Chile earthquake tsunami warnings

UPDATED

The 8.8 earthquake off Chile (by way of comparison, the 7.0 Haiti earthquake was five hundred times weaker) has caused tsunami warnings to be issued for countries on the other side of the Pacific.  According to Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 

A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR / GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI / KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA / SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI / AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU / HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES / CHINESE TAIPEI

The PTWC warning for Hawaii is at the highest warning severity level.  In 1960 a 9.5 magnitude quake  -- the largest earthquake of the century -- off South Central Chile caused a tsunami that killed over sixty in Hawaii before it taking more than 100 lives in Japan.

Whether any tsunami will have a serious impact as far north as California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, will depend largely upon the ocean currents, according to a tsunami expert interviewed on CNN.

CNN's weatherman mentioned a report of a 45 meter-high-wave hitting Easter Island, but this astounding claim had not been validated.  The 1960 Chilean earthquake reportedly caused a 25 meter-high tsunami.

You can watch a live streaming video from Chile here.

Update 1:  The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center has issued a "tsunami advisory" only for California and Alaska (map).  Vancouver, where the Olympics is finishing up, will apparently not be impacted.  WCATWC has also posted a  preliminary forecast model energy map:

Update 2: And here are the tsunami travel times (WCATWC):

Japanese whaling ship rips Sea Shepherd boat

Updated (videos!)

ABC has a report on a rare collision in the Southern Ocean.   The Japanese whaling security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 has rammed and damaged the Ady Gil, a $2 million high-speed trimaran belonging to Paul Watson's anti-whaling Sea Shepherd Society.    The Andy Gil is believed to be sinking but the crew were rescued by the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker.   The Sea Shepherd Society has asked Australia to send a naval vessel to "restore peace" and protect the 21 Australian citizens on board the Sea Shepherd and the whales from the Japanese.   According to ABC, the incident happened "outside Australia's economic zone but within Australia's search and rescue zone."

The Sea Shepherd website gives some background about the unprecedented resources the organization has sent into the cold waters off Antarctica this whaling season.

The objective of Sea Shepherd’s three-ship campaign is to bankrupt the illegal Japanese whaling fleet and to sink them economically.

“This year, I have three ships, four small boats, a jet ski, a helicopter, 77 crew, and a bagful of aggravation for the Japanese whale poachers,” said Captain Paul Watson. “We intend to make life miserable for the whale killers over the next month and a half.”

Included in the crew is the Animal Planet crew filming the third season of the hit television series “Whale Wars.”

The Sea Shepherd crew number 77 from 16 nationalities including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Jotman wishes Sea Shepherd every success against the whalers.

But it's important to recognize that whaling is just the tip of the iceberg -- the best known and most publicized -- of the various ways people are harming marine life.  The most important battles have yet to be won.
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Pictured in my photo is a minke whale -- one variety that Japanese commercial whalers claim the right to hunt.   

UPDATE: Here's a video (h/t Omar Todd) -- taken by a person on the Japanese whaling ship -- showing the high-tech trimaran getting sliced by the bow of the whaler's "security ship."   



UPDATE 2: And here's a video of the incident shot from the Sea Shepherd's Bob Barker:

What countries appeared most/least corrupt in 2009?

 Scanning the list from best to worst, here's what strikes me about the rankings of countries in Transparency International's corruption perceptions index for 2009:*

• The top ten least corrupt are the Nordic countries, plus New Zealand (#1), Canada, and Australia.  (Netherlands isn't exactly Nordic, but it comes in at #6.  Singapore (#3) is perceived as the least corrupt country in all of Asia.
  
• The US (home to Delaware) and UK (protector of Jersey) just barely make the top twenty.
• Three Gulf states are perceived as less corrupt than Israel (#32)
• The big countries of Eastern Europe  -- Hungary, Czech, Poland (#46-52) -- are believed to be more corrupt than any country in East Asia outside of China.
• Turkey (#61) and Italy (#63)are perceived as being almost equally corrupt, but Turkey (still considered unfit to join the EU) ranks higher than both Italy and dismally-ranking Greece which is tied with Romania at #71.
• China (#79) and India (#84) rank similarly on corruption.    India is tied with Thailand.
• In South America, Chile is #25 (ahead of Spain) but neighboring Argentina is #105.  (As we saw with the English speaking world, the "colonials" seem to be outranking the "mother countries" on this survey).
• Egypt has the same perceived level of corruption as Indonesia (#111), but the "land of baksheesh" is perceived as being less corrupt than Lebanon (#130) and Syria (#126) and even Vietnam (#120).
• Pakistan and Philippines are tied at #139.
• Zimbabwe is tied with Russia at #146.
  
