Create an enormous income helping the Sea Shepherd protect sea creatures

By raising money to help stop the butchery of seals, whales, sharks, and other endangered creatures, we are ultimately working to make the world a better place.

Our new 'Sea Shepherd Backup' program is definitely a money-making program. But it is also a major funding program for the Paul Watson's 'Sea Shepherd Conservation Society' which is the most active and effective of all marine conservation groups.

The fact that you can make money helping a great cause, doesn't make your efforts any less honorable - provided that donors know how their money is being used. After all, you have to live and support your family, and earning money from your effort is the very foundation of American life. The more money we make, the better able we are build strong families, and help others - people and animals alike.

As a Sea Shepherd Backup crew member, you will be helping to fund Paul Watson's animal defense campaigns. But, as you recruit more and more members, you'll be
also be building a powerful marine protection agency. An organization strong enough to influence International laws - and a fleet of Sea shepherd ships large enough to enforce them.

The need is critical. Few people have any idea what it is like under the surface of the oceans and aren't aware of how badly the seas are suffering. Walking along the beach or standing on a wharf, everything looks exactly the same as it always has. Sea birds still flock over schools of small fish, and you can still find small crabs, starfish, and minnows in tide pools. But farther out, in the deep water where the commercial fishermen make their living harvesting cod, salmon, mackerel, hake, tuna, and the other fish species we only see when they are served to us in restaurants, things have changed a great deal.

The once-boundless schools of large top-level predators have shrunk by 90% and many
fish and animals have disappeared entirely or have become critically endangered. More than 150 more species of once-plentiful marine animals, including sharks, tuna, whales, albatross, sea turtles, and sea lions, will be gone by the year 2048.

Your income as a Sea Shepherd Backup crew member will be unlimited if you spend a little time each week encouraging other animal lovers to join us. Just show as many people as you can the pamphlets and videos that we'll provide for you. They show just how desperate ocean conditions really are, and how badly help is needed if we hope to prevent the complete collapse of the marine eco-system.

Paul Watson - Captain Courageous

Captain Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,is a much-hated man, as the comments at the bottom of any article pertaining to his courageous activities prove. At least 60% of the commentaries are vicious and vitriolic, accusing him of being an 'eco-terrorist', a pirate, and an immoral outlaw.

When more than half of the general populace hates your guts, you know you're doing the right thing. Flying-Phil Gaglardi, B.C.'s Highway Minister, was much despised (and later revered) by the majority of British Columbians when he built the Province's amazing highway system up and down and across the Rocky Mountains in Canada, but he gave them all the vebal finger: "Call me anything you want. Just spell my name right...G A G L A R D I"

Far from being an eco-terrorist, Paul Watson is an 'eco-defender' -- putting himself in harms way constantly in defence of whales, seals, tuna, sharks, and any other creature threatened illegally by the real enemies of the marine ecology: greedy fishing corporations and their hired thugs. Certainly very few of his detractors, wouldn't expose themselves to jail time and bullets to defend anyone or anything in distress.

Paul Watson gets shot

Yes, he has been arrested - by people who share the same prejudices as his online critics - but he has never been tried or convicted, because he has never done anything illegal.

His rap sheet is an extensive testimony to his courage, not criminality. I wish I could boast such a record in defence of creatures whose lives were being taken by real criminals. His record reflects the typical response of the law when an innocent man seeks to defend himself or others who are being attacked by a potential murderer. You, not the criminal, will be charged with a crime.

1972 Iran - Paul Watson spends two weeks in jail. Espionage for want of any real offense.

1977 Seattle WA - Paul Watson spends one day in jail. Trespass. No charge laid. No conviction. You too could spend a day in jail while some malicious cop tried to drum up a real charge.

1980 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Breaking the Canadian Seal Protection Act. Can you imagine Paul Watson breaking any act that protects seals.

4/83 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Conspiracy to break the Canadian Seal Protection Act. The persecution of a Hero continues.

