Mother Dolphin Carries Dead Baby Calf For Days
Published on Jul 17, 2012 by NTDTV
On July 8, a mother dolphin was spotted with her calf in Sanniang Bay of Qinzhou City in Southern China. The mother appeared to be helping her calf stay afloat. And when a tourist vessel got close enough to see the baby, they saw that it was dead.
It had a long cut across its belly, probably from a boat propeller. Tourist boats often go dolphin spotting in nearby waters.
The calf looked like it had been dead for several days.
[ Mr. Su, Fisherman]: "The little dolphin was dead for two or three days, but its mother still stayed with it and carried it day and night, which has touched all of us and the tourists. Just like human beings, dolphins also have feelings. A mother's love is noble and moving."
Similar behavior in mother dolphins has been documented by an Italian scientist since 2007.
After several encounters with dolphins mourning their dead or nearly dead, scientists are starting to think that not only do dolphins grieve, they are also aware of their own mortality.
Dolphin Assisted Fishing
Dolphins help Brazilian fisherman catch their prey, then swim off (but what's in it forthem?)
Posted by Cempaka at 1:06 AM 0 comments
Labels: Animals - Birds, Dolphins, Species, Whalers
2009 Timor Sea Oil Spill 'Just as Devastating as Gulf of Mexico'
Jakarta Globe, July 22, 2012
This handout photo provided by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from Sept. 2009
shows a man looking at a waxy substance found in water affected by the Montara oil
rig leak in the Timor Sea. Monitoring the clean-up of a huge oil spill in pristine Australian
waters could take as long as seven years, an official said in Nov. 2009, as environmentalists
urged a wide-ranging inquiry into the disaster. (AFP Photo/WWF/Kara Burns)
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Kupang, West Timor. A prominent US expert in oil spill recovery said in Kupang on Saturday that Indonesia needs to craft a program to deal with the lingering and largely over-looked effects of the 2009 Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea.
Dr. Robert Spies, who was the Chief Scientist for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, and who served as an adviser to US government after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, said the Timor Sea can still be restored, but only with "serious attempts" made by the Indonesian and Australian governments in coordination with the company who operated the Montara platform.
Serious attempts would include substantial money, much of which should come from Thai state-owned oil and gas company PTT Exploration and Production, Montara's primary operator.
Spies said he's recently studied the impact of the Montara spill in the Timor sea, especially in Indonesian waters. He said the pollution caused by the Montara leak was just as severe as the Gulf of Mexico spill.
"Restoration programs could be made after hearing expert opinions involved in examining the effects of the pollution on the environment," Spies said at a discussion on pollution and impact on the environment.
The Montara oil spill leaked an estimated 2,000 barrels a day from Aug. 21 to Nov. 3 2009 (or 74 days), according to the Australian Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism. The Montara slick grew to almost 90,000 square kilometers and entered Indonesian waters, according to environmental group WWF.
A team led by the Environment Ministry said the oil slick covered 16,420 square meters of Indonesian maritime territory. The West Timor Care Foundation, which supports poor fishermen in eastern Indonesia, estimated the spill affected the livelihoods of about 18,000 fishermen. Businesses such as seaweed and pearl farms were also reportedly hit.
Spies said damage in the Gulf of Mexico was minimized thanks to quick action taken by American authorities in 2010; Spies said the US government was quick to launch environmental restoration programs, and asked British Petroleum to finance much of the environmental assessment.
BP was also asked to provide compensation for people directly impacted by the spill — namely fishermen.
Similar methods could be used for the Timor Sea pollution through coordination through the multitude of companies involved, Spies was quoted as saying by Antara.
The Motara platform was owned by Norwegian-Bermudan Seadrill, and operated by PTTEP Australasia (PTTEPAA), a subsidiary of PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) — that company was in turn a subsidiary of PTT.
Houston-based Halliburton was involved in cementing the well, and were also involved in cementing the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon well.
