it will be illegal to possess, sell, trade and/or distribute shark fins in California.

Every year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for the tasteless, “luxury” shark fin soup. This unnecessary dish has been a major contributor to the near collapse of many shark species world-wide. As the top predator in the marine food web, sharks maintain the natural balance in our oceans. Without them, other ocean species will disappear and ocean ecosystems will collapse. Scientists are warning that the massive decline of sharks is having a devastating effect on the marine ecosystem and they say that an estimate 34% of the world’s sharks are near extinction, and almost all shark species are in decline.

IDA would like to thank Governor Brown and all the legislators who voted for this ban. California is the 2nd largest consumer of shark fin in the world but will now be a leader in the global effort to end the practice of finning and in the preservation of the ocean ecosystem for generations to come.

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Photo Credit : Mike Lorden

I recently returned to the United States from Japan, and while my body is now thousands of miles away from Taiji and the Cove, my thoughts remain with the dolphins and the daily horrors  occurring there.  The killings that took place on the last days of my visit haunt me, but it is in loving memory of those whose lives were lost or shattered that I share their tragic story.

During the early morning of Saturday, December 4th, a pod of over 100 migrating dolphins were ruthlessly hunted down and corralled into the Cove by Taiji fishermen. I watched from the shore as several of the dolphins got caught up in nets, their heads struggling desperately to come up for air, only to be pushed under by the fishermen trying to drown them.  I can still hear the sounds of blowholes spouting rapidly in distress as many were forced to listen to the anguished cries of their family members being killed. And I’ll never forget the sight of a lone baby swimming in isolation from the others in search of his mother. Forty-three dolphins were slaughtered before the fishermen decided to call it a day and leave the others to await their gruesome fate the next morning. Their trauma and terror as they swam close together, entrapped all night in the cove, is unimaginable.

We rose before dawn on Sunday to be at the Cove before the fishermen. After daybreak, it soon became clear why some dolphins had been spared the day before. Accompanying the fishermen, a group of trainers had come to select dolphins for captivity. Witnessing the selection process was sickening, as five trainers would wrestle down each dolphin for harsh examination. They would even ride them to see how they responded.  In the end, six dolphins had been chosen for a life of performance, never to be among their families again. For 36 others, death was their fate, and I listened and watched as they had stakes driven into their backs, and their bodies thrashed about violently in the waters for minutes on end.
Not all of the remaining dolphins were killed, with approximately 25 being released back to sea.  As they swam away the baby was among them, lagging far behind and certain to die of starvation without his mother. I felt I should be grateful that their lives had been spared, but I thought only of the shock and suffering these sensitive beings had just endured. How would they ever recover, and what kind of lives would they be returning to?

While the story of these dolphins in the Cove is no different than the many thousands who have come before, and, sadly, for the multitude who will come after, stories like theirs must be told until the day when all dolphins can swim free from harm.  Please help that day arrive by continuing to tell this story.

Photo Credit : Mia Kiander

Standing atop a promontory in Taiji, Japan, I’m enduring an agonizing wait to see if today will bring another merciless slaughter of dolphins. I’ve been in Taiji for four days now and have witnessed over 60 dolphins lose their lives at the hands of the Taiji fishermen. On November 29th, a large pod of more than 50 spotted dolphins were killed, while a pod of 10 risso’s dolphins were destroyed the following day. On both occasions, babies were among the victims. I am deeply troubled that almost a year after The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary the fishermen have employed a new killing method that reduces the flow of blood into the cove’s waters. They have also perfected the transfer of dead and dying bodies under blue tarpaulins so that the bodies are rarely seen as they are moved to and from the grisly gutting barge and butcher house.

On previous days, I’ve watched as so-called “banger” boats round up the dolphins at sea by creating a wall of sound with incessant banging on metal pipes, which drives the dolphins into the cove. Once the net has been dropped, they are then driven farther into the cove and up onto the rocky beach beyond public sight for slaughter. In some instances, as with the pod of risso’s dolphins I observed, the pod gets separated in such a way that some dolphins are slaughtered well before others, and those awaiting their gruesome end must listen as their family members are murdered. The scene is a profound horror, and one can only imagine the terror, pain, and fear that these highly intelligent and sentient beings must be experiencing as they are hunted down and their lives extinguished.

Currently there are 50-60 captured dolphins being held in small pens to be trained for a life in captivity. They can spend months in these pens swimming in mindless circles, undergoing daily “training” sessions, in which they learn that food now comes from a human, and only after performing a meaningless trick like jumping in the air, touching a ball with their nose, or waving their fin. I cannot express how desperately sad and disturbing it is to see these incredible beings, who were living free and wild only days and weeks before, suffer such degradation and exploitation in this way. Their lives have been shattered, their freedom and families lost, and now their dignity taken too. It is heartbreaking and shameful.

