Oceans, for the animals.
Support Sea Shepherd.Org

Sea Shepherd News Update from Otsuchi, Japan March 11, 2011

Update from Otsuchi, Japan - March 11, 2011


Go here for report pictures and video.


Horrendous footage from the BBC here.

Sea Shepherd News: Sea Shepherd’s Cove Guardians are Alive and Unharmed

Sea Shepherd’s Cove Guardians are Alive and Unharmed

After more than twenty-four hours since we last heard from them, Sea Shepherd Director of Investigations Scott West was able to call his wife Suzanne to report that he and the entire Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian crew are alive and unharmed.

They had to abandon their two cars in the devastated port city of Otsuchi where they spent the night on a hill. The entire town around them was destroyed. They walked out over scattered debris, roads that were completely wiped out, and walked past numerous dead bodies amidst piles of rubble. At one point yesterday they saw and heard a woman in the water screaming for help, but she was washed out to sea before they could do anything to rescue her.

The Cove Guardians went to Otsuchi to document the slaughter of Dall’s Porpoise. Every year the fishermen slaughter over 20,000 of these gentle creatures. They had just filmed a fishing boat returning from a porpoise hunt when they saw the water in the harbor receding and they immediately headed for high ground. The time from the Earthquake to the Tsunami striking Otsuchi was about eight minutes.

The Cove Guardians were right in the midst of the most devastating Tsunami to ever hit Japan, and we are thankful they have all survived and are well.

Scott West was only able to send out this quick message, as his mobile phone was fading:

We are all 6 safe and out of Otsuchi. Now in Tono at hotel with no power, Internet, water, or food. Have IPhone until battery dead. -- Scott SSCS

Sea Shepherd News: The Deadliest Wave: The Tsunami and Sea Shepherd

The Deadliest Wave: The Tsunami and Sea Shepherd
Magnitude: 8.9 Earthquake off Japan

Date/Time: Friday, March 11, 2011 at 02:46:23 PM at epicenter
Location 38.322°N, 142.369°E



The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was put on alert in five locations yesterday afternoon. We remain on alert at two of those locations – Japan and the Galapagos.

Our Cove Guardian crew is still missing. Cove Guardian leader Scott West was with Mike Vos, Tarah Millen, Carisa Webster, and Marley Daviduk, and accompanied by Brian Barnes of Save Japan Dolphins. They reported seeing the water recede, and Scott Mike, and Tarah were reportedly in a van at the time. The others were reported to have been on higher ground. These individuals were last heard from just minutes after the tsunami warning horns began to blow, and have not been heard from since. They were very close to where the full force of the tsunami hit Japan, and we hope they are okay and that the problem is simply that much of the communication infrastructure has been knocked out. All the Cove Guardians in Iwate Prefecture were either American or Canadian and the embassies in Tokyo have already been informed. The Japanese whaling fleet is still about a week out from arriving back in Japan and thus was not impacted by the earthquake and the tsunami.

Captain Locky MacLean ordered the Gojira to head for sea out of Tahiti to avoid the wave. They did so and have recently returned to port in Papeete.

The crews on the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin were on minor alert in Hobart, Tasmania.

Our operation on the Galapagos is under threat of the tsunami. We have not had any reports back yet.

Sea Shepherd’s Founder and President, Captain Paul Watson, was on the island of Palau some 2,000 miles south of Japan with Sea Shepherd CEO Steve Roest at 1930 hours last night, the time the wave would have struck the islands. There was hardly a ripple, which is a very good thing because there really is no high ground in Palau.

We anxiously await word from the Cove Guardians, and all of us with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society wish to express our support and sympathies to the people of Japan who have suffered this horrific natural disaster. We are also very concerned about the threat posed by some of the nuclear reactors that have been destabilized by the quake and the tsunami. We also wish to express our support and concern for the people living in the path of these deadly waves – especially to those people in Northern California, Hawaii, and the pacific coast of South America. SSCS

Birds and Fish are now Dying all Around the World

Astounding as it is mysterious.

I'm posting this in the middle of the night, so I haven't as yet given the HAARP links the attention that they probably warrant.

Birds and Fish are now Dying all Around the World
Posted by EU Times on Jan 6th, 2011

Something strange is happening in the world. First they (the authorities) claimed it was the cold which was killing the birds and the fish but now it’s happening all around the world, in warmer areas as well. So it’s not the cold which is killing these animals.

