Sanctuary in North Iceland Could End Whaling

By Jonny Zwick (@jonnyzwick) There are reasons for anti-whaling supporters to stay optimistic about the prospect of abolishing the archaic industry of whaling in Iceland. Despite the estimated 21 fin whales and 20 minke whales that have been slaughtered along the coast lines of the island nation this Summer, murmurs of a possible sanctuary in the North provide hope for those opposed. The primary reason that minke whalers have been pushed north this season is the implementation of a whale sanctuary in Faxafloi Bay. Faxafloi Bay lies right outside of the capital city, Reykjavik, and is famous for it’s fruitful whale and puffin watching. Although the invisible sanctuary line doesn’t run as far as whale-watching companies hoped that it would, it has restricted whalers in their deplorable practice. The significance goes beyond the recognition from Iceland’s Minister of Fisheries that whale watching may be more economically beneficial than whaling; it greatly depletes whalers already limited areas to hunt. I use the words, “already limited” because minke whales are mostly coastal/inshore marine mammals. Whalers can’t simply ignore the sanctuary by travelling further out to sea. Well, they could, but they wouldn’t find any whales to hunt. A sanctuary in the North, where whale watching is growing at an extreme rate, should surely put this controversial industry to bed. With a slowing consumer market and a shrinking hunting zone, I would recommend minke whalers start buffering their resumes if the line is put in place.

Let it be clear that the sanctuary in the North is in preliminary stages and may just be speculation. However, I am preaching this optimism due to the fact that I recently spent four days in the most important territories regarding the sanctuary and what I found out was very promising. An Icelandic colleague of mine recommended I travel with him as he promoted whale welfare by speaking with whale watching companies, restaurant owners, and the citizens who define these communities. We visited Akureyri, Husavik, Dalvik, and Siglufordur. The following developments signify the positive indications that a whale sanctuary is on the northern horizon:

*Husavik - The fjord is narrow, and massive snow-capped mountains serve as a remarkable backdrop for an ideal trip to see the majestic creatures in their natural habitat. There were only two companies, Gentle Giants and North Sailing, who ran whale-watching expeditions until last month. The introduction of a third company, Salka, not only proves that the whale watching market is growing outside of Reykjavik, but will also help transform the other two companies from competitors to teammates. We spoke to all three companies and they agreed that now is the time to unite and work together to ensure there are whales in the areas they are bringing tourists. *Akureyri – Another new company, Ambassador, has emerged in Akureyri. *Akureyri - My colleague and I spoke with restaurant owners who promised they would not sell whale meat, acknowledging that serving these dishes in their newly identified whale watching community would be a massive contradiction. Six restaurants now have stickers on their front doors stating that they are “whale friendly” and don’t offer whale meat. The stickers help introduce tourists to the notion that eating the marine mammals they recently appreciated is not an Icelandic norm. *Dalvik – We spoke with a whale watching CEO who, last year, was a proponent for whaling. He was convinced that the two industries could co-exist, but now revokes those beliefs, and is committed to promoting a sanctuary. *Dalvik – Arctic Sea Tours, a small, family run company, expressed their joy to us about how well their business was doing. Freire, who started the company, told us there has been a 100% increase in clientele for three successive years. They have purchased a second boat and have hired local citizens outside of their family lineage. *Siglurfjordur – This is where the minke whaling vessel, the Hrafnreydor, is docked. We looked for the vessel upon arrival, but couldn’t find it in the picturesque harbor where every other ship in the small town resided. We eventually discovered the ship completely isolated, hidden behind desolate industrial buildings closer to the mouth of the fjord. Speaking with locals revealed that our suspicions were correct and the whaling boat had been purposefully hidden. Members of the community seemed shocked when we informed them of the ship’s presence. They vehemently told us the whalers were not welcome. These discoveries provide an insight to the current status of the booming whale watching industry. Attitudes are shifting and jobs are being created. Whale watching companies understand the threat that whalers pose to their business, and are teaming up rather than competing, to ensure there are whales for their tourist clientele to observe. Their growth and unification plays a vital role in demanding the imposition of a northern sanctuary, subsequently ousting whalers from the North, and ending whaling as a whole in Iceland.

