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US Navy Detonates 40,000-Pound Bomb Off Florida Coast
In addition to concerns about harm to sea life, progressives said the money would be better spent on healthcare and other human needs.
Jun 23, 2021
Marine mammal experts this week expressed deep concern over the potentially devastating effects of the U.S. Navy's recent detonation of 40,000 pounds of explosives off the Atlantic coast of Florida on sea life, while progressive observers blasted what they called the government's misplaced spending priorities.
"Some smaller species of marine mammals would be expected to die within one to two kilometers of the blast, and... [others] would suffer injury including hearing loss out to 10 kilometers."
--Michael Jasny, NRDC
The Navy set off the massive blast--which registered as a magnitude 3.9 earthquake on shore--on June 18 about 100 miles off Palm Coast as the first in a series of full ship shock trials on the USS Gerald R. Ford, a $12.8 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier commissioned in 2017.
"The U.S. Navy conducts shock trials of new ship designs using live explosives to confirm that our warships can continue to meet demanding mission requirements under harsh conditions they might encounter in battle," the Navy explained in a press release.
The statement claimed the explosion occurred "within a narrow schedule that complies with environmental mitigation requirements, respecting known migration patterns of marine life in the test area."
The region is home to various marine mammal species including bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales, and North Atlantic right whales. While whales are not typically seen off the northern Florida coast in June, marine experts nevertheless expressed alarm over potential harm to mammals and other sea life.
"The Navy's own modeling indicates that some smaller species of marine mammals would be expected to die within one to two kilometers of the blast, and that some marine mammal species would suffer injury including hearing loss out to 10 kilometers of the blast," Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Marine Mammal Protection Project, toldThe Guardian. "That gives some sense of the power of the explosives we are talking about."
"A large whale might need to be within a few hundred meters of the blast to die, while a small mammal could be a couple of kilometers away," added Jasny, who said that even if the animals survive the blast, potential hearing loss still poses a grave risk to species which use that sense to locate food and their companions.
The U.S. Navy has previously come under fire for its use of undersea sonar, which can injure and kill marine mammals. In 2015, the Navy agreed to limit its use of underwater sonar and explosives in particularly sensitive areas for scores of vulnerable species.
While numerous observers worried about the effects of blast testing on marine life, others expressed concerns about misplaced government priorities, with the advocacy group Public Citizen tweeting that "94% of public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies." Some social media users responded to CBS News' tweet about the explosion lamenting that the United States still does not have universal healthcare.
Janet Weil, an activist with the peace group CodePink and the Portland, Oregon branch of Extinction Rebellion, called the text a "waste of tax dollars and resources."
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'Unprecedented' Decline of Plants and Animals as Global 'Red List' Reveals Nearly One-Third of Assessed Species Under Threat
"We must act now both on biodiversity loss and climate change."
Jul 18, 2019
Calling on global policymakers to act immediately to preserve biodiversity and save tens of thousands of species from extinction, the group behind the world's most definitive list of endangered animals and plants has added more than 2,600 threatened species to its annual report.
The Red List, published Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), revealed that one third of all species the group has assessed are now under threat due to overfishing, pollution, illegal logging and trafficking, threats to water sources and habitats due to the climate crisis, and other factors, including many human activities.
"This update clearly shows how much humans around the world are overexploiting wildlife."
--Dr. Grethel Aguilar, IUCNOf the approximately 9,000 species the IUCN assessed over the past year, the group determined about 2,600 to be endangered, critically endangered, or threatened, bringing the total number of vulnerable species to about 28,000 of the more than 100,000 that have now been studied.
"Nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history," said Jane Smart, global director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group. "Decisive action is needed at scale to halt this decline; the timing of this assessment is critical as governments are starting to negotiate a new global biodiversity framework for such action."
A quarter of all mammals are threatened with possible extinction, while 40 percent of the world's amphibians and a third of reefs and corals--which in addition to providing thousands of species with habitats, also protect humans' habitats by halting the erosion of coastlines--are now endangered.
On social media, climate action and conservation advocates decried the "bleak assessment" and wrote that the Red List only bolsters the case for taking immediate action to move toward sustainable energy sources and curb the climate crisis.
\u201cThe latest @IUCNRedList says one-third of all species are under threat. Also worrying is that not a single species was recorded as having improved in status. There is no time like NOW to take #ClimateAction and halt this unprecedented planetary loss. \n\nhttps://t.co/ymfnFwemz2\u201d— Inger Andersen (@Inger Andersen) 1563450024
\u201cBleak assessment of #RhinoRay extinction risk according to today's @IUCNRedList update; all 6 giant guitarfishes and 9 of 10 wedgefishes at "extremely high risk of #extinction". Photo: @ConservationOrg Abdy Hasan https://t.co/SQYkoeVWBM\u201d— Peter Kyne (@Peter Kyne) 1563455176
The updated Red List was released less than a year after the World Wildlife Federation revealed that 60 percent of all animal species have been wiped out since 1970 due to human activity.
