Jane Goodall on animal rights

Do you think that animals should have rights?

“I personally am never going to fight for rights 'per se'. (...) My approach is different. I'm fighting for human responsibility. 

So my job is to make people think of animals differently - as they really are. You can have a law - and we're surrounded by laws - but it's so often possible to get around them - they are continually being broken. So I want people to understand that animals really do have personalities and feelings - so that they want to obey laws that protect them.”

From:
www.theecologist.org

Photo by Michael Neugebauer: Jane Goodall with an orphan chimpanzee at the Tchimpounga Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo.

Bernd and Melany Würsig in Galaxidi

In these days Bernd and Melany Würsig are visiting the field station of Tethys in Galaxidi (Gulf of Corinth, Greece), spending a few days with researchers Silvia Bonizzoni and Giovanni Bearzi.

Bernd and Mel are good friends, long-time advisors and a bright example of commitment to cetacean science and conservation. They have done incredible work, and managed all that with much generosity, never taking themselves too seriously and always willing to share the fun.

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Bernd Würsig is regents professor at Texas A&M University, and chair of the Marine Biology Graduate Program. Melany Würsig is curriculum instruction specialist at Cloverleaf Elementary School in Houston, Texas. Bernd has been senior advisor to 65 graduate students since 1981, and authored or co-authored approximately 150 research papers and six books, including the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (2009, with Bill Perrin and Hans Thewissen). Bernd and Melany co-authored The Hawaiian Spinner Dolphin (1994, with Ken Norris and Randy Wells) and The Dusky Dolphin: Master Acrobat off Different Shores (2010).

In the good old days

One more video from the good old days, posted by Drasko Holcer.

It features Tethys researchers working with 'eco-volunteers' back in the mid 1990s.

(Italian narration)

If you are interested in attending ongoing research courses by Tethys in Italy and Greece, please check:
http://www.tethys.org/tri_courses/courses_index_e.htm

The legacy of Cousteau

Jennifer Jacquet attempts to explain why an ocean hero seems to be falling into oblivion.

Read the article about Jacques Cousteau at:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_man_on_the_edge/

Carl Safina on science and morality

Simply noticing and recording the disturbing trends of a degraded world is a virtue of science and all those practicing it. The process reveals a lot of information about the world around us. But information alone is not enough to mobilize action on the scale required to make that world a healthier and more desirable place for our children. A set of political relationships with this, that, or the other political party is not enough. Nor are relationships in the marketplace. Nor a broad appeal to beauty. In this video clip, the writer Carl Safina speaks about the kind of relationship he believes is required.

From:
http://www.beholdtheearth.com/blog/1104/carl-safina-matters-of-morality/

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

(...)

They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum
And then they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see them
Don't it always seem to go
You don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees, please
Don't it always seem to go
You don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

(...)

-- Big Yellow Taxi (1970)
Text and music by Joni Mitchell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgMEPk6fvpg

or if you prefer the Counting Crows version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTC6m-a3U9w

Four bottles from France

Chateau Billeron Bouquey, Domain du Grollet, Pineau des Charentes, VSOP Fine Champagne Cognac Reserve… the elegant names of four bottles received today by the Tethys staff in Galaxidi.

The exclusive gift was a wonderful idea by our French volunteer Gaelle, who participated in the 14th Ionian Dolphin Project team.

This post is our simple way of expressing our gratitude. A really special ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ (*) to you, Gaelle. We will think about you while enjoying these nectars!

Silvia and Joan

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(*) Thank you very much, in Greek

Susie in regalia

Tethys collaborator Zsuzsanna Pereszlényi received her MSc in Biology during an official cerimony at the University of Pécs, Hungary, after having also passed a most challenging State Exam.

Susie graduated with a thesis titled "Feeding behaviour of common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus in the Amvrakikos Gulf, Greece".

GB

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Photo: Susie in regalia at her MSc cerimony

Time to go on a global diet

My biggest concern is overfishing, which precedes all other human disturbances to marine ecosystems, including pollution, degradation of water quality, and anthropogenic climate change. But when we talk about overfishing, we are really talking about overeating. Almost all ocean fishing exists to feed humans or something we eat (such as farmed fish). Of all the flesh consumed - chicken, beef, pork, mutton, and seafood - the latter accounts for the greatest amount eaten globally. In fact, fish is one of the last wild foods most people eat with any regularity. The human appetite, a combination of population growth and demand for fish, is at the root of the global fisheries crisis. It’s time to go on a global diet.

Jennifer Jacquet

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From: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/seafood/testimonials

Asking questions

'Asking the questions at the right time is as important a contribution as giving the answers... and I would like to think so because I have been much better asking questions than giving answers.'

-- Walter Munk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je3QvqNdHl0
(at 25:57)

Brave new ocean

If you don't bother to read scientific papers about the present condition of our oceans, you can simply watch the impressive lecture given by Jeremy Jackson at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

"Brave new ocean"

SB

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Jeremy Jackson is a marine ecologist based at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. In 2003, Jackson and Daniel Pauly co-founded ‘The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project’ to help promote a wider understanding and use of the term in discussions of general conservation. Shifting Baselines is a sort of partnership between ocean conservation and Hollywood to help bring attention to the severity of ocean decline, to point out that the changes people saw in their 20th-century lifetimes were just small snapshots in a larger picture of environmental decline that has been accelerating for 200 years.

