Japan considering leaving International Whaling Commission and resuming commercial hunting
âJapan is considering leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to resume commercial hunts after unsuccessfully campaigning for decades to gain support for the cause.â
âJapan has hunted whales in the Southern Ocean since 1987 for what it calls "scientific research" purposes, but this has been criticised internationally as a cover for commercial purposes.The country cut back on its catch after a 2014 international court ruling. Japan has long maintained that most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is a cherished part of its food culture.â
(via Japan considering leaving International Whaling Commission and resuming commercial hunting - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation))
Whales are full of toxic chemicals
âEuropean whales and dolphins may be at risk of extinction from the effects of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a team of researchers recently reported in Scientific Reports. Concentrations of PCBs in killer whales and bottlenose and striped dolphins, they found, were high enough to cause health damage.PCBs have been banned in Europe, the United States and many other places for decades, so finding them in marine mammals may be surprising to some.â
âPCBs are far from the only toxic chemicals that have been found to taint the blubber and other tissue of whales and dolphins...Chlordane, toxaphene, DDT and PCBs are all examples of persistent organic pollutantsâ chemicals that were once widely used in agriculture and manufacturing (or accidentally produced through industrial processes or combustion) but are now banned due to their adverse effects on human health and the environment. These chemicals became especially troublesome not only because of their toxic qualities but also because they crept from their original destinations. Some are still leaching out of landfills. And they move through the environment, often through the food web. Because these chemicals donât easily break down, animals that eat animals laced with these toxins end up with ever-higher levels of them â a process known as biomagnification.â
âPersistent organic pollutants are not even the only problem when it comes to toxic chemicals. Mercuryâ from anthropogenic sources such as power generation â also works its way into whales and dolphins. Tests of whale meat for sale online in Japan last year revealed mercury levels as high as 47.5 times what is considered safe for human consumption. With such reports about toxic chemicals in whales and dolphins going back decades, one has to wonder why people continue to hunt and eat these animals â let alone feed them to schoolchildren.â
(via Whales are full of toxic chemicals | Science News)
One More Reason the World Should Stop Eating Whale Meat: Itâs Filled With Pesticides
âIt was discovered that Japan deemed whale meat purchased from Norway unfit to eat because it contained up to twice the permitted levels of pesticides, likely due to agricultural runoff or leakage from waste storage containers.â
âJapan is right to take action to prevent the import of toxic Norwegian whale meat,â Clare Perry, head of the EIAâs oceans campaign, said in a statement. âHowever, it should also look to its own cetacean hunts, which provide thousands of tons of toxic whale and dolphin products for unsuspecting Japanese consumers.â
This was not the first time that Japanese officials blocked foreign whale products. Over the past decade, Japan has refused Norwegian-caught blubber and meat on a number of occasions, citing health standard violations including elevated levels of PCBs, excessive amounts of live bacteria, and high pesticide counts.
Whale and dolphin meat is also often loaded with mercury. In 2011, the EIA purchased whale meat in Japan and found that one sample contained 21 parts per million of the toxic metal, 50 times above Japanese safety limits.â
âWe hope by spreading awareness of the fact that whale meat has been repeatedly turned away by the Japanese health officials thatâŠcompanies that continue to hunt and trade whales will finally accept that this is no longer an acceptable or economically viable prospect,â
âTourists traveling in all three whaling countries need to be made aware of these findings,â Iceland recently began importing Norwegian minke whale meat, much of which is âsold to tourists who mistakenly believe that eating whale meat is an essential part of Icelandic culture,â
âNorway and Iceland will take advantage of the lull in Japanâs whale hunting expeditions. Activists admit there is still a long way to go. In the past two years, Norway increased exports of minke whale products to Japan, shipping more than 137 tons of meat and blubber. Minke whales are listed as endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Last year, Iceland killed 161 whales, while Japan killed 447. But Norway âkilled more whales than Iceland and Japan combined...Even the shrinking market for whale meat in Japan represents a greater possibility for sales for Norwegian whalers, who have had difficulties increasing domestic demand for meat.â
(via One More Reason the World Should Stop Eating Whale Meat: Itâs Filled With Pesticides | Takepart)
Dead pilot whale found with 80 plastic bags in stomach
âA pilot whale has died in southern Thailand, with an autopsy revealing more than 80 bags were clogged in its stomach. A rescue team initially found it alive, but attempts to nurse the male pilot whale back to health were ultimately unsuccessful. During the rescue attempt, the whale reportedly vomited up five plastic bags...the bags had made it impossible for the whale to eat any nutritional food. Â
 At least 300 marine animals die in Thai waters from plastic ingestion each year. Thailand is one of the world's biggest consumers of plastic bags, which are notorious for the adverse impact they have on marine life.â
(via Dead pilot whale found with 80 plastic bags in stomach | Newshub NZ)
Cleaning up the plastic in the ocean
âIt is, in many ways, a miracle product, cheap to produce and virtually indestructible. Yet plastic's blessings are also a curse. That water bottle we use once and throw away will be with us for generations. There are campaigns to limit this plastic plague with bans on bags and straws and yet around the world, it continues to pile up, seeping into our rivers and streams and turning our oceans into a vast garbage dump.