12/83 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Conviction for conspiracy to break the Canadian Seal Protection Act. The whole Canadian Government should be jailed!

1989 Iceland - Paul Watson spends one day in jail. Charges not laid. Another act of harassment.

6/1/92 Lofoten Islands Norway - Two activists claim guilt for sinking the Norwegian whaling vessel "Nybraena" while in port. Both are sentenced to 120 days in prison in absentia. Shipwrecking, other unclear charges. Not Paul this time - just two of his trainees destroying the vehicle that was being used to illegally slaughter whales. No more of a criminal act than U.S. customs seizing and disposing of a vehicle used to transport drug across the border. Although definitely a vigilante act, because Norwegian law enforcement agencies refused to take action.

1993 Newfoundland Canada - Paul Watson spends five days in jail. Mischief. The little devil!

3/31/94 Bremerhaven Germany - One activist arrested by harbor police for an incident related to the ramming of a Norwegian Navy vessel. Authorities fail to extradite him and the charges are dropped. Attempted Shipwrecking. Only one activist against the Norwegian Navy?

3/31/94 Amsterdam Holland - One activist arrested in Amsterdam and held in Lelystad penitentiary for extradition to Norway. Charges were related to the sinking of a Norwegian whaling vessel. Charges not clear.

1995 Newfoundland Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Accessory to mischief. Only an accessory?

1997 Germany - Paul Watson spends one day in jail on Norwegian Interpol warrant. Sinking a ship.

1997 Netherlands - Paul Watson rearrested on Interpol warrant (see above) and spends 80 days in jail awaiting extradition hearing. Sinking a ship. Eighty days for a hearing? Since when did waiting for a hearing become an offence to be included on a rap sheet?

4/22/02 Puntarenas Costa Rica - Arrest warrant issued for an activist in relation to an altercation with the Costa Rican fishing vessel "Vacadero". Attempted murder, destruction of property. No trial. No conviction. Just accusations. A trial would have meant hearing both sides of the story.

5/10/02 Puntarenas Costa Rica - New charges leveled against one named activist and the crew of the "Farley Mowat" related to April 22 altercation. Attempted shipwrecking. Once again, no trial. No conviction. Just accusations and no revelation of the activities of the fishing vessel involved.

11/17/03 Taiji Japan - Two Sea Shepherd activists arrested after diving into a bay and releasing pilot whales before they could be killed by fishermen. Interfering with commerce. You have to admire the courage of the divers. They deserve medals, not arrests.

03/31/05 Charlottetown, PEI Canada - Ten "crew" of the ship Farley Mowat are arrested for interfering with the seal hunt. Violating Fisheries Act regulation regarding distance to be kept from seal hunt. At least this time, the stupid Canadian Government didn't accuse them of a "seal protection act" violation. No trial. No conviction.

Interview on British TV

As for being a pirate, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships fly their own special version of the skull and crossbones. Maybe they are pirates! Just don't try to slaughter defenceless sea creatures if you see their pennant.

Origin of Life

One of the great unsolved mysteries of science is the origin of life. How did it happen? Everybody asks this question of themselves and when they can't figure it out they ask their priests, ustadz (muslim), philosphers, and scientists. And these learned people ask each other. The question, because even the smartest of people, can't see what is too close to their eyes, is then referred to God, or explained in terms of chemical formulae and DNA.

Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the DNA structure thought that life could have been intentionally sent from elsewhere in the universe in an attempt to find a new home. But even if an intelligent life form had somehow survived an interstellar journey and gave birth to life on earth, it wouldn't explain the origin of life. We would then have the infinitely more complex problem of explaining how life originated in some distant, unknown place in the universe – or beyond.

Some scientists think that life began with a stupendous chemical fluke, unique in the observable universe. Others say that life is written into the laws of nature - easy to get started and therefore likely to be widespread in the universe.

The truth is, nobody has a clue. It could be either extreme, or somewhere in the middle."

