I was born in 1953. The Earth's population stood at about 3 billion humans. As all people are, I was still rather new on the planet for my first three decades here, still learning the ropes. When I was 18, in April, 1970, a new group of humans called "environmentalists" held the first Earth Day celebration. At the age of 35, in 1988, I started to notice that things were going horribly wrong here on our lovely blue-green planet. I started learning about what was going on, started looking at human behaviors and trends. Over the next 25 years, I left no stone unturned.
Fast forward to 2013. I am now 60 years old, and there are more than 7 billion humans on the planet. Those disturbing trends I started following in the late 1980s got more and more pronounced as time went on. Now they seem unstoppable and the eventual end is in sight.
7,080,430,265 (estimate) is a large number. Every single one of those humans needs to eke out a living. There's only one Earth on which they can do so. Busy, busy, busy. Some earnest, well-meaning people have decided that the human footprint is much larger than this one planet can support. They believe that (as of 2007) humans required at least 1.5 Earths to support them all.
I have spent much of the last 3 years (since January, 2010) documenting and explaining the root causes of the human destruction of Earth's biosphere, specifically, the destruction of marine ecosystems, the changing of our once benign Holocene climate, and the killing off of various species, both large and small, both animals and plants.
It was all I could do. I mean, I could have planted some trees, but that seemed pointless because some rapacious land developer could just as easily bought the land where those trees grew, and bulldozed them into oblivion to build condos or something. Those developers want to make a buck! Doesn't everybody? Planting trees seemed pointless until such time as the bulldozers were silenced. They have not been silenced, nor will they ever be silenced until everything else has been silenced too.
And now today is April 22, 2013—it is Earth Day.
Instead of planting trees, I've reported on stories like Dolphin Hunting in Pangani Worries Tourism Stakeholders (AllAfrica.com, April 14, 2013).
Hunting of dolphins has become a problem and conservation activists want authorities to put a stop to the malpractice which has become rampant in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions [in Tanzania, west Africa].
Sibylle Riedmiller who is Secretary of the Tanga Tourism Network Association (TATONA) is quoted to have written in a correspondence that "We received reports of dolphins being hunted in Tanga Coelacanth Marine Park off Kigombe."
Ms Riedmiller pointed out that although dolphins are protected by law, guests visiting the Marine Park, the first of its kind in the country, witness fishermen catching dolphins and some destined for fish markets in Dar es Salaam.
"While it is certainly distressing for guests to witness this, we were not sure whether dolphins are actually protected," she noted. Riedmiller pointed out that among local fishermen, ignorance is widespread on protection of dolphins by law, hence, the need for sensitisation.
"Awareness is definitely lacking, it may be a good idea to write about dolphins, their importance for the marine ecosystem and their immense value for the tourism industry and their protection status at least in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar," the TATONA Secretary noted.
World Wildlife Fund for Nature advisor, Jason Rubens, said dolphins have been protected by Tanzanian Fisheries Regulations since 2009.
Mr Rubens wrote in a message to Reidmiller that WWF has included dolphins as one of the species to be protected when the Fisheries (Amendment) Regulations, 2009 were made.
"The list of 38 species I put together in the regulations includes spinner dolphin, grey dolphin, spotted dolphin and bottle nosed dolphins.
It's very likely the species mentioned at Kigombe would be one of those as these cover the species known commonly to occur in Tanzania near-shore waters," Rubens noted.
He said dolphins are now being actively targeted by dynamite fishermen in Dar es Salaam because their flesh makes a very good bait for sharks, the ultimate driver being the shark fin trade.
Modest Kiwia who is a Warden-in-charge at Tanga Coelacanth Marine Park, is urging stakeholders to report such incidents to authorities whenever they observe them.
I wrote about shark finning in Shark Finning — The Carnage Continues (Jan 4, 2013) and again in The Fate Of The Earth's Largest Animals (March 4, 2013). I wrote about shark extinctions in Humans Jump The Shark (November 10, 2012). I don't remember writing about using dolphin meat as shark bait, so that's new today. There you go.
As I said, when I was born in 1953, there were around 3 billion humans on the Earth. Now there are more than 7 billion. All those humans need to make a living. Tanzania can protect dolphins to promote tourism all day long—the dolphins are more valuable alive—but those Tanzanians who aren't in the tourist trade still have to make a living. And they are in luck!
The Chinese crave shark fin soup. There are lots of newly wealthy Chinese who want this soup! The fishermen of Tanzania have a chance to make a few bucks by killing some dolphins, luring in some sharks with dolphin meat, dynamiting the sharks, finning them, throwing the carcasses back into the ocean, and sending those fins on to Dar es Salaam. Refrigerated, they are shipped to China from there and finally end up in somebody's shark fin soup.
There it is.
You don't have to be rocket scientist to see what's going on here.
Busy, busy, busy.
It's Earth Day (Not!)
Essentially, that's our problem in a nutshell: We all need to make a living. It's that simple.
Add to that the facts that humans are ignorant, selfish, short-sighted, corruptible and naturally optimistic and you have an intractable problem.
It's so simple that even an economist could not fail to see what needs to be done.
Posted by: Clyde | 04/22/2013 at 11:01 AM