The Beacon: Andy Sharpless's blog
Californians: Tell the Governor to Protect Sharks!
Andy Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana.
Calling all Californians: Right now your Governor, Jerry Brown, is considering legislation that would effectively end the trade of shark fins. As you’re probably aware, trade in shark fins facilitates the practice of shark finning, which is one of the single biggest contributors to the collapse of shark populations around the globe.
The California State Senate passed a bill to end the trade in California, A.B. 376, earlier this month and we expect the governor to sign or veto the bill this week, so your rapid input is critical.
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CEO Note: Calling on President Obama and Congress to End Tax Breaks For Oil Companies
Last night in his speech before the joint session of Congress, President Obama asked this important question:
“Should we keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or should we use that money to give small business owners a tax credit when they hire new workers?”
The stakes are significant. The multi-national oil companies receive more than $4 billion in tax breaks every year from the United States, according to The New York Times.
And of course international companies like Exxon, BP, and Shell spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and political campaigns in the United States to ensure that they keep those American tax breaks.
Earlier this year, President Obama tried to reduce the tax breaks handed out to oil multinationals, but Congress refused to consider it in this spring’s budget talks.
And all the while, oil companies continued to spend some of their record profits on perpetrating the falsehood that Americans need them to keep drilling in the American ocean and the American Arctic in order to save us money at the pump.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it. Increased domestic drilling will have little to no effect on your gas prices, because the price of oil is set on the international market. Surging international demand, or reductions in international production, has a much bigger effect on your gas prices than do slow and incremental changes in domestic production.
Moreover, when we expand domestic drilling and allow hazardous actions like BP took last year in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we take all the environmental risk at home, but share any oil finds with the international market. Does that seem smart to you?
The international oil companies want Americans to believe that if we let them drill enough, and give them big enough tax breaks, the American price of gas will drop. The facts show that’s not true.
Offering oil companies tax breaks in the hopes they’ll lower your gas price is like offering your teenager a bigger allowance in the hope they’ll take smaller portions at dinner.
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CEO Note: Nearing A Full Shark Fin Ban on the West Coast
While in 2010 the United States banned shark finning - the act of slicing off a shark's fins at seas and throwing the bleeding torso overboard to die - it has still allowed the sale and possession of shark fins, encouraging import and a market for the fins. Shark fins are primarily used in shark fin soup.
On Tuesday, the California Senate passed a bill to ban shark fin sale, trade, and possession. It awaits the governor's signature. Oceana joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Humane Society of the United States and Wildaid in support of this legislation.
This legislation builds on precedent and the momentum of Oceana’s work to protect sharks around the globe, including the U.S.’s ban passed last year, and a national ban on finning in Chile passed this July. The California bill joins similar legislation passed this year in Washington and Oregon, and last year in Hawaii. This coastwide action will help to lessen the demand for shark fins, and thus help save sharks across the globe that are slaughtered by countries with few or no regulations.
Up to 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins, including rare and endangered species. But with this legislation, we are making major progress in saving the oceans' top predator and one of the most ancient creatures in the sea.
If you're a California resident, you can help us. Place a phone call to Governor Brown's office to ask him to pass this bill, AB 376, by Oct. 9 in order to become law. You can reach Governor Brown's office at 916-445-2841.
With your support, we continue to win victories like this for our oceans. Thank you.
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CEO Note: Our International Leaders Speak Up
Oceana is a truly international organization, with campaigners at work in places from Alaska to Chile and Europe. And our leadership reflects that international agenda. We’re fortunate to have the vision of board members from around the world.
In the past week, two of our board members have spoken up on our behalf with essays in the Huffington Post, and I wanted to share their insight with you.
María Eugenia Girón is a Spanish business leader as well as Oceana board member, and she reported on Oceana’s successful battle to get the government of Spain to issue mercury warnings on certain seafood. Spain is one of the world’s largest consumers of seafood per capita, so the warning is much-needed. The announcement came after Oceana was forced to sue the Spanish government to release its own reports that show high levels of mercury in Spanish seafood.
María writes in the Huffington Post:
As a Spaniard, I'm proud of our seafood tradition. Unfortunately, as a mother, I'm worried. There's a downside to our seafood habit: studies have shown that the mercury level in our blood is 10 times that of the average level in the US and in other countries.
The next step is to get Spanish grocery stores to post mercury warnings, much like the stores on Oceana’s Green List in the U.S. have done after our prodding.
Our chairman, Dr. Kristian Parker, is a marine biologist and citizen of Denmark. He reported on Oceana’s summer expedition in northern Europe’s Baltic Sea. He writes:
Despite being surrounded by some of Europe's oldest cities, such as Stockholm and Copenhagen, the Baltic Sea doesn't get too much global attention. That's a shame, because the Baltic has provided fish for millions of people since the days of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the sea is increasingly sick as a result of decades of pollution and overfishing.
