The Wrong Way to Save Right Whales?
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Sixteen months ago, a federal agency proposed slowing ships in certain East Coast waters to 10 knots or less during parts of the year to save the North Atlantic right whale, one of the world's most endangered marine mammals, from extinction.
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Save the species, save a buck. Landowners frustrated by the Endangered Species Act might get a carrot instead of the stick under a proposed revision of the law that would offer them tax incentives to give the critters a home. That approach is emerging as a narrower alternative to a comprehensive overhaul of the endangered species law, a priority for Republicans before Democrats took control of Congress this year.
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The blue whale, once on the verge of extinction, is making a comeback.
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Humpback whales are safe Â at least for now. Giving in to U.S. pressure and worldwide criticism, Japan's government on Friday announced a whaling fleet now in the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt will not kill the threatened species as originally planned. The fleet will, however, kill some 935 minke whales, a smaller, more plentiful species, and 50 fin whales.
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The BBC's Jonah Fisher is reporting from a Greenpeace ship which is protesting against whaling. Is it right to hunt whales? Send us your views.
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Researchers are planning the rescue of an endangered right whale first spotted off the Georgia coast earlier this week entangled in fishing gear.
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The North Atlantic right whale, western wolverine and the dromedary jumping-slug on Canada's Pacific coast will soon share a dubious distinction.
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When environmental protestors boarded a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean, images of the action quickly flashed on the world&#39;s TV sets, followed by photos from the Japanese ship after the protestors were taken into custody. Getting these images out is crucial if either side is to win the global PR battle, but doing so can be problematic when you&#39;re at sea, thousands of kilometers from the nearest cell phone network or broadband connection.To solve their problems, both sides take advantage of digital video and photo technology to get the footage, then look to the skies and tap into the global satellite communications network run by London-based Inmarsat. The company specializes in providing voice and data services to maritime vessels and other users at sea, or in remote areas that traditional telecommunications networks don&#39;t reach.On Tuesday, as the protestors approached the Japanese whaling vessel &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; a digital video camera was rolling onboard the small inflatable craft sent from the Sea Shepard Conservation Society&#39;s ship, &quot;Steve Irwin.&quot; The camera caught the moment when two of the conservationists jumped aboard, and within seconds the video was speeding back toward the Steve Irwin on the inflatable.Once back onboard, the video was fed into a Macbook Pro laptop and edited into a 13MB MPEG2 clip that was just 12 seconds long, said Jonny Vasic, a spokesman for the society.&quot;One of our big tools in these whale wars is these video and digital still cameras. They really help us expose the bad guys,&quot; said Vasic.The clip was then sent via satellite to the society&#39;s FTP server and made available to the world&#39;s media.The ship&#39;s satellite communications system is a $35,000 &quot;Sailor Fleet 77&quot; unit that was donated to the society last year by Australia&#39;s Bluetongue Brewery. It supports up to 256Kbps&#160;transmission, although actually getting that speed depends on several factors. In calm seas, a gyro-based mount keeps the antenna pointed at the satellite, but in heavy seas, maintaining a reliable signal can be a problem. Keeping the link gets increasingly difficult as the ship goes further south because the satellite appears very low on the horizon.&quot;It&#39;s about 90 percent reliable,&quot; said Vasic.Crew onboard the &quot;Steve Irwin&quot; are also using the satellite link to attempt to send e-mail to the Japanese ship, in addition to marine-band radio calls, in an attempt to secure the release of their two members, who remain aboard the &quot;Yushin Maru 2.&quot;The Institute of Cetacean Research, the Tokyo-based organization that operates the &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; declined to comment on the technology at its disposal, citing security reasons.&quot;I&#39;m sorry to say, you might be Greenpeace posing as a journalist,&quot; said Gabriel Gomez, a spokesman for the group in Tokyo, when contacted by telephone on Thursday.The systems employed by the Japanese group don&#39;t appear as sophisticated. Only a handful of still images from the ship have been released by the group to the media, and they are a relatively low VGA (640 pixels by 480 pixels) resolution. No video has been made available.The satellite communications technology being employed by the two ships is increasingly being used by media, governmental and relief organizations in remote areas. Earlier this month, Cable News Network (CNN) won a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its satellite news gathering system based on Inmarsat&#39;s BGAN broadband system. The BGAN system offers a standard IP (Internet Protocol) connection as fast as 492Kbps and is small enough that it can be built into a backpack.
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An independent scientific panel has expressed concern over a decision by oil and gas companies developing Russia&#39;s Sakhalin II offshore fields to ignore noise limits aimed at preserving whales, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said Friday.
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By Michael McCarthy  A European treaty aimed at protecting dolphins and porpoises may be on the brink of collapse, damaging conservation efforts, environmentalists fear.
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The Soylent wing of the Green movement examined The enviroloonies seem to have found their way out of the asylum again: this time to tell us that 70 per cent of Britons should die for the sake of Gaia. That's not quite the way they put it, of course. Rather, the Optimum Population Trust (there's a pedantic part of me that wants to tell them it's Optimal) tells us that the maximum sustainable population of the UK is 17 million: given that there are north of 60 million currently, we can only avert the coming End Times if the extra pop their clogs soonest.â¦
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WALNUT CREEK, Calif. _ Although analysts haven't finished calculating the total cost of rerouting two humpback whales that strayed into the Delta last month, the bill to taxpayers is in the six figures.
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The number of beluga whales swimming in Cook Inlet appears to be increasing, but biologist say it's too soon to know whether the winsome white whales are finally making a comeback.
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CAP DE BON DÃSIR, Quebec A few miles from this spit along the pink granite coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there is a sheltered cove that has witnessed the full span of the human relationship with whales. Save the whales! Then what? Atlanta&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;Constitution&nbsp;(subscription)
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PORTLAND, Maine - Scientists are studying endangered right whales this summer to learn more about their behavior and assess the risks posed by lobster gear.
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Killer whales in the Pacific Northwest's Puget Sound should be protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, government scientists said on Thursday.
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45-ton mother and calf 'put down', trolls falsely claim Even a pair of stranded whales and the legions of people dedicated to saving them aren't safe from trolls, it seems.â¦