Here in Washington, DC, Monday morning commutes on the Metro can feel like a prison sentence.  So this past Monday morning, when over a dozen Greenpeace activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and boarded the Red line train to Dupont Circle, people probably had no idea what to think of us asking for a prison sentence of our own.

By the time our “chain gang” of fourteen reached the top of the escalators, we’d been joined by two whales carrying picket signs and Greenpeace USA’s esteemed executive director, John Passacantando.  We were heading to the Japanese chancery on Embassy Row with one message to the government of Japan:  If defending whales is a crime, then arrest us, too. 

On June 10th, 2008, the Japanese government arrested and detained two of my colleagues at Greenpeace Japan—Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki—for the “crime” of exposing a whale-meat embezzlement scandal.

In a matter of days on December 10, 2008, a group of executive directors from five Greenpeace national offices will travel to Japan to deliver their requests to Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan.  This international delegation of Greenpeace executive directors will demand that Japan re-open the investigation of the whale meat scandal and of whaling itself.  And, like my fellow activists and I did this past Monday morning, these executive directors will put themselves forward as "co-defendants" with our colleagues Junichi and Toru.  December 10 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, and the declaration defines the rights of every human on the planet—including the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the right to a fair and public trial, and presumption of innocence.

Monday mornings might seem like our prison sentence, but our planet’s prison sentence lies in whaling and Japan’s jailing of average people like you, me, Junichi, and Toru, who are working hard to save the environment.  I hope you choose to join me and countless other activists around the world this week who are telling the Japanese government to arrest you, too, for the "crime" of saving the whales.

Your fellow activist,

Josef Palermo
Web Editor

I have just read the action alert sent out by my coworker John Hocevar, Director Ocean's Campaign, Starving For Your Help. I have worked with John going on four years now, mostly working on Alaska's vast Gulf and Seas, surrounding our Great Land. I am writing in total support of Mr. Hocevar's statements. 

As many, if not all of you know, I was born and raised on St. George Island, one of the two inhabited Pribilof Islands. These Islands are a wonderful place, not only for the richness of its wildlife, but imagine what it is like for the people, the Unangan (Aleut) who call this home. As a young Unangan boy, my entire life was surrounded by this richness. This is perhaps why I grew up to major in biology when I went to college. My life, as I understand now, was rich and filled with beauty. There were millions of fur seals, whales, stellar sea lion and countless millions of just about every marine birds one can imagine. That was just a short 30 years ago.

 Today, as John said, it is a totally different place. It is becoming bleak, forelorn, empty of its once abundance. We Unangan said: "God put us here to take care of His creation." This is what we believe. Sadly, we are not even close to the numbers of people, the money of large fishing companies with their lobbyests, nor close to having the political clout to fulfill this belief. 

 I ask you to please consider helping us and our fragile home. Often, as you know, seeing something is always preferable to reading about it. If you saw what these Islands and the Bering Sea is being turned into, you would understand what John and I are saying. 

Thank you very much for your help.

George Pletnikoff

Fishing Villages

It is very difficult for people to get an understanding of what happens to an entire village in Alaska that is dependent upon fishing for their economy.

It is said that for every fishing boat, most fishing boats in villages are under 55 feet in length, there are at least 10 jobs crated to support that boat. First, of course, is the crew. Usually on a boat this size, and depending upon what species of fish or crab they are fishing for, there is a crew of 5 people: the skipper and four deck hands. Then you have the fuel handlers, gear shops, grocery stores, and transportation industry. So you can see that in a village of 500 people, a lot of jobs in the support industry is created the more fishing boats there are in the village. Now, imagine that same scenario when we are talking about a billion-dollar a year industry such as there is in the pollock fishery. Together, in both the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, that billion-dollar fishing industry harvests approximately 3,000,000,000 pounds of fish. Three billions. Imagine, if you will, the amount of jobs created in a village when that amount of fish has to be caught, delivered and processed, then shipped to the markets. The amount of people and expense to do this is staggering. Now imagine what happens to that village if the total allowable catch is severely lowered by the fishery managers and then if that fishery collapses. Imagine what happens to that village. Worse yet, imagine what happens to the environment, the ecosystem if such a scenario were to materialize.