For more information:
http://www.aseachange.net

"Every ecosystem I studied is unrecognizably different from when I started. I have a son who is 30, and I used to take him snorkelling on the reefs in Jamaica to show him all the beautiful corals there. I have a daughter who is 17... I can't show her anything but heaps of seaweed."
-- Jeremy Jackson

A question to Bernd Würsig

Q: What do you enjoy most about your career?

A: Bright inquisitive promising students who care about nature and life, probably like you.


From http://www.marinebiology.edu/WursigQuestions.htm

Bernd Würsig is Regents Professor of Marine Mammalogy & Director of the Marine Mammal Research Program, Texas A&M University

Talented young scientists: Jennifer Jacquet

Born and raised in Ohio, a state without oceans, Jennifer spent her childhood pining over manatees in the pages of the WWF magazine for children. As an undergraduate, Jennifer volunteered with the conservation vigilante Sea Shepherd International and, aboard the Sirenian, helped patrol the Galapagos Marine Reserve for illegal shark poaching. She was also an intern for the Florida Marine Research Institute studying those pined-over gentle giants: the manatees (the body of Fred Flintstone, the grace of Fred Astaire).

Jennifer joined the Sea Around Us Project to work on catch reconstructions for small-scale fisheries in the developing world (e.g. seafood security) and some aspects of the seafood market in the developed world (e.g. seafood eco-marketing). She also runs the Shifting Baselines weblog.


The portrait above and a list of publications by Jennifer Jacquet can be found in the UBC Fisheries Centre web site.

I particularly like Jennifer's most recent work, an impressively documented overview of the marine fisheries crisis with a wink at The Talking Heads:
Jacquet, J. In press. Silent Water: A Brief Examination of the Marine Fisheries Crisis. Environment, Development, and Sustainability.

Another of her interesting articles questions eco-labelling and its presumed advantages - definitely worth reading:
Jacquet, J. L. and D. Pauly. 2007. The rise of consumer awareness campaigns in an era of collapsing fisheries. Marine Policy 31: 308-313.

Giovanni Bearzi

A day in the life

(written upon request for the Earthwatch Institute web site)

From March 2006 I settled in Greece where I am in charge of year-round research in the Amvrakikos Gulf. Together with Giovanni Bearzi, I lead the ‘Dolphins of Greece’ project supported by the Earthwatch Institute.

Before moving here, I had been working intermittently with the Tethys Research Institute in Greece since 1999. From the very beginning, I fell in love with the island of Kalamos, its surroundings and the kindness of local people. In those crystal-clear waters I made my first dolphin sighting.

When Tethys offered me the opportunity of taking care of a new project in the Amvrakikos Gulf and settle in the beautiful village of Vonitsa, it just felt like the right thing to do. Obviously, it wasn’t easy to leave behind family, friends and my hometown (the gorgeous Barcelona), but I guess it was part of the challenge. After over two years of living in Greece the decision has proven to be good.

The semi-closed Amvrakikos Gulf has a high density of bottlenose dolphins and its calm waters make it an ideal place to the study these animals. However, the Gulf is becoming increasingly eutrophic and polluted as a result of human pressure. Management priority should be given to curtailing eutrophication and pollution and incrasing water exchange with the open Sea - that has been reduced by port construction and other infrastructure.

My life in Vonitsa changes a lot depending on whether we have volunteers participating in our field courses or not. As dolphin research must be conducted year-round with consistent methods, my main task while volunteers are at the field base is to ensure that field work and data collection are done properly. I must keep up with their expectations and do my best to convey a conservation message and involve them in everything we do. To accomplish this task, the help of one or two research assistants is crucial. My assistants devote much time to looking after the volunteers’ needs and they supervise their work at the field base, after 4-5 hours of intensive work at sea.

While the volunteers are here, one of the things I enjoy the most are our conversations over dinner. We normally talk about the day’s events. That dolphin bow-riding who stared at us while gracefully gliding below our boat. The feeding frenzy of a flock of seagulls taking advantage of dolphins schooling fish to the surface. A couple of male loggerhead sea turtles ‘wrestling’ a few meters away from us... Living with people with different backgrounds, sharing their thoughts, emotions and worries towards the future of our planet is mostly a pleasant experience.

When I am alone or with research assistants (usually marine biology students) we carry on with our survey effort and data collection, but I can afford to devote more time to other aspects of the project. This includes organising educational and public awareness activities at local schools or working with local fishermen to investigate interactions between dolphins and fisheries.

In the winter, one of the things I enjoy the most is walking early in the morning along the seaside, in the good company of my dog Posi, looking at the mountains on the opposite side of the Gulf with their hills covered by snow and the flocks of sea birds flying around the small wooden boats of local fishermen while they are hauling their nets. And, of course, I enjoy being at sea in the company of dolphins. It is then that being here makes perfect sense.

Joan Gonzalvo