Scubaism

President Rafael Correa said Saturday he has ordered a U.S. environmental activist deported from Ecuador for allegedly violating national sovereignty by taking part in a police seizure of two tons of shark fins apparently illegally fished.

Sean O’Hearn, a representative of the environmental group Sea Shepherd, was detained before dawn in the capital of Quito.

“I am having (him) expelled from the country because I am not going to allow any foreigner to come here to tell us what to do,” Correa said on his Saturday morning radio show.

“I have an Ecuadorean wife and Ecuadorean daughter,” O’Hearn told The Associated Press at the immigration center where he was being held. “This is my country, and for me to treated this way, from night to day to be deported … without being able to defend myself, I am indignant and my wife feels indignation as an Ecuadorean.”

“He has committed no crime,” said Mariana Almeida, president of the environmental group Fundacion Selva Vida. “He has had the courage to defend sharks.”

A report by immigration authorities said O’Hearn infringed on Ecuadorean sovereignty by “participating in searches for Ecuadorean citizens,” resulting in the revocation of his visa.

On Tuesday, police seized hundreds of shark fins apparently caught illegally in the days before a widely criticized presidential decree allowing the sale of fins if the sharks — some of them threatened species — are caught accidentally.

O’Hearn said he participated in the raid as a representative of Sea Shepherd, which he said signed an agreement with police to enforce environmental controls.

O’Hearn, 33, has lived in Ecuador since 2006. The Sea Shepherd Foundation donated a boat to the government to conduct sea patrols to protect against illegal fishing of endangered species.

His lawyer, Gina Solis, said the government is violating procedures by speeding up his deportation. “The only thing he did was help police combat crime, because two tons (of fins) are not accidental fishing,” she said.

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“In Texas, anyone with a $50 dollar non-game permit can take as many (turtles) as they want,” said Avriett, who chairs the Piney Woods group of the Sierra Club.

Global turtle populations are at risk, but conservationists said the problem is growing acute in Texas where there are no limits on the collection of unprotected varieties.

An average of 94,442 turtles per year are taken by dealers, mostly for export from the state, according to figures from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD).

Data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request showed more than 267,000 wild turtles were exported to Hong Kong from Dallas from 2002 to 2005, said Chris Jones, an environmental attorney who has lobbied for turtle protections.

Although there are no state-wide statistics showing declines in Texas turtle population, Jones said abundant anecdotal evidence exists. For example in one section of the Rio Grande river that had been a trap site, an adult turtle has not been seen in 10 years.

“They are taking them so fast the scientists can’t study them,” Jones said.

Now some varieties including the Texas river cooter could have some protection because the TPWD commissioners on May 24 approved a measure to prohibit the collection of wild turtles on public land.

But under that regulation, which is not yet on the books as law, collectors may harvest three varieties of turtles on private land; the red-eared slider, the common snapping turtle and five types of soft-shell turtles.

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At least two Seattle-based factory trawlers loaded fish products from their Bering Sea harvest to a Korean tramp steamer that is on an international blacklist because of its past involvement in illegal fishing activities, according Pete Gray, president of the Alaska Marine Pilots in Dutch Harbor.

The factory trawlers Ocean Peace and Seafisher transferred seafood to the M/V Seedleaf, a refrigerated tramp steamer, Gray said. “The Seedleaf has been, for the past 10 days, in Adak loading cargo from the trawlers mentioned,” Gray said July 11.

The activity is the second time this year in which cargo vessels under international sanctions related to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities, referred to as IUU, have called at Dutch Harbor ports and been used by participants in Alaska fisheries.

The Seedleaf was blacklisted by the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for undocumented transport of fisheries resources in the Great Southern Ocean in February 2003.

Although the U.S. was one of the founding members of CCAMLR in 1982, the Seedleaf’s activities in U.S. waters do not violate the country’s formal obligation under the treaty because no current federal law makes it illegal.

“The U.S. is not in violation because under CCAMLR the implementation is subject to the laws and jurisdictions of an individual state. The U.S. is in the process now of determining how best to implement these conservation measures related to IUU vessels. We want very much to develop rules that will work to address this issue. We’re not there yet,” Monica Allen, press officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said July 17.

