Posted by Wen Bo

The place where fishermen returned the collected crude oil has a nice name, Golden Bay Bridge. To 35 year old fisherman Cui Zhanyou, it has become a bridge of no return.

On the evening of July 27^th, when Cui was transporting barrels of oil to the collection center, his boat was overturned by rough waves. After days of searching, Cui’s family still could not find a trace of him. (more…)

By Julianna Calcagno

Marine Sanctuaries Program Intern – Summer, 2010

When was the last time you wanted a noisy leaf blower or a honking car alarm to stop blaring? Imagine thousands of similar sounds intruding into your daily life from breakfast through dinner time, and all through the night. This is what it’s like to be a whale in today’s noisy oceans. It’s called noise pollution. You and I may not notice it up here on land, but it is really bad for you if you are one of the animals that live in the vicinity of all the noise produced by humans on a daily basis in our oceans. The blue, grey, and humpback whales that swim and feed in the krill-rich waters of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary are subject to dramatically increased background noise because of all the shipping traffic that drives through those waters on the way to the busy Port of Oakland, the 4th busiest port in the nation.

Now picture being at a concert and trying to hear something important that the person right next you is saying. Unless you have a hearing super power you would barely hear what the other person is saying. That is what the whales have to endure all the time. The noise that the ships make – mostly from their propellers – is at the same level, or frequency, that whales use to communicate with each other. In their darkened ocean world they can’t rely on sight, like humans can. Whales depend on sound to communicate through vast amounts of water, to find food, to mate, to survive, and protect themselves from predators.

Scientists recently discovered that some whales are changing their vocalizations – essentially screaming – so that they can be heard over the racket all the boats are making. But doing this is likely straining the whales and at some point they won’t be able to call loud enough to be heard in our industrialized ocean, leaving them silenced and alone.

If ships slowed down, though, they wouldn’t be spreading as much noise pollution, and they would save innocent whales that die each year after being struck and killed by fast-moving vessels.

Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, is doing it! If they can slow their speed to 12 knots (about 14mph) – instead of the much noisier and dangerous 20 – 24 knots – then so should the rest of the shipping companies.

Try to picture having no way to communicate, protect yourself, or even be able to eat because of some body else who wants to be able to move faster to a destination.  For whales’ sake, and cleaner air and less climate change, ships should give whales a brake!

Posted by Wen Bo

Photo: Greenpeace

In the very recent memory of Tom Beeke, a passionate Canadian birder, Dalian’s Jinshitan resort was still his land of discovery. Tom got a job as English teacher at Dalian Maple Leaf International School several years ago. Besides living close to the sandy beach, it was also a great treat being able to venture around Jishintan coast, bushes and wetlands to watch birds.  This summer, Tom’s new book, Birds of Dalian, hit the local book market.

Dalian, located on the East Asia-Pacific Flyway of migratory birds, is an important stopover site for birds migrating between Siberia and Australia. For those birds, who are now in Siberia, their journeys south will soon start.  For this year’s new chicks, their first ever encounter with the coasts, islands and the sea around Dalian will begin one month later. (more…)

Posted by Evan Sparling

Back in July, Igor and I went to visit a partner who conducts anti-poaching patrols in the Nalichego Nature Park, not far from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. We had to take a boat to his home within the park and, after a day-long tour, rode back to the truck to head home. As we turned a corner we saw the following image:

Right there, in the middle of a federal park on waters where any fishing equipment beyond a spinning rod is banned, we caught two men stringing a net across the mouth of a key spawning river.

I realized just how complacent poachers can be on Kamchatka, but it also revealed how a little support in the right places can significantly ameliorate the problem. Our partner in this park will likely catch several similarly complacent poachers this season. And if we can find more committed partners like him to conduct similar work, we can show poachers that their illegal work will not be tolerated by the locals who care the most about healthy salmon populations.

Posted by Wen Bo

Zhong Yu of Greenpeace bears witness to the Dalian oil spill (Photo: Greenpeace)

Twenty-two years ago, when my high school classmates unfolded a banner with the words “Save Our Seas!”, we put the Greenpeace logo on the banner.  At that time, we were protesting marine debris littering the coasts of Dalian.

Now, twenty-two years since that unofficial Greenpeace banner hung in 1988, Dalian received its first official support from Greenpeace with the deployment of several Greenpeace teams to respond to the massive oil spill in Dalian.