The other side of this picture is people living in villages who are not a part of this economic activity and way of life. They are, as was labeled by politicians several years ago, the silent majority. They are the people who work everyday in local jobs created by the State and Federal governments, the health care system, the municipal government and some by private business not necessarily related to the fishing industry. Often, the fishing industry is only a seasonal economy, as in the Bering Sea crab fishery, or the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.  These silent majorities work day in and day out, searching, hoping and planning on some semblance of the great American dream, that of being able to afford a Christmas tree, and all that that dream encompasses.

The silent majority of people in our villages supplement their incomes with cultural and ancestral activities. We go hunting, fishing and gathering for our foods. We go to the same places on the beach our ancestors have done for hundreds and thousands of years. We go, looking, searching and hoping for that sea lion, fur seal, walrus, duck, and other foods we grew up eating with our parents and grandparents, knowing of that security and the goodness of that life. We go to the familiar places to search for our spirit. We hear the voices of people long gone. We smile at the wisdom taught at this place, by people long revered. We are in a familiar place where life truly is lived. It is said that a gay person has no choice about their sexuality. The same is true about a person or people who live in that familiar place. We have no choice. It is a calling. It is life. It is, not a way to live, but simply life, such lived, above the noise of choices.

Fishery managers do not consider this life. Their only mission is to ensure that an industry has enough resource to continue. Here is where that mission, it seems to me with the problems of the pollock fishery, fails. Fishery managers rely on what they call best available science. Not sound science, but science that is best available to provide answers. What is that?

If the pollock fishery collapses, as the surveys done by National Marine Fisheries Service has shown, it will be because the fishery managers were wrong. Their best available science did not take into account the reality of what is on the ground. If and when this happens, it means entire ecosystems are in trouble, is suffering a stroke, or worst yet, a heart attack. We cannot call 911 for help. It does not work that way.

Now, consider this. If, because of this best available science, one community, one human spirit is killed, not only have we committed a crime against the environment, but worse, against another human being. We have snuffed out a spirit. We have committed cultural genocide, a holocaust. Where is the best available science, best available medicine, best available intentions, that’s going to repair that? As a friend of mine said: “Man is a spiritual being.” Best available person.

Growing up on the beaches of St. George Island, one of the five Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, I remember combing the beaches. There was, and is, so much to be found. Glass balls, I even found a container with chopsticks, very fancy, that I took to the Governments Island Manager’s house to find out what it was, and lots of other debris that we thought interesting and valuable. And so, after large storms, we went out on our favorite beaches looking to see what was there.

I remember that as children, growing up on this little Island, we used to collect glass balls, little balls of glass about the size of softballs today, covered with woven net. This was a prize. We used to, as kids in school, brag about how many we found, what sizes, and sometimes where. We exchanged stories about them. We talked about what we did with them, what trinkets we made, how we glued them together to make Christmas trees, and how we used files, a steel tool used to sharpen other tools, to cut a slit in them to make banks. And in these banks we put our dimes, nickels, pennies and the occasional quarter to go to the company store, or canteen run by the United States Government to buy candy. And we wondered where they came from and what they were used for. We did not know. Now we know they were used to hold up the miles long nets on the surface of the water used to kill hundreds and thousands of animals, mostly for fish, but birds, seals, whales, and anything else that would come into contact with them. And they were used by either the Japanese or Taiwanese Governments. We know that now, but not then. And they were a prize.

As time flowed by, now into the 60’s and 70’s we began to see different things coming ashore on our Islands.  Along with the occasional coke bottle, plastic bottle, glove and basket, large pieces of net began to show up. Again, being on a small Island, we did not know what these things were being used for. So, as far as we were concerned, all of this debris was normal. After all, everyone else in the world, our small world to be sure, was going through the same thing. Sure. If it was happening here it was surely happening elsewhere. Or was it?