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Ecuador’s president overturned a ban on the sale of shark fins, which are popular in Asia, but stipulated they can only be sold if the sharks are caught by fishermen accidentally.

In a presidential decree Friday, Rafael Correa said the legalization of the sale of shark fins would help generate income for fishermen and added that shark fishing would remain illegal.

However, he did not say how authorities would determine if the shark had been caught accidentally or on purpose.

The 2004 ban had the “good intention of protecting sharks, but with absurd methods,” a presidential statement said. During the ban, the sale of shark fins was punishable by up to two years in prison.

Critics said the new measure will lead to increase shark catches.

Former Environment Minister Edgar Isch called it “a way to more easily evade any type of control” aimed at preserving species.

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A Miami man will forfeit his boat and spend 10 months in jail for illegally harvesting brilliantly colorful corallimorphs, prized for saltwater aquariums, from the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Alexandre Alvarenga, 40, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan, who accepted his guilty plea for illegally taking 900 living specimens of Ricordea florida so that he could sell them.

The investigation began in November 2006 when two Germans were caught at Miami International Airport with 500 specimens. They told investigators they were planning to sell them in the Dusseldorf aquarium trade.

Chiseling the rocks in chunks, and disturbing the protected coral, is illegal. The bigger chunks enable them to be sold in clumps, which are more lucrative than individual ones.

A single Ricordea polyp of gold or orange sells on the Web for $12 or more.

The Germans told investigators they had helped Alvarenga harvest the protected marine creatures from his 1969 fiberglass-hulled Morgan boat in the waters east of Cudjoe Key.

Investigators planted a Global Positioning System on Alvarenga’s boat to track it during the next two months. On Jan. 25, he was arrested at Cudjoe Key Marina with a load of 400 specimens of the Ricordea florida from sanctuary waters.

The specimens seized from Alvarenga have been kept alive at the Mote Marine Laboratory on Summerland Key. The sanctuary plans to restore them to their natural habitat and repair the damage caused by chiseling them from the seabed. The cost will exceed $78,000.

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So why is the sea mafia scraping the bottom of Gulf of Mannar — India’s only Marine National Park? Sea cucumbers or holothurians (kadal attai in Tamil), slugs found on the sea bed along coral reefs, are in great demand in countries like China, Japan and Malaysia where they are prized as aphrodisiacs and for their medicinal value. Despite the fact that India has banned commercial exploitation of the slug — Amendment (2002) of Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 — illegal exports continue due to the high price ($110 for a kg) it commands in the international market.

The costliest available sea cucumbers in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay are Holothuria scabra (sand fish or vella (white) attai in Tamil). There are also the Holothuria atra (lolly fish or karuppu (black) attai) and the Stichopus hermanni (warty sea cucumber or pavaikya (bitter gourd) attai). The fishermen sell each cucumber for Rs 10 to Rs 100, depending on the species and size, to processing agents who number around 500. After processing, Beche-de-Mer is sold to traders. A 20 count per kg of scabra fetches an agent Rs 3,000-3,500, 40 counts per kg Rs 1,000-1,500 and for anything above 40 counts, price is negotiable. Traders, of course, get a much higher rate in the international market.

So lucrative is the trade that the Tatas recently purchased a hatchery in Lakshadweep’s Agathi Island, with government sanction, to culture and export sea cucumber.

But it is the clandestine trade — with alleged LTTE links — that’s reaching alarming proportions. Labelled ‘dried fish’, sea cucumbers are packed in containers and sent through returning Lankan refugee boats from Rameswaram or smuggled via Tuticorin coast. Though India was the first to ban sea cucumber fishing in the region, neighbouring Sri Lanka and Mauritius have no such ban. “Boats bringing refugees from Sri Lanka return with the ‘attai’. Single motor boats carry about two tons while double engine boats can carry as much as five-six tons. From Lanka, the haul is taken to Singapore which is the wholesale market. The peak season is December to March,” said a fisherman in Mandapam, one of the processing centres.

On July 10, there was a seizure in Rameswaram and about 100 kg sea cucumbers were seized. Three persons were caught but the group leader got away.

Beche-de-Mer is a cottage industry comprising fishermen, processors (middlemen/agents) and traders (mafia). There have even been instances of officials being assaulted while trying to prevent fishing and export of sea cucumber.

