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UK Parliament Debates Suspending Free Trade Agreement with the Faroe Islands over Dolphin Slaughter

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     On the night of September 12th, 2021, 1,428 Atlantic white-sided dolphins were killed in an unauthorized hunt in the Faroe Islands. On that bloody Sunday, the entire pod, including mothers and calves, were driven to the shore with boats, some of the creatures displaying evidence of having their flukes shredded by the propellers, before all the animals had their spines severed with a lance and their heads taken off with sharp knives. It is the cruelest dolphin slaughter on the planet: this particular hunt dragged on for well over six hours, some creatures beached in shallow waters that grew increasingly red with the blood of their family members, 1,428 cries of agony that were silenced. This hunt was the largest single recorded slaughter of whales or dolphins in the history of humanity, the largest dolphin hunt in the Faroe Islands, and the only one that recorded 1,000 or more deaths in the past 80 years. The murder brought the total number of dolphins killed in 2021 ...
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Introducing A New Movement To Save The World

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     International waters make up 70 percent of the planet's oceans, or roughly half of the planet's surface. Owned by nobody and subject to no authority, they are lawless, and they also make the perfect marine reserve. While most fishing does not occur in international waters, that it what makes it perfect for designation as a marine reserve in which all commercial activity is banned. Every nation on Earth coming together to protect half the planet by 2050 would be a huge victory and might just show humanity how truly inconsequential it should be on the face of the Earth.      So, what of the 30 percent of oceans owned by nations? There is currently a goal of protecting 30 percent of the oceans by 2030, and that is an admirable goal. With all this talk of 2050 being when climate change destroys the world and the ocean has more plastic than fish, let's make 2050 the year by which half of all oceans owned by nations are protected in marine reserves.   ...
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China Receives An Ultimatum on IUU Fishing After Sea Shepherd Exposes the Activities of Its Fleet

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     In 2021, Sea Shepherd conducted a successful campaign to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. This so-called "IUU" fishing comprises 15 to 40 percent of all fishing activity on Earth. In their first partnership with the nation of Perú, Sea Shepherd, using its vessel Ocean Warrior , arrested six ships for IUU fishing in a matter of just a few weeks.      An even more consequential part of this campaign was exposing the massive Chinese fleet just outside the Galápagos Marine Reserve. Sea Shepherd documented vessels with histories of labor abuses using crew that had not set foot on land or heard any news from the outside world in nearly two years, with one Chinese fisherman even asking if the COVID-19 pandemic, which had been in the United States for nearly 18 months and killed hundreds of thousands of people at that point, had made it to the United States yet. These vessels flipped off their AIS information...
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1.1 Million European Citizens Call For An End To The Shark Fin Trade

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     2022 is already shaping up to be a historic year for shark conservation. 2021 was an important year, for sure: nations pledged to protect the majority of the most important shark habitat on Earth, and the U.K. joined Canada in banning the shark fin trade. However, 2022 has started off with a bang.      At the beginning of the year, 450,000 people had signed onto the European Citizens' Initiative urging the European Union to ban the shark fin trade. The European Union is relatively behind on shark conservation. They did ban the practice of shark finning in 2013 (13 years after the United States), but they have yet to ban the trade in shark fins.      There's a persistent myth that China is the sole destination for shark fins in the world, and for a long time, that was mostly true. However, China banned the consumption of shark fin soup, a tasteless chicken- or fish-broth-based soup used to display one's wealth, at public functions years a...
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Nations Pledge To Protect 65 Percent Of The Eastern Tropical Pacific

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     Definitions of what constitutes the Eastern Tropical Pacific vary widely. In some minds, including that of the author, the area can best be defined as the millions of square kilometers of ocean from the most northerly shores of Baja California to the colder coasts of Southern Peru. However, what everyone can agree on is an area called the Eastern Tropical Pacific (or ETP) Seascape, an area covering 770,000 square kilometers.       Covering virtually the entirety of the waters of Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panama, this area is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. It is the single most important shark migration route on the face of the planet, home to such sights as schooling hammerheads. It is also home to dozens of species of rays, endangered marine mammals, and some of the most threatened sea turtle populations anywhere in the seas.      Protecting the Eastern Tropical Pacific has been a high priority for marine con...
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How Gabon Is Leading The Way In Protecting Their Marine Life

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       In 2016, Sea Shepherd launched Operation Albacore , a partnership with Gabon to weed out illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in their waters. Coming toward the end of Sea Shepherd's anti-whaling campaigns in the Antarctic (which saved 6,000 whales and ultimately saw Japan leave Antarctica in 2019), it was met with skepticism by the group's supporters. However, with a few possible exceptions, this is the most impactful campaign Sea Shepherd has ever conducted and comes at a time when Gabon is ramping up their work defending their marine life.      In 2017, Gabon's president announced the creation of a combined total of 20 new marine parks and aquatic reserves covering 26 percent of Gabon's oceans, surpassing the network of protected areas that covers 10 percent of Gabon's land area and making it the largest network of marine protected areas in Africa. In 2018, Gabon banned the practice of setting tuna nets on whales and whale shark...
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Tuna Are Finally Bouncing Back From The Brink Of Extinction

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       It's been a decade since the plight of the oceans was first brought to my attention. I've always cared for animals and the environment, but the oceans called to someone who grew up in Wisconsin, about as far away from the ocean as one can be. Carl Safina's work studying seabirds and sea turtles, describing their beauty and the threats they face, inspired me, as did his work decades ago to restore America's fisheries.      However, it was Sea Shepherd's direct-action approach that appealed to me, and the atrocities and corruption they exposed that angered me. One that stuck out in my mind was their campaign Operation Blue Rage, which occurred in 2010 and 2011. In the first year, they were able to free 800 endangered bluefin tuna off the coast of Libya in spite of being attacked with hooks and rocks. In the second year, they discovered an even larger operation with nearly a dozen vessels working together to illegally catch thousands of tuna. Inste...
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