Fish Food 4 Thought

       It absolutely irks me when people say that sea turtle egg poachers are just poor folks trying to feed their families for two reasons: A) poverty is not an excuse for humans to drive species to extinction; money is expendable but life is not, and B) it is simply not true. Especially in Latin America, where most sea turtle egg poaching takes place, the wildlife trade is directly linked to the violent cartels and other criminal syndicates who are not poor and are impossible to defend. Those who profit off of sea turtles eggs profit off of not just shark fins, but also cocaine, weapons, and sometimes even human beings, and in too many countries in the region the people who are supposed to enforce the law are bought off by these criminals.      Even with the horrible impact of sea turtle egg poaching, this alone is not what is driving them to extinction, nor is the legal (albeit barbaric and wrong) hunting taking place in countries like Australia, Fi...

     Sea lions are the constant companions of vessels in harbors and coastal areas across the West Coast of the United States. They are gentle creatures, more bark than bite, with complex social systems. They are mothers and fathers like you and I, feeding their youth with milk to foster another generation of successful marine mammals. Contrast this to the scene that has played out in Oregon and Washington over the past decade. Men and women lacking the skills for actual jobs capture the animals, lock them in metal bars akin to those used to rape cows, sear the flesh of the animals with a number, the stench of burned skin and fur mixing with blood smoking through the air. The animals cry in agony... and are released. That's when the monitoring begins. It's almost like baseball... three strikes, and you're out. The only difference is that, for the poor pinnipeds, striking out is punished with a bullet to the brain, and the strikes are recorded any time they are observed......

     Picture the scene: it is June 2011. The UN and NATO have backed militants aimed at toppling the regime of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which they ultimately succeed in that October. Peaceful protests being met with hails of bullets has resulted in widespread violence, and thousands lose their lives amidst a constant cacophony of bullets, mines, and mortars; so bad is the situation that no foreign civilian aircraft are allowed to fly over the Northern African nation. This is part of the Arab Spring, a wider discontent that also rocks Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Bahrain, and virtually every other MENA country, albeit in relatively smaller ways. In the midst of all of this is a pair of ships, a trimaran and an old trawler refitted by volunteers. They're not here for war, unless the fight to save the bluefin tuna can be considered such.      They were attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden that May, but nonetheless persevere into the most...

       Please note that this paragraph serves only to provide context and not to delve into any social or political issues related to the United States and China. In May 2021, the United States combined dozens of bipartisan bills into a comprehensive legislative package called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which aims to compete with China by codifying Made-in-America laws, bolstering cybersecurity, further sanctioning alleged human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, and more.      This law also aims to compete with China in terms of environmental protections. China and Hong Kong are, by far, the biggest consumers of shark fin soup and other products derived from the endangered elasmobranches. The United States, more likely on the grounds of punishing China than any concern for the sharks, it should be considered, included a ban on the import and export of shark fins in the United States in the USICA. 15 states have already banned it, shark...

     24,000 fisheries workers die every year on the job, making it among the most dangerous industries in the world. Hundreds of fisheries observers, mostly in developing nations, have gone overboard, and not by accident. Try telling the truth on whether or not fishermen are breaking the law when you are alone and outnumbered in hostile waters. Fishing vessels carry illegal weapons, transport illegal immigrants (being responsible for a large percentage of those who enter the United States, for instance), and mule illegal drugs about Latin America and Southeast Asia. These are the beginning of a long list of atrocities; it's not just the fishermen in Thailand that are subjected to a form of modern slavery nearly as large as that of sex trafficking; Asian vessels that operate in Hawaii dock in Honolulu and make sure their fishermen never leave the ship to describe the horrors they have endured. All of this is overseen by European and Asian captains and officers who make dec...

     The Blackfish Effect was not a coincidence; it was and continues to be a proven result of the dramatic and shocking documentary Blackfish , released in 2013. It exposed the disgusting cruelty shown toward orcas held captive at SeaWorld as well as the maddening effect that led Tilikum to kill three people (no wild orca has been recorded killing a single person). This resulted in dozens of nations moving to ban or restrict marine mammal captivity while SeaWorld has seen a continual decline in attendance and overall revenue that has forced them to lay off thousands of employees. SeaWorld tried to take legal action against the film for a decade, and they have lost every time.      Such has been the case with Ali Tabrizi's documentary Seaspiracy . Even before the film was released, leaked documents revealed insiders from the fishing and aquaculture industries formulated a legal and PR strategy to control the damage that might be caused. They slammed it as "...

     We call sharks monsters, represented best by the movie Jaws  for their serial predation of innocent people. There is a slight error in this logic in that it is not only completely false, but that the opposite is true. Sharks kill, on average between five and 10 people a year: you are more likely to be struck by lightning playing golf or hit by a soda machine walking down the street than killed by being bitten by a shark. I say "bitten" because sharks do not eat people: their teeth are more like needles than knives, and all shark-related deaths are caused by blood loss and lack of available medical treatment, usually from a single bite.      Compare that to how humans treat sharks. Shark finning is the most common threat we pose to the animals. Sharks are caught on lines and dragged onto the deck of a fishing boat, where they have their fins sliced off while they are still alive. The shark, still suffering from the removal of its fins, is thrown ov...