Jakarta Globe and Antara
Kiara regrets PTTEP`s rejection of RI`s claim on oil spill
PTTEP acknowledges oil spill in Timor Sea: Minister
Indonesia to Seek $2.2 billion in Damages for Timor Sea Oil Spill
Board: BP missed the big hazard issues in spill
Posted by Cempaka at 11:28 PM 0 comments
Labels: Australia, Disaster / Accident, Disaster Management, Oil Spills, Pollution, Thailand
Ahoy! Your ship is being tracked from orbit
BBC News, by Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, 20 July 2012
Large ocean going vessels steer clear of the Somali coast to avoid
confronting pirates
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China in space: Running fast to catch up
The latest satellite ship-tracker goes into orbit this weekend for Canada's ExactEarth company.
The monitoring of vessels at sea is a fast-developing space service.
It's a market being driven presently by ExactEarth and its US competitor, Orbcomm.
Their satellites listen in to the AIS (Automatic Identification System) signals broadcast from vessels.
All ships over 300 gross tons (and many passenger ships) are mandated to carry transponders that push out data that includes not just position, course, and speed, but also information about a ship's type, draught, cargo - even its captain.
AIS was established in the first instance as a safety system - something maritime agencies and ship operators themselves could use near shore to keep tabs on who was doing what in local waters.
Its limitation is that communication with coastal receiving stations is line of sight, meaning it's not possible to track vessels once they've gone out into the open ocean. Hence the enterprise of also putting receiving stations in orbit.
"It's interesting. Before satellite AIS came along, you'd talk to people and they'd just assume that ships were tracked wherever they went in the world. But the reality was that there were 60,000 ships out there carrying nine trillion dollars' worth of cargo, and when the captain went over the horizon, unless he sent a signal, no-one knew where he went. That's all changed now," says ExactEarth's John Allan.
The company claims its exactView-1 satellite will be the most performant platform yet launched.
The spacecraft is British-built, assembled by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited in Guildford. It AIS receiving equipment is also UK built - developed by the European division of Com Dev (which part owns ExactEarth) at its Stoke Mandeville base in Buckinghamshire.
It was apparent just from the AIS data that the Costa Allegra was in trouble
Doing ship-tracking from orbit is not straightforward. In some of the busiest waterways, it can be very difficult to disentangle the signatures of the individual vessels.
Rob Goldsmith from Com Dev Europe explained: "One of the problems with AIS is that it was designed as a terrestrial system - ship to ship, and ship to shore. It's a VHF signal and it uses something called Self-Organized Time Division Multiple Access, which means that within a communication frequency, each ship will be allocated a slot and it will co-ordinate with all the others so there is no interference.
"That's fine over a 50-70-nautical-mile cell, but from space you see a lot of these cells and they collide - you get a lot of noise. But we have a very clever algorithm. Our satellites capture the signals and download them to the ground where a big computer separates them."
ExactEarth expects the next-generation receiver on the new satellite to finesse this process even more.
There are lots of applications for this type of data.
The exactView-1 spacecraft is the smaller
of the three satellites mounted for launch
Safety at sea is an obvious one. If a vessel gets into trouble, the maritime authorities can see very quickly where that ship is and those that are closest to it and might be able to offer assistance.
"In the AIS data, you get course over ground information (the direction in which it's moving) and heading (the direction the ship's pointing). These can tell you a lot about what a ship is doing," says John Allan.
"You may remember the Costa Allegra, which had a fire about two weeks after its sister ship, the Costa Concordia, ran aground.
"The fire knocked out the engine and the ship started drifting, and you could see that in the AIS data. The ship went side on in the current, but its heading was about 90 degrees different.
"Just by looking at the AIS data, you could tell there was something wrong with the vehicle.
"Now, if you were a coastguard and you saw that behaviour in a supertanker, it would certainly pique your interest."
AIS information is being used to challenge owners whose ships take dangerous shortcuts or fish in restricted zones.
It's also being used in the effort to combat piracy, by enabling the authorities to manage and monitor convoys of ships passing through high-risk waters. Nato is using satellite AIS to monitor the situation off the Somali coast.
The killer application in the future will be to put an AIS receiver on a radar satellite.
Radar sees through cloud and can picture the sea surface day or night.