In an old naval base just outside San Francisco, engineers have spent months assembling a curious contraption, the brainchild of a driven 24 year-old Dutchman named Boyan Slat who dropped out of college to take center stage in a grand new venture...Slat came up with the idea as a teenager eight years ago on a diving trip off the coast of Greece. He was horrified by how much plastic he saw in the water and began collecting and analyzing it, and thinking of ways to clean it up.â
âHe laid out his vision to clean up the ocean at a TEDx Talk when he was 18. It went viral and a self-styled savior of the seas was born. A slick Silicon Valley-style roadshow followed and Slat raised more than $30 million for his Ocean Cleanup, money he used to market his message and carry out research including an aerial survey to map the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. For the past five years, a team of engineers and scientists have been feverishly modelling, testing and revising Slat's idea.
Eight million tons of new plastic flows into the ocean every year, mostly from places that have no way of dealing with their trash...Over time, that plastic disperses, disintegrates into smaller pieces, and often gets eaten by fish, making its way up the food chain. Scientists still aren't sure what all that means for human health, but it's tightening its grip on marine animals and their habitat.â
âThere are really only three things you can do with plastic: put it in a landfill, burn it or recycle it. For decades, we thought recycling was the best answer, and we were told to throw our plastic, our paper and our aluminum cans into those familiar bins, to be picked up and carted away...90 percent of the plastic we used never made it into one of those bins at all. The other ten percent ended up in...a recycling facility.
âUntil recently, in California, and probably much of the rest of the U.S., two thirds of the plastic went straight to China. China was accepting it and-- it appears that China found a way to recycle it economically which-- the-- the U.S. has trouble with.But last year, all that changed when China decided it didn't want to be the world's trash dump and shut the door to our plastic. A lot of the plastic has been diverted to other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand...There's no real audit trail or anything like that so it's very difficult. And we know that a lot of plastic in Southeast Asia and other countries ends-- ends up in open dumps...For plastic, it's currently not working. So we need to change it. We need to try different things.â
âBoyan Slat and his big idea have been getting breathless coverage from the world's media...But since its deployment, its performance has been less enchanting. The plastic it has managed to corral ends up floating right back into the Pacific; a major design flaw Slat's trying to fix. But even if he does get the device working, scientists we spoke to have serious doubts about just how effective it can be: For one thing, its ten foot screen can only skim the ocean's surface, missing plastic that's much deeper. It could also end up trapping marine animals. But their biggest criticism is that it's pointless to spend millions of dollars trying to clean the middle of the ocean when more and more plastic is flowing into it from the coastlines.
âYou know, I think the analogy that you hear often is, "If you've got a flood in the bathtub you're not gonna go just get a bunch of towels and try to keep cleaning it up, because it's still flooding over. You really need to turn off the tap, right?"
"This is like trying to mop up a flooded bathroom but leaving the tap on."
(via Cleaning up the plastic in the ocean | 60 Minutes, CBS News)
Whale meat marketed to young Norwegians as hip and trendy, but environmental activists aren't buying it
âWhale steaks, sushi and burgers have been promoted at food and music festivals as modern and trendy, luring in younger consumers.The Instagram hashtag #hvalkjĂžtt (whale meat) has more than 800 posts showing all-manner of whale-inspired fine dining.Whales are not just consumed, the carcass is being turned into cosmetics, vitamin supplements and protein powder with "unique amino acid composition ⊠good for restitution, increased energy levels and combustion."
"So far these marketing approaches have not really worked. And the national and international demand for whale products is very, very small." The Norwegian Government increased this year's minke whales hunting quota to 1,278.But activists say last year only 432 whales were taken, the lowest total in 20 years.
Gone are the days of Greenpeace engaging in high-seas tussles with Norwegian whaling ships to grab international headlines. Instead the environmental group has adopted a more reserved approach.
"We maintain the need for a ban and maintain the line whaling is unnecessary and stupid...But we don't create unnecessary noise which might fuel the nationalistic eating of whales again, which was very bad for whales." In past decades when global pressure was heaped on Norway to stop whaling, support at home for the industry spiked."That raised the support for whaling to sky-high levels in Norway, because it was seen as a national sovereignty issue,"Â
âPutting ethical concerns to one side, experts say Norway's whaling industry is on solid legal ground. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling. Norway entered a reservation, which essentially means it opted out.
"That reservation gives Norway perfect right to consider itself not bound by the moratorium...Norway has essentially disengaged in many ways from the contentious debate within the IWC...And Norway takes the attitude it's not going to be told by any other state how to manage environmental affairs."