You see? What was happening during the 60’s and 70’s while beach combing, miles and miles, and yards and yards of monofiliment nets were used to catch fish. Nets made of plastics, which would never degrade, made of by products of oil, to stretch out over the Bering Sea to kill. We did not know that, but now we do. And kill they did. They did not fall apart or come loose. They were made of a product that would last years and years. And they would, even if those who put them into the water, the fishers lost them, continue to kill and kill until there was nothing else to kill. Whales, fish, birds, seals, walruses, plankton and seaweed, no matter what came into contact with them, they were doomed to death.

Today, in the 2000’s, not much has changed, really. We still comb the beaches of the Pribilof Islands, both St. Paul and St. George and pick up stuff. Now instead of glass balls and chop sticks, we pick up nets, plastic balls, plastic gloves, plastic, plastic, plastic. Pop can  rings used to hold a six pack together is common. Plastic nets, ropes, lines caught in and around the necks of curious fur seals is oh so frequent. Often the nets are so tight around the necks of these animals that their flesh shows because it cuts into their fur. Plastic whatever. Imagine it and we pick them up. I remember not too long ago when I first began working for Greenpeace that we were on St. Paul Island. I took my buds to see one of the long sandy beaches on the Island, to walk and talk. To discuss what it was that they expected of me, an Unangan person working for a conservation group, and how I expected to fit in. We walked the beach and talked. At one point, one of the guys/gals stopped to pick up a plastic something, handed to one of the other Greenpeace persons with me and said, now its your responsibility. I did not know what that meant. Come to find out, if you pick up some piece of trash, no matter what it is, and handed it over to another of your buds, that person was now responsible for it. Needless to say, I did not accept anything from anyone else on our walk.

Today, large nets are still used to kill. The difference now is, is that they are not left to drift out in the ocean to arbitrarily kill, but are focused. Its called “directed fishery.” I am gonna kill these fishes, but sadly in the process, hundreds of millions of metric tonns of non directed fishes, called by-catch, are killed also. But, this is legal. It is considered fishing for fish using the best available science.

You know how it is said? That no matter how much has changed, everything remains the same? It’s true. Today, instead of collecting glass balls, our Tribal Government of the Aleut Community of St. Paul cleans our beaches every year. They go out to the same beaches that I used to collect collectibles and collect trash, tons of trash. And its all plastic trash, made to never degrade.Look at  www.tribaleco.com/entang/

Instead of talking to our friends in school about making Christmas trees and glass ball banks with what we found on the beach, we are now talking about what kind of people live out there who allow this to happen. Who are they? What are there values? What are they thinking? Indeed, what are we thinking that we allow this to happen?

As an advocate for ocean conservation and admirer of majestic whales in the sea, I am really excited about a new movie that is opening in theaters on September 26th,  called Whaledreamers.

The movie is an uplifting and inspirational story about indigenous cultures in Australia and their positive relationship with whales.

While countries like Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to hunt whales for greedy profit it is nice to see a story like this to help restore your faith in humanity.

Instead of decimating whale populations and profiting from their blood, these indigenous cultures look for ways to live in harmony with the whales and their surrounding environment.

From watching previews, the movie looks to have some beautiful underwater footage that will move chills down your spine. You will fall in love with whales all over again.

Julian Lennon produces the movie and he even has a great song in there that will get your toe tapping. Looks like the movie might be in limited release, so check your local theater to see if it’s coming to your town.

In addition to being a cool story to watch, the movie also provided the inspiration for this year's Weekend of Unity & Peace taking place from October 24-26. The fundraising events are intended to increase awareness and advocacy for groups such as Greenpeace and, the important issues the film covers. If you want to participate in the festivities, visit this website for more information: www.unityandpeace.org.

To watch a preview, check movie times or learn more about the movie, check out their website.

-- Michelle