Dolphin Assisted Therapy is Bogus

“Imagine this. Jay, an eight-year-old boy with autism, whose behavior has always been agitated and uncooperative, is smiling and splashing in the pool. A pair of bottlenose dolphins are hovering on the surface next to him, supporting him in the water. With all the attention he’s getting, Jay is excited and in high spirits; he appears more aware and alert than ever before. Jay’s parents, who had given up hope, are elated to have finally found a treatment that works for their son. They sign up for more sessions and cannot wait to get home and tell their friends about the experience.” (Excerpted from Dolphins Are Not Healers, Aeon magazine). In this new review of dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) in Aeon Magazine (http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/lori-marino-dolphins-are-not-healers/ Lori Marino tells us that while the above scenario looks benign and encouraging – looks can be deceiving! Marino discusses her work with clinical psychologist Scott Lilienfeld showing that there is no therapeutic value to swimming with dolphins. She details the history of dolphins in mythology and how these ancient beliefs have fueled modern-day pseudoscience practices like DAT. The bottom line? DAT is a form of exploitation of both dolphins and desperate parents of disabled and sick children. Buyer Beware!

Toxics and Blood Cancer, a Diabetes Link?

This blog was written on the site of the International Myeloma Foundation in response to a posting by the eminent Myeloma authority Dr. Brian Durie. http://myeloma.org/MtEntryPage.action?source=/imf_blogs/myeloma_voices/2013/01/broad-concerns-about-toxic-exposures-and-myeloma.html By Hardy Jones I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2003. In 1997 I had been diagnosed with chronic mercury poisoning attributed to a diet high in tuna and swordfish - large predatory fish known to carry high levels of heavy metals and organic pollutants. In 2005 I was tested for organic pollutants such as those derived from agent orange, benzine, DDT, flame retardants etc. I was found to be quite high in some of the congeners. The story is best told in my book, The Voice of the Dolphins, but is also covered on the Bluevoice web site. I would say (in response to Dr. Durie's intention to test 911 victims) the sooner the better on testing 9/11 victims. Even though it’s slow, POPs (persistent organic pollutants) do break down and diminish. Also, if a person loses weight they will mobilize POPs, which are lipophilic, and excrete them. When I asked toxics expert Arlene Blum about my POPs levels she said “Oh, too bad you didn’t get tested when you were still eating lots of tuna etc. because your values would now be only a shadow of what they may have been.” I had stopped eating large predatory fish in 1997 after being found to have high mercury levels. My test for POPs was run in 2005. I’m thinking of having myself tested again - 7 years after the last test but the tests are expensive. I’ve just heard from a top marine mammal toxicologist that there is likely a correlation between levels of mercury and other heavy metals and POPs. There are confounding problems but as a general rule this analogy works. I will be getting test results from Peruvian dolphin-eating fishermen by Feb. 21. Our tests for mercury etc. should/could be a proxy for POPs. These fishermen have epidemic incidence of diabetes which Dr. Durie has tied to MM incidence. Anyway, it's great the IMF is doing this work. Prevention of this disease is better than suppressing it with drugs, even though these drugs have been a godsend to me. I would be happy to receive information from people who eat a lot of high food chain predatory fish who have MM. Hardy Jones hardyjones@bluevoice.org http://www.bluevoice.org/news_diabetes2.php http://www.bluevoice.org/news_sharedfate.php

