August
9, 2002
Whale meat hits Japanese
market
Nearly 2,000 tons of whale meat went on sale across Japan last week.
Sales, expected to reach $32 million, will go toward financing more whale hunts,
which Japan calls "research" whaling.
The meat comes from 440 minke whales killed in the Antarctic during the hunting
season that ended in March.
Japan stopped commercial whaling in 1986 after the International Whaling Commission
imposed a moratorium on the hunt, but began its research whaling the following
year.
Most of the meat ends up on store shelves and restaurant tables.
Whale meat sells for US$22 a kilogram. About 270 tons of the 1,929 tons of
whale meat will be made available for local use in Japan to keep alive the whale-eating
tradition among young people more used to Western food.
Some 1,000 tons of whale parts, such as internal organs and skin, will be sold
for canning or other processing.
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August
9, 2002
Penguin wanders into Alaskan
waters
A group of Alaskan fishermen pulled a penguin onto their salmon boat last month,
while fishing off the southeast coast of Alaska.
"My nephew saw this odd-looking bird swimming around and asked what it
was," Guy Demmert told the Anchorage Daily News.
"I didn't know. The first thing that came to mind was the unusual sea
life we get coming in off the [ocean] currents, so I didn't pay that much attention
to it."
Nothing prepared him for the sight of a little black-and-white penguin standing
among the salmon and jellyfish on deck after they emptied the net.
"He popped up and just stood there. We were kind of in shock," Demmert
said. "It looked real healthy. Nice and plump, kind of like a seal, like
he was eating really good. He didn't look like he suffered any kind of damage
from the net."
The bird, released after Demmert shot a few photos, has since been identified
as a Humboldt penguin. These birds usually live on the coast of Chile and Peru.
In South America, penguin populations have fallen steadily in the past century
as humans have destroyed their nesting islands
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