While many people enjoy eating a nice lobster or crab dinner, the methods often used to kill the crustaceans are sometimes seen as barbaric and cruel.   It can take live lobsters up to three minutes to die when plunged into a pot of boiling hot water.   It takes even longer for the crab – up to five minutes when boiled alive.

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Visitors at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World sure got their money’s worth recently!  Visitors at the New Zealand aquarium witnessed a shark perform an unplanned and unconventional “cesarean section” on another shark!

Acting as midwife, the smart shark apparently knew what the Auckland aquarium’s staff did not – another shark in the aquarium was pregnant.  Although it is common for sharks to nip at one another, this particular shark took a great big bite out of the pregnant shark’s side.

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Long line fishing is being blamed for a startling drop in the number of albatrosses around the world.  Fish, squid and other bait are trailed on hooks behind a trawler to catch tuna and swordfish.

However, because the hooks for these fish are set just below the surface it attracts albatrosses who think they’ve spotted a nice free meal and dive into the water to get it.

Instead they get hooked and tangled in the line, dragged under the water, and drowned.  In many cases the bait has been dislodged meaning that hook will now catch nothing.

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I know, as a joke it’s either sick or bad or both. However it’s not too bad an analogy for the conclusions the chaps at the Charles Darwin University School for Environmental Research (SER) are reaching.

[Darwin, for those not familiar with Australian geography, is the capital of the Northern Territory in Australia, the harshest region in the country].

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Earlier this week, an ocean survey vessel reported feeling a “shudder underneath the ship” in the waters of northern California.  Soon after, a whale was spotted “bleeding profusely.”   A few hours later, an endangered blue whale washed ashore in a rocky cove in California.  According to reports, the apparent strike probably occurred about 7 miles from shore. 

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A class of young school children from Alaska found a dead beluga whale on the beach during a weekly field trip. The Winterberry Elementary School second graders came across the whale along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.   According to their teacher, Meg Eggleston, the children saw the whale moving its tail and were convinced the whale will be fine.   But the whale, dead for hours, had already begun to decompose. 

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A Hector’s Dolphin showing the characteristic round dorsal fin.

The Wine

It started with Gemma McGrath who had moved from a job on Whale Watch boats to a barmaid in the small Otago village of Bannockburn which is about as far away from the sea as one can get in New Zealand.

Missing the dolphins and concerned by the steady decrease in their numbers, she spoke of them so passionately and persistently that she eventually got a farmer in the area to donate 3 tons of Pinot Gris grapes.

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Sirocco, a male Kakapo, is grinning from ear-to-ear as he makes a play for a very unusual partner.

While filming the BBC’s “Last Chance to See” series, filmmaker Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine have a surprising encounter with an amorous Kakapo named Sirocco.

Sirocco, one of just 124 of his kind, appears eager to increase the population of his species - whether or not there’s another Kakapo around.

In the meantime, however, a human head will do just fine.

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In the Australian outbacks, 18 scientists have just discovered over 850 new species living underground.

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Wildlife experts fear that the spread of an AIDS-like virus could force already threatened koalas into extinction.

Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations are in serious decline - victims of habitat loss, domestic dog predation, vehicular deaths, and bushfires.

Sadly, a new and deadly danger is facing the iconic koala: The koala retrovirus.

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Cat got your tongue?  Well, not in this case!  According to the BBC, a strange-looking parasite was recently discovered inside the mouth of a weaver fish off the Minquiers.  Attracted to fish, the parasite, an isopod, eats the fish’s tongue then takes up residence inside its mouth!

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Last Tuesday, EcoWorldly Staff Writer Bryan Nelson wrote an article on the suspension of dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. The suspension came off of Japanese local media swarming on Taiji, after the award winning documentary film “The Cove” put the spotlight on the small Japanese village that slaughters thousands of dolphins every year.

Ric O’Barry, the dolphin trainer and activist who brought the location to the attention of filmmakers, returned to the site of the slaughter this week, just as the annual “hunt” would normally begin. However, this time with all of the media attention, no dolphins were killed in the first 2 days of the season.

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In just a few short months, Iceland has killed over 150 whales despite a 1986 international ban on commercial whaling and ban on international trade in whale products.  The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) reports 63 minke whales and at least 93 endangered fin whales have been slaughtered since May 2009, in what is being described as the largest commercial hunt in the North Atlantic in decades.

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According to Greenpeace and the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), Pacific tuna could face extinction by 2048, due to overfishing, pirate fishing and exploitation.

In a news conference held last week, the two groups recommended a 50 percent reduction in tuna catches and asked the Taiwan government to support the Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission (WCPCF), to “close the four pockets of international waters in the Pacific Ocean as marine reserves to sustain the tuna stock.”  The WCPCF, also known as the Pacific Tuna Commission, is a decision making body comprised of 27 countries and territories around the world that manages tuna fishing in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

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Earlier this week, eight Hermanus police officers and four inspectors from the Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) agency, were ambushed by alleged abalone poachers during a raid in Hawston, South Africa.   When officials arrived on the scene, they found 50 men counting fresh abalone in the back yard.  The suspects fled. 

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A female humpback whale is fighting for her life after getting tangled in a long line near Tonga.  The controversial fishing lines, which can be several miles long, are often left floating in deep waters.  Baited hooks are placed along the lines, snaring unsuspecting turtles, sharks and whales.

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There are all kinds of amazing creatures under the sea.   Scientists have discovered a strange new species of worm-like creatures that put on quite a colorful display when threatened.   Scientists believe the worms, nicknamed “green bombers,” release fluid-filled balloons or spheres from their body as a defense mechanism to distract or confuse prey. 

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