The Dolphin Knew the Diver Would Help

Reciprocal Altruism This rather erudite term means one individual helping another with the evolutionary result that the original helper may obtain help in the future and thus better chances of survival and passing along ones genes. Human societies involve a lot of cooperation in everything from agriculture to finance to warfare. So the idea that if I help you, you will help me someday is axiomatic. But why would a human help a dolphin? At first glance we would have no real expectation that the helped dolphin or others of its group would help us. Perhaps reciprocal altruism may be embedded in our DNA and become trans specific. For an example of a dolphin helping a human, check out this video of dolphins saving me from a hammerhead shark in the Bahamas. http://bluevoice.org/webfilms_dolphinsprotect.php I’m not saying we help dolphins with the conscious expectation that the dolphin will one day help us in any way. I think we do it because we have an innate sense that having dolphins in the world makes our lives richer. So just by being dolphins are “helping” us. For an example of humans helping dolphins you have only to look at the worldwide response to he brutal killing of dolphins at Taiji. For another video of a human helping a dolphin check out http://nydn.us/WoTbUu Here we have the whole new wrinkle in that the dolphin asked the diver for help. This is not unique but it is mind blowing in what it says about dolphin intelligence and the potential for human-dolphin cooperation in the seas. The dolphin knew the human could help and chanced that he would help. I started this blog thinking I could wrap it up in 15 minutes. But the idea keeps expanding exponentially, so I’ll stop here and come back to it. To read a scientific paper by Dr. Ken Norris on reciprocal altruism go to http://bit.ly/W3ffHP

Continuted Investigation into Dolphin Dealths in Peru - Part 1

Peru 12/3/12 Despite all our effort the mystery of the mass mortality of dolphins in Peru February thru April, 2012 remains unsolved. Various authorities have stated emphatically that the MME could not have been the result of seismic testing but they offer no alternatives. They are trying to prove a negative, though not really going to the effort to prove it. So as I sit on Delta 151 an hour out of Atlanta and five hours to Lima I'm hoping for some advance in three areas: interviews with the fishermen who had direct observation of the seismic testing last winter and spring, more data on the correlation between eating dolphin meat and the epidemic of diabetes rampant in San Jose, Peru, a survey of all villages along the Peruvian coast to determine the numbers of dolphins taken for food, and to join ORCA/Peru to sign an agreement with the mayor of San Jose for an outreach program to reach local fishermen advising them of the danger of eating dolphin meat. Finally to take the data from Peru and universalize it to impact Japan and all the other places where dolphin bush meat is an issue. I chat with a Peruvian women on the plane and am surprised at my fluency in Spanish. I feel comfortable in Latin culture. The language, attitudes, and games played that are so transparent in another society are more opaque in one's own. Being in a foreign culture enlightens understanding of one's own culture From 1966 - 1968 I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru. I surfed a lot. One of our favorite places was Cerro Azul, a bleak fishing village with a long pier pushing out from the desert shore. Cerro Azul has a great break And we were virtually alone on the waves generated by the passing of the Humbolt current up the west coast of South America from Antarctica. There were days when we would catch a rising swell, cut left and begin a 40 second run to the beach. Fins would appear in the wave. The first time it was a shock. I supposed it was a shark and my mind frantically calculated the distance to shore and the chances the shark would go after me. The animal rose toward the surface and as its back appeared came a whoosh and burst of spray from the top of what I then called its head. A dolphin!

Conclusions on Dolphin Mass Mortality Event in Peru

A Mass Mortality of Dolphins:
Deadly Warning from the Beaches of Peru
By Hardy Jones, Executive Director,
BlueVoice.org

The tragic mass mortality event (MME) of at least 900 dolphins along the coast of northern Peru may be a portent of what would face marine mammal populations if seismic exploration for oil were permitted off the east coast of the United States.

See video http://bluevoice.org/webfilms_catastropheperu.php

The MME was investigated in a perfunctory manner by the government of Peru (GOP). Government agencies were reluctant to brave the remote beaches north of the fishing village of San Jose – the so-called stranding zone. There may have been some political concerns about offending the oil and fishing industries. And there is no funding in Peru for coordinated interdisciplinary investigations, as there is in the United States, when an MME is declared.

