Japan’s highly controversial whaling season in the Antarctic has begun again with hunting vessels leaving the western Japanese port of Shimonoseki today. Their mission is to slaughter up to 333 minke whales through until March 2019 for research.
Reports from Russia’s Pacific Coast suggest that 11 orcas and up to 90 beluga whales have been taken from the wild and placed in tiny holding pens in a bay near the city of Nakhodka.
According to local independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta it is the largest number of marine mammals to be held in this way, and prosecutors are said to be investigating whether the orcas and belugas are being kept in the tiny enclosures illegally.
Image: Mother and calf right whale, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, NOAA Research Permit #15488
WDC is delighted to announce that it has received its largest corporate donation to-date of just under $680k from our friends at Humble Bundle following WDC’s nomination as Humble Bundle’s ‘charity of the month’ for August. The donation will be used to support our vital world to put an end to the cruel practice of keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.
Photographer, Mandy Barker has combined her interest in taking pictures and football (or soccer) to highlight the issue of plastic pollution in the ocean and on the shorelines of the world.
Her latest, thought-provoking photography project was triggered in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup and uses striking images of washed-up plastic footballs to shed light on the sheer scale of plastic debris.
After 3 years the Canadian Senate has finally passed a Bill to outlaw the captivity of whales, dolphins and porpoises in Canada.
Bill S-203 now needs to be passed by the House of Commons by May. If it is approved, a fine of up to $200,000 could be imposed on anyone keeping and breeding whales and dolphins in captivity.
The first evidence of microplastics making their way into humans has been revealed by scientists studying participants from the UK, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Austria.
Nine different types of plastic were found in the faeces of every person who took part in the study, 20 microplastic particles in every 10 grams of stool, which suggests humans are swallowing them in food.
Plastic in the gut could suppress the immune system and aid transmission of toxins and harmful bugs or viruses, experts believe.
The European Court of Justice has today ruled that the UK Government failed to propose sufficient numbers of sites that would protect harbour porpoises in waters off the Scottish, English, Welsh and Northern Irish coastline. The European Commission now will ask the UK government what measures they will put in place to comply with the EU Habitats Directive.
In disappointing news, a Federal appeals court has rejected a petition from conservation groups to reopen a lawsuit over the Miami Seaquarium’s treatment of Tokitae (also called Lolita), the last surviving Southern Resident orca held in captivity. This is a blow to the latest court effort to free Tokitae from the Seaquarium and retire her to a sea sanctuary in her home waters of Washington State. The groups involved, including Orca Network and Washington’s
A NOAA ship reported the sighting of yet another carcass of an endangered North Atlantic right whale. This whale, found approximately 100 miles east of Cape Cod, is the 3rd known mortality in 2018, all of whom bore injuries consistent with entanglement in fishing gear.