Plans are afoot to put AIS on radar
satellites, which can see the ocean
surface whatever the weather
Not only then would you have the identification data but you could tie this directly to the imagery evidence.
This would allow you to check the vessel was indeed the type of ship its AIS transmission claimed it to be; or, in the opposite scenario, investigate why a big ship picked up on radar was not broadcasting its status.
It has been known, for example, for traffickers to turn off their AIS to try to hide their activity.
The Spanish government's first radar satellite, Paz, due to launch next year will carry an AIS receiver.
There is a proposal also for the forthcoming British NovaSAR radar satellite to be fitted with such equipment.
And the European Space Agency recognises the benefits of joining the two technologies and is talking about including AIS on one of its future Sentinel radar platforms.
You should be able to watch Sunday's Soyuz rocket launch here. You can also read more about the other satellites launching with exactView-1 here.
Labels: Global, Maritime, Pirate Attacks, Ships
ASEAN states stall on sea dispute
Deutsche Welle, 14 July 2012
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) concluded a series of meetings in Phnom Penh this week, failing to issue a joint communiqué amid disagreements over a maritime dispute in the region.
Foreign ministers of the 10-member ASEAN bloc held tense talks on contested waters in the South China Sea, which has important shipping lanes, and is believed to be rich in oil and gas reserves.
ASEAN comprises Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.
China and Taiwan, along with ASEAN member states Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei, all claim territory in the area, which has become the scene of rising tensions in recent months.
Unprecedented in ASEAN's history
Cambodia opposed mentioning
the Scarborough Shoal in the
The Philippines said in a statement on Friday that the non-issuance of a joint communiqué was "unprecedented" in ASEAN's 45-year history.
It said that during a special morning meeting, several ASEAN states and the ASEAN Secretariat supported the Philippine's view that discussions on the Scarborough Shoal - the site of a recent standoff between China and the Philippines - should be mentioned in the communiqué.
"… the Chair (Cambodia) has consistently opposed any mention of the Scarborough Shoal … in the Joint Communiqué and today announced that a Joint Communiqué cannot be issued," the statement read.
The Philippines' Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said at meetings on Thursday - attended by visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi - that China's "increasing assertion" in the area could threaten regional peace and stability.
"If left unchecked, the increasing tensions that is being generated in the process could further escalate into physical hostilities which no one wants," said del Rosario.
Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said at a press conference that the communiqué had become a "hostage" of bilateral issues between ASEAN member states and China.
Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy, told DW that Cambodia's actions as ASEAN chair were "reprehensible" and its "act of obstinacy" was a reflection of China's influence.
"For the first time in ASEAN's history, its foreign ministers have met and acted on a very heavy agenda but have lost their traditional means of publicizing their decisions," he said, adding that discord over the wording of the joint statement could spill into negotiations for a code of conduct (COC) on the South China Sea.
Profound disappointment
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters on Friday that he felt "deep, profound disappointment" that a consensus could not be reached among ASEAN members. However, he added that states would continue to work on a draft COC.
North Korea accused the US of
destabilizing the region
ASEAN and China agreed in 2002 to work toward the adoption of such a code to guide behavior in the South China Sea.
"There is still a common view that we must, if anything, reinforce our efforts to work on the COC, to begin our talks with the Chinese on the COC," Natalegawa said.
Earlier this week, a senior Cambodian official stated that foreign ministers had adopted "key elements" of a draft COC, and must start discussions with China.
Hillary Clinton told reporters at a briefing on Thursday that the US looked to ASEAN and China for "meaningful progress" on finalizing a COC.
"We believe the nations of the region should work collaboratively and diplomatically to resolve disputes without coercion, without intimidation, without threats and certainly without the use of force," she said.
US 'root of instability'
Meanwhile, North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun told an ASEAN gathering on Thursday that the US nuclear threat and US policy was the "root of instability" in the Korean Peninsula.
Clinton said in her remarks at the East Asia Summit on Thursday that all parties must remain "firm and unified" in pursuing the denuclearization of the Peninsula, following "provocations" from North Korea over the past year.