(via Whale meat marketed to young Norwegians as hip and trendy, but environmental activists aren't buying it | ABC News AU)
Vegan Seafood Is About To Become Big Business--And Not A Moment Too Soon
âOur oceans are, indeed, under threat, but not just from microplastics. Overfishing has become catastrophic. A report by Nature Communications in 2016 found that far more fish have been caught globally between 1950 and 2010 than was admitted, leading to a sharp decline in the number of fish in the sea. Industrial fisheries using large commercial machinery to trawl the ocean bed result in millions of other sea animals, including whales, dolphins and turtles, getting trapped and killed in nets â known as âbycatchâ. Aquaculture â essentially the factory farming of fish â poses a host of health and environmental hazards.
Meanwhile, slave labor, which is particularly rife in the shrimp industry, poses ethical problems, as does the issue of animal cruelty, something often overlooked when it comes to sea creatures. Scientific evidence has found that fish are sentient and feel both physical and emotional pain, as do crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans.â
âCalifornia-based Sophieâs Kitchen led the field when it launched in 2011 with a range of plant-based canned tuna, frozen crab cakes, fish fillets and shrimp, along with frozen and refrigerated smoked salmon. The products are free from soy and gluten, are non-GMO and kosher. Key ingredients are konjac (also known as elephant yam), which is popular in Japanese cuisine, and yellow pea.â
âOver the past three years, buoyed by the surge in demand for plant-based products, several new players have entered the vegan seafood scene â and investors are queuing up to fund them.
Ocean Hugger Foods in New York has made a splash in the restaurant and food service sector with its raw tuna, Ahimi...Designed to be an alternative to ahi tuna, with a savory, meaty taste, Ahimi is made with five simple ingredients, the key one being tomato. The texture and flavor of the tomato are transformed through a special technique and the product has been hailed in several quarters for its realistic taste to actual tuna.â
âThereâs been too little focus on the need to stop the crisis in our oceans. Over 90% of species live in the oceans and over 90% of carbon is stored in the oceans. Destroying our aquatic ecosystems is catastrophic. With an estimated 50 billion aquatic animals killed for food in the US every year, which is five times as much as all land animals combined, I want to be a part of saving those species, as well as saving our own species.â
New Wave Foods, which has been developing plant-based shrimp alternatives, in both a raw and crispy breaded format, since 2015. The female-led company, which is based in San Francisco, is taking a similar approach to Ocean Hugger in focusing initially on placing its algae-based products with food service providers and restaurants.
New York-based Good Catch Foods is gearing up to launch its range of vegan tuna, crab cakes, fish sliders and fish burgers later this year and into 2019...Made from a blend of six legumes, including peas, soy, chickpeas, lentils, fava and navy beans, along with sea algae oil to give a umami flavor.â
âIf the current growth of the plant-based foods and drinks sector is anything to go buy, the future for innovators, as well as our oceans, could well be rosy. Recent data compiled by Nielsen on behalf of the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA) shows that plant-based foodsâ dollar sales grew by 20% over the past year in the retail sector, for a total of $3.3 billion. With overall food sales growth at only 2%, PBFA says this means plant-based foodsâ growth is outpacing all other retail food sales by 10x.
And while still in its infancy, particularly compared with the proliferation of plant-based burgers, sausages and other alternatives to land animal products on the market, the vegan seafood category is ripe for exponential growth and we can expect to see even more players entering the market.
âWith such a wide variety of seafood we can use myriad plant-based culinary innovation techniques to give us an amazing seafood experience without the collateral damage of our current system...We see this as an outsized economic opportunity, with massive potential for global impact. Itâs arguably the single best use of our investment dollars and an area in which weâre very excited to be the tip of the proverbial harpoon â one pointing to plants as the best solution. Itâs a win for consumers, entrepreneurs, our eco-system â and for the fishes.â
(via Vegan Seafood Is About To Become Big Business--And Not A Moment Too Soon | Forbes)
BLUEFIN TUNA COULD BE SAVED FROM EXTINCTION WITH LAB-GROWN FISH
âBluefin tuna is classified as endangered by the World Wildlife Fund and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the worldâs most comprehensive inventory of at-risk species.According to WWF, fishing practices have caused the severe decline of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, the Southern bluefin tuna, and the Pacific bluefin tuna. Since fishing began, the population of the latter has declined by 97.4 percent. Driving the population decline is the demand for the fish in sushi markets.
But Finless Foods has a vision to save the species. Using cellular agriculture â a branch of science that combines biology and engineering â the startup is growing marine animal cells in a lab. The end result is called clean meat, a product that looks, cooks, and tastes like fish but spares the lives of millions of marine creatures that fall victim to the seafood industry...the team at Finless Foods worked out how to use the bluefin stem cells to grow three types of tissues: muscle, fat, and connective tissue. They can also control the amount of fat content to produce the flavor of otoro tuna. â
âReplacing wild or farmed bluefin tuna with a slaughter-free option could benefit not just the species, but marine ecosystems as a whole. When populations of top-level predators, like bluefin tuna, drastically lower, other populations are disturbed, throwing the ecosystem off-balance. Further, choosing the product over conventional seafood negates the risk of consuming mercury or plastic.â
(via BLUEFIN TUNA COULD BE SAVED FROM EXTINCTION WITH LAB-GROWN FISH | Live Kindly)Â
