A new study from researchers at the University of California Academy of Science and the University of British Columbia indicates that global sea turtle populations are mistakenly ingesting fatal quantities of plastic debris. Accompanying photographs put an all-too-graphic real-life visual to the statistics and conclusions.
Half-dozen years ago, a pair of photographers—Chris Jordan and Susan Middleton—documented the death-by-plastic of big Laysan albatrosses in the Hawaiian Islands. The haunting photos of dead birds captured where they died, on the beach at Midway, stomachs split and filled with bottle caps, disposable cigarette lighters and plastic bags, were powerful evidence of a deadly legacy.
Attracted by colorful detritus swirling just below the water’s surface, the birds had dived for and swallowed the bits of plastic, a substance that no living being can digest. Eventually—stomachs bloated from all the non-biodegradable material they had ingested—the birds died.
In the past few years, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 5 Gyres.org, the Plastic Pollution Coalition and many more have conducted investigations of the plastic in the ocean. The stat that six times more plastic than plankton exists in parts of the ocean is heavily quoted, by veteran scientists and men-on-the-street. Adventurers sail boats built of plastic and architects propose building plastic islands.
Despite all the reuse-recycle-refuse talk, for all the taxes and bans on plastic bags, we continue to depend on, consume and toss plastic: Last year, the world threw away 7 billion pounds of PVC, recycling just one quarter of one percent.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
Given the hammering Japan’s northern coastal towns took from the earthquake/tsunami, and the ongoing radiation leaks from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, the future of fishing from the region has come into question. Just like the fishermen in the Gulf after the BP spill, seafood providers across Japan are concerned about public-relations fallout—even if its fish stays available and safe, i.e. nonradioactive.
Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, the world’s biggest—selling more than 400 species of fish six days a week, a $5.5-billion-a-year business supplying 40 million Japanese fish-lovers—has not yet backed off any species, but buyers have fallen off due to a lack of fish.
The immediate concern is that so many of the small towns in the north—and their boats, docks, jetties, nets, tackle and fishermen—are gone. Fish farms and onshore processing plants have been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of wild fish washed onto shore, dead. Scallops, sardines, oysters, seaweed, bonito and even shark’s fin have largely disappeared from Tsukiji in the past week.
The normally packed aisles of the sprawling market—the equivalent of 200 football fields under one roof—are relatively empty of buyers. “We’re not selling anything because there are no customers,” one wholesaler reported. Renowned sushi restaurants adjacent to the market are suffering too, in part due to the lack of tourists.
The Tsukiji market’s general manager, Tsutomu Kosaka, told the New York Times, “It’s not like the brand is just damaged now—it’s over. At least for now, the brand is finished. Gone. It’s hopeless.”
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
Finally someone has been held responsible for a sizable oil spill in Louisiana and sentenced to a jail term for the environmental degradation caused by the accident.
But it is not anyone who worked for BP, Transocean or Halliburton. Nope, it is one Randall Dantin, 46, of Marrero, Louisiana, who is going to jail for 21 months for his role in an accident on the Mississippi River that spilled 283,000 gallons of fuel oil into the river in the heart of New Orleans in July 2008.
The Gulf spilled close to 5 million gallons. To-date, no one involved in that spill has been charged with a crime.
I was in New Orleans when that 2008 accident happened, and watched as the spilled fuel oil quickly coated the river and its banks for 80 miles, all the way to Venice, LA, shutting down New Orleans access to drinking water for nearly a week.
After a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Coast Guard, responsibility for the accident goes to a “sleep-deprived” tugboat driver who was pushing a barge loaded with oil across the river when it was errantly t-boned by a tanker coming down the Mississippi.
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
A trio of news stories out of the Gulf this week remind that the more things change in the region — whether natural disaster (hurricanes), manmade screw up (oil rig explosions) or government intervention (drilling bans) — the more they stay the same.
Within weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank nearly one year ago the Obama Administration banned all new deepwater drilling. The ban lasted until October 12. This week the Department of Interior announced it had approved its first new permit to drill deep in the Gulf of Mexico since the spill.
Noble Energy, a Houston-based operator, is the prizewinner, which the new Bureau of Ocean Energy, Regulation and Enforcement – the reorganized Minerals Management Service, the federal office that had cozied up to the oil industry for years — says it thoroughly vetted. Noble had begun drilling to 13,858 feet when it was halted by the spill.
The announcement was welcomed by the oil industry as its shares jumped on Wall Street. “We expect further deepwater permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit,” said the agency’s director Michael Bromwich.
For Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal the permit was a “good first step.” The first-term governor – who faces election this November — wants more permits granted faster. “We must quickly get to a level of issuing permits that represents a critical mass so thousands of oil and gas industry workers can get back to work fueling America again.”
It’s no surprise of course that’s Jindal’s take. As the Times pointed out this week he’s long been “cozy” with the oil industry, relationships complicated – or greased, dependent on your view — by a foundation set up by his wife the month after he was elected in 2007, the Supriva Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.
Among the biggest donors – all legal under Louisiana law – are Marathon Oil ($250,000), Israeli oil company Alon USA ($250,00), Dow Chemical ($100,000), Northrop Grumman, AT&T as well as other oil companies, insurers and construction companies.
While campaign donations are limited, donations to Mrs. Jindal’s Foundation are not.