The Baltic Sea expedition was the first of its kind launched by a nonprofit; the crew of campaigners and scientists covered 7,000 nautical miles, some of it in absolutely frigid conditions. Now back on shore, we will analyze all the good data the crew gathered to help make the case for additional protections for this important source of seafood in Europe.
Several other members of our board of directors, including board president Keith Addis and Susan Rockefeller, have also spoken out on Oceana’s behalf. Their commitment to the future healthy and vitality of our oceans is greatly appreciated, as is yours.
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What if an Oil Spill Happened in the Arctic?
Andy Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana.
Less than a year after the Deepwater Horizon gusher was finally sealed, oil companies are claiming they can drill safely in the Arctic Ocean, an even more fragile and forbidding environment than the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, our government seems to be suffering from amnesia, too.
This month, Shell Oil received a conditional approval from the federal government to drill four exploratory wells next summer in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. The company claims that it can end a gushing spill like the Deepwater Horizon in just 43 days and clean up 90 percent of oil lost.
These claims aren’t based in historic experience and have little scientific evidence to back them up. Crews were only able to recover 10 percent of the oil escaping the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, and only 8 percent of oil from the Exxon Valdez spill.
The most recent oil spill drill in the Beaufort Sea was in 2000 and was described as a “failure.” Mechanical systems like skimmers and booms in calm but icy conditions simply didn’t work. The technology has not improved since then. Just watch this video of a failed cleanup test:
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CEO Note: The Arctic Still Isn’t Safe From Oil Spills
Less than a year after the Deepwater Horizon gusher was finally sealed, oil companies are claiming they can drill safely in the Arctic Ocean, an even more fragile and forbidding environment than the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, our government seems to be suffering from amnesia, too.
This month, Shell Oil received a conditional approval from the federal government to drill four exploratory wells next summer in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. The company claims that it can end a gushing spill like the Deepwater Horizon in just 43 days and clean up 90 percent of oil lost.
These claims aren’t based in historic experience and have little scientific evidence to back them up. Crews were only able to recover 10 percent of the oil escaping the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, and only 8 percent of oil from the Exxon Valdez spill.
The most recent oil spill drill in the Beaufort Sea was in 2000 and was described as a “failure.” Mechanical systems like skimmers and booms in calm but icy conditions simply didn’t work. The technology has not improved since then.
Watch the video of the failed cleanup test here.
Furthermore, the Arctic is an incredibly harsh place. The Gulf of Mexico was surrounded by thousands of first-responders within a few hours’ travel, and it has year-round temperate weather. The nearest Coast Guard response facility is 1000 air miles from the Beaufort Sea. The Arctic is only a hospitable working environment for a few months in summer. Ice and weather could easily make rescue working conditions far too dangerous for crews, leaving a nearly-pristine ecosystem that is home to Inuit people destroyed during an uncapped oil spill.
We’ve won major victories against offshore drilling, especially last year when President Obama announced that the new five-year plan for offshore drilling removed thousands of miles of U.S. ocean from consideration, including the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
But the Interior Department’s approval of Shell’s plan shows that we still face an uphill battle, even when the facts show that increased drilling won’t reduce gas prices at the pump.
We have campaigners and scientists at work in Washington, D.C. as well as in Alaska who are closely monitoring the oil companies’ plans to drill in one of the last great ocean ecosystems. With your support, we hope to win more protections to keep our coasts safe from oil spills.
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CEO Note: Oceana’s Seafood Fraud Campaign Kicks Off
How many New Yorkers does it take to tell the difference between snapper and tilapia?
We found out last weekend, when many of Oceana’s supporters came together for the second annual Hamptons Splash, a fundraiser hosted at the beautiful home of Margie and Michael Loeb.
In addition to showing their support for saving the oceans, guests got an inside look at Oceana’s newest campaign to end seafood fraud. This common practice is hurtful to both oceans and the people who love and depend upon seafood.
Our new report, “Bait and Switch: How Seafood Fraud Hurts Our Oceans, Our Wallets and Our Health,” explains how U.S. consumers are frequently served a completely different fish species than the one they paid for. Seafood may be mislabeled as often as 25 to 70 percent of the time for fish such as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod, according to recent studies.
How is this possible, you ask? More than 80 percent of U.S. seafood is imported, but only 2 percent is inspected. Fraud can happen at each step of the supply chain – the restaurant, the distributor, or the processing and packaging phase.
Plus, it’s a simple question of supply and demand. As seafood consumption around the world continues to rise, so do the incentives to overfish the oceans and mislabel fish as more expensive species, such as wild salmon and red snapper.
