‘The Grind’: Annual whale slaughter begins in Faroe Islands – ‘Almost like a national honour sport’

By Felicity Capon  24 June 2015 (Newsweek) – Two activist ships are racing to the Faroe Islands, in the North Atlantic to attempt to stop the “barbaric” annual slaughter of hundreds of whales and dolphins currently taking place in the autonomous Danish province. Two vessels, the Sam Simon and the Bob Barker, which are owned […]

Japan to defy IWC ban on whaling – ‘We of course intend to resume whaling again this year’

By Elaine Lies; Editing by Jeremy Laurence 19 June 2015 TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan hopes to resume whale hunting in the Antarctic later this year, a top official said on Friday, despite a finding by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that Tokyo had yet to prove the kill was scientifically justified. In April, an IWC […]

Rare Guadalupe fur seals stranding in record numbers – ‘These stranded animals are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of animals affected by the unusually warm water temperatures we’ve been seeing off the coast’

10 June 2015 (The Marine Mammal Center) – California sea lions aren’t the only pinnipeds in crisis this year. Guadalupe fur seals, a threatened species, seem to be struggling with the same food availability issues and have stranded along our coast at five times the record yearly rate. With their diminutive snouts, extra-long front flippers […]

Humpback whales exhausted as food sources depleted due to climate change, researcher says

By Gian De Poloni13 June 2015 (ABC) – Climate change could be responsible for humpback whales becoming exhausted during their annual migration to warmer waters, a whale researcher says. Janelle Braithwaite examined historical whaling data and says climate change may be depleting the Antarctic food sources whales rely on to store energy for their long […]

Number of starving sea lions in California ‘unprecedented’ – More than 3,000 baby sea lions have washed ashore so far this year

By Nadia Drake5 June 2015 (National Geographic) – More than 3,000 starving sea lion pups have washed up on California’s beaches since January—easily 15 times more than in a normal year. “It’s unprecedented,” says Sarah Wilkin, national marine mammal stranding and emergency response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And those are the […]

New science shows BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still killing dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico

20 May 2015 (PBS) – JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: the lasting impact of America’s biggest offshore oil spill. It comes as officials are grappling with a new spill along the coast of Southern California near Santa Barbara. It began yesterday when an onshore pipeline ruptured. Slicks are now spanning a total of nine miles and the […]

Why more than 15,000 dolphins have been killed in Solomon Islands drive hunts – ‘The numbers are sufficient to raise concerns about the likelihood of local depletion of the populations’

By Elahe Izadi9 May 2015 (Washington Post) – Drive hunting – when groups of hunters on canoes fan out far off-shore and clap stones together as they round up dolphins – has been taking place off the Solomon Islands for many years. Now, researchers who examined detailed hunting records and interviewed locals say more than […]

Japan dolphin slaughter poses threat to Olympics

By Elizabeth MacDonald30 April 2015 (FOXBusiness) – The summer Olympics in Tokyo are five years away, with the games already drawing more sponsorship money than the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But just as China faced uncomfortable attention over its poor human rights record and severe pollution, Japan is also facing growing, global condemnation of its fishermen […]

Scientists to analyze ‘the Blob’ at Scripps Oceanography Workshop

30 April 2015 (Scripps Institution) – A workshop on an unusually warm pool of North Pacific Ocean water and associated conditions will take place May 5 and 6 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Participants in the 2014-2015 Pacific Anomalies Science and Technology Workshop will include federal, non-federal, state and local scientists and […]

Japan says it will hunt whales despite science panel’s opposition – IWC’s rejection of Japan’s latest plan for killing Antarctic minke whales ‘is a stunner’

By Virginia Morell16 April 2015 (Science) – In an unprecedented move, an expert panel that advises the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC’s) Scientific Committee has rejected Japan’s latest plan for resuming the killing of minke whales in the Antarctic. Japan, however, says it will continue with its whaling plans. The panel’s nonbinding finding, released this week, […]

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