Ongoing Work
// Present Activities and Duties
Currently, and after my contract ended with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in June 2009, I stepped back to my Freelance Scientific Consulting status. But as before, after the IWC meeting there is a big gap that run through most of winter time and I can only start to work again around March or something.
Also, all my other activities; working at Fatum Surfboards factory, giving surf classes, working as a lifeguard all fall as well in winter so I needed to get my fingers on other pies in order to fill that gap, and be more productive throughout the year.
Fisheries seemed an obvious theme to grab onto, and with my lifetime experience of living by the oceans and around fishermen, that was a very fitting topic. Moreover, and after seeing the documentary End of the Line, it also was an urgent one, something I needed to look into.
So right now I’m looking at ways I can work on that issue, both on my community and also at the global level.
Furthermore, I’m trying to find something more solid to hold on to in terms of professional areas I can combine my knowledge and build something else out of it.
Additionally I am still part of the PEW Whales Network, coordinating on a joint effort with other people and entities work in Africa with lusophone countries (i.e. Sao Tome and Principe, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique).
During 2007/2008 I was leading the effort to take Sao Tome and Principe (STP) off the recruiting list of Japan to the IWC, mission that was accomplished, and STP was not present at the IWC meeting in Chile (June, 2008).
Besides this I represent the International League for the Protection of Cetaceans in Portugal and collaborate with Global Ocean upon request/suggestion.
Click on the categories below to see some of my work activities:
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)
Global Ocean
Greenpeace
PEW International Group
// My Whaling Story
The environment movement is loosing one of its most cherished causes: SAVE THE WHALE!
On a “coup d’état” Japan and its allies are undermining the entire work environmentalists and humanists have done for decades. This is a complex and intricate theme, with opposite opinions converging on a single regulatory body, the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
The IWC was created with the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) on 1946, by 15 countries on a desperate way to regulate whaling and manage the whale stocks, with many species at the break of extinction.
It wasn’t just working to secure the place of some of the biggest creatures to ever inhabit planet earth; in fact the greatest catches happened during the 60’s, already under the IWC mandate.
In terms of timeline my affair with whales (cetaceans generally) is quite new. I clearly remember when I decided cetaceans would be a part of my life; it was around 2001 while I was watching the BBC Blue Planet series, and David Attenborough was describing amazing things about the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). The biggest animal to ever inhabit planet earth, far bigger than the biggest dinosaur, its tongue weights as much as an elephant, it heart is the size of a small car, with vessels so big that you could swim down them, and a tail with the width of a small aircraft. Much is to be discovered about these amazing creatures, that is, if we manage to secure their place among us, and not making them part of the past with a few skeletons preserved at some fancy museum.
My understanding of the crisis surrounding whaling I guess started back in 2002 when I was working as a volunteer at the whaling museum in Madeira, and got interested on the subject. During 2003 I was at Leiden (Holland) for a meeting related with a photo-id software called Europhlukes, where I happened to stay at the same hotel as Dr. Jonathan Gordon (for years at the helm of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (FAW), Song of the Whale, research vessel) and Mr. Greg Donovan (Head of Science at the IWC). During breakfast we held pertinent discussions about projects and the IWC. My interest with the IWC and its affairs grew, even more after I met Dr. Sidney J. Holt during the IFAW Forum at Limerick (Ireland) during 2004. With his help I published an article related to Whaling and the IWC on a Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) publication named Whale and Dolphin Magazine, we were in the year 2005. Later that same year I travelled down to South America, and incredibly, at the same time I was reading the book by Kieran Mulvaney, “The whaling Season” I happened to meet Milko Schvartzman, Greenpeace (GP) Campaigner who was making an effort in collaboration with a local organization I had gotten involved in Uruguay, to bring it back to the IWC. That’s when I got involved with GP, my contact with Milko and GP prevailed even after I left South America to this day.
Whaling is fundamentally wrong, when it comes to ethics and moral principles. Currently, the pro-whaling world is controlled by a triad of countries (Japan, Norway and Iceland), who conduct their activities outside the control of international law. Because what these countries do is generally acclaimed by being wrong, done for money, with them seeking refuge on ornamental and highly unsubsidized junk-science arguments. It is also wrong because in the current context it jeopardizes the options of future human generations, THEIR decision of what to do in relation to whales. In 50 to 100 year, the Antarctic stocks will be back at their former enormous abundance, give whaling is stopped now and no major environmental disaster happens. Then a decision can be made on whether we should use that resource as food or keep the goodies of non-lethal use (i.e. whale-watching). We cannot make that decision now, what we have to do today is make sure we perverse these creatures. Japan also argues that whales are a threat to the world’s food security, complete nonsense since the problem with food is distribution, not production. As Sidney Holt pointed out at the Greenpeace Forum “Louder than Words”: “For some years there has been intense antagonism between some people who oppose whaling in principle and others who would tolerate it, while not necessarily liking it, if it was properly controlled, carried out sustainably, with all the necessary precautionary bells and whistles. It is those two groups that, I think, must work together, not in opposition on philosophical grounds, to bring commercial whaling to a stop, for at least fifty years. Then let our descendents decide what to do next. And stop the present cant about feeding the world. Japan began Antarctic whaling in the 1930s for one purpose only: to earn hard currency by selling baleen whale oil to Europe and using the proceeds to buy fuel oil from the US for its military machine.”
// The end of the Line?
The End of the Line is the title of a film by Rupert Murray, based on the book by Charles Clover. I was overwhelmed by what I saw. I knew the fisheries situation was bad but I didn’t image it to be this dire.
Soon after I started to dig more into this issue and learned about a platform of NGOs operating in Portugal named PESCA (meaning fisheries in Portuguese).
Portugal is a country of ocean going habitants, it is on our blood and history, the stories and lives that succeeded and perished by and for the ocean.
And living by one of the most important Portuguese fishing harbours I’m certainly aware of the importance of fish as a resource. However the solution is not a simple one. The people depending on the ocean are as important as the ocean inhabitants themselves, so what can we do to solve this?
The fleets need resizing, we need more Marine Protected Areas, more conscience and care. Fisheries (this is people and their families) cannot rely on subsidies and charity. They are hard workers, who put their lives on the line every time they sail out to sea. They need dignifying and effective solutions. We need to preserve our heritage, oceans and creatures that live on it, a holistic perspective in order to achieve a solution that really works.