Natural History Museum

I popped to London this week to have a look round the Natural History Museum. Always a lovely day out. Really enjoyed slowly strolling around taking it all in. I particularly enjoyed the two exhibitions they had on - Images of Nature and Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Images of nature is a selection of historic as well as modern nature imagery. There was some really interesting images and it was good to see various ways of visually presenting nature.

Wildlife photographer of the year was a brilliant selection of wildlife photography. Some of the pictures were really stunning and demonstrated great skill.

Images of Nature

The caterogory that really interested me was the One Earth caterogory One Earth Award. This section highlighted conservation issues or actions and the interaction between humans and the natural world.

Black Fish

Thursday the 28th I went to a talk by ocean conservation group The Black Fish. The group has set itself a mission to change attitudes towards our oceans and work to protect the life within them. I've always had a great love of the sea and all that lives within it. To produce work to support the ocean would be wonderful.

The talk was hosted by the Cowley club, a social club based on London road (http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk). The talk was mostly based around the issue of over fishing especially of tuna. Tuna, in particular blue fin tuna. Blue fin tuna is extremely popular and brings in a huge amount of money. Recently one blue fin tuna sold for 250 thousand pounds. Due to it's popularity the fish is coming very close to extinction and is reported to fall from existence in 3-4 years. Regulations have been put in place but there is such a lack in up keeping these rules.

Also mentioned in the talk was their fight against keeping dolphins and whales captive, a fight I am very much behind. At the moment there is a lot of concern for Morgan the killer whale who is currently captive in the Netherlands where experts are considering her release. Also being considered is selling Morgan to Sea World Florida.

The talk was really motivating and really informative. Hoping to stay in touch with the organization and hopefully be bale to produce some work for them!


http://www.theblackfish.org/

Vodafone tax dodge

Vodafone have recently managed to dodge a huge tax bill of 6 billion pounds funnily enough at the same time that 7 billion pounds worth of welfare cuts have been placed on the UK. £6bn is 85% of the £7bn the Chancellor has cut from the Welfare bill per year. Why isn’t the Chancellor asking companies who operate here to pay their fair share of tax if the deficit needs to be plugged now? Why hit the elderly, the disabled and the poor instead? Vodafone is the perfect example of a system that has become biased towards powerful corporations and against ordinary people.

Faroe Island whale slaughter

Residents of the Faroe Islands, an province of Denmark, slaughter and eat pilot whales every year. The process is said to be 'part of becoming a man' The Faroese are descendents of Vikings, and pilot whales have been a central part of their diet for more than 1,000 years. They crowd these intelligent animals into a bay and kill them, cutting the dorsal area through to the spinal cord. In the process, their main arteries get cut.

Ironically, this practice, called grindadráp, is diminishing the population of 5,000 islanders. Many of them get sick and die from high mercury levels in the whales. Mentally retarded children are reportedly being born at alarmingly high rates.

Shark finning

Shark finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark's fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown. This happens to tens of millions of sharks every year meaning that since the 1970s the populations of several species have been decimated by over 95%. This is all due to the huge demand for shark fin soup in Japan and China.

Electronic waste dumps

Over in Ghana and other parts of Africa there are huge areas where the Western world is simply dumping it's electronic waste. This huge amount of waste is so big due to our constant need for the latest technology. Our waste is dumped on other peoples land and is filled with harmful toxic chemicals. Many go to the scrap piles in desperate search of items to sell. Young children are often seen rummaging through the poisonous waste as they're so desperate for an income.

Dolphin slaughter and capture in Taiji Japan

These shocking images were only made aware to me by watching the award winning film "The Cove". I've been a dolphin lover for years and had no idea this was going on. Annually 20,000 dolphins in Japan alone are being hunted and brutally killed. Fishermen lure the dolphins into a small bay where a small percentage are removed and taken to marine parks and the rest are beaten to death. Many of the dolphins are dumped where as some are used for school dinners. Children are secretly fed dolphin which has dangerously high mercury levels.