Tag: west coast (page 1 of 2)

5 Signs the California Drought Could Get Worse

May 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatchCalifornia is entering its fourth year of drought, with high temperatures, water shortages and increased wildfires. The state has taken some steps to address the impacts of that, including addressing greenhouse gas emissions and rationing its diminishing water supply. But there are signs that the impacts of drought on the state could get even worse.1. A new study shows that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to ris [...]

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Will new ruling finally free Lolita after 40 years in captivity at Miami Seaquarium?

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments



Excerpt from seattletimes.com

A decision to list the captive orca Lolita for federal protection is expected to set the stage for a lawsuit from advocates seeking the whale’s release.

Seattle Times staff reporter
A Puget Sound orca held for decades at Miami’s Seaquarium will gain the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act, a move expected to set the stage for a lawsuit from advocates seeking the whale’s release.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesday the decision to list Lolita as part of the southern resident killer whales of Puget Sound, which already are considered endangered under the federal act. 

Whale activists, who petitioned for this status, have long campaigned for Lolita’s return to Puget Sound. They hope the listing will provide a stronger legal case to release Lolita than did a previous lawsuit that centered on alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.

“This gives leverage under a much stronger law,” said Howard Garrett of the Whidbey Island based Orca Network, which hopes a San Juan Island cove will one day serve as the site for Lolita to re-enter the wild.

NOAA Fisheries officials on Wednesday described their decision in narrow terms, which set no broader precedents. It does not address whether Lolita should be released from the Seaquarium.
“This is a listing decision,” said Will Stelle, the NOAA Fisheries regional administrator for the West Coast. “It is not a decision to free Lolita.” 

Aquarium officials have repeatedly said they have no intention of releasing the orca. 

“Lolita has been part of the Miami Seaquarium family for 44 years,” said Andrew Hertz, Seaquarium general manager, in a statement. 

“Lolita is healthy and thriving in her home where she shares habitat with Pacific white-sided dolphins. There is no scientific evidence that ... Lolita could survive in a sea pen or the open waters of the Pacific Northwest, and we are not willing to treat her life as an experiment.”

Orcas, also known as killer whales, are found in many of the world’s oceans. The southern resident population, which spends several months each year in Puget Sound, is the only group listed in the U.S. under the Endangered Species. 

The three pods in the population were reduced by captures by marine parks between 1965 and 1975, NOAA says. Among them was a roundup in Penn Cove where seven whales were captured, including Lolita. 

The southern resident pods now number fewer than 80. Possible causes for the decline are reduced prey, pollutants that could cause reproductive problems and oil spills, according to NOAA Fisheries.
Under the Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to cause a “take” of a protected orca, which includes harming or harassing them.
Wednesday, NOAA officials said holding an animal captive, in and of itself, does not constitute a take. 

Orca activists are expected to argue in their lawsuit that Lolita's cramped conditions result in a prohibited take.

There is “rising public scorn for the whole idea of performing orcas,” said Garrett, who hopes Seaquarium will decide to release Lolita without a court order. 

But NOAA officials still have concerns about releasing captive whales, and any plan to move or release Lolita would require “rigorous scientific review,” the agency said in a statement.
The concerns include the possibility of disease transmission, the ability of a newly released orca to find food and behavior patterns from captivity that could impact wild whales.

NOAA said previous attempts to release captive orcas and dolphins have often been unsuccessful and some have ended in death.

Garrett said the plan for Lolita calls for her to be taken to a netted area of the cove, which could be enlarged later. She would be accompanied by familiar trainers who could “trust and reassure her every bit of the way,” he said. 

The controversy over releasing captive whales has been heightened by the experience of Keiko, a captive orca that starred in the 1993 movie “Free Willy,” about a boy who pushed for the release of a whale.

In 1998, Keiko was brought back to his native waters off Iceland to reintroduce him to life in the wild. That effort ended in 2003 when he died in a Norwegian fjord. 

Garrett, who visited Keiko in Iceland in 1999, said he was impressed by the reintroduction effort, and that there was plenty of evidence that Keiko was able to catch fish on his own.

“The naysayers predicted that as soon as he got into the (Icelandic) waters he would die, and wild orcas would kill him,” Garrett said. “He proved that 180-degrees wrong. He loved it.”

Mark Simmons, who for two years served as director of animal husbandry for the Keiko-release effort, has a different view. He says Keiko never was able to forage for fish on his own, and that he continued to seek out human contact at every opportunity. 

Simmons wrote a book called “Killing Keiko,” that accuses the release effort of leading to a long slow death for the orca, which he says lacked food and then succumbed to an infection.

“It’s not really the fact that Keiko died, but how he died,” Garrett said Wednesday.

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Ground-based telescope spots alien ‘Super-Earth’

December 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments

An artist's conception shows the size of super-Earth 55 Cancri e compared to Earth. A ground-based telescope in Spain was able to identify 55 Cancri e, which suggests that telescopes on the ground help in the search for habitable planets around other stars.


Excerpt from csmonitor.com

A telescope on the Canary Islands has spotted a planet twice the size of Earth as it passed in front of a star, the first time a planet in this category has been detected by a ground-based telescope.

Finding Earthlike planets beyond our solar system has largely been the work of space-based telescopes, but new observations from a remote island suggest that could change.

The Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma — one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa — observed 55 Cancri e, a planet twice the size of Earth, as it passed in front of its parent star and caused a dip in the star's brightness, according to a new study. This is the first time a planet in this "super-Earth" size category orbiting a sunlike star has been observed by a ground-based telescope using this detection method, the researchers say.

First identified in 2004 by a space-based telescope, 55 Cancri e has a diameter of about 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) — about twice that of Earth. The alien world is eight times as massive as Earth, making it a so-called super-Earth, a planet more massive than Earth but significantly smaller than gas giants like Neptune and Uranus. While not habitable, the planet's size and position around a sunlike star make it similar to planets that might support life, researchers say. 

The planet's detection with the Nordic telescope shows that observatories on the ground could use what's called the transit method — watching for dips in the brightness of a star to indicate a planet passing in front of it — to assist space-based telescopes in follow-up studies of super-Earths or Earthlike exoplanets, scientists say.

Nearly 2,000 exoplanets have now been confirmed, and upcoming exoplanet searches promise to expand that catalog. 

"We expect these surveys to find so many nearby terrestrial worlds that space telescopes simply won't be able to follow up on all of them. Future ground-based instrumentation will be key, and this study shows it can be done," Mercedes Lopez-Morales, co-author of the new research and a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement.

Five exoplanets orbit the star 55 Cancri, which is located 40 light-years from Earth and is visible to the naked eye. The closest-orbiting of those five is 55 Cancri e, which completes one lap around the star every 18 hours. When the planet passes between Earth and the parent star, 55 Cancri appears to dim by 1/2000th (or 0.05 percent) for almost 2 hours, researchers said.


Daytime temperatures on 55 Cancri e likely reach higher than 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt metal and much too hot to support life. But scientists involved with the study say this approach could help characterize the atmosphere of more hospitable Earthlike or super-Earth planets.


After its initial detection, 55 Cancri e also became the first super-Earth seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, using light directly from the planet. Thus, it has now served twice as a litmus test for super-Earth detection methods. 

In addition to the wealth of planets identified by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, scheduled for launch in 2017, is expected to "discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky," according to the TESS website. The European Space Agency's Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission, planned for launch in 2024, will also search for a large number of exoplanets.

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Carol Ann Ciocco ~ Pleiadean Ring of Fire Annular Eclipse (May 20 2012)

May 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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May 17, 2012

Eclipses 2012 Gemini Pleiadean Eclipse

Hi everyone, as you may have heard, on May 20/21, 2012 we will experience an Annular Solar Eclipse at 4:47pm Pacific Daylight Time (11:47pm UT). This is a partial eclipse, no...

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PlasmERG’s Revolutionary Engine Getting Ready to Rumble

January 31, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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The Nevada based company PlasmERG, with their sister company Inteligentry, is prepping for the testing and manufacturing of their Noble Gas Engine. The first test engine has been assembled, and the electronic control system will soon ...

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Venus-guided Moon phase

December 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Jon Waldrup Hello; On the cusp of December, 2011, in the cycle of the last New Moon before we launch into 2012, and during a Venus-guided Moon phase, I want to let you know of another opportunity to create a unified humanity. This is the Venus/Pluto co...

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Transcript of an Interview with Adama: Is Your Emergence Immanent?

October 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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by conversationswithadama

Full Transcript of Session with Larry Frank & Erin Mackley, as Channel for Adama.

Listen to mp3 recording here, as well as information from additional channels.

My name is Larry Frank and what...

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Washing Away ALL Our Old Bridges to Create the NEW!

August 31, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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Channeler: Lisa Gawlas  

There is so much I am excited about, so much I want to share outward with you. So please bear with me if this is an unusually long sharing.

The communication during August has been breathtaking ...

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AA Uriel – July 3, 2011 – This is not a spectator sport, it requires active participation!

July 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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6 July 2011  

Channeler:  Light of Luna

It is with great joy and love that we greet you today. It is not often we get to speak to you in this manner. It is often more with pen on paper, although we do enjoy this...

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A Compilation of articles about stopping whaling

June 7, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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Sea Shepherd Returns for a Fourth Season of Whale Wars to Put an End to Antarctic Whaling

Animal Planet's Emmy Award-nominated docu-reality series Whale Wars returns for a fourth season beginning Friday, June 3, at 9 PM E/P wi...

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Aghartha In The Hollow Earth!

May 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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The Inner Earth & Realm of Aghartha

Aghartha In The Hollow Earth!

By Dr Joshua David Stone

The biggest cover-up of all time is the fact that there is a civilization of people living in the center of Earth, whose c...

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The Stabilized Passageway Zoosh through Robert Shapiro

April 9, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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7 April 2011   Channeler:  Robert Shapiro

Hi everyone, from most precious Zoosh through Robert Shapiro from the latest Sedona journal, talking about a new earth active now and also talking about Vertical time, meaning on...

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Planet Alert April 2011

March 30, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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  By Admin on behalf of Mahala, on March 27th, 2011

What’s up for the new moon of April? On the new moon of April 3, 2011 at 7:00 AM PDT there will be six planets in Aries, plus Eris, and Vulcan. What a powerhouse that ...

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