Earthlings

Watching this once is a must for every meat eater. This makes you think about where your food comes from, and if you really want to be eating meat from which you do not know, how it was produced. Also keeping Pets is not as "nice" as it is often seen.
For the facts watch these :

The end of the line

The end of seafood by 2048?

(taken from : http://endoftheline.com/film/)

Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

The End of the Line chronicles how demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world, how hi-tech fishing vessels leave no escape routes for fish populations and how farmed fish as a solution is a myth.

The film lays the responsibility squarely on consumers who innocently buy endangered fish, politicians who ignore the advice and pleas of scientists, fishermen who break quotas and fish illegally, and the global fishing industry that is slow to react to an impending disaster.

The End of the Line points to solutions that are simple and doable, but political will and activism are crucial to solve this international problem.

We need to control fishing by reducing the number of fishing boats across the world, protect large areas of the ocean through a network of marine reserves off limits to fishing, and educate consumers that they have a choice by purchasing fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries.

(http://endoftheline.com/film/)

This underlines the importance of sustainable fishing and the planning for the future. Out of pure greed humans do everything to make profit, and if this means that over-fishing is necessary most companies will not hesitate. 

Garbage Patches

Most of the garbage that is produced nowadays is based on plastic. Plastic is made of petroleum, which is something that our planet cannot biodegrade (digest). Therefore every bit of plastic that is produced is still on our planet, apart from the few plastics which have been incinerated, causing toxics to be released into the atmosphere.

In the ocean the plastic accumulates in garbage patches, where plastic to sea life ratio is 6:1, causing birds and mammals to die of starvation and dehydration with their bellies full of plastic. Fish also ingest toxins, which makes them not safe to eat.

The largest of the garbage patches is known as the Pacific Gyre, or the Great Garbage Patch. This is about the size of Texas with about 3.5 million tons of trash. This includes shoes, toys, wrappers, toothbrushes, and bottles.

(http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/)

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02_01/SoupLL0502_468x271.jpg

A lot of the plastics littering cities also end up in these patches through rivers and currents. Litter from beaches also gets carried there. To stop these enormous rubbish piles from growing combined efforts are needed... from everybody. 

Shark Finning

Shark finning is the process of catching shark, slashing off their fins while the shark is still alive, and then the bodies are discarded into the ocean. Finning takes place in the ocean, as this way the fisheries only have to transport the valuable fins.  The sharks are left to suffocate, or be eaten by non injured sharks as they can no longer swim away. This is a million dollar business. 

 (http://wspa.typepad.com/.a/6a01156f3fc9e0970c011570253c04970c-pi)

This process threatens shark stocks, and endangers the balance of many ecosystems. This process has also been banned by the EU in 2003.  

Shark fins are used as an Asian delicacy – mainly as the key ingredient in shark fin soup – and sell for more than £200 per kilo. And it is this high price that has led to the spread of shark finning. Instead of taking the entire body of a shark back to port, fisherman hack off the animal's most lucrative parts, its fins, and then throw the rest of it away. The sharks can no longer swim and either starve to death or are eaten alive by other fish. Species targeted this way in UK waters include the shortfin mako, blue, smooth hammerheads and thresher sharks, as well as species such as Portuguese dogfish and gulper sharks.

(http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/organizations/ssg/iucnsharkfinningfinal.pdf)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/11/uk-shark-finning-ban-extinct) 

Its just an animal...

Have you ever considered how large the international black market for wildlife is?

Medicine, food, cosmetics, entertainment, fashion... its all at a cost for the animals.

The Skin Trade:

In Rantau Prapat Sumatra workers slaughter and skin hundreds of reptiles that are brought to them by trappers. First the workers kill or stun the animals with a blow to the head. Then they fill their bodies with water or air as this allows them to gut and skin the animals more easily. The skins are then sold for the productions of boots and purses, while some internal organs are sold to China (medicine purposes). The scale of these businesses is often not realized, but this is industrialized wild life trade.

Tiger Farm Show:

At the Xiongsen tiger and bear park in China keeps more then 300 bears, and 1300 tigers. It has also been revealed that the park has been illegally selling tiger meat in their restaurant (found by DNA testing). It is being assumed that some of these so called zoos are stockpiling the tigers in case laws lift, in order to allow trade with the endangered animals. 

Tuna:

Bluefin tuna has been endangered for a while, due to overfishing for sushi. But even now, the market is not stopping to harvest the tuna, even though conservationists suggest that the tuna is given a recovery phase. But their extinction is most likely very near. 

Every day tuna is brought to the fish market in tuna, where the finned, and skinned tuna is laid out for sale. In 2009 a tuna sold for over 180 000 dollars. 

"But overfishing makes sense to dealers:the fewer tuna there are, the higher the price they fetch" 

Due to human greed for money, we are putting some of the worlds already endangered species at risk of extinction. 

Harvesting Shrimps:

Shrimps are caught in trawl nets, which are dragged along the ocean floor, catching anything in its way. It also destroys things such as coral which often take years to regrow. 