Author: Mary Kozlovski
Editor: Shamil Shams
Indonesia attempts to resolve ASEAN rift
Indonesia Scrambles to End Asean Rift Over Sea
ASEAN's communiqué failure disappoints SBY
Labels: ASEAN, China, Maritime
Japan floods: 250,000 people ordered to leave homes
BBC News, 14 July 2012
Japan's Self-Defence Forces have been helping to search for the missing
Thousands ordered to flee floods Watch
Japan country profile
About 250,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes to avoid floods caused by torrential rainfall in south-west Japan, officials say.
Flooding and landslides on the southern island of Kyushu have left at least 20 people dead in the past three days.
TV footage showed muddy waters sweeping through homes and streets as rivers burst their banks in the north of the island.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has warned of further rain and landslides.
At least seven people were said to be missing on Friday, Japanese media said. Japan's Self-Defence Forces have been brought in to help search for the missing.
More than 75cm (30in) of rain fell in 72 hours in the city of Aso, in Kumamoto prefecture, according to weather officials quoted by the French news agency AFP.
The evacuation orders affect 85,000 households in the prefectures of Fukuoka, Saga, Kumamoto and Oita, the Kyodo news agency reported.
In Fukuoka prefecture alone, around 190,000 people from 65,000 households were issued the order, with the entire area of the cities of Yanagawa, Yame and Miyama to be evacuated.
Another 140,000 have been advised to vacate their homes as well, AFP quoted local officials as saying.
Those being asked to leave their homes have been told to go to designated shelters such as schools and other facilities, according to the agency.
In pictures: Japan floods
Thousands evacuate in Japanese floods
Beijing chaos after record floods in Chinese capital
Posted by Cempaka at 7:31 PM 0 comments
Labels: Disaster Management, Islands, Japan, Natural Disaster, Weather
This 2011underwater handout photograph released by US-based charity
The Nature Conservancy shows the effects of bleaching in Indonesia's Wakatobi
archipelago, a thriving marine paradise that supports 100,000 people and
contributes millions of dollars to Indonesia's economy. in 2011, coral bleaching
caused by higher sea temperatures wreaked havoc across the Coral Triangle,
a region of rich tropical reefs spanning much of Southeast Asia and almost all of
Indonesia. Up to 70 percent of the coral in Wakatobi, off the southeastern tip of
Sulawesi island, was totally or partially bleached. (AFP Photo/ROD SALM)
New Report Says 85% of Coral Triangle Reefs Are at Risk
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Rising Popularity of North Sulawesi's Bunaken Wrecking its Coral Reefs
90% of Balikpapan Coral Reefs Destroyed: Environmental Activists
Fishermen Successfully Revive Coral Reefs in Bali
Pekanbaru, Riau. Indonesia called on the international community to give serious attention in saving coral reefs and fishery resources in the "Coral Triangle," a minister said.
"Saving the Coral Triangle region is important because it is so rich in marine biodiversity," said Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Minister Sharif C. Sutardjo in an e-mail on Friday.
The Coral Triangle refers to the shared tropical marine waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and East Timor. The area is said to contain 30 percent of the world's reefs and more than 3,000 species of fish. More than 130 million people living in the region rely on reef ecosystems for food, employment, and revenue from tourism, according to studies.
At the Rio +20 forum in June, Sharif said Indonesia was committed to the success of the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF), a 2007 partnership of six countries that addressed what they called "urgent threats facing the coastal and marine resources of one of the most biologically diverse and ecologically rich regions on earth."
Sharif also lauded the importance of a "blue economy," in the marine and aquatic sector.
"The Blue economy concept also emphasizes a balance between economic development and environmental carrying capacity, so as to positively affect the people welfare," Sharif said.
A healthy marine ecosystem can support the livelihood of the community, as well as support sustainable economic development, Sharif argued. He added that the goal of a blue economy is to encourage a more balanced economic development between resource utilization and environmental protection efforts.
"In fact, it would be a lot of growing economic activity in the marine and fishery sectors," Sharif noted, saying the policy would also strike new balances between land and marine based development.