Whatever the reason, the GOP issued a statement concluding that “natural causes” and “evolutionary forces” were to blame for the massive die-off of dolphins. That statement is clearly ludicrous.

I believe there is enough circumstantial evidence to state that a plausible cause of the death of the dolphins along the coast of Peru would be seismic exploration for oil that was being carried out in the area of the MME. The extremely loud sounds generated by detonation of powerful air guns can cause dolphins feeding at depth to race to the surface. If they surface too rapidly, bubbles develop in their tissues causing death. This recognized phenomenon is called acoustical trauma, rapid ascent decompression syndrome. It leads to decompression sickness, commonly called the bends.

Scientists once thought marine mammals such as whales and dolphins were not subject to decompression sickness because they do not breathe compressed air. But a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society1 said researchers had recorded deaths among marine mammals as a result of decompression sickness, primarily among beaked whales “in association with anthropogenic activities such as military sonar or seismic surveys.”2


My conclusion comes after months of investigation, including an 85-mile drive along the sands of northern Peru and email exchanges with top experts in marine mammal rescue and previous MMEs.

As the investigation into the cause of the Peru dolphin MME continues, The Obama administration is proposing to open vast offshore tracts between Florida and Delaware to seismic surveys for potential oil deposits. The oil industry has applied to Minerals Management Service (MMS) and The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to run hundreds of thousands of miles of air gun surveys off the east coast over the next eight years. The Obama administration estimates these detonations would injure up to 138,500 marine mammals.

My investigations in Peru gave me a horrific view of the possible results of what may have been seismic testing that was being conducted in areas frequented by thousands of common dolphins. To give some background; beginning in February 2012 hundreds of dolphins were reported stranded (dead) on the beaches of northern Peru. In March I joined Dr. Carlos Yaipen Llanos of the Peruvian Organización Científica para Conservación de Animales Acuaticos (ORCA). During a single 85-mile drive along the beaches in the stranding zone, we counted 615 dead dolphins. Most were long beaked common dolphins. A few were Burmeister’s porpoise.

Dr. Yaipen Llanos, funded in large measure by BlueVoice, collected tissue samples from thirty dolphins. He conducted necropsies in situ and in Lima. After extensive testing he was able to rule out possible causal factors:

-The dolphins were not killed by fisheries interaction. -Their bodies were unscarred as they would be if they had died from net entanglement.
-There was no evidence of red tide and no species other than the two mentioned were affected.
-A contemporaneous mass mortality of pelicans was the result of starvation when their prey moved into deeper waters due to the end of a La Nina. There is no connection to the dolphin mortality.
-The deceased dolphins were well fed and healthy in appearance. A female, very recently stranded, had milk in her mammary glands.
-Morbilla virus, related to distemper, and Brucella bacteria, two pathogens commonly associated with mass mortality events, were ruled out by Dr. Yaipen Llanos. No symptoms of these diseases were found.

The Peruvian government report concurred in finding none of the above-mentioned factors complicit in the deaths of the dolphins.

What is not known, because it was not measured, is whether the dolphins suffered exposure to a huge quantity of either heavy metals or organic pollutants.

Based on the necropsies of 30 dolphins (the GOP had only three organs from two dolphins), Dr. Yaipen Llanos concluded that acoustical trauma leading to rapid ascent and decompression syndrome was the cause of death of the dolphins.

Dr. Yaipen-Llanos stated to me that necropsies that he and his colleagues performed on three separate expeditions to the stranding area showed the dolphins investigated had bleeding in their middle ears and had suffered fracture to the periotic bones that surround the inner ear. He also found gas in their internal organs and acute pulmonary emphysema, symptoms all consistent with death from decompression sickness.
Dr. Yaipen Llanos found newly stranded animals on each of ORCA’s three expeditions, showing the death of the dolphins was an ongoing process. He issued a statement saying “we believe that a strong source of sound was continuously emitted in the area. This didn’t happen just once.” He specifically did not name seismic testing as a cause, stating it was outside his professional competence.
During the course of my research I found widespread resistance from highly qualified experts to the idea that acoustical trauma was the cause of the dolphin mass mortality. NB: None of these scientists had been on scene and had gathered what little information they had from the GOP. The GOP dismissed the acoustical trauma hypothesis outright. Dr. Joseph Geraci3 told me “there is no scientifically verified case of seismic testing ever causing a mass mortality event.”

