https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/sustainable-fisheries-contradiction/?fbclid=IwAR2Egs1DS_TuEWruDKmQNyuBPD3gpo-fMTdrSlrSqPb9DcPG7i9wybqFN34

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Commentary

Wednesday, Mar 24, 2021

Commentary by Sea Shepherd CEO Captain Alex Cornelissen

Over the past five years Sea Shepherd has focused on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). Our campaigns, primarily in West Africa, have given us a wealth of information regarding the impact of both IUU fisheries as well as large scale industrial fisheries on the ocean.Photo from Operation Albacore in Gabon, by Melissa Romao/Sea Shepherd.

It’s clear that mankind is killing all life in the ocean, and for some reason that goes largely unnoticed.

Life forms in the ocean continue to be objectified:

• * Species of fish are being referred to as “stock”
• * Extraction of life forms is being described as “harvest”
• * Quantities are measured in weight instead of individual organisms
• * All species are simply referred to as “seafood”
• * And most importantly, the myth that fish don’t feel pain
•  

Obviously, this is carefully chosen language so potential consumers don’t question the way we extract fish and other creatures from our ocean. But our crew out on the water see this destruction every day when they interact with fishing vessels.

We see the amount of bycatch of species that aren’t commercially exploitable simply killed and discarded back into the ocean.

We see sharks killed by the thousands by tuna boats that are so-called “dolphin friendly”.

We see dolphins killed by many fishermen who considered them a pest for eating “our fish”.

We see seals sharing the same fate as the dolphins because they’re competition for our fisheries.Dolphin killed in a driftnet in the Indian Ocean. Photo Eliza Muirhead/Sea Shepherd.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we look at the natural world, the way we have separated ourselves from the very ecosystem we are part of. This particularly applies to the way we see the ocean. We dump our waste there because we think it’s large enough that no one will notice. We take whatever we want because we think the ocean is an infinite source of protein.

Our appetite and demand for fish is now so great that we stop at nothing to get the deliverables. Habitat destruction and species extinction seem to be acceptable in this process.

But even global fisheries are beginning to see the end of the industry, they are well aware of the fact that if we continue at our current rate of extraction, we will have emptied out our ocean in less than three decades. Pressure is on the industry to keep up with demand and to keep the prices low, but with dwindling fish populations it is increasingly hard to maintain supply. Prices are kept artificially low through global subsidies favoring industrial large-scale fisheries. These then compete illegally with coastal subsistence and artisanal fisheries, causing further problems in regions already at risk due to food scarcity. Other operators don’t shy away from forced unpaid labor to lower their cost, treating workers as expendables.Photo from Operation Albacore in Gabon, by Tara Lambourne/Sea Shepherd.

And of course, there’s the perpetual lie that eating fish is a healthy choice for people’s diet. We have polluted the world’s ocean to the point that it affects the entire food chain, with pollutants concentrating as you move higher up the chain. For years, pregnant women have been warned not to eat tuna or swordfish due to the high levels of mercury, a situation that is only getting worse the more we pollute our natural world.

We are at a point in history where we will need to make a choice:

Do we stop supporting the destructive and unsustainable industry that is destroying our ocean or do we continue down our current path and find our ocean empty within our lifetime? Either choice leads to the same result: we will stop eating fish either now or in 30 years. Only the longer we wait, the more irreversible the situation will become. Our “infinite” source of protein has reached its limit, so it’s time we make the necessary choices to restore the balance in our ocean.Photo from Operation Sola Stella in Liberia, by Melissa Romao/Sea Shepherd.

We are seeing the results of our campaigns to stop IUU fishing in West Africa, with fish populations bouncing back and ecosystems recovering only after a few years. But these areas are not big enough to repopulate entire regions. Enforcing regulations and expanding the areas under protection against IUU fishing and large-scale industrial fishing are the base of Sea Shepherd’s current campaigns. Together with our government partners we are shutting down dozens of illegal operators every year, and in the process we are saving millions of lives.

It’s a matter of survival to stop the war against the ocean. It’s a fight that we cannot afford to lose. A fight that will intensify in the coming years when fish populations continue to decline. But also a fight that – with your support – we intend to win.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/22/us/florida-manatee-county-coronavirus-outbreak/index.html

By Jamiel Lynch, CNN

Updated 7:07 AM ET, Tue June 22, 202

(CNN)Two people are dead and four of their coworkers were hospitalized after a Covid-19 outbreak swept through a government building in Manatee County, Florida.The outbreak began in the IT department, according to Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes, who is also an epidemiologist. Another person who worked on the same floor but in a different department also tested positive for coronavirus last week.