After about an hour of fishing, a fisher will have about one hand full of shrimps, and 5 kg of other species are caught unintentionally are dumped back into the ocean as rubbish. And this is only a small fisher by itself. 

Also about 100 million sharks are killed in gill-nets that stretch for hundreds of meters through the oceans. 

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11588616)

Drift Nets, Seine Nets, and Dolphins living in Captivity

Drift Nets

Drift nets are nets that are often up to 64km long. They form a curtain that traps everything that crosses its path. These nets are a danger, not only to the fish that they are designed to catch, but also to sea turtles, dolphins, whales and sharks. All these animals get caught and drown in the nets only to be discarded by the fishermen, when they keep only the fish they intended to catch.
These incidents increase as the fish stocks decrease due to overfishing.

Seine Nets

Seines Nets are another lethal danger for dolphins. They are nets used for Tuna fishing. As Tuna often swim just below the schools of dolphins, the net which the fishermen use to encircle the fish also catches, and kills dolphins. When this type of fishing started in the 1950s it killed over a quarter of a million dolphins a year. Now fishermen are being educated, and taught methods to avoid killing the dolphins. With these new methods, now "only" 20,000 dolphins die in these nets every year. 

Dolphins Living in Captivity

Dolphins are highly adapted to their environment. They are streamlined, they have a skin that allows moving through the water with barely any friction. They live in schools, and have a complex family life, in which they care for each other. They are highly intelligent. They have a higher brain mass to body weight ratio then men. 

And we have been abusing this for years, by taking individual animals out of their environment, and placing them in small pools for our entertainment. And even though these animals are fascinating and beautiful to watch, one has to consider the following before visiting a theme park that presents dolphins as an entertainment:

• 53% of those dolphins who survive the violent capture die within 90 days.
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• The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only 5 years in captivity.
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• Every seven years, half of all dolphins in captivity die from capture shock, pneumonia, intestinal disease, ulcers, chlorine poisoning, and other stress-related illnesses. To the captive dolphin industry, these facts are accepted as routine operating expenses.

All of this proves that keeping dolphins captured is an imprisonment that is cruel, and unnecessary. (The UK has no captive dolphins) 

(http://www.idw.org/html/dolphins_in_danger.html)

Dolphin Killing

Japanese kill many dolphins and whales every year. They herd then together by slamming metal rods together under the waters surface. This causes the dolphins to panic and flee as well as forming a barrier which the dolphins can physically not cross, as the pain that this would inflict would be far too horrible. The animals are then driven into a bay, and slaughtered. Before they are killed some of the dolphins are chosen by dolphin trainers that work for Japan and then let the captured dolphins perform in Aquariums.


11 Facts about Dolphin Hunting:

1. Approximately 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed legally each year in Japan. The majority are killed at sea, but thousands are killed in dolphin hunts along coastal lagoons and coves. Dolphin hunts also occur in coastal island areas of the South Pacific and North Atlantic but they are nowhere near as large as those in Taiji.
2. The world outlawed commercial whaling in 1986. And yet, dolphin hunts remain legal because, although dolphins and whales are members of the same family and share similar traits of intelligence and self-awareness, so far the members of the International Whaling Commission have not agreed to protect so-called “small cetaceans.”
3. Dolphin hunts take place both to capture live dolphins for marine parks and aquariums and to kill dolphins for their meat, despite the fact that the meat often contains toxins, including mercury and PCBs at unhealthy levels, and sells at a very low price.
4. A live dolphin captured for a marine park show can fetch up to $150,000. A dolphin killed for meat draws about $600.
5. In coastal areas, dolphins are hunted by “drive-fishing” techniques, in which the dolphins are herded and corralled into net cages by loud banging sounds that disrupt their sensitive sonar, causing them to panic. Once trapped in the nets, their fate is decided by veterinarians and animal trainers who choose which dolphins they will purchase.
6. Once a live dolphin is selected for a marine park, aquarium or swim-with-dolphins program, it is separated from its close-knit family unit, hoisted in trucks and planes and transported from the ocean to a far-away pool where it will face stiff odds of survival.
7. Over half of all captured dolphins will die within 2 years of their captivity. They must rapidly adjust to a new environment where they can no longer swim their customary 40 miles a day in open waters, engage with their social group or use their sonar properly.
8. Dolphins not selected for marine parks are then “sitting ducks” for local fishermen who kill them for the price their meat will fetch. They are typically killed at close quarters with spears, knives and hooks. In the open ocean, they are usually killed with harpoons.
9. The primary economic driver of dolphin hunting is the multi-million dollar marine park business, which allows fishermen the resources to undertake additional slaughter for meat.
10. Most citizens in Japan are unaware of the dolphin hunts and unaware of the serious toxicity of dolphin meat. However, the Japanese government continues to support dolphin hunting and has successfully lobbied to keep the International Whaling Commission from acting on behalf of small cetaceans.
11. International attention and protest has helped to halt some dolphin hunts in the past but has not stopped the practice from continuing in the 21st Century.