Add Reply
Add Comment As A Guest
Close Topic OptionsIsland Junkyards
Island Junkyards - Sciences, Education, Art, Writing, UFO - Posted: 3rd Jul, 2008 - 7:07pm
Play Text RPG
- Location:
- International Discussions
- ➢
- ➢ Discuss
- ➢ Sciences, Education, Art, Writing & UFO
Posts: 2 - Views: 508
Island Junkyards
With all the garbage floating around in our oceans it is no wonder we are facing such a crisis with our fisheries and other marine life.
| QUOTE |
| ST. PAUL ISLAND -- Huge, whiskered male fur seals called "beach masters" are back on St. Paul Island after swimming a gantlet of lost or discarded fishing gear floating in the Bering Sea. The males, weighing up to 600 pounds, arrive at the island's rookeries in May or early June and wait for the females to come onshore to give birth and complete their harems. The scene at first appears idyllic on the treeless, wind-swept island, home to the world's largest population of fur seals. But a closer look unveils an ugly truth. The fur seal rookeries of St. Paul are an unintentional dumping ground for tons of debris, from plastic bottles and tires to netting and rope in which some seals become fatally entangled. Some of the junk comes from the domestic fishing fleet -- Alaska produces more than half of the nation's seafood landings -- but much of the debris bears identification from Russia, Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia. It's carried to the islands by ocean currents. St. Paul Island and neighboring St. George Island, part of the Pribilof chain, have seen declining numbers of fur seals, which were declared depleted in 1988 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The downturn comes decades after the commercial fur seal harvest on St. Paul and St. George was stopped. The population of fur seals in the Pribilofs is less than half of what it was in the 1950s, when between 40,000 and 126,000 animals were harvested annually. |
Sponsored Links:
Junkyards Island
alskann you are just now seeing what us inlander have been seeing for decades. Human waste piling up and choking out the natural order of things. Slight movement is being made to stop further amounts of trash and waste by many countries but so much is already there that what we are doing is a far cry from enough. We need to find ways of picking up trash that is already there and creating new items from it not just what we have bought today but yester years as well.
TOPIC: Island Junkyards