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September
17, 2004
Greenland catching
too many narwhals
Greenland is hunting far
more narwhals than recommended by the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Organization,
and, as a result, has been slapped with a temporary ban on commercial exports
of narwhals to the European Union market.
The new rules also prohibit
Greenland from exporting jewelry made from narwhal teeth.
The Danish Forest and Nature
Council imposed the temporary ban, after the Netherlands filed a formal complaint
with the EU Commission on Greenland's hunting and trapping activities.
Dutch representatives have
questioned whether Greenland's narwhal trapping activities are sustainable,
as the island's current catch far exceeds the recommendations of NAMMCO.
Home Rule Government spokesman
Niels Nielsen said Greenland must now provide evidence that its narwhal hunting
activities are sustainable.
Earlier this summer, Greenland
adopted a catch quota of 300 narwhals per year, a significant reduction over
last year's catch of 700 animals, but NAMMCO has recommended that Greenland
limit their yearly catch to 135.
So far this year, the number
of narwhals caught is already higher than the recommended limit.
September
17, 2004
Boost gay rights in
Iceland, says report
The rights of homosexuals
should be expanded in Iceland, according to a commission report released last
week.
David Oddsson, Iceland's
prime minister, set up the commission on gay rights last year. The commission
recommends same-sex couples living together should receive the same rights as
heterosexual couples. The commission also says same-sex couples should be allowed
to adopt children.
Currently, same-sex couples
in Iceland can only adopt stepchildren.
The commission is also
asking the national Lutheran church in Iceland to change its policy and allow
for marriage between same-sex couples.
September
17, 2004
Royal Greenland to
seek foreign labour
Seafood giant Royal Greenland
may import workers from Eastern Europe to end a manpower shortage at its western
Greenlandic halibut factory in Ilulissat.
Greenland's largest corporation,
government-run Royal Greenland, has had problems recruiting and retaining qualified
local workers, according to the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq.
High absentee rates among
workers and a shortage of qualified manpower were cited as reasons for the company's
decision to recruit workers from Eastern Europe.
This summer the halibut-processing
factory has been forced to operate with a skeleton crew. The plant has a daily
intake capacity for 50 tonnes of fish, but processed just 25 tonnes a day during
the summer.
Royal Greenland was forced
to reroute fish to other cities or freeze the fish for later processing.
September
17, 2004
Meteor crater cozy
nest for life on Earth
Nunavut's Haughton Crater,
an asteroid impact crater on Devon Island, is revealing information about how
life arose on Earth, report researchers from the British Antarctic Survey.
Charles Cockell and his
colleagues began gathering rocks in 1998 from the enormous crater caused by
an asteroid 23 million years ago.
Now, an analysis of these
rocks shows that when the asteroid hit, it left a surface riddled with holes
where a warm environment would have lasted for about 10,000 years.
"So, you've got water,
organics and heat all in the same place, which is good for the evolution of
life on earth," Cockell said in the New Scientist.
Similar meteor craters
may be also among the best places to search for life on Mars, the crater study
suggests.
September
10, 2004
Arctic waters off Russia under threat
Overfishing, pollution from industry and the legacy of the Cold War all threaten the future of the Barents Sea, says a report released last week by the United Nations Environment Programme.
A UNEP report says the overexploitation of fish stocks is “the most alarming problem for the region at present.”
Other threats include the storage of radioactive waste, and the introduction of foreign species, such as Kamchatka crabs, into the marine environment.
The report says the Barents Sea, which lies north of Norway and Russia in the Arctic Ocean, is much cleaner than other European bodies of water.
But the development of the huge oil and gas deposits on Russia’s Arctic shelf will increase oil transport and up the risk of accidental oil spills.
The report suggests ways to cut the risk of possible emergencies, including safety plans to prevent accidental oil spills.
The region around the Russian port of Murmansk houses more radioactive waste than anywhere else in the world.
September 10, 2004
Ice cores point to rapid climate change
Scientists drilling ice cores in Greenland have recovered what appear to be plant remains from nearly 3 km below the surface of the ice.
Team members said reddish clumps of material, found in the muddy ice in the cores, contain what look like pine needles or blades of grass.
These finds could be the first organic material to be recovered from a deep ice core drilling project. Scientists think the material could be many millions of years old.
The plant material was recovered between the ice sheet and the bedrock at a drilling site in central Greenland, by a team with the North Greenland Ice Core Project.
The presence of plant material suggest the Greenland ice sheet formed very fast.
Meanwhile, 200 researchers left Norway this week for the North Pole to study the geological history of the Arctic Ocean and shed light on climate change.
Organized by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, the Arctic Coring Expedition is the first attempt to bore through the Arctic Ocean bed.
By examining sediment recovered from beneath the sea floor, scientists hope to see why the climate changed from greenhouse to ice-age conditions.
Drilling will be concentrated on the Lomonosov Ridge, an area 250 kilometres from the North Pole.
The sedimentary rock on the underwater Lomonosov Ridge was created by the shells of tiny plankton. By analyzing the chemical makeup of the fossils, scientists can see what the temperature was like at the time.
“What we are learning from other drilling sites is that there have been rapid changes in climate in the past,” said Professor Kate Moran of the University of Rhode Island. “We are going to be able to understand how rapidly these changes occur. If we understand that, we can begin to understand how it could be used to help policy-makers decide what to do.”
September 10, 2004
Giant tropical fish lands in Iceland
A massive mola mola, or oceanic sunfish, was caught near Reykjavik, Iceland last weekend.
This mola mola, which belongs to the largest species of bony fish in the world, weighed in at two tons. The mola mola is usually found in warm waters.
The fish was dying before fishermen pulled it from the sea.
The Oceanic Sunfish is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world, despite the fact that its meat is known to contain neurotoxins that can cause paralysis or death.
September 3, 2004
Norway wraps up whaling season
SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE
On Aug. 31, the Norwegian whaling season ends, although whalers stored away their harpoons several weeks ago after landing only 543 minke whales out of a quota of 670.
Norway is the only country in the world to permit commercial whaling and officials want even higher quotas.
“We wish to increase the quota of catches to levels that remain sustainable,” Jorhill Andreassen from the Norwegian fisheries department said in May, following a vote by Norwegian members of parliament calling for an increase in whaling.
The quota may rise to 745 next year, a number the government says is acceptable to the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee.
September 3, 2004
Russian city dumps raw sewage into Arctic sea
SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE
More than 200,000 tons of waste water are discharged into the Kola Bay in Murmansk every year. The waste is discharged directly into the water.
Murmansk, a city of nearly 400,000 has no waste water treatment plant.
This year the region’s authorities budgeted four million rubles to build a waste treatment facility, but this won’t be enough to complete the new plant’s construction.
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