Plummeting biodiversity observed by scientists has prompted the IUCN to call for the United Nations, at its biodiversity summit planned for next year in China, to move toward bold reforms aimed at curbing fossil fuel emissions which have contributed to the climate crisis and ending other human activities linked to the decline of thousands of species.
"Loss of species and climate change are the two great challenges facing humanity this century," Lee Hannah, a scientist with Conservation International, said. "The Red List addresses both, by letting us know the extinction risk faced by all species, including climate change, in that assessment. The results are clear, we must act now both on biodiversity loss and climate change."
"This update clearly shows how much humans around the world are overexploiting wildlife," said the IUCN's acting director, Dr. Grethel Aguilar.
Species newly listed as "critically endangered"--the category most disconcerting to scientists after regional extinction and extinction in the wild--include the bleeding toad, the Northern Muriqui, the angelshark, and the Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog.
The South Asian river dolphin and the tri-spine horseshoe crab were also added as "endangered."
A number of trees, including the formerly-common American elm tree, are now considered endangered. About 90 percent of forest trees native to Madagascar, whose wood is widely used and illegally trafficked around the world, are now threatened with extinction.
"The implications for people are that we lose valuable resources such as rosewoods and elms, and we also lose ecosystem resilience, undermining the essential ecosystem services that forests provide," said Paul Smith, secretary general of Botanic Gardens Conservation International. "It is imperative that we not only halt the loss of tree species diversity but that we restore habitats with a diverse range of tree species where these have already been degraded by human activities."
On the IUCN's assessment of more than 105,000 species around the world, no endangered or vulnerable animal or plant species was listed as having an improved outlook for its survival.
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Statement on Japan's Resumption of Commercial Whaling Within Japanese Territorial Waters
Sea Shepherd has been opposing whaling since the 1970s and remains committed to seeing an end to whaling in the world's oceans.
Jul 01, 2019
Despite a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, since 1987, Japan has continued to kill whales in the Southern Ocean as a member body of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the name of scientific research.
Sea Shepherd stands firm that Japan's whaling in Antarctica has always been a commercial operation permitted only by the International Whaling Commission under the guise of scientific research.
In 2014, Sea Shepherd's stance was vindicated when the Governments of Australia and New Zealand took the Government of Japan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Netherlands with the judgement deeming Japan's Southern Ocean whale hunt both non-scientific and illegal. The whale war in the Southern Ocean continued between Sea Shepherd and the Japanese whaling fleet until this year when Japan announced an end to their Antarctic whaling program.
Other nations such as Norway, Iceland and Denmark have left the IWC and continued their commercial hunts within their territorial waters. Sea Shepherd has always deemed these countries as pirate whaling nations that are breaking international laws and treaties put in place to safeguard our oceans for future generations.
Sea Shepherd considers Japan among these last remaining pirate whaling nations and regards their announcement to leave the IWC and openly call their continuation of whaling a commercial operation as an arrogant disregard to International Conservation Law.
CEO of Sea Shepherd Global Alex Cornelissen said, "We see the resumption of Japan's commercial whaling as merely a continuation of the Japanese Government's blatant disregard of international laws and treaties - a fight that we have been leading for over a decade. If they want to continue whaling, Sea Shepherd will continue to stand with the global community that wants to see an end to whaling."
Sea Shepherd Founder, Captain Paul Watson said, "Whaling in Japan is a dying industry that survives only by the politically motivated injection of massive government subsidies. We have driven the Japanese whalers from the Southern Hemisphere, and now their illegal slaughter continues in their own waters, second in numbers only to the unlawful killing of whales in Norwegian waters. This summer, we stopped the Icelanders from killing endangered Fin whales, and we will be actively opposing the massacre of pilot whales and dolphins in the Danish Faroe Islands.
"Our opposition to whaling is global and we will continue to pressure Japan and the other outlaw whaling nations until we achieve our ultimate goal - the complete and total global eradication of the merciless madness of whaling by anyone, everywhere for any reason."
"For decades we have been the most direct and effective whale defence movement on the planet and will continue to do so," said Sea Shepherd Australia Managing Director Jeff Hansen. "As shepherds of the sea, we remain focused and effective, especially with our recent campaigns to combat illegal fishing, where an estimated 333,000 whales and dolphins are killed in fishing gear each year.
"We will continue to look at innovative ways to stop whaling by Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Japan.
"For now we ask the people of Japan to join us in this global fight, calling on your Government to lay down their harpoons once and for all, for the critical role whales play in maintaining a thriving and healthy ocean for us all."
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