Whale Hunting in Antigua ? Please Read

[hummingway]

Sometimes it's important to leave the snails undesturbed too. I realize you are making a point about not taking it too far but the question is when does that occur. Species do disappear naturally and new ones evolve but somewhere in there the balance is fragile. I don't consider the inconvienience factor to be any argument. I don't believe in human dominion as an argument for anything but suicide by a species. We are expendable and capable of destroying ourselves.

First nations people on the west coast of Vasncouver Island would like to hunt some sea otters right now. They cite two arguments, one is tradionally their leaders wore sea otter fur for ceremonial purposes and secondly they feel some of the shell fish beds they harvest are being threatened by the increased population. The thing is that sea otters were almost wiped out after the colonists showed up. They have recovered to be placed on species of concern lists instead of the endangered list. With the disappearance of sea otters the urchin have proliferated in many areas where the otters had kept them in control. Urchins are the lawn mowers of the ocean floor - they clean up on the algea that is home to the little things that feed the bigger things and so on up the chain. There goes the neighborhood. The first nations hunters will be allowed a small hunt but, being human, they would like more.

Indescriminate harvesting of any species has an impact. Clear cut logging has produced wonderful habitat for white tail and mule deer. There are less hunters now as populations become urbanized and the deer herds are large. More deer equals more large predators such as cougar. More cougar means more cougar human interactions. Me, I just miss the damn trees and think it's a shame the real cost of anything doesn't get factored. Monoculture forest seem a great solution to reforestration problems until a beetle shows up and chews its way through a mountainside.

Maybe its just a spotted owl, or just a lady slipper, or some snail that no-one should care about or maybe it's a tipping point.

[unbusted67]

Maybe you could post your pro-forma letter here and we could use it as a template....or maybe that wouldn't be cool with the mods. Not sure. Is not killing whales something we can all agree on, seeing that it is outlawed both in the US and, for the most part, internationally?

[fishwife]

I didn't keep a copy but I wrote something like this.

Dear Sir,

I own a large luxury motor cruiser. I'd intended to include a visit to your nation as part of a two year cruise in the Caribbean area. With six wealthy people on board we spend at least $xxxx a day (put your own bit here, I'm not telling you what we spend ) In the light of your stance on whaling I have decided to take our custom elsewhere. I shall be informing the many cruising people I know of the reasons why we will not be visiting your country.

P.

P.S. You'll have to go the site for email addresses

[Idylles15.5]

First off I want to thank anyone for getting involved and to wish everyone a Happy Easter. Nice job Fishwife. Lets not let this fade away, keep letting people know whats going on. Thanks Nelson Schlaefer

[Bash]

Originally Posted by Idylles15.5

Let me clear up my post of green peace nut job. I am all for the enviorment, but sometimes it an get a little silly, for instane when you can't dredge a whole harbor full of Marinas (which is the case here on Long Island in many places) because you might disturb a snail or something. That is all I meant. No offense to any Green Peace members.

Snails. I see.

Yesterday, 15 Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the mooring ropes of the Japanese-owned container ship NYK Orion in Rotterdam because it was transporting whale meat from Iceland to Japan. This meat was all taken from fin whales, a protected species. Seven containers full of whale meat were offloaded from the ship.

Seven containers. That's a huge amount of meat.

The Netherlands is one of 175 signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which makes it illegal to ship whale meat through Dutch ports. Still, the Dutch government was unwilling to do anything about this until nutjob Greenpeace activists forced their hand.

Nutjobs? Let me ask again: do you have any idea how much whale meat 7 shipping containers would carry? It would come out to about 168,000 kilos. For those of you more comfy with pounds, that's more that 1/3 of a million pounds.

Of course, Iceland and Japan will tell you that these seven shipping containers were part of the scientific research they are conducting on the health of whale populations. And Greenpeace are the Nutjobs in this story?

Think again.

[idpnd]

If you watch the excellent, oscar-winning documentary "The Cove", there is a lengthy bit on the corruption of eastern Caribbean states by the Japanese whaling lobby (and government). There also a healthy bit of slagging off Seaworld. I hate Seaworld.

[Ram]

Originally Posted by hummingway

Sometimes it's important to leave the snails undesturbed too. I realize you are making a point about not taking it too far but the question is when does that occur. Species do disappear naturally and new ones evolve but somewhere in there the balance is fragile. I don't consider the inconvienience factor to be any argument. I don't believe in human dominion as an argument for anything but suicide by a species. We are expendable and capable of destroying ourselves.

First nations people on the west coast of Vasncouver Island would like to hunt some sea otters right now. They cite two arguments, one is tradionally their leaders wore sea otter fur for ceremonial purposes and secondly they feel some of the shell fish beds they harvest are being threatened by the increased population. The thing is that sea otters were almost wiped out after the colonists showed up. They have recovered to be placed on species of concern lists instead of the endangered list. With the disappearance of sea otters the urchin have proliferated in many areas where the otters had kept them in control. Urchins are the lawn mowers of the ocean floor - they clean up on the algea that is home to the little things that feed the bigger things and so on up the chain. There goes the neighborhood. The first nations hunters will be allowed a small hunt but, being human, they would like more.