Dr. Robert Brownell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S.A also discounts the acoustical trauma theory, though he says he needs much more information before coming to a solid conclusion. But he also told me of “a mass stranding of melon-headed whales off northern Madagascar about June 2008 – (a major oil company) was working in region at the time.” He went on to say “a group of us has been trying to organize (a) workshop but (it’s) difficult with government of Madagascar (not cooperating). The possibility of a mass stranding in Madagascar caused by seismic testing does not refute Dr. Geraci’s statement in which he emphasizes the words “scientifically verifiable.” Since Madagascar won’t allow an investigation there will likely never be a “scientifically verifiable” cause of death assigned.

Dr. Brownell, Dr. Frances Gulland of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center near Sausalito, California and a number of other prominent experts on MMEs are hoping to put together a conference in Peru – perhaps in the fall of 2012.

In the meantime arguments go back and forth:

GOP: Dolphins began dieing in January and the seismic tests didn’t start until February

El Commercio, Peru’s most widely read newspaper, reported that the Peruvian Navy Had given permission for foreign oil companies to carry out seismic testing as early as November.

Various scientists: The bubbles described by Dr. Yaipen Llanos could have been the result of putrefaction in the dolphin corpse.

Dr. Yaipen Llanos: the fresh dolphin carcasses he examined had excess bubbles that differed from putrefaction bubbles.

And again, there is the GOPs conclusion that the MME was caused by natural causes and evolution.

No rebuttal required but laughter.

There will likely be no universally agreed upon conclusion on what killed more than 900 dolphins along the coast of Peru. The most plausible cause, the one that has not been disqualified, is seismic testing for oil. At very least this possibility needs to be factored into decisions on permitting this form of testing in the future.

In the Land of Dr. No

As the day wore on the tide moved up the beach pushing us closer and closer to the dunes. Finally we were driving through the surf and I felt that we had accomplished our mission. We had counted 615 dead dolphins and had evidence of the tragedy and necropsy samples that might shed light on what had produced this catastrophe.

We found an opening in the dunes and headed east toward the Pan American Highway. Initially we passed through an area behind the dunes that was flooded when the sea was high enough to crest the dunes. But it was now dry and reasonably hard. We made good time.

Our little fellowship consisted of Carlos and me, a driver, a tall female Dutch student and two female Peruvian members of ORCA-Peru. It was pretty cramped. A dangerous lot if I’ve ever seen one.

We then entered an area of powdery sand blown up into ridges that shaped just like waves. We’d go over the top of a crest then plunge into the trough. Hints of previous traffic were everywhere but no clear road to the Pan Am.

Eventually we found ourselves perched over a vast open pit mine. Massive trucks and earthmovers gouged the earth for phosphate. We made our way down tracks in the desert, occasionally stopping to ask guards in variously colored hard hats for directions. They looked surprised but pointed east.

Eventually we reached a huge conveyer belt and then saw the exit gate, which was open. As we approached it men in various colors of overalls and hard hats came running toward us. The gate was closed in front of us. We were in the land of Dr. No.

They asked for our IDs. Strutted around. Wrote on their clipboards. Carlos laughed saying “They’re so screwed because they’ve allowed a breach in security.” I thought, “They’re nuts to write this down. They should just pass us through and hope no one knows we got through their lines.”

Finally they let us out and we ran back to Chiclayo.

What were they afraid of; that we’d steal their phosphate? Or was there something in the mining process that was running into the sea. There was that one huge pipe running through the desert. The words “something evil this way comes,” ran through my mind.