Unvaccinated Americans are at risk of a possibly more dangerous Covid-19 variant. These are the most vulnerable statesOf the six people infected, five were hospitalized. One employee who was in the hospital died and another employee who was not hospitalized also died, Hopes told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

The only exposed employee in the IT office who was vaccinated did not get infected, Hopes said.

“The clinical presentation gives me concern that we’re dealing with a very infectious variant that is quite deadly,” Hopes told Burnett.

The government building was closed on Friday as a precaution. It reopened Monday but officials didn’t implement a mask requirement, instead keeping them optional.Hopes said he’s encouraging workers who aren’t vaccinated to wear a mask and the county is making them available to employees and visitors.

“Clearly masks work, but the vaccine is more important at this point,” Hopes said.Manatee County will offer a Covid-19 vaccine clinic for employees at the administration building on Friday.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/22/asia/thailand-elephant-breaks-in-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

By Jessie Yeung and Kocha Olarn, CNN

Updated 5:09 AM ET, Tue June 22, 2021An elephant poked its head into a resident’s kitchen through the wall on June 20, in Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

Bangkok (CNN)A woman in Thailand found an unexpected visitor in her house in the middle of the night last weekend — a wild Asian elephant.”We were sleeping and woke up by a sound inside our kitchen,” said Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon, a resident of Hua Hin district in western Prachuap Khiri Khan province. “So we rushed downstairs and saw this elephant poked its head into our kitchen where the wall was broken.”Her wall already had a hole in it from when an elephant had smashed into her house last month, she said. The damage had not yet been repaired when the elephant showed up on Saturday and stuck its head through the hole.

Videos taken by Ratchadawan show the elephant extending its trunk to rifle through cupboards and drawers, knocking over dishes. At one point, it picked up what appears to be a plastic bag using its trunk, and placed it in its mouth.https://277651c6245e3c33abade2356241e3f1.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“I have seen elephants roaming around our town looking for food since I was young,” said Ratchadawan. “But this is the first time they actually damaged my house.”

She added there was no food in her kitchen on Saturday when the elephant came in — but it may have been trying to steal the salt stored inside.

Solving India’s deadly conflict between humans and elephantsThe elephant came into the kitchen because it smelled food, the Department of National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “Elephants are herbivores so they needs minerals from salty food, which is essential for their bodies. They would try to find any minerals, and we have educated local residents,” the department said.

Ratchadawan’s house may also have been targeted because it’s located next to the entrance of a national park where elephants live, said Prateep Puywongtarn, a staff member at the Huay Sat Yai Subdistrict Administration Organization in Hua Hin.Similar incidents often happen in the area due to its proximity to the national park and the elephants’ habitat, he added. Elephant sightings and incidents typically increase during fruit harvest season — in recent years, an elephant destroyed a house where a resident was keeping fruit produce, he said.Elephant-human conflict has been on the rise in recent decades — not just in Thailand, but in places like India and across Asia where the animals live. As human settlements and infrastructure expand, wildlife habitats shrink and become fractured, leaving animals with less land, smaller packs and fewer resources — forcing them to roam in search of food.”Although roughly half of the geographic range of elephant habitat in Thailand is considered suitable for long-term elephant conservation, much of this area is threatened by agriculture, roads and other development resulting in fragmentation and increased (human-elephant conflict),” said a 2018 study on elephants in western Thailand, published in the journal PLOS One.Of 41 fruit and agriculture plantation owners surveyed in the study, nearly all said elephants raided their crops at least once a month — and more than half said it was a daily occurrence. They also reported other types of property damage, like the breaking of water pipes and water tanks.

Millions of people in China can’t stop watching a pack of wandering elephants“No single mitigation method can address the multifaceted causes of the problem, which stems from increased development of original elephant habitat,” the study said. Long-term solutions must include “efforts to restore natural elephant habitat, proper land use planning, and crop choices that are less attractive to elephants,” as well as “securing corridors to allow elephants to move to additional habitats.”Conservationists have also recommended similar measures in India, home to the world’s largest population of endangered Asian elephants. For years, human-elephant conflict has increased — elephants kill about 500 people in India every year. It’s a direct reflection of their shrinking habitat, leading them into more contact with humans, conservationists say.In China, the problem has been thrust to the fore this past month, with the nation captivated by a herd of 15 elephants currently making its way across the country’s southwest. The elephants, which millions of people are watching via livestream, have trekked more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) since escaping from a nature reserve last year.

Though it’s not clear why they left, biologists see the situation as a warning of what happens when elephant habitats are degraded.”The traditional buffer zones between humans and elephants are gradually disappearing, and the chances of elephants’ encountering humans naturally increase greatly,” said Zhang Li, a wildlife biologist and professor at Beijing Normal University, according to the state-run Global Times tabloid.