Indescriminate harvesting of any species has an impact. Clear cut logging has produced wonderful habitat for white tail and mule deer. There are less hunters now as populations become urbanized and the deer herds are large. More deer equals more large predators such as cougar. More cougar means more cougar human interactions. Me, I just miss the damn trees and think it's a shame the real cost of anything doesn't get factored. Monoculture forest seem a great solution to reforestration problems until a beetle shows up and chews its way through a mountainside.

Maybe its just a spotted owl, or just a lady slipper, or some snail that no-one should care about or maybe it's a tipping point.

Bravo!

[fishwife]

There is a thread somewhere on here about the best thing you've seen or done at sea, something like that anyway. A long time ago, about two years before the civil war kicked off, I was on a friends boat off Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, fishing for our supper. We were slowly trolling along when a Blue whale surfaced about 50 yards of the port side. We stopped and over about 30 minutes we, or the whale, drifted closer until we are about 20 yards apart. I've never seen anything more magnificent. The single eye I could see was bigger across than I am high and I'm not a short woman. We stayed alongside each other, the whale maintaining the distance, for another 2 hours, the whale aware of us and we very, very aware of the whale. Finally the whale slowly sank, I'm sure being careful not to disturb our boat. Whaling could mean the end of these wonderful encounters. Please don't let it happen on our watch.

P.

[Idylles15.5]

Please can we not lose focus of why I started this convo. I didn't mean any offense to anyone involved in groups of any kind. My point is that there are many people that wouldn't get invoved of some of the other enviormental issues they may find not so impacting, but at this point I think everyone may jump on board this issue. Even if your not into the enviorment I think most poeple these days think that whaling is completely apalling and understand that these animals are very intelligent mammals. With this in mind please lets not turn this into a who's more involved or who may of offended who by using a particular adjective. Think about the fact that whaling could move into the carribean. I don't know about you, but I was overjoyed the last time I saw a whale in Sir Francis Drake Channel. Lets keep it that way. Lets stay on point please.

[ViribusUnitis]

I'll go aginst the crowd and say that I think antigua should be allowed to hunt whales, as long as the catchs are mannaged in such a way so as to maintain a proper population of course. I see nothing in the IWC that indicates that they will not monitor the process and make sure that the populations numbers are mannaged.

I also feel that it's in the interst of the nations that are whaling to maintain the populations. If they hunt the whales too much, the whales will not be there to hunt, and the billions that the invested into the whale hunting equipment, and employment will be wasted.

I see this as no diffrent than any other form of animal husbandry. No diffrent from ranching, or mannaged catchs of fish all over the world.

They may overstep their bounds every so often, but at the end of the day, the end of the whales serves no one.

[unbusted67]

Oh boy

[hummingway]

I fish. I don't have a problem with managed hunts either but I think you're wrong about the IWC. Japan has shown very clearly that they are amongst the nations that believe they should be able to take what they want. As I said in an earlier post it's a common attitude. Canada was the first nation to institute a 200 mile controlled zone off its shores because the nations that were fishing the grand banks made it very clear they would stop fishing when the fish were gone. They very nearly achieved that. We are capable of cleaning out the oceans because we use industrial fishing techniques. We couldn't do it 150 years ago but we sure can now. Gigantic freezer ships patrol the oceans filling holds and indiscriminatlely sieving the ocean for months at a time. Modern whalers are harvesting machines operating in waters where only international agreements control. They're not concerned that the investment won't be returned. It will be as fast as they can make it happen. The mentality of get it before it's gone is what seems to be ruling many international fisheries.

[David_Old_Jersey]

From my brief Googles appears that Antigua is not going to be whaling in it's own waters as a Tourist attraction ............it's simply supporting Japan (with a few other caribbean island states) to overturn the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling - in exchange for cash...........not a new policy, I seem to recall that collecting money from Japan was the reason the carribean islands joined the IWC back in the 1980's.

[Chief Engineer]

The Greedy warlords of the countries reap the benefits while the populace struggles with the same kind of poverty and hunger that exists in their home continent.

Since the White and Black man killed off all the Natives and slavery became de rigeur
what do you expect? They are just Island versions of out Big Cities.

I have absolutely no desire to visit for any length of time.

Murder was virtually unheard of in Bermuda.......Til drugs/Hatians came in.

I remember an older black man who was kind of a general helper in St George....
He would escort people who "had had a few" back to their boats safely.....He was a genial "gofer" and had a wealth of local knowledge and an engaging personality....

When they found him murdered (early the 90's) the town was in shock......all tha has changed.

[Chief Engineer]

As far as raping the waters.....Nobody does it better than the Maryland Waterman

No clams anymore soft or hard.
SAV vanishing
Blue Crabs in decline because Virginia allows harvesting of eggbearing females by dredging.
Oysters? What Oysters? What MSX and Dermo haven't killed the Watermen have.

And then they whine about the loss of their way of life.........

There was a time that you could pick up clumps of live oysters on your anchor.....have't seen that in a while