Dr Charley Lineweaver of the Planetary Science Institute, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, at Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory completely missed the point when he said: "If life really does form readily then we might expect it to have started many times over on Earth.....And the discovery that all life on Earth did not, after all, have a common origin would virtually prove that we are not alone in the universe."

Life does not form, Charlie – readily or otherwise. Like gravity, it has been an integral force in the Universe ever since the Big Bang and beyond. It is the essential force that creates everything. Without life, nothing can exist. It permeates the Universe. But, also like gravity, it can only be detected by its effects on certain physical bodies. But gravity only exerts it force (attraction) between masses, while life force requires certain complex combinations of atoms and molecules to be active. It is these combinations that scientists mistakenly believe are the origins of life. They aren't. Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, and other simple life forms are just little life detectors, much the same as the combination of crystal and silicon wire (a crystal radio) detects electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.

Because life force fills the universe, as does gravity, both forces become weaker and weaker as the Universe expands and the elements in it grow farther apart until, at infinity, they become non-existent. At least that's what happens to gravitational pull. Life force on the other hand is alive and intelligent and increases its strength in direct proportion to the number and complexity of detectors (life forms) that exist in the universe. It's a great system, because all of the detectors not only react to the force (live), but amplify the energy they receive and transmit their greatly increased power back into the main life stream, much as a power station can increase the power in a national electrical grid.

Amplification is effected by one detector absorbing others, such as a jellyfish digesting a brine shrimp. The process produces an explosion of life force energy as one detector blasts its life into the grid and the other ratchets its output power up another notch from the energy it absorbs in the digestive process. The energy gain increases exponentially with the complexity of the absorbing detectors – commonly referred to as the 'food chain'.
 
copyright © 2009 by Cal Smith

Let's Do Something Concrete to Save the Oceans

With the populations of most large marine predators reduced to 90% of their pre-1970 numbers, conservation groups and responsible fisheries organizations need to quit talking and start doing something concrete to conserve and rebuild our dwindling marine resources.

In this regard, Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was on the right track last year when he did something concrete to put an end to bottom dragging off the coast of Newfoundland. He dropped concrete blocks onto the bottom to snag and destroy the cursed drag nets.

But the concrete blocks do much more than just create a fishing obstacle. They create a new safe habitat for the creatures that live in the area. A place where they can re-establish their numbers free from the terrors of bottom draggers.

Concrete disposal is a big problem in the US and many companies are capitalizing on it by offering costly removal and recycling services. The material is removed, broken up, separated from metal re-enforcement materials, and then crushed for recycling into clean land-fill and aggregate. It would be much simpler to load large sections of building foundations, road beds, septic tanks, and other material – concrete, metal, fiberglass, or wood – onto barges and scatter it onto ocean beds that have been decimated by draggers and trawlers.

The financing could come from 'bycatch' – the dead and dying creatures that longliners, seiners, trawlers, and draggers are required to throw back, dead or alive. Most of the bycatch could be sent to local government plants for processing into food for human consumption, or conversion into fish or animal food. A percentage of the profits could then be used to rebuild fish and crustacean populations.

It's not a new idea. Very successful artificial reefs have been constructed by sinking decommissioned ships and building concrete or rock breakwaters. There are a number of artificial reefs in some areas along New Jersey's 127-mile Atlantic coastline, tmade up of small sunken ships or piles of tires. And now engineers are preparing to install a concrete reef system off the coast of Cape May County to demonstrate how to counteract beach erosion. If successful, the project could be duplicated elsewhere and save taxpayers in the state millions of dollars a year in sand replenishment and beach restoration – and provide additional habitat for fish.

A concrete reef designed to make "fish ranches" off the west of Scotland has been an outstanding success. Scientists built 12 reefs in an area not previously been used for fishing said they were now teeming with fish and shellfish.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science, in Oban, began the experiment a year ago in an attempt to discover whether large-scale reefs would be viable for commercial fishing. Since then, 600 tons of concrete blocks have been sunk to the seabed. The reef provides sealife with shelter and and safe breeding areas in the blocks and already large numbers of juvenile cod and other cod species have taken up residence. They will only stay there the first year of their life but they have a chance to grow before they move away to other areas.