As for the fate of the dolphins this day, I am happy to report that due to bad weather, they managed to get away and escape the hunters’ conniving trap. For all the dolphins who won’t be as lucky as these were, please take action to help them.

After more than three years of campaigning, I am thrilled to announce that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has finally ruled to block the National Marine Fisheries Service’s killing of federally protected sea lions on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. In Defense of Animals (IDA) working with a grassroots group the Sea Lion Defense Brigade (SLDB) have organized against the state-sanctioned sea lion killing while the lawsuit that challenged the program languished in court for years. Now all that hard work has paid off and the sea lions are safe from harm!

The court said the government failed to meet the requirements of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and cannot justify killing protected pinnipeds. The sea lion predation of .04 to 4.2 percent of the spring salmon run at the Bonneville Dam could not be considered a “significant negative impact” when the same agencies allow fisherman to take up to 17 percent of the returning fish.

IDA congratulates the prevailing plaintiffs, The Humane Society of the United States, Wild Fish Conservancy and two private citizens. This campaign exemplifies how different organizations, working on legal and grassroots fronts, can reach a common goal for animals.

This is a huge victory for both sea lions and salmon. We are relieved to see an end to the unethical, politically motivated killing of native, protected sea lions and we hope these agencies will now address the human-caused threats to salmon recovery – over-fishing, introduction of non-native fish, dams and habitat destruction.

Since the lethal removal program began in 2008, IDA and the SLDB have worked to protect the sea lions in the Columbia River and hold agencies accountable to the public for this controversial program. Activists organized dozens of demonstrations, met with government officials, and rallied on the steps of the Oregon capital. IDA fought a court battle to free one sea lion named “Willy,” who was misidentified by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and wrongfully removed from the river.

During the 2010 spring salmon season, IDA and SLDB launched a volunteer-based vigil near the Bonneville Dam to track government trapping and killing, and educate the public and fishermen. An RV mobile monitoring vehicle called the “Sea Wolf” kept a round the clock watch over the sea lions.

Among the core campaigners, spirits are very high right now. “I’m overjoyed at the court’s ruling,” exclaimed Bethanie O’Driscoll, one of the plaintiffs and grassroots organizers, remarked after the victory was announced. “It’s been a hard fight, but anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of a sea lion will understand why it was worth it.”

“I’m not going to miss getting up every morning at 5:00 a.m. to try to scare sea lions out of the traps,” joked Julie Farris, a dedicated volunteer who spent months on site at the dam. She reminisced about how our efforts to educate the public and even fishermen really paid off. “We made inroads with people who had thought of the sea lions as a nuisance.”

Our education efforts have set the record straight. These gregarious, intelligent sea lions are a part of the river ecosystem. They belong here as much as the salmon, and should never been killed for simply eating.

This blog was contributed by Matt Rossell, a former IDA employee.

IDA Activists in Action!

Last Thursday, marine mammal activists from all over the world, in over 55 locations, stood together in protest of the Japanese government’s support of the slaughter of dolphins and sale of live dolphins for the public display industry. Events took place at Japanese Consulates and Embassies, sending a resounding message to the Japanese government and a public purposefully kept in the dark that killing dolphins and sentencing the rest to a life of captivity is shameful. How the Japanese government can knowingly allow the human consumption of dolphin meat that contains dangerous levels of mercury and other industrial pollutants is beyond reason. Or how dolphins are mercilessly captured and shipped as cargo all over the world in order to perform demeaning circus-style tricks for food in grossly unnatural, artificial, and highly confined environments.

There is hope for dolphins and other cetaceans through public education and growing interest in finally bringing to an end the appalling dolphin roundups in Japan

Stay tuned for more updates. And if you haven’t already done so, please watch Oscar Award-Winning Documentary, The Cove and Animal Planet’s Blood Dolphins.

We are saddened to report that yet another orca died prematurely this past week in a SeaWorld tank. Kalina was only 25 years old when she died.  She was forced to live her entire existence in an understatedly artificial environment, crammed into a chlorinated swimming pool with other suffering orcas.

Kalina’s life is a tragedy, riddled with unnatural circumstances.  She was conceived and born in a tank.  She was impregnated at an extremely unnatural and young age (six years old) and gave birth to her first calf at the premature age of seven.  Before her untimely death, she had been forced to give birth four times and may have even been pregnant at the time of her death.  In the wild, females mature around 15 years of age and then give birth to approximately five calves every five years until they reach menopause, at around 40 years old.  Female orcas can live up to 80-90 years in the wild.

