Drew Barrymore saves the whales and melts cold war ice in Big Miracle

Hollywood fictionalises the story of Cindy Lowry, who persuaded the Americans and Russians to free trapped whales in Alaska

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• • John Vidal, environment editor
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 February 2012 13.12 GMT
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Drew Barrymore in a scene from Big Miracle, a film about the rescue of a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. Photograph: Darren Michaels/AP/Universal Pictures

October 1988, Alaska: the end of the cold war. Ronald Reagan was US president, communism in eastern Europe was cracking and the ice had come in early. Cindy Lowry, a Greenpeace representative in Anchorage, read in a local paper that three young gray whales were stranded near America's northernmost city, Barrow. It was the start of a story that 24 years later has Lowry portrayed by Drew Barrymore in Big Miracle, a Hollywood film out on Friday.
Lowry was with Donny, her doberman, working on oil companies and overfishing. Then the phone rang. Could Greenpeace lend an icebreaker to get the whales out? Greenpeace never had an icebreaker. A biologist called to say the whales had little time left.
Lowry hit the phones. First she called the governer's office to ask where the coastguard icebreaker was. No interest. Then she tried a senator, the state fisheries department and Noaa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She tried whalers and oil companies, the coastguard itself, then got through to General John Schaeffer, adjutant general of the Alaska national guard. A media friend had told her the US and Russia had an agreement to help each other if their ships were in trouble. So she phoned Moscow.
Her telephone manner must have been extraordinary. By the end of the day, Lowry had the offer of an oil company barge, the US under-secretary for oceans had called from Washington pledging help, and the Russians were said to be interested. "It was getting pretty crazy. Everyone was phoning me. But it didn't seem that strange at the time. I was just so focused on the mission," she says.
Rescuers look on as a gray whale surfaces in a breathing hole off Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1988. Photograph: Bill Roth/Getty Images Thirty-six hours later she was on her way to Barrow. "To start with there was just me, a biologist from Noaa, and the oil companies," she says.
An NBC crew with a helicopter took her to see the whales, about 12 miles away . " They were trapped in two tiny holes cut in the ice and there was only just room for two of them to breathe. We could tell right away that the smaller one wasn't breathing that well.
"The oil companies wanted to get barges to them, the Iñupiats [native Alaskans] wanted to chainsaw the holes. Every two or three days there was a new crisis. It was -20C and getting colder."
The drama was told around the world as the nations worked together, with the usual hostilities between corporations and environmentalists, media and military suspended.
By the end of week one, the ice was getting busy. The US air force diverted its largest cargo plane from Japan to bring in an 11-tonne amphibious icebreaking tractor from Prudhoe Bay, then came not one, but two Soviet ships, the icebreaker Admiral Makarov and a cargo ship, the Arsenev. The Iñupiat called the little whale Bone because its head had been rubbed raw as it tried to push through the ice.
The best hope lay with the Soviets clearing a channel, but the danger was that the ship would kill the whales. "It was one or two in the morning. We felt they were [getting] too close. The whales were getting frisky. I think they could start sensing open water, and they started swimming really fast from hole to hole," Lowry says.
An official trailer for Big Miracle on youtube.com The rescuers had set up a light for the Admiral Makarov to see the hole. "I thought I was going to say goodbye to the whales. I sat down by the hole on my own and one of the whales came up and spouted water. The freezing whale breath darkened my anorak.
"It was pretty surreal. You're 12 miles out and a Soviet icebreaker is [heading towards you] like a skyscraper. I kneeled down on the ice and the whale rested its head just inches away from me and we had this most amazing eye contact."
It was pure Hollywood, but the film has developed the story. It now runs: "The incredible true story that united the world. A small town news reporter and an animal-loving volunteer, Drew Barrymore, are joined by rival world superpowers to save a family of majestic gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle."
In the movie Donny the doberman doesn't get a part, the whales are puppets and the love interest is strictly between humans. "There was no romance on the ice. It was a romance with me and the whale," says Lowry, morphed into Barrymore's "animal lover" Rachel Kramer.
Lowry, who today has her own organisation, Oceans Public Trust Initiative, follows other US environmental women activists including Karen Silkwood, Erin Brockovich and Dian Fossey in having her story told by Hollywood.
She is not over-worried about the fictionalising. "It's not a documentary. It's pretty much the same. I just hope the movie will make people aware. I hope in my lifetime that I will see the end of whaling. The reality is that the oceans which we return whales into these days are in much worse shape now than they were just 20 years ago. The reality is that the oceans today are far more polluted than they were."
The real life story had a bittersweet ending. Three days after the whales were released a friend rang Lowry to say the gray whales were in Prince William Sound, heading south. But real life is not Hollywood: "The good news was two had survived. But Bone, the little whale, hadn't made it."www.realty-dejavu.com

