A Whale Of A Week, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, SeaWorld, SeaWorld Has a New Ad About Conservation, 76 Southern Resident Orcas remain,Noah Cyrus, Local Commission Votes Unanimously to Free Lolita
The Trump administration is trying to push through a dangerous drilling project
in the Arctic Ocean. We need to stop it.
Icy, stormy waters make Arctic drilling inherently hazardous and spills impossible to clean up. And Hilcorp, the company launching this project, has a history of spills and safety violations. If this so-called "Liberty" project goes forward, oil spills could easily occur in the heart of polar bear and bowhead whale habitat.
Send a message to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that this reckless project threatens the Arctic's amazing wildlife and will deepen the climate crisis.
The Liberty project would be the first oil development in federal Arctic waters, involving building an artificial island from which to drill down into the oilfield. If a blowout occurs, the "worst case discharge" scenario envisions a spill of 193 million gallons of oil over 90 days. This would do irreparable harm to the Far North's bears and whales.
What's worse, Hilcorp has a history of frequently sidestepping environmental and safety rules. Just last year it struggled for months to plug a natural gas leak from one of its underwater pipelines in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
Please — urge the Trump administration to reverse its proposal and reject Hilcorp's plan. Send a letter today.
Icy, stormy waters make Arctic drilling inherently hazardous and spills impossible to clean up. And Hilcorp, the company launching this project, has a history of spills and safety violations. If this so-called "Liberty" project goes forward, oil spills could easily occur in the heart of polar bear and bowhead whale habitat.
Send a message to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that this reckless project threatens the Arctic's amazing wildlife and will deepen the climate crisis.
The Liberty project would be the first oil development in federal Arctic waters, involving building an artificial island from which to drill down into the oilfield. If a blowout occurs, the "worst case discharge" scenario envisions a spill of 193 million gallons of oil over 90 days. This would do irreparable harm to the Far North's bears and whales.
What's worse, Hilcorp has a history of frequently sidestepping environmental and safety rules. Just last year it struggled for months to plug a natural gas leak from one of its underwater pipelines in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
Please — urge the Trump administration to reverse its proposal and reject Hilcorp's plan. Send a letter today.
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A male orca has been found dead near Washington’s Salish Sea, only a
week after photos showed the animal looking lethargic.¹
Now only 76 individuals remain in the endangered Southern Resident orca pod. Weak, starving and undernourished, these orcas are careening toward extinction. Saving them is within our grasp. We need to raise $60,000 during our 2017 Oceana Fall Membership Drive to help protect these orcas and other at-risk ocean creatures. Will you be a part of our work to make that happen? Renew your Oceana membership with a gift before midnight on October 31 to help us push through measures to help orcas and the world’s oceans recover.
Oceana members are the backbone of our proven, science-based campaigns —
including our efforts to fight overfishing, protect critical habitat and save
at-risk whales from extinction. Your support means we can act nimbly when we
receive urgent updates like this one.
And Southern Residents definitely need our help. They dine almost exclusively on Chinook salmon — a once-abundant salmon species that’s now endangered due to habitat loss and fishing. A recent study found that as high as 69 percent of Southern Resident orca pregnancies end in miscarriage because the mothers are starving.² The only way to prevent these deaths is to restore Chinook salmon abundance. We are working with partners throughout the Pacific Northwest to develop salmon recovery goals and actions to achieve those goals. But more orcas will die unless we make progress. Please, help us keep Southern Resident orcas from disappearing for good by renewing your Oceana membership today.
Defenders of Wildlife: Starving,
malnourished and poisoned, Southern Resident orcas are dying painful deaths.
In
the past year alone, seven have died – the latest, a male calf just
two-and-a-half years old. Heartbreakingly, this Pacific Northwest orca
population is at a 30-year low.
The
loss of a calf is especially tragic, but it is made worse by just how precious
each individual is to the dwindling population of Southern Resident orcas.
Already
considered one of the country’s eight most at-risk marine species, Southern
Residents are teetering on the brink of extinction. With just 76 individuals left, any
more losses to the remaining population could be
catastrophic.
Just
two years ago, Southern Resident orcas experienced a "baby boom" that saw the
birth of six calves. But without enough salmon to sustain them, and with the
continued toxicity leaching into the Puget Sound, hope soon turned to
heartbreak.
Tragically,
half of those calves have been lost to starvation, malnutrition or toxic
poisoning. We can't fail the rest of them.
Southern
Resident orcas have been declining for decades, largely due to the scarcity of
the endangered salmon that make up 80 percent of their diet.
Human-caused
changes, including the construction of hundreds of dams along salmon migration
routes, have left salmon populations in free-fall. That, coupled with the
pollution and contamination of the food chain, has left orcas sick and
struggling to find food.
