Category Archives: Animal Welfare

Day 112 10/15/13: Endangered Sharks & Disappearing Moose

by in Activism, Animal Welfare, Environment, Marine Conservation, Shark Conservation and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
English: A timeline of the largest mass extinc...

English: A timeline of the largest mass extinctions on Earth in the past 500 million years. Made using the numbers at Extinction event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At my writing class today, a wonderful woman who knew that I write about sharks, said I ought to find out why the moose are disappearing, which led us both to remark on extraordinary fact that we are living through a mass extinction that, in day to day life, few people really talk about.

Here’s a gesture against forgetting:

Although CITES granted protection for hammerheads, manta rays, white tips and porbeagles, five countries (Japan, Iceland, Denmark, Yemen and Guyana) still refuse to recognize these treaties.

Please sign this petition to ask President Obama to apply sanctions against these countries.

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Day 110: 10/13/13: Five Fascinating Shark Distractions

by in Activism, Animal Welfare, Marine Conservation, Shark Conservation, Shark Sighting and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
Great white shark

Great white shark (Photo credit: 126 Club)

I got a little distracted while correcting papers:

1. Check out this video of white sharks feeding on a dead whale near Anacapa Island.

2. Make a cup of cocoa and curl up with the latest Pacific Coast breathings, attacks and other shark encounters here. 

3. Read the story of an Australian diver who survived his second shark attack in 10 years.

4. Behold gorgeous underwater images of a wily sea lion teasing a white shark near Guadalupe Island.

5. Ethics, Activism and Appetite: Read David Shiffman’s controversial “shark buffet” post on Southern Fried Science. Click here to read Shiffman’s later apology.

Day 109: 10/12/13: Shark Coffins & Doomed Stuffed Animals

by in Activism, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, Art, Shark Finning and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

These innovative creations are a welcome break from correcting a batch of opaque papers on sharks and fear.

I like the spare yet surreal look of this art show, but I LOVE that it’s

happening in Shanghai!!

Check out Banksy’s “Sirens of the Lambs,” a sad and weird traveling piece on animals

slaughtered for food.

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Day 107 10/10/13: Be a Voice for Whales and Dolphins

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Dolphin funToday’s action: small, but important.

Sign Oceana’s petition to President Obama asking the president to halt proposed underwater seismic tests (part of underwater oil & gas explorations)  that disrupt the communication, feeding and general well-being of whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.

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Day 104 10/7/13: Ask Singapore Airlines to Stop Transporting Shark Fins

by in Activism, Animal Welfare, Shark Conservation, Shark Finning and tagged , , | Leave a comment
English: Fresh shark fins drying on sidewalk a...

English: Fresh shark fins drying on sidewalk at Hong Kong (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(With apologies for the awful and unintentional rhyme:

Do a sharks a kindness, sign this:

https://www.causes.com/campaigns/35520-encourage-singapore-airlines-to-stop-shipping-shark-fins

Day 103 10/6/13: Certified and Certifiable

by in Activism, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, Diving, Environment, Horses, Inner Turmoil, Jaws, Marine Conservation and tagged , , | 2 Comments
David Foster Wallace gave a reading for Booksm...

David Foster Wallace  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“That’s great! That’s just great! You’re certifiable! Do you know that, Quint?” Brody (Roy Scheider) hollers after Quint (Robert Shaw) smashes the boat’s radio (no more calling in for a bigger one) with a baseball bat.

I replayed that “Jaws” scene endlessly in my head on the way back from Catalina as my dive teacher filled out my diver certification card. I am by no means “good” at diving, but I am no longer afraid of bleeding ears or the large sharks attracted by the ribbons of blood pulsing from my exploding lungs.

The ocean is beautiful—heart-rendingly so. But I don’t want to disturb its inhabitants. I don’t want to shine flashlights in crevices to see lobster, or play with sea cucumbers. Even as I thrilled at the glimpse of a retiring purple octopus curled up in a rock hole, I felt a rush of feeling for the little guy. I know that octopus LIKE to be left alone. And lobsters seem to value their privacy as well.

I felt glad that I would be  teaching David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” in the morning.

The essential question is this:

How do I commune with animals, while not interfering with their nature, their ways of being? 

It’s not that animal rights guilt precludes my enjoyment of the natural world, but thoughts about animal consciousness increasingly shape my experiences.

I grew up riding horses and still love doing it (as a way of seeing the countryside), but even that activity is fraught with complications: bits, and crops and heels into ribs. I recently discovered this observation (given in sign language) from the always candid Koko the Gorilla:

Koko looks at a picture of a horse with a bit in his mouth:

K: horse sad.

CD: Why?

K: TEETH.

(Check out more of Koko’s insights in this fascinating argument for the personhood of gorillas).

More on this idea of displacement & communion soon. The sea hath ignited in my mind the power and glory of language while it seemed to have sapped the very marrow from my bones.