Save Japan Dolphins

Earth Island Reports

Save Japan Dolphins

Continued Vigilance Reduces Taiji Slaughter

Earth Island Institute’s Save Japan Dolphins Campaign, an arm of our International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP), continues its vigil at the notorious dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan and the effort is achieving some real victories. Thanks to our constant monitoring of the dolphin hunt, the relationships we’ve built with Japanese activists, and the public education campaign to raise awareness about the high mercury levels in dolphin meat, the dolphin-hunting season is expected to be much shorter this year, and that will save the lives of scores of animals.

photo Tia Butt

IMMP has had volunteer observers in Taiji since the start of the hunting season on September 1. Cove Monitors have been posting daily updates at www.savejapandolphins.org to keep the world apprised of what’s happening there. Ric O’Barry, star of the Oscar-winning film The Cove, joined the team in January. O’Barry brought with him a potent new tool for our campaign – an iPad, which he used to stream real-time video of the hunts and to offer virtual tours of the inhumane Taiji Whale Museum.
O’Barry and the rest of the IMMP team have sought to avoid confrontations with the hunters and local authorities.
They have focused their efforts on cultivating alliances with Japanese environmentalists and Taiji residents. This relationship building has been crucial to getting insider information about the hunts and to spreading the word about the dangers of eating mercury-contaminated whale and dolphin meat, a subject that is ignored by the Japanese government and media.
IMMP’s Japanese allies report that the demand for dolphin meat in Japanese markets has dropped considerably since the campaign started, especially with the opening of The Cove movie in Japan. (The documentary is now available on DVD in Japanese, and our campaign – along with Director Louie Psihoyos and the Oceanic Preservation Society, which made The Cove – has been distributing free copies.) The government has denied any problems with mercury-tainted meat, but Japanese consumers appear to be ignoring such false claims. In 2010, Japanese authorities stated whale meat sales were down by 15 percent, as approximately 5,000 tons of frozen excess meat sat in storage. In 2011, the tonnage in cold storage rose to 5,400 tons. Dolphin meat is often mislabeled and sold to Japanese consumers as “whale” meat.
It also appears that the Taiji hunts are slowing down. The season usually lasts through the end of March, and sometimes into April. Japanese sources report that the dolphin hunts may end by mid- to late-February this year, weeks earlier than usual, due to the lack of demand for dolphin meat. If so, it would mark the fifth straight year that the number of dolphins killed in Taiji has declined since the IMMP campaign started.
Even though the dolphin hunts are waning, they cannot stop soon enough for our Save Japan Dolphins Campaign. IMMP will continue our efforts – including fielding Cove Monitors, getting out the mercury facts to Japanese consumers, and working with the Japanese people – to put an end to the killing of dolphins and whales in Japan once and for all.
—Mark J. Palmerwww.realty-dejavu.com

Iceland Exports Over a Hundred Tons of Endangered Fin Whale as U.S. Sanction Deadline Looms

Iceland Exports Over a Hundred Tons of Endangered Fin Whale as U.S. Sanction Deadline Looms

