If your summer vacation plans have you buying tickets to a marine mammal park or a “swim with the dolphins” program, be forewarned: You could be helping to finance the slaughter of dolphins in the wild. This is the captive-animal industry’s dirty little secret. Every year, thousands of dolphins are killed in gruesome “drive fisheries” in Japan. Most end up as meat in local supermarkets. But a few of the dolphins captured during these government-sanctioned oikomi will end up in aquariums and marine parks instead. The sale of a handful of live dolphins funds the deaths of all the rest.
In October and November 2006, photojournalist Boyd Harnell observed the drive fishery in Taiji, Japan. “It was a repulsive, barbaric event,” Harnell says. During a capture in October, Harnell watched as a dozen “drive boats” chased a pod of dolphins. Crew members aboard the boats clang metal poles together underwater, creating a wall of sound. The clanging metal disorients the dolphins, while the boats, blocking every avenue of escape, force the panicked animals into a small “capture cove.” Some dolphins are pursued for hours. “It was like a military operation,” writes Harnell. “The pursuit was relentless.”
Some of the dolphins were able to break away and escape, “but the others,” says Harnell, “including some calves, were trapped and hyperventilating. A few calves were unable to keep up and became separated from their mothers. They were left to die of starvation or be eaten by sharks.”
Once the exhausted dolphins are inside the capture cove, their fate is sealed: The mouth of the cove is blocked with nets and the dolphins have no way out.
The morning after this first capture, Harnell saw fishers, armed with long knives, arrive to begin the slaughter. More nets are used to force the dolphins into the “killing cove,” where they are speared or their throats are cut. Video footage of past hunts shows dolphins thrashing in their own blood for many agonising minutes. Their bodies are taken to local slaughterhouses and chainsaws are used to hack them apart.
This spectacle is repeated again and again from September to March. At least 400,000 dolphins have died this way in the past two decades alone. Local fishers consider dolphins to be their competition for dwindling fish stocks and they describe the violent oikomi as nothing more than “pest control.”
But not all of the dolphins are killed. Every year, an unknown number of young dolphins captured during drive hunts is sold into the captive-animal entertainment industry. Some will be displayed in aquariums. Others will be used in “swim with” program or trained to perform in marine parks.
According to a report released last year by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, dolphins captured during drive fisheries have ended up in aquariums all over the world. Even countries that no longer allow the importation of dolphins collected during drive fisheries may be displaying animals purchased before the ban or moved through other countries to disguise their origin. The U.S., for example, stopped importing animals from drive hunts in 1993 but not before at least 20 false killer whales (a type of dolphin) were sold to U.S. facilities.
Activists working to stop the drive fisheries have been told that the huge sums of money offered for “show” dolphins are what fuel the hunts. Dead dolphins sold as meat aren’t worth much – a few hundred dollars. But a healthy young dolphin is worth tens of thousands. Without that incentive, local fishers would find other sources of income, such as conducting dolphin watch tours, as one former fisher in Futo does now.
If you don’t want to support these barbaric hunts, please don’t patronise marine parks or “swim with” programs. We’ve long known that captivity is a death sentence for marine mammals. Now we know, too, that the dolphins swimming endless circles in concrete tanks are not the only ones suffering.
Paula Moore is a senior writer for the international animal protection organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in Norfolk, Virginia; http://www.PETA.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paula_Moore
Friday, July 13, 2007
Sun Recycling Ramps Up Recycling Commitment
A recent story in the Orlando Sentinel revealed that Central Florida is the hands-down winner when it comes to recycling efforts in Florida. To make matters worse, our state pales in comparison to green states such as California, where aggressive recycling campaigns led to about 52 percent of its 88 million tons of trash being diverted into recycling in 2006, the newspaper reported?
More troubling for Florida, however, is that while the overall recycling rate hovered at about 34 percent in the 1990s, that number began to slip in 2000 to below 30 percent. By 2004, about 26 percent of trash was recycled.
