South Korea tightens rules to combat illegal whaling

BBC News, 3 January 2011

Related stories

• Whale talks 'secrecy' condemned
• Whaling plan draws greens' anger

South Korea says it is tightening rules to combat illegal whaling.

South Korea banned commercial whale hunting in 1986

Although commercial whale hunting is banned in the country, the trading of whales that are found dead is still legal.

The new rules will require fisherman to report to police immediately if they discover dead whales in their nets or washed ashore.

The move comes after critics said some fishermen were exploiting a loophole in the law.

The new regulations mean that, from Monday, samples from all dead whales must be given to the authorities for testing, and their meat can only be sold after a full investigation into how the animal died.

Those who catch dead whales will also only be allowed to process and sell them at state-designated facilities, South Korea's agricultural ministry said.

The new law aims to tackle a "growing amount of illegal whale hunting" around the country, it said, according to AFP news agency.

"Once the new measures go into effect, Seoul will be able to better meet allegations of lax oversight raised by some countries and the IWC (International Whaling Commission), and lay the foundation for monitoring marine resources around the Korean Peninsula," a ministry official was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying.

South Korea used to allow commercial whaling but banned it when the IWC implemented a global moratorium in 1986.

Massive fish kill blankets Arkansas River

CNN News, By the CNN Wire Staff, January 2, 2011

Dead drum fish lline the banks of a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River near Ozark.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• An estimated 100,000 drum fish have died, officials say
• The fish kill is not believed to be related to bird deaths in another town

(CNN) -- Arkansas officials are investigating the death of an estimated 100,000 fish in the state's northwest, but suspect disease was to blame, a state spokesman said Sunday.

Dead drum fish floated in the water and lined the banks of a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River near Ozark, about 125 miles northwest of Little Rock, said Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. A tugboat operator discovered the fish kill Friday night, and fisheries officials collected some of the dying animals to conduct tests.

Stephens said fish kills occur every year, but the size of the latest one is unusual, and suggested some sort of disease was to blame.

"The fish kill only affected one species of fish," he said. "If it was from a pollutant, it would have affected all of the fish, not just drum fish."

Ozark is about 125 west of the town of Beebe, where game wardens are trying to find out why up to 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve. Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Stephens said.

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More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky in Ark

A dead bird lies on Skylark Street in Beebe, Ark. on Saturday, Jan. 1,

2011. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday more

than 1,000 dead black birds fell from the sky in Beebe. The agency

said its enforcement officers began receiving reports about the dead

birds about 11:30 p.m. Friday. (AP Photo/The Daily Citizen, Warren

Watkins)

Dead Blackbirds in Arkansas Update, Dead Birds Discovered in Louisiana, Kentucky

Hundreds of dead blackbirds found near New Roads in Louisiana

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - New

Activists, Japan whalers clash in Southern Ocean

RNW, 1 January 2011

Militant anti-whalers Saturday said they had clashed with Japanese harpoonists in the Southern Ocean, chasing them through ice packs, throwing stink bombs at them and being hit with water cannon.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's vessels have been seeking to disrupt the Japanese whalers on their annual hunt in Antarctic waters since mid-December but had not been able to sight the Japanese fleet until Friday.

The society's president Paul Watson said that now they had made contact with the whalers, they would attempt to prevent any of the giant sea creatures from being slaughtered.

"It's got its water cannons turned onto us right now so we're manoeuvring through ice and trying to outmanoeuvre them so it's a little dicey," Watson told ABC Radio.

Locky MacLean, the captain of the Sea Shepherd's 'Gojira' vessel, said the society's three boats had been "dancing dangerously through the ice packs locked in confrontation with the three harpoon ships".

"It was both deadly and beautiful," he said in a statement on the society's website. "Deadly because of the ice and the hostility of the whalers and beautiful because of the ice, and the fact that these three killer ships are not killing whales while clashing with us."

The activists said the clashes involved several high speed chases and near collisions among jagged ice floes, and alleged that the whalers turned water cannons and hoses on their crew.

"Sea Shepherd responded with some rather unpleasant foul-smelling substances," they said in a statement, adding that there were no injuries.

A Sea Shepherd spokesman was unable to confirm what was thrown, but in previous years the activists have tossed rancid butter, or butyric acid, stink bombs at the whalers to make their decks unusable for slaughtering whales.

The conservationists said now they had found the Japanese fleet, 1,700 nautical miles southeast of New Zealand, they would continue to harass them to prevent them from killing whales during the southern hemisphere summer.

"Our objective is to save the maximum number of whales and to maximise the financial losses of the whalers at the same time," Watson said in the statement.

Australia has taken legal action against Japan to prevent it from hunting whales by exploiting a loophole in a 1986 global moratorium which allows whaling for research purposes.