The Rio+20 agreed with the possible dual benefits of environmental protection and sustainable economic growth, saying such growth could alleviate poverty and increase food security.
The CTI-CFF event was attended by more than 150 scientists as well as the official government of the member countries. There were 170 academic papers delivered at the forum.
Indonesia will participate in the International Coral Reefs Symposium (ICRS) held in Cairns, Australia in the next few weeks, where the country's marine advocates will again promote stewardship of it's coral reefs.
Indonesia's commitments also come in the wake of an ominous report presented at the International Coral Reef Symposium on Monday. The report said more than 85 percent of the Coral Triangle is directly threatened by human activities such as coastal development, pollution, and overfishing.
Labels: Conservation, Corals, CTI, Fishery, Government, Reef
South Korea may reconsider scientific whaling plans
UN bid denied at whaling talks
S Korea plans 'scientific' whaling Watch
South Korea's whaling: Faux and cons
Environmentalists in Seoul have protested
South Korea's whaling plans
South Korea has said it may reverse a controversial plan to resume whaling for "scientific research" if other options to study the mammals were available.
An official said on Wednesday that the country may consider other ways to study whales without killing them.
South Korea had cited scientific research rules last week as a reason to restart whaling.
But critics say the move was simply commercial whaling in disguise.
"We may not conduct whaling for scientific research if there is another way to achieve the goal," said Kang Joon-Suk, a senior official of South Korea's Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
He did not provide further details.
A South Korea delegation had announced during an International Whaling Commission meeting in Panama on 4 July that it would hunt whales under regulations permitting whaling for scientific research.
It said the research was needed "for the proper assessment of whale stocks".
But this was met with criticism from governments like the US, Australia and New Zealand, as well as environmental groups.
South Korea has had a long tradition of whaling, especially in its Ulsan region, where fishermen already catch whales in fishing nets.
Officially, this happens accidentally, but local environment groups say the minkes are deliberately caught, and that the meat is easily bought in markets and restaurants, says the BBC's environmental correspondent Richard Black.
An international moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed in 1986. But some countries like Japan conduct scientific whaling programmes.
S. Korea dumps whaling plan
France Urges South Korea to Drop Whaling Plan
Asian nations want to sink South Korea whale hunt plan
Labels: Animals - Birds, Asia, Environment, Science - Research, South Korea, Species, Whalers
Mexico, New Zealand Pressed to Save Marine Mammals
Members of the International Whaling Commission attend their 64th
Annual Meeting in Panama City on Wednesday. (AFP Photo/
Rodrigo Arangua)
Panama City. A scientific body on Thursday urged Mexico and New Zealand to take immediate action to prevent the extinction of small marine mammals that are being killed by gillnets set by the fishing industry.
The International Whaling Commission voiced fears for Maui's dolphins — some of the world's smallest dolphins found only on New Zealand's North Island — and the vaquita, a 1.5-meter (five-foot) porpoise in the Gulf of California.
The Commission's scientific committee estimated that New Zealand had just 55 Maui's dolphins left that are at least one year old and that Mexico had no more than 220 vaquitas, with the number declining despite conservation methods.
In a report at an annual meeting in Panama City, the committee voiced "extreme concern" over the future of the vaquita and urged the immediate elimination of gillnets that could entangle the cetaceans.
In New Zealand, the committee also called for a prompt ban on gillnets and for establishing a safe corridor for Maui's dolphins between North and South islands.
The two countries both said that they were taking action. Gerard von Bohemen, New Zealand's commissioner, pointed to a recent decision to expand a ban on fishing nets along North Island's western Taranaki coast.
Mexico's commissioner, Lorenzo Rojas Bracho, said that his country had cracked down on illegal fishing and that a working group in charge of shrimping was considering a net ban from next year.
Aimee Leslie, the marine turtle and cetacean manager at conservationist group WWF, said that the commitments by Mexico and New Zealand were not enough.
"Unless these governments remove all gillnets now they will be responsible for the loss of these animals forever," she said.