The group plans to have a million blocks of concrete, donated by a local firm, sunk to the bottom of the sea within two years. Dr Martin Sayer, Director of the project, said: "Reefs such as this are very widespread in places like the United States, Australia and Japan but they have never been attempted on this scale before. The overall objective is to see whether these reefs on a large scale will make any impact as a commercial fishery or if they could act as providers for commercial fisheries."

The thing is that artifical reefs can be made from everything from sunken cars or ships, concrete blocks, sandbags, culverts, railroad ties, light poles, and other large concrete objects -- even offshore oil platforms. Anything that can attract and provide shelter for marine life. The fact is that such structures don't just attract the fish that live in the area, they actually increase the amount of sea by providing safe breeding areas.

There's an old saying “one man's garbage is another man's treasure' and a concrete building that is condemned for human habit seem like a palace for thousands – even millions – of sea creatures. Instead of being a pollutant, much of what we think of as garbage would actually serve to enhance the environment.

What do you think? Instead of worrying about the disappearing reefs that we can't do anything about, let's build some reefs that are impervious to climate change and acidification. If you'd like to participate please contact me. Maybe together, we can do something worth while.

Will humans be the next dinosaurs?

Over the past two hundred years, eighty-nine species of animals have gone extinct, and another 140 are on the endangered lists and will be gone by the end of this century. The world is in the midst of the most devastating mass extinction period in history, including the one that wiped out all the dinosaurs.

The oceans have been particularly hard hit. The total biomass of the ocean's top level predators has decreased by 90% in the past 50 years, primarily because of overfishing and some of the destructive fishing methods employed by commercial fishermen. But Sports fishermen too, have taken a terrible toll.

In the US alone, there are more than 50 million sports fishermen, spending 125 billion dollars in pursuit of of fish. But most sports fishermen are careful not to injure anything they don't intend to eat. 'Catch and release' has become the order of the day on the streams, lakes, and coastal waters of North America. But it takes all kinds to make a world and there are still many people who are not only indifferent to the agonies they inflict on other creatures – animals or people – but are deliberately sadistic. When fishing, anything they catch that they can’t eat or sell, no matter what it is, from a dogfish to a seagull, is treated with sadistic cruelty. Some go out of their way to see the creatures die as painfully and as slowly as possible.

For these people, wherever the fish aren't biting, there are always seagulls or ducks to test their fishing skills. Live minnows or herring will always attract birds that will chase baited hooks into the water. It's not that the birds are 'stealing', although that's how the fishermen justify their cruelty, seagulls and ducks think that injured fish splashing on the surface of the water are their natural prey and aren't aware that these little fish were deliberately impaled on a hook in such a way that its dying agonies would attract an unsuspecting fish – or bird.

Sports fishermen kill an awful lot of little fish that way. Threading them on their hooks, carefully avoiding vital organs so they will live a long time, struggling frantically in pain and fear. This torture is not usually inflicted on them maliciously, only callously, without compassion. It's just an effective way to attract larger, unsuspecting predators. The longer the herring lives, the less frequently the fisherman has to re-bait his hook. The torture is just the price the little fish has to pay for being such an attractive bait. C'est la guerre.

Seagulls, as you probably know if you have ever tried feeding them, are very adept at catching food before it hits the water. Consequently, when a fisherman casts a herring-baited hook into the air, there is a very good chance it'll be taken by a gull before it hits the water. It's sort of like sky fishing, except there are no flying fish in North American waters.