Defenders is working to reduce toxic contamination of the orcas’
food supply. We’re helping to remove outdated dams and increase and restore
vital salmon habitat so that orcas will have plenty of healthy salmon to eat.
Southern
Resident orcas are rapidly descending towards extinction. We must act now to
keep them from disappearing forever.
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Local Commission Votes Unanimously to Free Lolita – Urge Miami Seaquarium to Let Her Go!
We finally have some promising news to share about Lolita, the oldest living orca in captivity. The Miami Beach Commission is now putting pressure on the Miami Seaquarium to release Lolita to a seaside sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest. Truly, this is the least they can do to ensure Lolita can live the rest of her years in peace. The Commission voted unanimously last week in favor of the resolution that urges Lolita be retired to the Orca Network, a non-profit that developed a retirement plan way back in 1995.
Even though the resolution only holds a symbolic significance, as the board does not have any legal power over the Miami Seaquarium, this is still a hopeful step. The plan would take six to eight weeks to transport, rehabilitate, and retire Lolita to the San Juan Islands in Washington State, close to her original home in Puget Sound. Orca Network estimates the process would cost $1.5 million in private sector funding.
The Mayor of Miami Beach, Philip Levine, is a long-time advocate for moving Lolita to a seaside sanctuary. “Hopefully, in the future, this animal will go on to its family in the Northwest,” he told the Miami Herald. But because Lolita was added to the endangered species listing for the Southern Resident killer whale in 2015, the minimal amount of risk would have to be taken to retire Lolita.
Lolita has lived almost her entire life in what is equivalent of a bathtub, this year marked her 47th year in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium. Activists have been fighting to free Lolita for years, and there have been a number of lawsuits that allege her tank is not up to regulations and it has even been considered that since she is the member of an orca pod listed as endangered, she should be privy to Endangered Species Act regulations that could permit her to return to the wild. Prior lawsuits have been denied.
Not surprisingly, the Miami Seaquarium is against the proposal, stating that the stress upon Lolita could prove fatal. Seems odd that they would all of a sudden care about her well-being after refusing to even expand the size of her tank. Importantly though, the more negative attention brought to the Miami Seaquarium, the more likely they are to retire Lolita to a sanctuary. At the end of the day, they won’t change anything until their bottom line is affected.
Please share this story to show the Miami Seaquarium that the world is watching and that we won’t give up until Lolita is free.
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Dolphins and whales are in trouble and desperately need your help!
Keeping orcas and smaller dolphins in concrete tanks is abusive. In just the past 9 months at SeaWorld. Three orcas: Tilikum, Kaska, and three-month old baby Kyara are all dead.
Tilikum at SeaWorld Orlando: Dead of infection. Kyara at SeaWorld San Antonio: Dead of infection. And now, 43-year-old orca mom Kasatka at SeaWorld San Diego: Dead of "lung disease."
Enough is enough! Keeping orcas and dolphins in concrete tanks is a failed, cruel experiment and must be ended. It is time to retire them to seaside sanctuaries.
SeaWorld is sputtering. Investors are fleeting and attendance is dropping. Yet they won't retire a single orca or dolphin. Their alternative: a $15 million TV ad buy to con people into believing the orcas are "thriving" at SeaWorld.
Please help us fight back against their misinformation and distribute our new 7-minute video,The Chance to Be Free. Watch it HERE.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government resumed the brutal dolphin slaughter, allowing hunters to rip wild dolphins from their families for sale to amusement parks in Japan and China. Dolphin meat is sold to the public, even though it is ladened with mercury.
We've brought the dolphin kill levels down, but more needs to be done. The killing must end!
Your support will allow us to expose the Japanese government's cruelty and block sales of dolphins captured from the wild. It will also help expand our campaign that the Olympic IOC ban all whale or dolphin products from the 2020 Olympics in Japan.
Finally, dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific are under threat. The Mexican tuna industry is using the most disastrous fishing technique that has ever been devised. They intentionally chase and set nets on dolphins as a way to catch tuna that swims below.
Shockingly, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) - a global fisheries certification company - is caving in and rewarding Mexican tuna companies with an Eco-label that deceives people into believing that their canned tuna is Dolphin Safe!
MSC's decision is wrong and must be reversed. They are threatening the lives of tens of thousands of dolphins -- all for a cruel fishing practice that should be banned.
Your help allows us to warn consumers not to buy this deceptive and destructive tuna product.
The International Marine Mammal Project is a project of
the Earth Island Institute network. EII receives the highest marks from Charity
Navigator, demonstrating that we are worthy of your
trust.
Taiji photo courtesy of OPS, Captive
Orca photo © Mark Palmer, Dolphin in Tuna net photo © Sam LaBudde