Austria's representative Michael Stachowitsch voiced frustration over conservation efforts in Mexico and said: "Frankly, it's time for diplomatic niceties and strategies to take a back seat to immediate, concrete action."
"When a bridge collapses someone takes responsibility. When a bank or a corporation goes under, there is shame and someone takes responsibility," he said. "How much greater must the responsibility or shame be when a highly developed mammal species is lost forever?" he said.
The International Whaling Commission is known for its annual showdowns over whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland, but the scientific committee meets separately and is formed by experts.
Labels: Animals - Birds, New Zealand, Species, Whalers, WWF
Indigenous whaling bids granted after 'racism' claim
BBC News, by Richard Black, Environment correspondent, Panama City, Panama, 3 July 2012
Whale sanctuary bid falls short
Indigenous focus for whale talks
Whale meeting heads for discord
The vote to renew whaling quotas may have
gone differently had nations not applied
as a bloc
Whaling quotas for indigenous groups in Alaska, Russia and the Caribbean were renewed at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting.
The vote came despite questions over whether the bid from St Vincent and the Grenadines qualified under IWC rules.
A bid for similar quotas in Greenland has yet to be debated.
Aboriginal subsistence whaling (ASW) is allowed if indigenous peoples have a "nutritional and cultural need" and there is no danger to whale stocks.
The debate saw heated exchanges involving an allegation from the St Kitts and Nevis delegate, Daven Joseph, that the mainly Latin American countries seeking to block the bid were "bordering on racism".
"Small nations are being singled out," he said.
"If [St Vincent and the Grenadines] are hunting for four humpback whales each year from a population of 10,000, who gives the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Chile or Costa Rica the right to tell St Vincent how to use the whales?"
But others said that the bid should not qualify under ASW rules because the Bequians, the group that maintains the hunt, are not truly indigenous.
Whaling "started by a settler's family as recently as a 1875 does not qualify as 'aboriginal'," argued Monaco's Frederic Briand.
"So we may ask a fundamental question - is there a justification for further approval of this quota?"
Louise Mitchell Joseph, speaking on behalf of the Eastern Caribbean Coalition of Environmental Awareness, said there was no documented history of whaling in the islands.
"There have been many archaeological excavations conducted, and there was no evidence found whatsoever of whale hunting by aboriginal peoples," she said.
"Neither whale remains nor weapons that could have been used to kill such a large mammals were ever found; neither are any images of whales inscribed on our petroglyphs."
Success in triplicate
Peter Sanchez, speaking for the Dominican Republic, said the hunt was "artisanal whaling out of control".
"[The hunters have] repeatedly broken the rules - hunting for young ones and pregnant females," he said.
At issue is for how long - or even if -
aboriginal peoples have hunted whales
"We recognise the needs of indigenous peoples in the US and Russia but we cannot support the [joint] request by all three countries."
A number of delegations clearly felt the same way, clarifying that they would have voted against the St Vincent hunt if the three nations had presented their bids separately.
But with the vote overwhelmingly in favour by a margin of 48 to 10, it was evident that few had the will to force the joint resolution into its component parts.
Governments have to apply for ASW quotas every five years, though the current batch may last for six if, as anticipated, IWC members decide in future to hold their meetings every two years.
The vote means that Alaskan Inupiat retain their quota of 56 bowhead whales each year.
Russian indigenous peoples in Chukotka in eastern Siberia will continue to hunt 120 gray whales annually, while the Bequians retain their annual right to four humpbacks.
A separate resolution submitted by Denmark on behalf of Greenland is requesting an expansion of the quotas currently enjoyed by Inuit communities, enhancing the take of humpback and fin whales on the grounds that people need more whalemeat.
But some nations, including other EU members, are concerned by a recent report that found whalemeat on sale to tourists, raising questions over whether the Greenlanders really need quotas as large as those they currently have.
The EU is supposed to maintain a united front in forums such as the IWC, and a joint position is being agreed back in Brussels, with a decision anticipated on Wednesday.
Indigenous peoples threatened by resource exploitation
Labels: Animals - Birds, indigenous People, Species, Whalers
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