10/23/2006

Iceland Breaks Whale-Hunt Ban, Kills Fin Whale

Breaking news of today showed how a nation can be ridiculous enough to say that whales are no longer in danger of extinction and managed to convinced itself that it can start to hunt it for "studies". I am seriously convinced to advocate people whom I know to not visit the country and boycott their products.

10/12/2006

Weddings = Sharks fins?

Our friends from Deep Blue Scuba recently sent this to their members. I think what they are doing is fantastic, as we all should, to have some responsibility towards the fearsome creatures of the sea, and not just keen to get more people to pick up scuba diving.










(Extract)
" The industry certifies more and more divers with each diving season but the sharks in our seas become fewer and fewer with passing days. Why does this happen?

Let’s observe what happens around us. We keep receiving promotions from major credit card companies promoting Sharks Fins Restaurants. We keep seeing programmes on TV promoting “exquisite” cuisines with shark fin as ingredient. Here we are as divers, on one hand, saying NO to sharks Fins, and yet at the same time, on the other hand, we are amongst the culprits—the consumers driving the sharks to the brink of extinction. On average, 80 sharks are killed for ONE Chinese wedding dinner. 80 sharks just for the sake of following tradition and custom. How many Chinese weddings dinners are there every week in Singapore?

( I attended 4 this year alone )
Times that number by 80 and you get the number of sharks dying every week. Think then about the dinners in Malaysia, in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in China. Do your part, Say NO to Shark Fins before the family of 5 blacktips at Renggis are gone too."

Few readings (Dozens of articles on the net if you do a google search on sharks fin):
http://smallurl.co.uk/?408
http://smallurl.co.uk/?409
http://smallurl.co.uk/?410
http://www.sharktrust.org/

10/09/2006

New photos

Added links to the pictures I took during recent trips to Romania and Bahamas.