2011-10-07, 15:49:05, by admin, Industry Press Release, seafood

October 7th, 2011

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Environmental and welfare groups today revealed that Iceland’s commercial whaling operation exported a further 133 metric tons of whale products from endangered fin whales in July despite the pending threat of U.S. trade sanctions for violating conservation agreements that protect the endangered fin whales.
The 133 metric tons of whale meat worth an estimated US$1.2 million was exported to Japan in July 2011 even as the U.S. administration announced that Iceland was defying the global ban on commercial whaling.
“There is a line in the sand that Iceland has just crossed,” said Allan Thornton, President of the Environmental Investigation Agency. “The Icelandic killing of fin whales is illegal and its illegal export of whale meat will lead to further illegal killing of fin whales. Only U.S. sanctions against fish imports by the seafood company linked to Iceland’s whaling company will stop this environmental crime.”
Since 2006, 280 endangered fin whales, the second largest animal on the planet, have been killed by the Icelandic whaling company “Hvalur”, despite the international ban on commercial whaling.
On July 19th, Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke certified that Iceland was undermining the effectiveness of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) by permitting commercial whaling and international trade in endangered fin whale meat. The Commerce Secretary had previously warned the Icelandic Fisheries and Agricultural Ministry in November 2010 that U.S. law required a response to Iceland’s commercial whale killing.
President Obama now has until September 17th to report to Congress on any action he decides to take, including possibility sanctions against Icelandic products exported to the U.S.
Iceland has exported almost 1400 metric tons of fin whale meat and blubber to Japan, worth around US$18 million, since it began killing fin whales.
As well as the shipments of whale meat and blubber to Japan, Iceland has exported whale products including whale oil to Norway, the Faroes Islands and Latvia, despite a ban on such international trade in products of great whale species by the Convention on International trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Susan Millward, Executive Director of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) said: “This recent export demonstrates the urgent need for President Obama to immediately impose economic measures including trade sanctions against Iceland.”
Sue Fisher, Policy Director for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said today that “Not only is Iceland abusing two international conservation agreements, it is setting fin whale quotas that are three times higher than sustainable levels according to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the world’s foremost authority on whale science. “U.S. citizens overwhelmingly oppose commercial whaling, and nothing less than economic sanctions will fulfill President Obama’s promise to strengthen the commercial ban on whale hunting.
Editors Notes:
On 24th September, “Making a Killing”, a documentary featuring EIA’s investigation into the Icelandic fin whale hunt and trade will be shown on the Nat Geo Wild Channel. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/wild/tv-schedule
“Renegade Whaling: Iceland’s Creation of an Endangered Species Trade” offers an in-depth look at how Iceland is defying international treaties. Read the report
In 2009, Iceland dramatically increased its fin whale quota to 150 animals a year.
In December 2010, as Iceland’s self-allocated whaling quotas and exports reached record levels, 19 U.S. NGOs, representing tens of millions of U.S. citizens, filed a “Pelly petition” pursuant to the Pelly Amendment to the US Fisheries Act, urging the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to certify that Iceland is undermining international conservation agreements calling for the imposition of trade sanctions against fisheries-related businesses linked to Iceland’s whaling company.
Secretary Locke’s ‘certification’ triggered a 60 day review period by the President during which time he may impose economic or trade sanctions.STOP THE KILLING

JAPAN KEEP ON KILLING WHALES

(AP) TOKYO — Japan says it has caught 195 whales in the Pacific Ocean this season under a research program opposed by activists who call it commercial whaling in disguise.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said Thursday that the fleet harvested 49 minke, 95 sei and 50 Bryde's whales and one sperm whale during its three-month Pacific expedition.

Japan also hunts hundreds of whales in the Antarctic Ocean as part of its research program, which is exempt from a 1986 whaling ban.

Critics say the expeditions are a cover for commercial whaling because meat from the harvest is sold for domestic consumption.

Japan's annual whale catch has declined in recent years due to violent protests by conservationist groups.

PICTURES OF THE KILLING WHALES AND DOLPHINS

LOOK AT THESE PHOTOS,

http://www.google.com/search?q=japan+whale+killing&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1280&bih=644&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=n8N7Tr_GDcbZ0QG1sL3XAg&ved=0CFwQsAQ