One of Kalina’s offspring, Keto, is another orca whose unremittingly bleak life in captivity has caused the most terrible ending. In December, 2009, Keto killed his trainer at Loro Parque in the Canary Islands. During a rehearsal, Keto landed on his experienced trainer and pushed him around underwater for several minutes.

Until the necropsy report is released, SeaWorld is billing Kalina’s death as unexpected, yet the scientific community recognizes that the timing of her passing falls within the norm for orcas in captivity.  SeaWorld in particular has an appalling premature death rate— most orcas there die before they reach 20.   This year alone, the public display of orcas at SeaWorld has caused four deaths in the last four months.  (The fourth was Taima’s stillborn calf.)  In addition to the orca deaths, two people have been killed in less than a year as a result of SeaWorld’s unspeakable greed to breed more orcas.

While the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) continues to process public comments received this year concerning permit regulations for public display of marine mammals, we are continuing our work to finally end the cruel confinement and exploitation.  What could be more obvious in understanding that orcas don’t belong in swimming pools when their home ranges in the wild have been documented to fall within 200-810 miles?  Or that the trauma associated with moving orcas all over the country, even to other countries, is a violation of their intrinsic need to maintain multi-generational family bonds?

Please stay tuned for IDA updates on how we can prevent the imprisonment of orcas and other marine mammals in the U.S.  There is certainly hope—the UK is one country where marine mammals are no longer on public display.

Workers using Corexit in the Exxon Valdez Spill. Photo Credit : The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council

It’s been over a month since President Obama and the EPA gave BP 24 hours to stop dumping the toxic oil dispersant Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico. The decision was first reported in the Washington Post immediately after Congress heard testimony from BP’s own executives and scientists confirming our worst fears. Not only is this highly toxic chemical relatively ineffective against this type of crude oil, but it was now adding more pollutants to the already poisoned waters.

Numerous independent scientists have come forward to say that Corexit is really only good for public relations. This carcinogenic, mutagenic, and highly toxic chemical does break up the oil into small somewhat transparent ripples and droplets that are more visually acceptable than images of giant black tides drowning wildlife and covering beaches. What the cameras don’t see is the long term damage to delicate ecosystems that are now struggling to escape toxic tides of chemicals. According to environmental engineer Joe Taylor the sulfur and sulfuric acid based dispersant will also deplete oxygen levels under the water, killing plankton and everything above plankton in the food chain. This is not new information. Corexit has been banned for years in the UK because of the long and short-term damage to wildlife and ecosystems. The world was first introduced to Corexit in 1989 when it was used in the Exxon Valdez spill. Images of the workers during that spill spraying the chemical in hazmat suits should have been our first clue something wasn’t quit right with this chemical.

So – why at the time of this decision had BP already sprayed over 600,000 gallons of Corexit on the surface of the Gulf with another 55,000 injected directly into the oil pouring out of the ocean floor? And why, one month later, have they been allowed to dump even more? It is estimated that more than 1.4 million gallons have already been used.

Please act today to remind President Obama that this disaster could have been prevented and that he needs to restore the moratorium on all-offshore drilling in the U.S.

The proposal would have allowed countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland, who never stopped killing whales in the first place, to continue killing them, with the endorsement of the IWC.  Thanks to pressure from IDA and whale supporters worldwide, we stood firmly unified, demanding real protection from hunting for whales. The world listened. And they agreed.

Although we prevailed in maintaining the global ban on commercial whaling, other significant pressures continue to harm whales and threaten their existence.  Starvation, increasing predation by orcas, migration through industrial polluted waters, oil spills, military sonar, and commercial fishing operations are among the many obstacles threatening their survival today.  The central location of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, is home to an endangered sperm whale population. In 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicated the population would not be able to withstand a loss of three additional whales due to man.  Last week, the first dead sperm whale was found floating 77 miles south of the sunken rig.

Please enjoy the victory – and take pride in the part you played preserving the moratorium on commercial whaling. Stay tuned for upcoming alerts to further protect marine mammals and their habitats. Next time we ask you to send a letter or fax, remember this – it can work. Every fax and e-mail you sent made this victory possible.

Christopher Richter for SWSS (MMS, ONR, Oregon State, Texas A&M)

Who is affected when our politicians allow oil rigs to tear ever deeper into our earth to suck out more precious black life force? Who will suffer when the oil companies push past scientific reasoning and into the no man’s land of drilling, throwing caution to the wind for a few more gallons of crude oil? Before tragedy strikes, no one wants to answer these questions, but now we can all see that it is our precious ocean’s irreparable ecosystems and innocent wildlife who have and will pay the price for one oil company’s deadly mistakes.

