SRI Special Report and Campaign

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Politics as usual with hope thrown under the bus...

"Allowing Japan to Continue Commercial Whaling is Unacceptable" -- Barack Obama, March 16, 2008

This campaign's subtitle reflects back to Barack Obama's own promise: "As president, I will ensure that the U.S. provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling. Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable." -- then-Senator Barack Obama.

President Obama is now drastically veering away from this campaign pledge. During March, a proposal was plotted out at an intersessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that would reinstate commercial whaling if passed at the next IWC meeting this June.Incredibly, the Obama administration is giving the proposal its full support and urging other nations to follow.

This US appeasement to Japan's ambitions to resume commercial whaling is based on Japanese leverage over our debt obligations, and an ecologically reckless gesture to satisfy whaling quotas for the Inuits in Alaska.

First the CITES travesty and now this...the US leading the charge to overturn one of the greatest achievements in environmental protection history...the ban on commerical whaling. Download the Shark Research Institute report and learn what you can do to make your voice heard before it's too late...if it isn't already.

http://www.sharks.org/pdfs/SRI-Special Report-Whaling-Campaign.pdf

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Nice op-ed from LA Times...reprinted on Huffington Post about this upcoming tragedy. My favorite line was this: "..legalizing whaling in order to eliminate it makes as little sense as allowing criminal activity in order to eliminate crime."

Joel Reynolds: It's No Way to Save the Whales

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Greenpeace FB Campaign: OBAMA..Save whales, not whaling.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=382905943175

Times UK

Norway welcomes lifting the ban on commercial whaling.

Global Whale Alliance

The Petition Site has 13,348 signatures so far. Please add yours.

The members of the IWC will decide whether or not to lift the ban on commerical whaling at its next annual meeting in Agadair, Morocco, June 21st - 25th.

 

[mantagirl]

Thank you Marie for all you do at SRI, it is a constant uphill battle with not enough thanks. We are thrilled to have you blogging with us on our new upcoming site and hopefully together we can keep spreading the word and gaining support for ocean animals worldwide.

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Hi Mantagirl. Was this a general props to Marie Levine? Where is your new blog to be found? Be great to read anything she writes.

 

[mantagirl]

Marie is great and she works so hard for SRI. My new blog is not up quite yet but it will be at Hostmonster I am hoping to launch it at the Long Beach show on the 15th. It will be 6 blogs on everything dive travel and be a resource site, nothing commercial. We will have one blog specifically for our friends the sharks including shark diving and conservation. Marie will write one post a month for that blog.

Other blogs will be on travel destinations, travel planning tips, conservation, travel health and medicine, and travel gear and gadgets.

How are things in Galapagos? Talk about a place we need to keep protecting the sharks...what a wonderland!

 

[mantagirl]

by the way, my photo here was taken at Darwin!