July 24, 2010

Dear Friends,

I have just returned from a much-needed vacation and am happy to report that collectively we have achieved an enormous victory for great whales worldwide. A controversial proposal that would have legalized whaling for Japan, Iceland and Norway was defeated at last month's International Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco. Concerned individuals, animal lovers, and environmental groups worldwide fought to maintain the 1982 global moratorium on commercial whaling. Against all odds, we prevailed! After several years of closed-door negotiations, the Obama Administration and other conservation-minded governments wisely said no to this new proposal designed to legalize commercial whaling and approve quotas to kill whales in an international whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean.

This last minute reprieve is good news for whales, but they aren’t saved yet. Whales face more threats today than ever before…from entanglement in marine debris and fishing gear, to ship strikes, noise pollution, ozone depletion, global warming, ocean acidification, and pollution and contaminates--particularly toxic metals. Roger Payne’s Institute, Ocean Alliance, has just released a report from their 5-year voyage around the world measuring baseline levels of toxic metals and POPs (persistent organic pollutants--substances like DDT, PCBs and fire retardants) in the skin and blubber of sperm whales. They brought back 955 sperm whale biopsy samples from all the world’s oceans.

Marine toxicologists John Wise at the University of Southern Maine and Maria Christina Fossi at Italy’s Sienna University analyzed these samples. They concluded that sperm whales are contaminated wherever they are found--even in ocean regions that lie far from major industry and corporate agriculture. Research indicates the worst problem to be chromium--a major carcinogen. (The film "Erin Brockovich" is about chromium pollution.) Roger chose to study sperm whales because they live at