July
5, 2002
Russians seek more fish
The lower house of Russia’s
parliament wants a Soviet-era border agreement with the U.S. to be re-examined,
saying that it gives the Americans too much of the rich fishing areas in the
northern Bering Sea.
The State Duma voted 327-0
for a non-binding resolution, saying the U.S.-Soviet agreement dividing the
sea between Russia and Alaska is unbalanced and violates national interests.
The statement said Russian
fishing industries have lost about three million tonnes of fish worth more than
US$1.4 billion.
The Russian parliament
never ratified the deal, but the U.S. considers it legal and detains Russian
vessels that venture to fish in what the agreement says are U.S. waters.
The Duma urged the government
to determine its position about the agreement "in line with Russia’s
national interests." It also called for drafting legal proposals that would
"minimize the damage to Russia inflicted by the agreement."
Whaler dies after whale
flips boat
Yupik whalers watched in
horror last week as a harpooned whale surfaced beneath the canoe of a Little
Diomede man who was hunting gray whales near the International Date Line in
the Bering Sea.
Ronald Ozenna died from
injuries he sustained when a harpooned whale flipped the small boat he was in
and scattered hunters in the water.
"It happened so fast,
I don’t remember blinking," Orville Ahkinga Jr., a lifelong friend
of Ozenna’s who was hunting in a nearby boat told the Anchorage Daily News.
Diomede residents have
long hunted the gray whale, but they don’t like to, Ahkinga said. The animals
are smaller than bowheads, and are good eating, he said, but very aggressive.
They call them "devilfish."
After the accident, the
hunters abandoned the whale as they hurried to bring the injured whaler to shore.
TOP
July
5, 2002
Finnish fish labelled for
dioxin
Finnish fish products are
to be given a label that will show how much of the toxic chemical dioxin they
contain.
An ellipse-shaped symbol
on jars or cans of fish means the dioxin content does not exceed the maximum
limits set by the European Union. A rectangular symbol will indicate that the
dioxin level is higher.
The new rules kicked in
July 1.
The system was required
after Finland got special permission from the EU to use fish caught in the Baltic
Sea, whose dioxin content exceeds the maximum levels set by the EU.
Finland and Sweden have
been given special permission to exceed the maximum levels of dioxin in fish
sold in the two countries until the end of 2006.
Baltic herring and sprat
more than 17 centimetres long, as well as salmon caught in the Baltic Sea, will
bear the rectangular symbol for high dioxin content. Under the rules, these
fish can’t be exported to any other EU countries, except Sweden.
TOP
July
5, 2002
Japan reverses whaling stance
Japan says it will reverse
its opposition to subsistence bowhead whaling.
In May at the International
Whaling Commission’s annual meeting in Japan, Japan voted against quotas
for the bowhead whale hunt in Alaska and Chukotka.
The news from Japan was
well-received in Barrow, Alaska, where a nalukataq, or whale festival, was getting
under way. This traditional celebration is thrown jointly by three to five whaling
captains after one lands a bowhead.
"This is going to
be a special nalukataq," Edward Itta, vice-chairman of the Alaska Eskimo
Whaling Commission, told the Anchorage Daily News.
It has been a poor spring
whaling season, Itta said, and the nalukataq would be Barrow’s first of
2002.
"Quite a bit of damage
has been done," Itta said. "My fellow whalers, we still feel the hurt.
I never want to be put in the position again where we are used as pawns. This
is something we do not play around with. This is a key element to the survival
of our people."
TOP
July
5, 2002
Norway to sell whale meat
Norway plans to defy the
international ban on commercial whaling and sell whale meat to Iceland.
Norway will issue an export
license for 10 to 15 tonnes of minke whale meat.
In 1993, Norway started
commercial hunting of minke whales, ignoring the global moratorium. Last year,
the Norwegian government said it would export whale meat to pro-whaling countries,
including Japan and Iceland, for the first time since 1988.
Icelanders eat mostly fried
whale meat.
Iceland, which stopped
whaling in 1990, says whales are consuming its fish stocks. The Icelandic Marine
Research Institute recommends 250 minke whales and 100 fin whales be killed
every year, out of a stock of 70,000 animals.
But the International Whaling
Commission has vetoed Iceland’s requests for a system of regulated whale
hunts.
Norway, in defiance of
the IWC, has set its own quota of 674 minke whales for this season.
TOP
July
5, 2002
Polar bears pose new threat
A researcher at the Polar
Institute in Tromsø, Norway, predicts polar bears around the Svalbard
Islands off Norway’s Arctic coast will become more aggressive as the climate
warms.
Andrew Derocher of the
Polar Institute told the Norwegian newspaper Nordlys that it’s just a matter
of time before summer ice in the Svalbard area disappears as a result of global
warming.
This will make it more
difficult for polar bears to hunt for food, such as seals, he said. As a result,
the animals will be forced to find new hunting grounds and be more likely to
enter human settlements.
This spring, a man returning
to his cabin found that it had been taken over by a group of polar bears.
TOP
July
5, 2002
Siberia’s population
plummets
In the past 10 years, the
population of Chukotka has fallen by more than 60 per cent. The neighbouring
province of Magadan has lost more than half its inhabitants, and some 15 per
cent of residents have left the port city of Murmansk.
Altogether, at least a
million people have headed west from the Russian Far East. To save on the cost
of supporting communities in northern regions, at least 20 per cent of the population
has been evacuated.
Last year, a study of demographic
trends by the Russian Academy of Sciences found that Russia’s North and
the Far East had turned into "a consolidated zone of lost population."
Large tracts of central
and western Siberia have been losing population as a result of factory shut-downs,
collapsed collective farms, the closure of coal, diamond and gold mines, the
decline of military industries and the decay of the frontier bases in the former
heavily militarized Soviet republic.
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