Day 101 10/4/13: Five Things I Learned at the Marine Mammal Center

by in Animal Welfare, Education, Environment, God, Marine Conservation and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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1. The pinnipeds arriving at the San Pedro rarely suffer from shark bites. The Center’s marine biologist, Chris Nagel has seen about three shark bites in five years. Most of these bites involve a stripping off of the skin. As I mentioned about a million blog posts ago, the Center treats shark bites (quite successfully) with special bacteria-free honey from South America and…duct tape.

2. The seals and sea-lion patients do suffer from marine mites, a variety of bacterial infections, and injuries inflicted by people. These include gunshots to the face, being tossed mackerel stuffed with dynamite and having their flippers hacked off by angry fishermen. Dead seals have also been found with algae-covered plastic water bottles in their guts. The most common ailment the animals suffer from–dehydration–is also indirectly, human-caused. Pinnipeds get their water from fish. Rising surface temperatures drive fish to the cooler depths. As the immature seals don’t know how to dive very deeply, they either can’t find fish, or depend on their mothers who must then go on deeper, and often longer hunts and don’t always return with food or return at all.

3. Anti-evolutionists often protest at the MMC. Even though they don’t believe in evolution, these activists express outrage that the Center “wastes” money to nurse sick and wounded animals back to health rather than “relying on natural selection.” I know, I know.

4. Some of the marine mammals that aren’t able to return to the wild, ” join” the Navy. The seals work for the military as search and rescue animals. They carry tools and identify foreign divers. Smart and cooperative, the slippery charmers are also highly social animals and rarely go AWOL. Porpoises however, are higher maintenance, and so often dubbed “The Lindsay Lohans” of the sea. The idea of drafting animals into military service makes me feel very weird.

5. Harbor seals, those spotted little darlings whose plush effigies populate aquarium gift shops everywhere, are actually really, really mean. Fur seals are also pretty cantankerous and are never returned to the ocean in popular swimming or surf spots, where they would likely bite people, but instead are transported about 40 miles out on the ocean before they’re set free.

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Day 98 10/1/13: 10,000 Walrus

by in Animal Welfare, Marine Conservation, Teaching and tagged , | Leave a comment

One of the many dire inevitabilities of the climate crisis, so the Walrus Refugeesexperts tell us, will be an increase in refugees–probably from the world’s poorest countries—which will be hardest hit by rising seas and soaring temperatures caused by the world’s most developed and prosperous nations.

But the refugee situation is already well underway. Consider the thousands of walrus that have come ashore in Alaska, no longer able to use the summer sea ice as a place to give birth or as a diving platform to hunt for food.

I feel guilty, ineffectual and ashamed to be human. But I am human. It’s inescapable.

So I try to justify my existence. I go round and round in circles. I show these pictures to students:

Look, look! (the urgency of the first grade primer)

Don’t be paralyzed, I say (although I feel paralyzed.)

Don’t give in to despair (even though I often give in to despair)

You can do something ( I believe this)

It’s not too late (part of me fears that it is)

The whole lecture is really some inner pep talk. As I warn them about graphic images, I can barely contain my own dread, even at the most familiar documentaries and exposes. As I rally students to change the world, I tell myself: At least don’t shut your eyes.  At the very least, keep going.

Day 93: 9/26/13: Befriend a Bull Shark

by in Animal Welfare, Environment, Marine Conservation, Shark Charities, Shark Conservation | Leave a comment

Bull shark populations have declined up to 90% from finning pressures. You can donate as little as $10 and get various perks: a shout-out on  Twitter or FB,

Bull shark

Bull shark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

a personalized certificate all the way up to an autographed vintage JAWS t-shirt.

Click here to adopt!

Day 88 9/21/13: Wetsuits, White Sharks, & Whiskey

by in Animal Welfare, Diving, Inner Turmoil, Memory and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The smell of wet neoprene has already joined the ranks of dusty hay, lilacs, and library bindings in my sense memory hall of fame. Evocative of pools–and soon the ocean. It’s been a week since I last used the wetsuit and it still isn’t dry. I suppose it doesn’t really matter since I am about to walk off the side of the boat into the ocean, but I find myself worrying about all sorts of things as I prepare to leave. My mouth feels slightly dry.  A byproduct of caffeine or Mild Terror?  I’ve packed ginger pills for nausea and a flannel sheet for the sheet-less bunk on board the boat which will sail from the quaint port of Oxnard, but I wish I had a little flask for whiskey.  Last week we read “Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor” in class and I’m not thinking of  sharks so much as the endlessness of the ocean, how border-less it is, how impossible it seems to me that people can actually create boundaries between national and international waters.

But I’d better can the poetry for now, and get on to more practical concerns like packing….and signing this petition to place covers on boat engines to protect great whites who follow cage diving boats in South Africa.