Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A marine mammal whodunit

The federal fish cops are investigating the possible illegal killing of marine mammals near Skagway.

"Since January, the carcasses of two Steller sea lions and three harbor seals have been discovered," the National Marine Fisheries Service said in a press release issued yesterday.

"Of the five deceased mammals, four showed signs of head trauma, and a bullet was recovered from one harbor seal skull during a necropsy."

Read more here.
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9 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 7, 2011 at 5:19 PM

    omg, that is awful. hopefully they can spend several thousand dollars doing the balistics and finding this mass murderer of sea mammals.

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  2. AnonymousJune 7, 2011 at 11:50 PM

    Yea..Enforcement for "possible" murders of a few mammals is big news and elicits large response. A huge bycatch scandal taking place in Kodiak under the eyes of thousands of people goes unnoticed though. Guess they got to put those PHDs in marine mammal groping to use. Hopefully it was just some subsistence users.

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  3. AnonymousJune 9, 2011 at 11:03 AM

    Noone cares as long as their making money, Just like the mammal gropers. Go hang with the hippies on the tholepin blog.

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  4. AnonymousJune 10, 2011 at 8:04 AM

    Why the hell should you care? Yeah, I'd love my kids or maybe your kids to actually be able to fish the chiniak gut or out on albatross and catch something that commercially viable besides arrowtooth. But I guess if all that matters is money......

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  5. AnonymousJune 10, 2011 at 8:25 AM

    The difference is that shooting marine mammals is illegal (unless for subsistence) while catching bycatch is legal and authorized. I am not saying is it good, but it is allowed.

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  6. AnonymousJune 10, 2011 at 1:39 PM

    You are mentioned on page 65 of the Pailin papers (NYT website) thought you might like to knoW.

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  7. AnonymousJune 10, 2011 at 8:28 PM

    2^^
    The bycatch is underreported through the observed tows. Look at the bycatch data and you will see 1-3 tows for alot of the observed days on draggers. This allows them to get their coverage on low bycatch areas/times of day and then make subsequent trips with no coverage at all anywhere they want.

    While this is perfectly "legal" for them to do a witness will tell you the affects- A boat can get a 0% on it's bycatch and then go out the very next day and fish on areas of HORRENDOUS bycatch. Don't think it happens? Happens everyday.

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  8. AnonymousJune 13, 2011 at 8:39 AM

    What you are saying is well known and obvious, but bycatch has nothing to do with this story.

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  9. AnonymousJune 13, 2011 at 11:41 AM

    Sorry, wrong fisheries blog. Forgot this is the "happy" blog about mayday calls and other important stuff.

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