Russians seek more fish
The lower house of Russia’s parliament wants a Soviet-era border agreement with the U.S. to be re-examined, saying that it gives the Americans too much of the rich fishing areas in the northern Bering Sea.
The State Duma voted 327-0 for a non-binding resolution, saying the U.S.-Soviet agreement dividing the sea between Russia and Alaska is unbalanced and violates national interests.
The statement said Russian fishing industries have lost about three million tonnes of fish worth more than US$1.4 billion.
The Russian parliament never ratified the deal, but the U.S. considers it legal and detains Russian vessels that venture to fish in what the agreement says are U.S. waters.
The Duma urged the government to determine its position about the agreement "in line with Russia’s national interests." It also called for drafting legal proposals that would "minimize the damage to Russia inflicted by the agreement."
Whaler dies after whale flips boat
Yupik whalers watched in horror last week as a harpooned whale surfaced beneath the canoe of a Little Diomede man who was hunting gray whales near the International Date Line in the Bering Sea.
Ronald Ozenna died from injuries he sustained when a harpooned whale flipped the small boat he was in and scattered hunters in the water.
"It happened so fast, I don’t remember blinking," Orville Ahkinga Jr., a lifelong friend of Ozenna’s who was hunting in a nearby boat told the Anchorage Daily News.
Diomede residents have long hunted the gray whale, but they don’t like to, Ahkinga said. The animals are smaller than bowheads, and are good eating, he said, but very aggressive.
They call them "devilfish."
After the accident, the hunters abandoned the whale as they hurried to bring the injured whaler to shore.
Finnish fish labelled for dioxin
Finnish fish products are to be given a label that will show how much of the toxic chemical dioxin they contain.
An ellipse-shaped symbol on jars or cans of fish means the dioxin content does not exceed the maximum limits set by the European Union. A rectangular symbol will indicate that the dioxin level is higher.
The new rules kicked in July 1.
The system was required after Finland got special permission from the EU to use fish caught in the Baltic Sea, whose dioxin content exceeds the maximum levels set by the EU.
Finland and Sweden have been given special permission to exceed the maximum levels of dioxin in fish sold in the two countries until the end of 2006.
Baltic herring and sprat more than 17 centimetres long, as well as salmon caught in the Baltic Sea, will bear the rectangular symbol for high dioxin content. Under the rules, these fish can’t be exported to any other EU countries, except Sweden.
Japan reverses whaling stance
Japan says it will reverse its opposition to subsistence bowhead whaling.
In May at the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting in Japan, Japan voted against quotas for the bowhead whale hunt in Alaska and Chukotka.
The news from Japan was well-received in Barrow, Alaska, where a nalukataq, or whale festival, was getting under way. This traditional celebration is thrown jointly by three to five whaling captains after one lands a bowhead.
"This is going to be a special nalukataq," Edward Itta, vice-chairman of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, told the Anchorage Daily News.
It has been a poor spring whaling season, Itta said, and the nalukataq would be Barrow’s first of 2002.
"Quite a bit of damage has been done," Itta said. "My fellow whalers, we still feel the hurt. I never want to be put in the position again where we are used as pawns. This is something we do not play around with. This is a key element to the survival of our people."
Norway to sell whale meat
Norway plans to defy the international ban on commercial whaling and sell whale meat to Iceland.
Norway will issue an export license for 10 to 15 tonnes of minke whale meat.
In 1993, Norway started commercial hunting of minke whales, ignoring the global moratorium. Last year, the Norwegian government said it would export whale meat to pro-whaling countries, including Japan and Iceland, for the first time since 1988.
Icelanders eat mostly fried whale meat.
Iceland, which stopped whaling in 1990, says whales are consuming its fish stocks. The Icelandic Marine Research Institute recommends 250 minke whales and 100 fin whales be killed every year, out of a stock of 70,000 animals.
But the International Whaling Commission has vetoed Iceland’s requests for a system of regulated whale hunts.
Norway, in defiance of the IWC, has set its own quota of 674 minke whales for this season.
Polar bears pose new threat
A researcher at the Polar Institute in Tromsø, Norway, predicts polar bears around the Svalbard Islands off Norway’s Arctic coast will become more aggressive as the climate warms.
Andrew Derocher of the Polar Institute told the Norwegian newspaper Nordlys that it’s just a matter of time before summer ice in the Svalbard area disappears as a result of global warming.
This will make it more difficult for polar bears to hunt for food, such as seals, he said. As a result, the animals will be forced to find new hunting grounds and be more likely to enter human settlements.
This spring, a man returning to his cabin found that it had been taken over by a group of polar bears.
Siberia’s population plummets
In the past 10 years, the population of Chukotka has fallen by more than 60 per cent. The neighbouring province of Magadan has lost more than half its inhabitants, and some 15 per cent of residents have left the port city of Murmansk.
Altogether, at least a million people have headed west from the Russian Far East. To save on the cost of supporting communities in northern regions, at least 20 per cent of the population has been evacuated.
Last year, a study of demographic trends by the Russian Academy of Sciences found that Russia’s North and the Far East had turned into "a consolidated zone of lost population."
Large tracts of central and western Siberia have been losing population as a result of factory shut-downs, collapsed collective farms, the closure of coal, diamond and gold mines, the decline of military industries and the decay of the frontier bases in the former heavily militarized Soviet republic.
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