While Central Florida is recycling at a higher rate, according to figures from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the rest of the state clearly needs to do better. Instead of filling up a landfill, recycling leads to a greater percentage of trash being turned into new products. Just about every industrial process produces various types of materials that can be reused. Industrial processes that make consumer goods is just one example.
Industrial byproducts are valuable commodities that are recyclable.
Construction and demolition debris share much the same properties as the virgin materials they replace while helping us to preserve natural resources by relying less on virgin materials. Industrial byproducts that are recycled help to conserve energy which in turn reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Using industrial byproducts for recycling helps reduce the demand for products made from energy-intensive manufacturing processes.
Industrial byproducts for recycling also saves money by decreasing disposal costs and helps reduce material costs for end users. Many industries in the United States generate large amounts of industrial byproducts on an annual basis. Unfortunately in the past the majority of many of these materials have been land filled.
State-of-the-art equipment enables Lantana, FL-based Southern Waste Systems--and its sister company Sun Recycling-- to sort and process materials within 24 hours. The company recycles 80 percent of the debris collected and processed which normally would be sent directly to landfills. “Recycling of construction and demolition debris allows us to keep it out of our landfills and allows us to recycle and re-use the material,” said John Archambo, director of customer relations for the Solid Waste Authority (SWA) of Palm Beach County. Archambo, who attended the June 25 grand opening of SWS's Sun V recycling facility, said the SWA strongly encourages private companies to recycle.
“It helps expand the life of the landfills,” he said.
eBrandNation is a service of Media Logistics LLC, a media relations consultancy in South Florida operated by John T. Fakler, an award winning former business journalist and corporate consultant. Media Logistics LLC is a niche player in the PR industry. We help businesses communicate with customers and gain media exposure in both traditional and non-traditional ways, such as developing Web content, guerilla branding and e-marketing.
More about our media relations company can be found at http://www.medialogisticsllc.com
Information regarding specific branding services is available at http://www.ebrandnation.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Fakler
More troubling for Florida, however, is that while the overall recycling rate hovered at about 34 percent in the 1990s, that number began to slip in 2000 to below 30 percent. By 2004, about 26 percent of trash was recycled.
While Central Florida is recycling at a higher rate, according to figures from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the rest of the state clearly needs to do better. Instead of filling up a landfill, recycling leads to a greater percentage of trash being turned into new products. Just about every industrial process produces various types of materials that can be reused. Industrial processes that make consumer goods is just one example.
Industrial byproducts are valuable commodities that are recyclable.
Construction and demolition debris share much the same properties as the virgin materials they replace while helping us to preserve natural resources by relying less on virgin materials. Industrial byproducts that are recycled help to conserve energy which in turn reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Using industrial byproducts for recycling helps reduce the demand for products made from energy-intensive manufacturing processes.
Industrial byproducts for recycling also saves money by decreasing disposal costs and helps reduce material costs for end users. Many industries in the United States generate large amounts of industrial byproducts on an annual basis. Unfortunately in the past the majority of many of these materials have been land filled.
State-of-the-art equipment enables Lantana, FL-based Southern Waste Systems--and its sister company Sun Recycling-- to sort and process materials within 24 hours. The company recycles 80 percent of the debris collected and processed which normally would be sent directly to landfills. “Recycling of construction and demolition debris allows us to keep it out of our landfills and allows us to recycle and re-use the material,” said John Archambo, director of customer relations for the Solid Waste Authority (SWA) of Palm Beach County. Archambo, who attended the June 25 grand opening of SWS's Sun V recycling facility, said the SWA strongly encourages private companies to recycle.
“It helps expand the life of the landfills,” he said.
eBrandNation is a service of Media Logistics LLC, a media relations consultancy in South Florida operated by John T. Fakler, an award winning former business journalist and corporate consultant. Media Logistics LLC is a niche player in the PR industry. We help businesses communicate with customers and gain media exposure in both traditional and non-traditional ways, such as developing Web content, guerilla branding and e-marketing.
More about our media relations company can be found at http://www.medialogisticsllc.com
Information regarding specific branding services is available at http://www.ebrandnation.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Fakler
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