Fisheries and Oceans Canada is pleased to announce the posting of four draft Species at Risk Act management plans for marine mammals. Management plans are available for Steller sea lion, Harbour porpoise, Grey whale, and Offshore killer whale on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Pacific Region website, at: http://www-comm.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/pages/consultations/marinemammals/mmplans_08_e.htm.

Comments on the management plans are welcome before May 12th, 2008, and can be submitted online via the comment form, emailed to sara@pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca or mailed to:

Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Species at Risk Act Marine Mammal Management Plans
200-401 Burrard St,
Vancouver, BC
V6C 3S4

Thanks,

Courtney Druce
Species At Risk Officer / Officier des espéces en danger
Fisheries and Oceans Canada / Pêches et Ocêans Canada
200-401 Burrard St / 200-401 rue Burrard
Vancouver BC, V6C 3S4 / Vancouver (C.-B) V6C 3S4
T: (604) 666-2792 / F: (604) 666-3341
Courtney.Druce@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

 

TV-Tipp - Können in Gefangenschaft gehaltene Delfine wieder ausgewildert werden?

Delfine leben und lernen in sozialen Verbänden. Ohne den Schutz der Gruppe sind sie verloren. Genau das passiert im israelischen Eilat - drei Tiere werden von der Gruppe abgelehnt. Riskanter Plan der Tiertrainer: Das in Gefangenschaft geborene Trio soll künftig im Schwarzen Meer leben.

Mittwoch, 23.04. - Tierreport -  19.00 Uhr - ARTE

_______________________________________

Um diese riskanten Auswilderungsaktionen zu vermeiden, muss es verhindert werden, dass Delfine überhaupt in Gefangenschaft "leben". Deshalb fordern wir ein:

Ausnahmsloses Importverbot für Wale & Delfine nach Deutschland!

 

Bereits über 1000 Einträge in der Solidaritätsliste - 170 Tierschutzvereine und Organisationen unterstützen diese Forderung!

 

Machen Sie mit!

 

Falls noch nicht geschehen, bitte ich um einen Eintrag in die SOLIDARITÄTSLISTE! Alle Einträge werden bei einer Aktion am 9. Mai in Berlin der Bundesregierung übergeben und auf dem größten Delfin-Schutz-Transparent Deutschlands (1 Kilometer) integriert und den Politikern und auch allen Medien in Deutschland präsentiert.

Wir fordern die Bundesregierung auf, endlich ein Gesetz für ein Importverbot für Wale & Delfine nach Deutschland zu beschließen, damit die Delfinarien in Deutschland keine weiteren Tiere mehr aus anderen Anlagen oder aus der freien Wildbahn erhalten können. Weil die Nachzucht nicht funktioniert, werden die Delfinarien mittelfristig alle schließen müssen.

 

Helfen Sie bitte mit, die Ausplünderung der Meere zu stoppen – setzen wir ein starkes solidarisches Zeichen, um noch mehr Tierleid zu verhindern!

 

Eintragungsmöglichkeit bis 30.04.08

 

Info & Online-Formular unter:

 

http://walschutzaktionen.de/334601.html  

 

 

Unterschriften-Listen zum Ausdrucken:

 

http://walschutzaktionen.de/392601.html

 

Bitte leiten Sie diesen Aufruf zum Schutz der Delfine auch an Ihre Freunde und Bekannte weiter!

 

Vielen Dank!

----------------------------- 

Andreas Morlok

Delfin- & Walschutz-Aktivist

Internet: http://www.walschutzaktionen.de 
E-Mail: walfahrt@t-online.de

 

The trash vortex

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A tiny fraction of the plastic waste in the oceans being collected from a beach. Plastic waste kills many marine animals when they mistake plastic for food.

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The very thing that makes plastic items useful to consumers, their durability and stability, also makes them a problem in marine environments. Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year of which about 10 percent ends up in the sea. About 20 percent of this is from ships and platforms, the rest from land.

Take a walk along any beach anywhere in the world and washed ashore will be many polythene plastic bags, bottles and containers, plastic drums, expanded polystyrene packing, polyurethane foam pieces, pieces of polypropylene fishing net and discarded lengths of rope. Together with traffic cones, disposable lighters, vehicle tyres and toothbrushes, these items have been casually thrown away on land and at sea and have been carried ashore by wind and tide.

These larger items are the visible signs of a much larger problem. These big items do not degrade like natural materials. At sea and on shore under the influence of sunlight, wave action and mechanical abrasion they simply break down slowly into ever smaller particles.

A single one litre drinks bottle could break down into enough small fragments to put one on every mile of beach in the entire world. These smaller particles are joined by the small pellets of plastic which are the form in which many new plastics are marketed and which can be lost at sea by the drumload or even a whole container load. These modern day “marine tumbleweeds” have been thrown into sharp focus, not only by the huge quantities removed from beaches by dedicated volunteers, but by the fact that they have been found to accumulate in sea areas where winds and currents are weak.

The “Eastern Garbage Patch”

Click to view animation.

The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre covers a large area of the Pacific in which the water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral. Winds are light. The currents tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre. There are few islands on which the floating material can beach. So it stays there in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton. The equivalent of an area the size of Texas swirling slowly around like a clock. This gyre has also been dubbed “the Asian Trash Trail” the “Trash Vortex” or the “Eastern Garbage Patch”.

This perhaps wouldn’t be too much of a problem if the plastic had no ill effects. The larger items, however, are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.

Animals can become entangled in discarded netting and line. Even tiny jelly-fish like creatures become entangled in lengths of plastic filament, or eat the small plastic particles floating in the water.

Chemical sponge

There is a sinister twist to all this as well. The plastics can act as a sort of “chemical sponge”. They can concentrate many of the most damaging of the pollutants found in the worlds oceans: the persistent organic pollutants (POPs). So any animal eating these pieces of plastic debris will also be taking in highly toxic pollutants.

The North Pacific gyre is one of five major ocean gyres and it is possible that this Trash Vortex problem is one which is present in other oceans as well. The Sargasso Sea is a well known slow circulation area in the Atlantic, and research there has also demonstrated high concentrations of plastic particles present in the water.

Ocean hitchhikers

Veröffentlicht von GreenPeace