It’s not pollution either, such as poisoned water or something in the air (such as chemtrails) because it would have been detected by now and besides it’s happening everywhere in the world. It’s simply not possible that the entire world would suddenly turn poisonous. So what’s really happening here? No one really knows yet but everyone is speculating and creating theories of their own.

Some have even ventured to fairy tale lands into explaining that the birds died because they were terrified by fireworks which were used on January 1st 2011, but what about the fish? And why hasn’t this happened in previous years because this year is definitely not the first year in which people use fireworks.

Update 7 – Italian authorities concluded that indigestion was responsible for thousands of turtle doves falling from the sky.

HAARP has also been named as a cause of these mysterious mass deaths, but HARRP is based in Alaska, and could it reach and affect the entire world?

Update 5 – One of our visitors believes that these poor animals died because HAARP was used world wide, which is possible. At this point anything is possible. There could be more of these facilities in other countries as well. He sent us the following links:
-Possible HAARP Locations Around The World
-HAARP Nightmare Expands to Sweden; France is Next

HAARP is also suspected for the recent massive floods in Australia where Government radars and satellites have detected strange rings above Australia.

The truth is that no one really knows what’s happening and everybody is speculating. This strange world event will definitely not be ignored by us.

This is definitely not normal, not a routine event and not something that happens everyday. Some of these events have happened a few months ago while most of these events are happening right now, but never the less the listed older events still might give some clues to what could be causing this strange world event.

This page will get updated regularly as more such mysterious deaths are expected to happen anytime so be sure to check back.

So far, according to the authorities, all these poor animals died because of the cold and indigestion, but there’s a problem here. There’s no cold in these countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Brazil nor in New Zealand and could all these birds and fish suddenly become victims of mass indigestion?

There’s something bizarre happening here.

This mysterious apocalyptic phenomenon has happened so far in the following places:

Argentina
Update 10 – Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record

Australia
Update 10 – Thousands of dead barramundi fish wash up in Australia, unknown causes
Update 10 – Dead fish clog lake at airport
Update 10 – Migratory bird deaths blamed on wild weather

Bolivia
Update 10 – 6 million dead fish, alligators, turtles and dolphins floating down Bolivian rivers

Brazil
Mysterious killing of fish in coastal

Canada
Update 1 – 10,000s of Birds found dead in Manitoba
Update 1 – Dead Birds and Fish reported in St. Clair River, Ontario
Update 1 – Goldstream River, at Goldstream Provincial Park, Victoria mysteriously turns bright green
Update 6 – Canadian farmer finds flock of dead birds in St.-Augustin-de-Desmaures, west of Quebec City
Update 14 – Dead herring wash ashore on second beach in Cedar
Update 17 – Royal Ontario Museum investigates sudden bee death

Chile
Thousands of Birds fall from the sky in South America
Update 10 – 2500 tons of fish die in China
Update 10 – 300 dead sparrows found
Update 10 – Geleshan strange birds fall out of the sky the birds are dead

China
Eagles and Birds are falling from the sky in China
Update 14 – China has discovered dozens of dead birds

Colombia
Update 15 – Strange Light Kills Thousands of Fish in Colombia

Cuba
Update 10 – 1000′s of baby fish wash ashore dead south of Cuba

France
Update 10 – What killed the mulets in the Maine Lake

Germany
Update 10 – Dead birds of prey found in Germany

Ghana
Update 10 – Whales washed ashore Ghana coast

Haiti
Mysterious fish kill prompts ban

India
Update 10 – Sewage inflow kills fish in thousands in Bangalore’s Iblur Lake
Update 10 – Thousands of Fish Dead in India’s Yamuna River
Update 10 – At least a dozen migratory Bar-headed Geese found dead
Update 16 – Thousands of fishes, turtles die in Etawah pond

Iran
Update 12 – Mass fish death recorded in Caspian Sea

Ireland
Update 10 – Whales found dead on Donegal Beach

Italy
Thousands of Doves are Dying
Update 3 – Birds Dying In Italy: Thousands Of Turtle Doves Fall Dead From Sky
Update 5 – Overeating and indigestion blamed for 1,000 turtle doves falling dead in Italy with strange blue stain on their beaks
Update 10 – 200 birds dead in Caserta, Italy
Update 10 – Massacre of the sea clams and crabs
Update 10 – Dead turtle doves in Modena