What’s in it for the corporations, above and beyond supporting the foundation’s goal of delivering much-needed hi-tech equipment to schools in the poorest neighborhoods of Louisiana? AT&T hopes the governor will sign a law allowing it to sell cable TV rights without negotiating directly with individual parishes; Marathon was granted approval a year ago to expand the amount of oil it can refine at its Louisiana plant; Alon is seeking permit to dump more pollutants at its Krotz Spring refinery. And on and on.
Politicians using do-good foundations to (vaguely) mask corporate bribery is hardly a new tactic. PACs and political interest groups on both sides of the fence have been doing it for decades.
But in Louisiana, where corruption is a long-practiced fine art, the Jindals’ mutual interests aren’t masked at all. A picture of the governor with his wife graces the foundation’s website, his chief fundraiser is the charity’s treasurer and an employee of the governor’s office, working as an aide to Mrs. Jindal, is the contact for the foundation’s books.
While corporations continue to get their way in Louisiana, it appears many of those whose lives were impacted by last April’s oil spill will have to wait a bit longer for re-compensation.
Citing “lack of adequate documentation,” Ken Feinberg – appointed by Obama to dole out up to $20 billion of BP’s money to those whose livelihoods were affected by the spill – admitted that more than 100,000 claims currently on file might never be paid.
“Roughly 80 percent of the claims that we now have in the queue lack proof,” Feinberg said last week in Washington, admitting it was “a huge number.”
To-date his office has paid out nearly $3.6 billion, to 168,000 individuals and businesses across the Gulf, mostly emergency payments of a few thousand dollars.
Feinberg’s denials angered state governments in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the White House … and a boatload of individuals in the region who’ve either already lost businesses or need money to jump start them. The states are appealing to the courts for redress, which means the lack of payments will certainly go on for months. Individuals are largely left holding the bag.
From its perspective, BP feels Feinberg has been “overly generous.” Any of the $20 billion not paid out goes back to BP. Meanwhile the oil company is paying Feinberg’s law firm $850,000 a month to administer the fund, which is currently being renegotiated – upwards. The lawyers are most likely happy to see the payment process drag on … and on.
The Sea Shepherd’s Southern Ocean season – dubbed “Operation No Compromise” — is more than half over and reports so far it may be having its best season of protest ever.
How to measure? Very few whales taken by the Japanese whaling fleet and no ships sunk on either side. Yet.
Of course there’s been plenty of verbal slugging since the season began in December, as well as the tossing of some literal bamboo spears, by the Japanese!
Lead-Shepherd Captain Paul Watson accused the Japanese of making a false “Mayday” distress call from the Southern Ocean last Friday, claiming it was “under attack” by the anti-whalers.
Watson admits he and his gang had deployed its typical weaponry: prop foulers (wire ropes intended to damage engines), and a fair number of stink and paint bombs – resulting in the return fire of those bamboo spears — but that they were hardly close to ramming the Japanese whaling ship.
“They said they were in distress and we were standing by,” Watson told the AP. “The ‘Gojira’ [the Shepherd’s new attack ship, named after Godzilla] is right beside them and they refuse to answer our calls.”
Truth is, according to Watson, it was the Japanese ship “Yushin Maru No. 3” which nearly cut the “Gojira” in half, coming just 10 feet from its hull.
Given the remoteness of the battleground, for now all we have is the he-said/she-said issuances of the two fighters. But all will be made clear later in the year, since for the fourth consecutive season a film crew from Animal Planet is on board documenting the campaign for “Whale Wars.”
It would appear that this year’s campaign strategy has paid off. Utilizing thee ships, a helicopter and 88 crewmembers the Shepherd’s have successfully chased the Japanese whaling fleet over 5,000 miles. Early in the season they isolated and cut off its refueling vessel – the “Sun Laurel” – even while being harassed by two of the Japanese’ three harpoon boats – which have focused on trailing the Shepherd’s rather than hunting whales.
Watson checked in from port in New Zealand, where he’d taken the Shepherd’s lead ship, the “Steve Irwin,” for fuel and supplies. He is optimistic about the season, suggesting it may be “our most successful yet.”
“They have taken very close to zero (whales),” he says, hoping this may be the last season the Shepherd’s presence will be required off Antarctica, hoping its non-stop harassment will finally encourage the Japanese to give up its “scientific” hunt.
Where whaling commission edicts and international protest have failed, a combination of the seaborne fights, new Japanese tax laws, falling meat sales and having been caught running a whale-meat black market, may succeed in stopping whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Success has apparently been felt on the fundraising front as well, since the Shepherd’s have recently raised a giant electronic billboard in Times Square depicting a breaching whale about to be harpooned. It is the media savvy non-profit’s first stab at outdoor advertising.
I’ve watched up-close since last April as residents of the Gulf have moved from shock to anger to resignation, convinced that once the BP well was capped the news media would move on and the mess would remain.
While there is still lots of good reporting coming out of the Gulf addressing a variety of important issues – Is the seafood safe? Where did all those dispersants go? What’s the next fishing/hurricane/summer season going to bring? – it’s important not to forget that oil and dispersants still linger, that more than 6,000 workers are still out there every day trying to make a difference and the economy of the Gulf is still way out of whack.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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