First on the list is the continuation of shark finning around the world. Every day more and more sharks are being slaughtered by either commercial or illegal shark fin industries. The world's oceans are dying as more and more of these sharks vanish from the world's oceans. The shortfin mako shark, a species that can be found off of New Jersey, is on target to become a full blown endangered species by the end of 2010. About ten years ago, these sharks were plentyful and very large. Fishing tournaments and shark finning have decimated the mako sharks and evidence can be found at any New Jersey shark tournament website. One in particular, Mako Mania which operates out of Point Pleasant Beach, posts their tourny results from the past few years. Each year there are less sharks being caught and the sizes of the sharks continue to decrease as well. This means that there are fewer and fewer large makos out there. What does that matter?
It's a simple question of the food chain. Talking to local fisherman in Point Pleasant I commonly hear the following "The dogfish are the real problem." and "If there weren't so many dogfish, there would be more of a flounder season." Okay so lets look at this. Dogfish, a species of small shark will typically dine on animals such as baby flounder, baby fluke, crabs, and other small bony fish. Recently their populations have exploded and they have become a real headache for local fisherman. Dogfish, like many other sharks do not reproduce when their young and their litters are not all that big. So why are their so many? The answer is simple. Large sharks such as shortfin makos eat smaller sharks like dogfish. Blue sharks, hammerheads, great whites, sand tiger, and even sandbar sharks will also eat dogfish if the oppertunity presents itself. Every one of the shark species I just listed are either threatened with extinction or already considered endangered. There are simply not enough predators left to keep the dogfish in check. This fiasco is not just occuring here in New Jersey. Spiny lobster populations in areas around the world such as Japan and Tasmania have been totally destroyed thanks to a population explosion of octopus. This again can be accredited to the massive decrease of large sharks in those areas. Florida's spiny lobster population nearly collapsed, but as shark conservation continues to increase there, the lobsters are starting to come back as the sharks do.
That being said, local fisherman have been taking it upon themselves to kill any dogfish that they catch. Because of this senseless killing, they are now considered to be "Near Threatened" on the IUCN's Red List and they too are now a protected species. This huge problem can all be avoided if people simply stopped killing millions of the dogfish's prey. Illegal shark finning is continuing to run rampant throughout the world and it's even starting to occur off the state of Texas where several finned sharks have washed up on shore. I've said it a million times and I will say it again. The fins are shipped off to China to become a tasteless bowl of soup that is simply used to show wealth.
*****THE FOLLOWING ARE GRAPHIC IMAGES INVOLVING SHARK FINNING.*****
These pictures need no caption and it is clear to anyone with half a brain that this is an insanely cruel and straight out wrong practice. Sadly though it continues today despite conservationists and activists hardest attempts to have shark finning banned from the world. Long line fishing is also taking a massive toll on sharks as any shark that is caught is 9 times out of 10 finned, dead or alive, and thrown back into the sea to die...
Onto the next topic now that I have hopefully gotten some people to understand why fishing in New Jersey is all kinds of messed up and what is going to happen if humans do not change their ways about killing sharks so senselessly. There are a few nations in the world today that still feel that it is nescessary to go out and hunt down whales. I'm not going to get big into this as I've posted many times about Japan going out and killing whales including endangered species in a pathetic attempt to save their dying whaling industry. More on that in the next topic. In June the IWC (International Whaling Commission) could possibly overturn the ban on commercial whaling in the name of whale conservation. Yes you read that correctly, according to nations like Japan, whaling is whale conservation.If anyone can tell me how that is please do. Also. The Japanese claim that their "scientific" whaling is humane and killing the whale is needed to study it. New Zealand currently has a boat in the Southern Ocean studying whales, looking for the same things the Japanese are, but are doing it without killing a single whale. So is it really needed to kill them? You decide, but I think it's obvious.