Japan
Japan on alert after finding dead birds

Kazakhstan
Update 10 – Mass mortality among saigas in Kazakhstan: 12,000 dead

Malaysia
Update 14 – Fishy deaths near Tambun cemetery

Mexico
Update 10 – 4,000 bird deaths in Lakes in Guanajuato Mexico

Netherlands
Update 10 – Massive fish kills in Berkel

New Zealand
Hundreds of snapper dead on beaches
Update 2 – Penguins, petrels and other seabirds, mass deaths
Update 10 – Botulism outbreak killing ducks
Update 10 – 10 tons of dead fish on Kawau Island
Update 14 – 24 pilot whales dead in New Zealand’s Far North stranding

Norway
Update 14 – Eider ducks die like flies

Pakistan
Update 10 – Millions of SeaShells appearing on Pakistani Beaches

Papua New Guinea
Update 10 – Dead fish washed ashore at Pari village

Philippines
Update 2 – Residents gather, eat dead fish floating in barangay Ibo
Update 10 – 100 tons of fish found dead on Lake Buhi

Portugal
Update 10 – Dead Octopuses Wash Up on Portuguese Beach

Romania
Update 8 – Alcohol poisoning, not avian flu, killed Romanian birds
Update 10 – Dead birds falling in 3 citis in Romania

South Korea
Dead Teal Ducks With Bird Flu Strain Found In South Korea

South Africa
Mystery of dead birds on Cape roads
Update 9 – 730 wild-caught African grey parrots mysteriously die while being transported

Spain
Update 10 – Thousands of dead fish

Sweden
50 birds were found dead
Hundreds of dead birds found in the middle of the road in Sweden

Taiwan
Update 10 – Dead birds found in an orchard

Thailand
Update 6 – Bird deaths in U.S., Sweden, Britian, Thailand, Brazil and beyond

Turkey
Update 7 – Massive bird deaths reported in Karacabey, Bursa province

Ukraine
Update 10 – 1,500 birds found dead in Ukraine

United Kingdom
Dead fish discovered in canal marina near Abergavenny
Update 1 – 40,000 ‘devil’ crabs found dead on the beach
Update 10 – Mystery deaths of dozens of seals off Norfolk Coast
Update 10 – 75 starlings fall from the sky
Update 10 – Large number of dead barn owls found
Update 10 – Foul play suspected as bodies of 60 seal pups are found on beach
Update 10 – Another 100 fish die in Cwmbran, UK
Update 10 – 100 dead birds fall on British home
Update 14 – Cold winter kills record number of barn owls

Vietnam
Update 2 – Tonnes of farm fish found dead
Update 15 – 10,000 Cattle in Vietnam Mysteriously Die from Cold Weather

United States of America
Alabama
Update 9 – Now 300 dead birds fall from the sky in Alabama (how much longer can scientists keep saying this is normal?)

Arkansas
Nearly 3000 Dead Birds Fall From Arkansas Sky
First Birds Fall, Now 100000 Fish Dead in Arkansas
Update 4 – Not Just Birds and Fish but People Dropping Like Flies
Update 16 – Fish safe to eat although UAPB researchers can’t explain 83,000 fish kill

California
Update 7 – Thousands of fish washed up in Chicago and hundreds of birds perish in California as animal deaths continue to bemuse scientists
Update 18 – Million Dead Fish Swamp LA Area Marina

Colorado
Update 16 – Hundreds of fish found dead in an irrigation ditch

Florida
Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek
Update 13 – Pelicans turn up sick, dead off Jacksonville coast
Update 17 – Thousands Of Dead Fish Wash Ashore In Florida
Update 17 – More than a Million Jellyfish Wash Ashore in Florida

Hawaii
Update 10 – Mysterious Illness Killing Pufferfish

Illinois
Dead Birds Reported by Residents in Southern Illinois

Indiana
Update 10 – Dead fish wash ashore at lake beach in Indiana, blamed on winter storms

Kentucky
Update 1 – Dead birds found in Kentucky, Sweden, as crabs wash up on U.K. shores in latest mass animal deaths

Louisiana
Mass La. bird deaths puzzle investigators
Dead Birds Fall From Sky AGAIN In Louisiana, 300 Miles From Arkansas Incident Days Earlier
Update 17 – Hundreds of dead birds discovered in Lake Charles

Maryland
2 Million fish die in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

Michigan
Update 1 – Hundreds of Dead Fish Appear In Lincoln Park
Update 14 – Outdoors: Pheasant decline tied to vanishing habitat

New York
American Bats Dying Mysteriously
Update 17 – Bird deaths in Columbia County were no accident, USDA says

North Carolina
Dead pelican count escalates in Topsail Beach
Update 1 – Reward offered for information on what’s causing dead pelicans at Topsail Beach
Update 15 – Over 200 Pelicans Wash Up Dead at Topsail Beach, NC