Before I started diving, I used to join the throng of fishermen that gathered on the wharf in Comox, on Vancouver Island, each January and February, fishing for Spring (Chinook) salmon. In those days, a large run of the big fish always spent a few weeks in the bay, feeding voraciously on spawning herring in preparation for their own spawning run up the Puntledge River in March. Fishermen crowded the end of the dock during those weeks and most were quite successful. But the fish always quit feeding by mid-morning and the action slowed down until early evening, during which time only the real die-hards remained on the wharf.

While fishing was good, the fishermen were quick to get their lines into the water before a hungry gull could steal their bait. Not out of compassion, but because reeling the bird in and getting it off their hook consumed a lot of good fishing time, resulting in fewer salmon for their freezers. Often when a seagull was unfortunate enough to get caught during these times, the fisherman would simply cut his line leaving the seagull to fly away with the big salmon hook still in its beak or throat. During slack fishing times from 9am to 5pm though, there was always some sadist, bored by inaction, who would deliberately try to catch a bird for sport.

If I was on the dock, it invariably led to an altercation of some kind, often a fist fight, until the regulars got smart enough not to do it while “that self-appointed seagull protection officer” was on the scene. Don’t get me wrong, there were many who sided with me on the seagull issue. It was just too bad that they didn't also feel compassion for the bullheads, sea perch, and other ’trash’ fish they often left lying squirming and gasping their lives away for hours on the dock. Nor did many of them think twice about slicing a dogfish open and throwing it, still living, back into the water, just because it was a nuisance.

One guy, who was far too big for me to tackle in a rough-and-tumble, liked to dare me by periodically kicking anything he caught as it lay writhing on the wharf. I had previously reported him to a Fisheries Officer friend of mine for trying to catch seagulls, which is illegal, and he had been warned not to do it again. He took revenge by torturing everything else he got his hands on.

One day he caught a rock cod about 15 inches long and very deep bodied. I estimated that it weighed six to eight pounds. My ‘friend’ tore the hook from its mouth, threw it on the deck of the wharf and kicked it. Happily, the dorsal fin of the flopping fish was fully extended with its long sharp spines pointed directly at the toe of the foot speeding toward it. Happily too, the foot was clad in a canvas running shoe which a couple of spines had no difficulty penetrating. Nor did the spines have any trouble embedding themselves deeply in the massive toe before they broke off.

The man howled in pain, I howled with joy, and the fish flopped over the 8” wharf bumper, back into the water from whence it had come – maybe for the sole purpose of retaliating for all the cruelties its fellow creatures had suffered at the hands and feet of the man monster? I have no idea what became of the man because he never came back to the wharf. C'est la guerre.

Jellyfish can grow new tentacles - and heads

In an ancient Greek myth, Her­cu­les encountered a many-headed marsh mon­ster called Hy­dra that could re­grow its heads if they were somehow cut off.

Now sci­en­tists from the university fo Veterinary Med­i­cine in Han­no­ver, Ger­ma­ny have found a way to cre­ate many-headed jel­ly­fish by de­ac­ti­vating cer­tain genes in the jelly class hydrozoa.

By shutting down a cer­tain Cnox gene, researchers Wolf­gang Ja­kob and Bernd Schier­wa­ter found that they can gen­er­ate hy­dro­zo­an jel­ly­fish with two heads, both of which func­tion normally and both take in food. De­ac­tiva­t­ion of a dif­fer­ent gene led to even more heads, they added.

The discovery isn't really so surprising. It's old hat to the jellyfish who have been generating multiple heads for 540 million years with without having scientists screwing around with their genes thank you.

The best part of the natural system is that the heads are dis-enjoined
so they don't compete and conflict with one another. Moreover, they can control the number of heads produced by the availability of food and other environmental conditions.

The head-generating process takes place in the early stages of the jellyfishes' development, when it is just a coral-like polyp attached to the ocean bottom. It grows the heads on its stalk, stacking them like dinner plates. When the top head (hydra) detatches itself and flips off like an errant frisbee, the next one grows and in time (determined by the availability of food) it follows the first head into the wild blue yonder.

Cal being interviewed on Vancouver television