Anybody remember Pfiesteria hysteria? It was a raging crisis in the Chesapeake in 1997, when schools of menhaden pocked with sores went belly up in the Pocomoke River. The toxic dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida was suspected of killing them, and of making people sick, too. Scientists and health officials swarmed in, concerned the affliction would spread. […]
A Commentary and Rant by Captain Paul Watson Every day we are assaulted by politicians and some media attacking us for being alarmists and accusing us of exaggerating the threats facing the environment and especially our concerns for biodiversity diminishment and human population growth. According to these voices of denial, the world is in great […]
LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO, Mexico, March 7 — This remote lagoon, surrounded by salt flats, mesas and desert, has been a sanctuary for gray whales for centuries. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times A gray whale pops up for air in Baja California, where advocates of tourism and the environment clash with those favoring heavier […]
Epidemic Hits Species Hailed for Revival, Then Weakened by Polluted Waters A wasting disease that kills rockfish and can cause a severe skin infection in humans has spread to nearly three-quarters of the rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay, cradle of the mid-Atlantic’s most popular game fish. The mycobacteriosis epidemic could carry profound implications for the […]
Consumers looking for Gorton’s seafood will have limited access on the Mendocino Coast, where at least eight stores have emptied their shelves of the products environmental activists say are manufactured by a business with whaling ties. “Japanese parent company Nissui annually slaughters hundreds of whales,” said Cindy Arch, who is working with Susan Nutter and […]
A New Study Finds a Declining Food Supply for Large Marine Animals in Bering Sea The Bering Sea – which lies just south of the Arctic Circle between Russia and Alaska – is getting warmer, and the heat is already having a huge impact on marine wildlife there, say scientists in a study published today […]
The debate over whether the Navy’s use of sonar to detect submarines is harming whales and other sound-sensitive species is back again. This time the battleground is the waters off the southeastern United States, where the Navy hopes to establish a training area for sailors who need to practice their sonar skills in a shallow […]
If George W. Bush were a character in a novel or a play, last week might have been the turning point in the narrative. He was shown on film being explicitly warned, just hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, that the levees in New Orleans were vulnerable. But everyone knows that after the levees broke, he […]
Today’s subject is game hogs — consumptive outdoor types who can never get enough. Whether fishing or hunting, they always want more. It’s bad enough when you run across game hogs in the woods or on the water. But one person can only do so much damage. When game hogs represent public agencies charged with […]
“Today, the United Nations reports that 75 percent of the world’s fish populations are being overfished.” Back in the ’80s, when we were young and passionately fishing the “blue waters” of the Atlantic off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, there were fish to be had. Huge schools of bluefin, yellowfin and albacore tuna roamed the […]
I’m quite sure that by now almost everyone has read the glowing reports that have been published on the state of our striped bass fishery. Most have painted a picture of a healthy, robust and ever expanding stock, so you can go to bed and not worry about a thing. That is of course if […]
News: Navy sonar exercises could be to blame for whale strandings. The pilot whales began coming ashore last January, on North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore, not far from Whalebone Junction, where fishermen make the turn toward the marina at Oregon Inlet. Short-finned with distinctly rounded heads and long, stocky dark bodies, some were almost […]
Danger Posed to Whales Is Cited The civilian agency in charge of marine issues has sharply challenged the Navy’s plans to build an underwater sonar training range in the Atlantic Ocean, saying that the military significantly underestimated the danger posed to whales and other marine mammals and that the science the Navy used to reach […]
The authors respond to David Talbot’s review of “Ultimate Sacrifice.” We appreciate the serious coverage of “Ultimate Sacrifice” in Salon.com, but there are several assertions and omissions in the review written by David Talbot that we’d like to address. “Ultimate Sacrifice” presents evidence from thousands of pages of declassified documents that John and Robert Kennedy […]
‘Freak’ occurrence may have been caused by suffocation Millions of dead fish blanketing the beach strand of Wrightsville Beach earlier this week created a scene that one expert called “phenomenal.” Menhaden fish, which are not typically eaten by humans, began washing up along the beachfront Sunday morning. A cause of the occurrence has not yet […]
Though you wouldn’t know it from following the media coverage, there have been new developments in the case during the past dozen years — many of them sparked by the thousands of once secret documents released by the government as a result of the furor around Stone’s film. (Millions of other pages remain bottled up […]
As happens every year – who knows for how long – along with the Day of the Dead and the visiting souls of the departed come the monarch butterflies who have flown the 5,000 kilometers, from southern Canada and the northern United States to the oyamel forests in Michoacan and the State of Mexico1, to […]
2005 Global Environmental Citizen: The Honorable Al Gore Former vice president Al Gore delivered a speech about global warming upon accepting the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. The award was conferred on Oct. 21 in New York by Eric Chivian, MD, director of […]
Baja deal would mark an unusual alliance It is one of Mexico’s most remote regions, a vast landscape of water and earth where migratory birds feed, mangroves thrive and gray whales migrate to breed and bear their young. For years, conservation groups from both sides of the border have fought to preserve the Laguna San […]
Simple precautions could protect majestic creatures LOS ANGELES (October 19, 2005) – Ear-splitting sonar used throughout the world’s oceans during routine testing and training by the United States Navy harms marine mammals in violation of bedrock environmental laws, according to a lawsuit filed here today in federal court. Whales, dolphins and other marine animals could […]