South Carolina
Update 10 – Hundreds of dead sea creatures wash ashore in South Carolina, blamed on cold

South Dakota
Update 13 – Yankton Sees Bird Kill-Off

Tennessee
Update 3 – Flock Of Birds Found Dead In Wilson County

Texas
Update 1 – Now East Texas also reports hundreds of dead birds
Update 1 – Experts in Texas are weighing in after large amounts of dead birds were reportedly found across the Country and around the World

Virginia
Update 17 – More than 20 dead horses found on farm

Wisconsin
Update 11 – 200 Dead Cows Found in Portage County Field, Wisconsin

Source EUTimes

Ten Minutes of Joy Humpbacks Filmed in Bermuda

Source.
http://bernews.com/2011/02/bermuda-whale-film-dc-festival-selection/

H/T http://twitter.com/#!/RareWildlifeGuy

Sea Shepherd News: Operation No Compromise is Officially Over

I would be interested as to the protocol employed here, where the pigs and not customs, routinely meet a foreign registered vessel. I know it's an occasion for a bit of swagger, and we all know how much stormtroopers like a bit o' that nonsense, but I'd be interested nonetheless.

Operation No Compromise is Officially Over
March 05, 2011

The Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker have arrived in Hobart, Tasmania. For the third year in a row, the Australian Federal Police were on the dock waiting to raid the ship at the request of the Japanese government.

As they’ve done for the last two years, Sea Shepherd is cooperating with the Australian Federal Police with their obligations to do the bidding of the Japanese government. Sea Shepherd is confident that their activities in the Southern Ocean
have been non-violent and lawful.


Japan has never charged Sea Shepherd with any crime related to their activities in obstructing their illegal whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Despite this, the Japanese government keeps demanding that Australia stops Sea Shepherd ships from entering and leaving Australian ports. Unfortunately for Japan, Australia is a democratic nation that actually needs to have a violation of the law before taking punitive action against citizens or visiting foreigners.

Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens Party will greet the ships and crew upon their arrival. Captains Paul Watson and Alex Cornelissen will hold a media conference with Senator Brown at 11:00 hours AEST.

Operation No Compromise is now officially over. It has been Sea Shepherd’s most effective campaign to date against illegal whaling activities in the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd will be prepared to return to the Southern Ocean at the end of this year once again, if the Japanese whaling fleet returns. “We will be prepared and we will be ready,” said Captain Watson. “Our objective is to defend the integrity of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We have done so since 2002, and we will continue to do so if there are any future threats to the sanctuary and the whales.” Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd sails into more controversy
March 06, 2011

Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson says he is 75 per cent sure Japan will not start another whale hunt as his own vessels sailed into a police investigation.

The anti-whaling group's two main ships, the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin, arrived in Hobart on Sunday morning after an Antarctic campaign which saw the Japanese withdraw early, citing harassment from the environmentalists.

For the third year running, AFP officers searched the anti-whaling vessels and prohibited members of the public from entering the nearby docks for about two and a half hours.

An AFP spokeswoman confirmed the Sea Shepherd's activities in the Southern Ocean would be investigated.

'The AFP is undertaking investigations into the events which occurred in the Southern Ocean during January and February 2011, in accordance with Australian legislation and consistent with Australia's obligations under international law,' the spokeswoman said.

'(On Sunday) the AFP did execute search warrants on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessels in Hobart.'

Once the Sea Shepherd crew were permitted to disembark, a triumphant Mr Watson said he was confident his organisation was winning its fight.

'Every year we've been going down stronger and they've been going down weaker,' he told reporters.

'This year they realised they can't outrun us ... they just decided to call it quits.

'I'm 75 per cent sure they won't be back next year but, if they are, we'll be prepared to come back.'

Greens leader Bob Brown was at the docks to welcome the crew, and said the AFP investigation came because of complaints from Tokyo.

'The Japanese government has complained about these ships getting in the way of commerce and industry,' Senator Brown said. (Shurely shome mishtake, research don't you mean?)


'The good police are doing the work of Tokyo.

'I have written to the Minister for Foreign Affairs this morning calling for an end to this charade.'

The Japanese foreign ministry called in the Australian, New Zealand and Dutch ambassadors last month to demand 'effective measures to avoid the recurrence of Sea Shepherd's obstructionist activities'.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has so far refused to comment on the meeting.

Tensions between the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the whalers reached boiling point last year when the crew of the Sea Shepherd's Ady Gil claimed they were rammed by a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean.

New Zealand authorities found both vessels were at fault. BigPond News