“When it comes to their trade, they will stop at nothing,” says V Naganathan, eco-development officer of the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve Trust (GOMBRT) whose efforts to check smuggling resulted in the conviction of kingpin Villayutham (known as Villa) last October. But Villa managed to get bail and today, his territory reportedly extends from Rameswaram to Periyapattinam.

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Recreation providers in California may be held liable for gross negligence regardless of the wording on liability waivers signed by participants or their parents, the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Monday.

The state high court decision permits the parents of a developmentally disabled girl who drowned at a summer camp run by the city of Santa Barbara to sue even though her mother had signed an agreement assuming “full responsibility for risk of bodily injury, death or property damage.”

California’s recreation and sports industry had strongly urged the court to reject liability, warning that it could be the death knell for camps, fitness centers, hiking clubs and other providers of physical activity.

But Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote the majority opinion, said there was no evidence that states with even more liberal rights to sue have lost recreational opportunities.

Ordinary negligence is the failure to provide care that any reasonable person would know was required. Gross negligence is defined as “want of even scant care” or “an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of conduct.”

Even though people now can sue only for gross negligence, juries tend to assume that any accident that results in a serious injury or death must have involved gross negligence, said Andrea J. Saltzman, who represented Santa Barbara in the case.

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Policehave arrested a man as he was planning to sell more than a tonne of illegal puffer fish, which contain a potent toxin that can kill unsuspecting dinners.

Yongyuth Ngaenvisai, 25, was arrested Monday as he drove a pickup truck containing 1,200 kilogrammes of the fish, also known as globefish or blowfish, to sell at a wholesale market in Samut Songkhram province southwest of Bangkok.

Police Lt Visut Vanijbut said the fish were to be sold to restaurants and made into fish balls, Visut said.

“It’s particularly dangerous since people would not know they were eating globefish, because it would be made into fish balls or ground into noodle soup,” he said.

The sale of the fish has been banned in Thailand since 2002, after six Thais who ate it died. If convicted, Yongyuth faces six months to two years in prison for illegal possession and distribution of puffer fish, Visut said.

The ovaries, liver and intestines of the puffer fish contain tetrodotoxin, a poison so potent that the US Food and Drug Administration says it can “produce rapid and violent death.”

The fish is called fugu in Japan, where it is consumed by thrill-seeking Japanese gourmets for whom the risk of poisoning adds piquancy.

Every year, there are a reports of people dying or falling sick in Asia from eating puffer fish. Eating the fish can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death.

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This story got lost in the news wire after the recent airport disaster in Brazil. The video of the dolphin incident is not available on the internet.

A crew of Brazilian fishermen was captured on video killing 83 dolphins and joking about their illegal haul, Brazil’s Ibama environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

The video obtained by an Ibama researcher and broadcast by Globo TV showed the fishermen netting the dolphins, which suffocated because they could not surface to breathe.

The dead dolphins were then hauled from the sea and piled on the boat’s deck. Fishermen on board are seen laughing after someone said, “Everyone’s going to jail after this filming!”

International dolphin advocates who saw the video said they were appalled and Ibama announced it will try to impose fishing restrictions along parts of Brazil’s coast where dolphins are common.

The researcher had been contracted by the agency to monitor catches of other fish in the area where the dolphin kill took place off the coast of Amapa state, near where the Amazon River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

No one has been charged or fined because authorities were still trying to identify the fishermen on video, Ibama said in a statement. The agency said the video was not available to be copied by other media because it was being transported to Brasilia for the investigation.

After they are identified, “they will suffer the appropriate sanctions,” Ibama said. Killing dolphins is punishable by up to 1 1/2 years in prison in Brazil. Ibama is working to ban fishing in all areas along Brazil’s coast where dolphins flock, the statement said.

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Two bags containing scuba diving equipment worth £3,000 have been stolen from a garage in Winyates, UK.

Thieves broke into the garage of a house in Blakemere Close, between 5am on Saturday, June 30 and 10.30pm on Monday, July 2.

The wheeled bags contained two sets of dry and wet suits, regulators, fins, masks, boots, gloves and vests.

Now there’s a good reason to unpack your gear as soon as you get home. Otherwise it would be too easy for burglars to just cart off all your gear when they’re packed nicely.

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