More than a month ago a fireball went up in the Gulf Coast signaling the beginning of the worst oil spill in our nation’s history. Eleven men lost their lives that night, and since then death has seeped out into the waters along with the toxic sludge. With 500,000 to one million gallons leaking into the Gulf every day, I do not think that any of us can begin to wrap our heads around the sheer volume of this colossal, devastating spill.

The suffering endured by marine wildlife and the destruction to their habitats is beyond comprehension.  Some of the animals wash ashore bloated by death, having lost their brief battle with the sticky, suffocating oil. Others struggle to survive, gasping through thick masks of the filthy liquid. Oil coats the feathers of the unfortunate birds, destroying their insulation. Other birds try frantically to clean themselves, ingesting the toxic oil and dying slowly from poisoning.

The effects of the oil spill on wildlife materialized slowly at first, but now there is a veritable gush of death and destruction on the shores of four Gulf States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  (USFWS) reported Wednesday that the wildlife rescue center in Fort Jackson, La., had received more than five times as many oiled birds in the past few days than in the previous six weeks combined, bringing the total to more than 400 birds.

As of June 10, the USFWS has reported more than 1,500 birds, sea turtles, marine mammals, and reptiles collected alive and dead in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida combined. This can only be a small fraction of the total number of animals suffering and dying underwater or on remote shores.

The USFWS further reports a total of 35 National Wildlife Refuges at risk from the BP oil spill.  Imagine these once-pristine beaches and grassy marshes covered in stinking, putrid oil. They were a sanctuary for some of the most endangered species in our country, and now they are annihilating, toxic wastelands.

Currently, BP has mandated that only paid BP employees may touch any oiled surface (this includes wildlife). So in order to enter the scene a responder must be a BP employee or contractor with hazmat training, oiled wildlife training, and many other qualifications. Only a few small groups of highly trained individuals are permitted to clean and care for affected animals. This leaves most of us feeling powerless to help during a tragedy of such magnitude.
In Defense of Animals has already come out against offshore drilling, but we must all find ways in our everyday lives to fight the paths that lead to this cruel tragedy. I also urge you all to reach out to your local representatives and state senators and demand that they pressure BP to open affected areas to qualified wildlife rescuers. Those who are qualified to save these animals’ lives must be allowed to gain access to them.

Going forward we must funnel our frustrations into breaking down the barrier that is keeping much-needed responders from helping and voicing our concerns over excessive drilling and unsafe practices. And when the time comes, IDA will be there to do whatever we can for the animals affected by this infernal abyss.

Killer whale Taima, bottom, nudges her newborn calf toward the surface of the water for her first breath at SeaWorld on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000, in Orlando, Fla. Taima died in child birth on June 6, 2010. ( (AP Photo/SeaWorld, Chris Gotshall, HO))

IDA is deeply saddened by the death of Taima, a long-suffering 20-year-old captive killer whale who died prematurely and unnaturally while giving birth to her stillborn calf yesterday at SeaWorld in Orlando. Her life was as upsetting as her death..

Captive breeding of killer whales by SeaWorld or other commercial aquaria does not contribute to meaningful conservation of the species since any surviving calf would not be released back into the wild. Instead, breeding programs simply replenish the population of imprisoned killer whales who normally die decades before their wild counterparts.  SeaWorld’s bottom line is to profit financially by using killer whales to entertain the public, not to protect wild killer whales and their habitats.

The father of Taima’s stillborn calf is Tilikum, the six-ton killer whale also held at SeaWorld in Orlando. Ever since he killed his trainer in February, he’s been stuck in yet a smaller tank where he floats listlessly at the surface because of the lack of space he has to barely turn around. Since he is not participating in any shows for the time being, his main worth to SeaWorld is his semen, which is taken from him to breed more animals and make more money.  Katina, a 32-year old killer whale also at SeaWorld in Orlando, is currently carrying his calf and is due in late October. 

What You Can Do:

Even if you have already responded to our previous requests for public comments, please do so again. Urge the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to phase out marine parks and, until then, create stricter regulations and oversight for facilities with public display permits, and prohibit any further captive breeding or captures of marine mammals from the wild. Please commemorate the death of Taima and her stillborn calf in the official public comment record. We must use this opportunity to urge NMFS to stop any further dolphin captive breeding programs including killer whales, the largest species in the dolphin family.

Please submit your polite comments on or before this Thursday, June 10 at 5:00 p.m., EST.