Posts Categorized: News

Still no home for Keiko

Authorities and experts have been pondering for weeks, but still no final decision has been taken about where celebrity killer whale Keiko will be spending the frosty winter months in Norway. Full Story: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/artic

Australia plans to create the world’s largest fully protected marine reserve, announcing on Wednesday it had mapped out a giant park free of fishing and exploitation in its remote, sub-Antarctic waters.

Seal Virus Reaches Ireland

Phocine Distemper Virus (PDV) has been found in a harbour seal on the Aran Islands. The disease was confirmed in a sample sent by UCG to the Dept. of Agriculture in Northern Ireland. PDV has now killed over 15,000 seals on mainland Europe and over 2,000 in the UK. It represents a major threat to

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Conservation group WWF International slammed the European Union yesterday for buying fishing rights from poor African countries like Angola, saying it was depleting stocks vital to poor coastal communities.

The NSW charter boat industry has reacted angrily to a proposal by the State Government to slap a tax on whale watchers as part of a licensing and environmental crackdown.

The number of species close to extinction has been increased by 124 in the 2002 update the “Red List”, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s catalogue of threatened species. Full Story: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99

Norway’s whalers will be permitted to harpoon 711 whales next year, up from 2002 when catches were the highest since Oslo broke with a global ban a decade ago, the Fisheries Ministry said. Full Story: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/n

The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group is mounting an expedition to answer a mystery which has intrigued researchers for many years… where do our Humpback Whales come from? Each year small numbers of humpback whales appear off the South-west coasts of Ireland. These whales been photographed but not yet linked into any of the existing

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Norway kills 634 whales.

Norway’s whalers killed 634 whales out of a quota of 671 in 2002, the biggest catch since the nation resumed commercial whaling in 1993 under a legal objection lodged against the IWC’s moratorium. Full Story: http://www.wdcs.org/dan/news.nsf/webnews