Our new campaign will be working to convince the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implement a tracking system for fish that can trace seafood back to its original source. The Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law by President Obama in January, requires tracking systems for high-risk foods, and Oceana believe seafood should be considered a high-risk food.
In the Hamptons, we invited guests to sample two fish dishes and guess which one was snapper.
The result? At least half of the guests picked incorrectly, which is a simple illustration of how easy it is to fool seafood consumers.
As our chief scientist Dr. Mike Hirshfield told the New York Times (in what they proclaimed “Quotation of the day”), “If you’re ordering steak, you would never be served horse meat. But you can easily be ordering snapper and get tilapia or Vietnamese catfish.”
I think you deserve to know that the seafood you’re eating is what you paid for, and I’m sure the people who failed our tests would agree. I’ll be sure to keep you informed as the campaign progresses.
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CEO Note: A New Victory for Sustainable Seafood and Healthy Oceans
I have some great news to share with you today. After a long legal battle, Oceana has succeeded in compelling the the federal government to reliably measure bycatch on the East Coast. Bycatch is the fish and wildlife that is thrown overboard, dead or dying, in the process of catching seafood.
Why is this important? Bycatch is one of the greatest problems facing the oceans today. It damages marine ecosystems by needlessly killing fish and wildlife, and it contributes to overfishing, further threatening our wild seafood supply. Worldwide, 16 billion pounds of bycatch are thrown overboard every year. This waste is tragic and completely unnecessary. The government needs to know the extent of bycatch in order to control it.
The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is required by law to count and report bycatch, but until Oceana’s legal victory, its Northeast region refused to do so. After a clear decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the federal government will establish a clear system for reporting bycatch, including determining how many observers needed on board commercial fishing ships in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
Oceana has fought bycatch for a decade now, and our campaigns have succeeded in saving thousands of sea turtles from shrimp trawls and longlines in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, as well as multitudes of birds, sharks, dolphins and fish from illegal driftnets in the Mediterranean.
With your support, we’re making the oceans a safer place for wildlife and a better source of sustainable seafood.
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CEO Note: Test Your Seafood Savvy at Hamptons Splash
Have you eaten any seafood yet this summer? If the answer is yes, do you know where it came from?
We recently launched a new campaign to combat seafood fraud, a practice that often misleads consumers about the seafood they purchase in order to increase profits. Recent studies have shown that seafood may be mislabeled as often as 25 to 70 percent of the time for fish such as red snapper and wild salmon. Fish fraud not only hurts our wallets, but marine conservation and human health as well.
But don’t just take my word for it. In a few short weeks, you’ll have the chance to test your own seafood IQ at our second major East Coast event, Oceana’s 2011 Hamptons Splash party, which takes place July 30th at a private beachfront estate in Southampton, New York. Test your seafood savvy with a blind taste test and a seafood pop quiz. You might be surprised how easy it is to be duped.
After you’re done tasting, sit back and listen as Oceana board member Ted Danson reads from his new book “Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them,” and enjoy musical entertainment provided by the Honey Brothers, featuring Oceana Ambassador Adrian Grenier.
Events like the Hamptons Splash party play a crucial role in our fundraising efforts, enabling us to launch new campaigns like seafood fraud. In short, they help us to continue winning victories on behalf of the oceans.
Even if you are unable to attend, you can still support us by visiting the event’s online auction, hosted by charitybuzz, which features artwork, travel opportunities and more, all benefiting our work. I urge you to visit the auction anytime today through Tuesday, August 2nd.
Best of luck bidding -- and tasting -- and thank you for supporting Oceana and Hamptons Splash.
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CEO Note: Victory! Chile Bans Shark Finning
Great news! Chile’s Congress has voted unanimously to ban shark finning -- and I’m proud to announce that it’s a direct result of our work.
The bill, which Oceana drafted and campaigned for, will end the brutal practice of shark finning, in which a shark’s fins are sliced off and the shark is thrown back into the water to suffocate or bleed to death. The new bill requires sharks to be landed with their fins still naturally attached.
This victory follows on the heels of a very similar ban passed by the United States Congress last December. Chile’s adoption of the same approach is heartening at a time when sharks are in serious trouble around the world.
Up to 78 million sharks are killed each year for their fins, and Chile has become a major shark fin exporter. A Freedom of Information Act request filed by Oceana revealed that between 2006 and 2009, Chile exported more than 71 tons of shark fins from 8 different species.
With the passage of this bill, Chile joins a growing list of countries leading the way in shark conservation. This legislation will help protect shark populations and ocean health in Chile and beyond.
Congratulations to our Chilean colleagues, and thanks to supporters like you, whose support makes it possible for us to win significant victories like this one.
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