Dolphin slaughter turns sea red as Japan hunting season returns

The gruesome spectacle of dolphins being slaughtered for profit has returned to Taiji, just as international condemnation of the Japanese town's annual cull reaches a crescendo. At least 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales have been taken in the first hunt of the season, which began on 1 September.
Over the next six months the town's fishermen will catch about 2,300 of Japan's annual quota of 20,000 dolphins. The meat from a single animal fetches up to 50,000 yen (£330), but aquariums are prepared to pay up to £90,000 for certain types.
In a typical hunt the fishermen pursue pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles together beneath the water to confuse their hypersensitive sonar. The exhausted animals are driven into a large cove sealed off by nets to stop them escaping and dragged backwards into secluded inlets the following morning to be butchered with knives and spears. They are then loaded on to boats and taken to the quayside to be cut up in a warehouse, the fishermen's work hidden from the outside by heavy shutters.
Taiji officials said all the pilot whales caught on this expedition had been killed and their meat put on the market, but added that half of the bottlenose catch would be sold to aquariums and the remainder "set free", in an apparent attempt to mollify international opinion.
It is impossible to verify those claims. The bottlenose dolphins were still penned in close to the shoreline more than 24 hours after they had been captured.
Guardian photographs taken covertly during the cull show what appears to be a young bottlenose floating, motionless and belly up, just beyond the slaughter zone.
What is clear is that a siege mentality has taken hold in Taiji, an isolated town of 3,500 on the Pacific coast of Wakayama prefecture.
Tensions have been rising and the culls conducted in near-secrecy since 2003, when two members of the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd released several dolphins that were being kept in an enclosure ready to be slaughtered.
During our visit we were followed at almost every turn, ordered not to take photographs and questioned by the police, who seem to view every foreign visitor as a potential hunt saboteur. None of the residents who agreed to talk would reveal their names, and requests for comments from the town office were ignored.
Criticism of the dolphin hunts intensified this summer with the release of the award-winning US documentary The Cove, whose makers used remote-controlled helicopters and hidden underwater cameras to record the hunters at work.
The film, with its graphic footage of the dolphin slaughter, sparked outrage after its release in the US and Australia. Last month councillors in the Australian coastal town of Broome suspended its 28-year sister-city relationship with Taiji after receiving thousands of emails protesting at the culls.
Taiji is regarded as the spiritual home of Japan's whaling industry. The first hunts took place in the early 1600s, according to the town's whaling museum, but the industry went into decline after the introduction of a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.
The town, a six-hour train ride from Tokyo, is dotted with restaurants serving whale and dolphin sashimi and cetacean iconography appears on everything from the pavements and bridge balustrades to road tunnels and a wind turbine.
Yet in other respects it does not have the feel of a town that takes pride in its traditions. Last week's pilot whale cull was conducted in inlets shielded on three sides by steep cliffs and dense undergrowth to deter campaigners and journalists. Barriers have been hastily erected along coastal paths that run through publicly owned land.
Local fishermen point out that the dolphins and other small cetaceans are not covered by the whaling moratorium. What critics regard as the senseless slaughter of intelligent creatures they see as a legitimate exercise in pest control, blaming dolphins for decimating fish stocks.
"People say dolphins are cute and smart, but some regions have a tradition of eating dolphin meat," said Toshinori Uoya, a fisheries official. "Dolphin-killing may be bad for our international image, but we can't just issue an order for it to stop."
The hero of the film is Ric O'Barry, a 69-year-old activist who has waged a one-man campaign against Taiji's dolphin culls for more than a decade. "We have to keep Taiji in the news," said O'Barry, who trained dolphins for the 1960s TV series Flipper before devoting himself to their conservation. "There is an international tsunami of attention.
"I've been working with dolphins for most of my life. I watched them give birth. I've nursed them back to health. When I see what happens in this cove in Taiji, I want to do something about it."
To many Taiji residents, O'Barry's comments typify the hypocrisy they say lies at the heart of mounting fury at their centuries-old tradition of killing whales and dolphins.
"I think we are the victims of a form of racism," said one, as we watched the pilot whales being herded out of sight to be killed. "Westerners slaughter cattle and other animals in the most inhumane ways imaginable, but no one says a word. Why is it that only Japan gets this kind of treatment?"WWW.COMPREOALQUILE.INFO

Track and survey bottlenose dolphins in Mediterranean waters to help scientists understand and combat the main threats to them and their ecosystem.

Track and survey bottlenose dolphins in Mediterranean waters to help scientists understand and combat the main threats to them and their ecosystem.

Based in the charming Greek village of Vonitsa on the Amvrakikos Gulf, you’ll have the opportunity to experience traditional village life as you help researchers conduct daily surveys on the area's bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). From a small research vessel, you’ll scan the water for signs of dolphin activity. Your team will search for dolphins and once found, you will follow them, and record information on their numbers, group composition, behaviour, movement patterns and interactions with the area’s fishing industry. The research team identifies individual dolphins by looking at distinguishing natural marks such as scars, bite marks, nicks, and notches in their dorsal fins. You will find yourself in the middle of a dolphin group, occasionally including calves or newborns. Dolphins often approach the research boat to bowride, even when the boat is moving slowly, so you’ll have a chance to see them up close and if you get lucky you might even hear their echolocation clicks and whistles.
Back at the field station, you’ll help enter data and prepare digital images of these dorsal fins to compare them and match them with the project catalogue to identify which individuals where seen in the field. Your days will start early, but you will have some free time each afternoon for resting or otherwise enjoying the quiet coast.WWW.COMPREOALQUILE.INFO