Zhong Yu, senior action coordinator with Greenpeace China, was not prepared for what she saw nor for what she would encounter.  Like many clean up workers and local fishermen, Zhong did not wear protective gear when she walked into thick crude oil along the beach. The photo of her wearing a red Greenpeace T-shirt and blue jeans was the first telling image from Greenpeace bearing witness to the Dalian disaster. (more…)

Posted by Wen Bo

Firefighters responding to the scene of the Oil spill in Dalian, China (Photo from Netease)

To Chinese firefighter Jiang Hui, his Darley fire truck was his darling. Jiang had been a driver with a $1 million fire truck since his unit purchased it three years ago, and he liked this American brand.

Jiang was among the earliest squads to reach the burning and smoky scene in Dalian. While shooting water and foam to the fire, the blazing crude oil quickly rushed near their feet. The tires of the fire truck caught fire.  Jiang jumped into the truck and tried to move it, but the flame started to engulf the fire truck.  Another firefighter ran to the truck’s front side, pulled Jiang out of the cabin and dragged him away.

The heat was too hot to bear. While some firefighters shot water canons towards the burning oil tanker, others had to shoot water towards the front line of firefighters to cool them down.

“Water, Water!”, “Foam!” were the shouts of the firefighters mixed with the sounds of continuous explosions and blazing noise of fireballs.

A Dalian TV cameraman, Lu Jianwei, captured a short conversation of a firefighter, later identified as Xu Zhiyou, talking to his wife over the cell phone. “Dear, I might not be back, treat mom well, treat our child well!”  On the other side of the line, his wife must have asked why. “Don’t ask, no time, I will stop here.” Then he turned off the phone and rushed towards the fire. (more…)

By Wen Bo

Site of explosion - Dalian New Port

When firefighter Sang Wu got the assignment from his director, Sang could see the tears welling in the director’s eyes. His assignment was to turn off the valves of the oil tanks, each containing 100,000 cube meters of crude oil, which were fueling the flaming pipelines.  This was the scene on the night of July 16^th, 2010, in Dalian New Port where the oil pipeline exploded. Sang Wu and his two other fellow fire fighters might have just accepted a suicide mission.

Because of the explosion and the fire, the electricity to the port was cut off. Turning off the valve was a tiresome endeavor. What would normally take just a few seconds, would take Sang and his teammates 80,000 turns manually. After turning the wheels 320,000 rounds in total, Sang and his teammates sealed off the valves of four of the closest oil tanks after eight hours of labor.

Throughout the night of July 16^th, over 2,000 firefighters from 14 major cities of Liaoning province raced to the scene of explosion. The site is a base for storage of crude oil and chemicals. Fifty-one toxic chemical tankers were linked up in the area near the explosion.  The closest tanker was less than 100 meters away from the burning old tanker.  If it had not been for the courageous actions of the firefighters, the tankers could have exploded and the city of Dalian may have simply turned into another Bhopal.

Posted by Xiu Min Li

Dalian oil pipeline explosion and spill

On July 16, an oil pipeline in Dalian, owned and operated by ChinaPetrol Group exploded while loading oil off a Libyan tanker.

The Financial Times reported today, “The disaster began last Friday, when two pipelines exploded as high-sulphur crude was being unloaded from a Libyan tanker. State media said firefighters were on the scene within three minutes and more than 2,000 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, which raged through Saturday morning.”

According to Chinese media report, the explosion has caused 1500 tons of oil to spill, reaching an ocean area of 50km with pollution likely to spread to 100km.  John Amos from SkyTruth made the above satellite image of the Dalian Spill. (more…)

Posted by Zhang Yadong, Executive Director of Green Longjiang

I am almost done with the research survey that I was assigned to do on the shark trade in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China. Except to update some photographs, I would not normally walk into a shop full of shark fins, open the menu of an Abalones and Fins Restaurant or even have a look at the body of a shark in a commodities market.

I still remember my initial doubt on conducting this shark trade research survey in Harbin when Wen Bo told me to do so: Isn’t it (shark fins) a traditional custom for southern China? Is it even a good idea to do such survey in Harbin, a place thousands of miles away from the ocean and without a traditional consumption custom? However, today, I know the answer.

(more…)

Posted by Wen Bo

This week, I attended a conference in Nanjing, China on Taihu Lake water pollution. The event was organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Japanese Institute of Developing Economics (IDE-JETRO) and Nanjing University.

Several of my colleagues from partner organizations based in China were there as well as several from U.S. based organizations, including one from Great Lakes Office of National Wildlife Federation. On the Japanese side, there were five to six institutions, including professors, researchers and one NGO, Japan for Sustainability.

(more…)