****THE FOLLOWING ARE GRAPHIC IMAGES INVOLVING ILLEGAL JAPANESE WHALING****
Again... No captions should be needed to explain what is going on in each of these pictures. Some of nature's most gentle giants are being wiped clean off the face of the Earth for really nothing more than human greed. Japan states that whaling is part of Japanese culture. I fail to see that when few Japanese people actually eat whale. In fact, most of the Japanese population opposes whaling and do not eat whale meat at all. Most meat that is taken from these whales sit in warehouses sometimes for over a year before hitting store shelves or simply being discarded.The last and newest to me, topic of this blog is something that I've just learned a lot about over the past couple of days and the involves dolphins. Yes dolphins, the creatures whom could possibly have more intelligence than humans. The ones we love to watch at Six Flags doing their little shows. The ones we see and think of Flipper. The ones that are being slaughtered by the thousands.... Yep you read that right. Dolphins are being slaughtered from September through May in a place called Taiji, Japan. Every year fisherman round up thousands of dolphins, sell some to dolphinariums such as Sea World, and then literally slaughter the rest. This is by far one of the most brutal practices going on in the world today. Reguardless of your personal position on animals in captivity, it has to be understood that if there were no captive dolphins today... Then no one would really care about what I'm about to go into because no one would really see and fall in love with these animals. These animals are in desperate need of human help. Surfers constantly tell stories of dolphins literally saving them from sharks. It's true. For some unknown reason, dolphins have been known to ride waves and even defend surfers. Of course they are a wild animal and have also been known to bite, but for the most part these animals are extremely friendly. Humans are really the last hope and greatest threat for these animals. In Taiji, the dolphins who are not sold are left to endure a 12 or so hour time period in a netted off area before they are hearded into an are known as The Cove. While in the nets babies are seperated from their mothers. This causes huge stress on the mother dolphins as they can't get to their babies. For the record, dolphin mothers are excellent mothers and will defend their babies. After 12 hours pass and night comes, the dolphins are hearded to The Cove. There every last dolphin is brutally murdered. The Japanese claim that the way they kill the dolphins is the most humane using a special spear that severs the spine. That is a totally false claim and video evidence taken by the team in the hit documentary, "The Cove", proves that the Japanese are lying to the world. They do not sever the spines. In fact they stab the dolphins at least 20 times each, the cove literally becomes a cove of blood, they cut the dolphin's throats, they kill babies right in front of their paniced mothers, they run over them, they step on them, and drag them by their tails. Terrible things for a person to do to an animal, but nothing is being done to stop it. Dolphin, much like whale meat is rarely eaten by the Japanese public. In fact, it is not uncommon for stores to sell dolphin, but label it as whale. Again though, it does not sell well. The Japanese government again claims it is a Japanese tradition to eat dolphin. The tradition must have failed as parents of schools that were being forced to give dolphin meat to students rose up and got the meat taken out of the schools. It's a good thing too because in 2008 a former Japanese offical who claimed that dolphin was healthy to eat tested positive to mercuray posioning. It is not healthy for a human, much like shark, to eat dolphin as it is basically toxic. Japan in the future could face a massive crisis from mercuray posioing unless dolphin is totally taken off the shelves.
Not only has the documentary, "The Cove" sent the Japanese into big trouble with basically the enitre world, it has turned a lot of it's people against the government. Prior to this documentary being released, the cove was a secret place that no one except fisherman and the government could get to. Now though the Japanese public know about it and they are outraged. Dolphins are viewd in very high reguard and the Japanese government is trying to get money from any source possible, including these animals.
**** THE FOLLOWING IS VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF THE TAIJI DOLPHIN SLAUGHTER****
If Japanese whaling, this horrid dolphin slaughter,and shark finning do not stop, the world's oceans will die and soon after, life on land will die. Life on land can not exist without life in the seas. If sharks, whlaes, and dolphins all vansih from the Earth, the oceans, bays, rivers, estuaries, and all other water sources will literally become massive acid pools where no life can survive. Humans are ripping apart the world and at the same time they are the only ones who can save it. It doesn't take much to help any of these causes at all. You can educate yourself simply be doing a little research here on the internet. Watch both "The Cove" and "Sharkwater" as well as the hit T.V. series "Whale Wars" to get a real first hand understanding of what these animals are going through thanks to the corruption of man. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at a7xoff@gmail.com or if your a facebook friend message me there and I'll try my best to answer any questions on these three topics. It only takes one person to start a movement, but it takes a much larger number to push it through, lets end all three of these brutal practices for the future generations of not just humans, but all life on Earth.