• Laos and Cambodia are tied at #158.
• America is trying to win wars in two of the five most corrupt countries in the world.  (Iraq and Afghanistan's rank prior to America's invasions could not have been any lower.)

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* ASEAN countries names are in bold. At Jot ASEAN I posted a short list that includes only Southeast Asian countries.

Samoa islands tsunami

UPDATE: Reports from Samoa here.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center NOAA, issued the following warning (at 2022Z 29 SEP 2009):

A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR

AMERICAN SAMOA / SAMOA / NIUE / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / COOK ISLANDS / TONGA / TUVALU / KIRIBATI / KERMADEC IS / FIJI /HOWLAND-BAKER / JARVIS IS. / NEW ZEALAND / FR. POLYNESIA / PALMYRA IS. / VANUATU / NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / SOLOMON IS. / JOHNSTON IS. / NEW CALEDONIA / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / POHNPEI / WAKE IS.

An earthquake of 7.9 struck Samoa. According to Radio New Zealand (live stream), at least 6 people have died in Samoa, and now New Zealand is clearing its beaches.

The NOAA website has posted the times when the tsunami is expected to arrive at various locations.   Times posted there are in GMT (about 12 hours behind local time in those locations where the tsunami first struck)

The tsunami has already struck American Samoa, Samoa, the Cook Island, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Kiribati, and parts of New Zealand (though apparently the wave was small when it arrived on the North Island and the warning may have since been downgraded for New Zealand).

This map came from the NOAA website (legend at top right):

UPDATE 1
According to USGS the original earthquake in Samoa has apparently been upgraded to 8.0 at a depth of 18 km.   USGS has a great earthquake map here that is constantly updated.

World Bank - FAO report: solution to overfishing crisis

The World Bank reported this week on the cost to the world of overfishing and the lack of marine resource management. This problem is staggering, but as the report indicates, there are ways to address the problem:

Economic losses in marine fisheries resulting from poor management, inefficiencies, and overfishing add up to US$50 billion per year, according to a new World Bank-FAO report released today. Taken over the last three decades, these losses total over $US2 trillion, a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Italy.

But, The Sunken Billions: The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform also argues that well-managed marine fisheries could turn most of these losses into sustainable economic benefits for millions of fishers and coastal communities.

According to the Report, the bulk of losses occur in two main ways.

First, depleted fish stocks mean that there are fewer fish to catch, and therefore the cost of finding and catching them is greater than it might be. Second, fleet overcapacity means that the economic benefits of fishing are dissipated due to redundant investment and operating costs.

The Report stresses that figure of US$50 billion represents a conservative estimate – it excludes losses to recreational fisheries and marine tourism as well as losses due to illegal fishing.

Excess fishing capacity

The build up of fishing fleets, deployment of increasingly powerful fishing technologies and increasing pollution and habitat loss has depleted fish stocks worldwide. Global marine catches have been stagnant for over a decade, hovering at around 85 million tons per year. Meanwhile, fisheries productivity -measured in terms of catch per fisher, or per fishing vessel-has declined, even though fishing technology has advanced and fishing effort increased.

If world fish stocks were rebuilt, the current marine fisheries catch could be achieved with approximately half of the current global fishing effort, the Report says.

According to FAO, over 75 percent of the world’s fish stocks are either fully exploited or overexploited.

Underperformance and hidden costs

But, the focus on the state of stocks has tended to obscure the even more critical economic health of the fisheries. When fish stocks are fully exploited, the associated fisheries are almost invariably performing below their economic optimum, the Sunken Billions reports. In some cases, fisheries may be biologically sustainable but still operate at an economic loss.

And while many fisheries are profitable, the global picture is that fish catching operations are buoyed up by subsidies, the Report finds. “At the global level, each ton of fish caught uses almost half a ton of fuel – much of it wasted in redundant harvesting effort,” it notes.

The press release about the report concludes:

“For each person employed at sea another three people are employed on shore,” noted Willmann. “Fish is the main animal protein for over 1 billion people. It provides livelihoods for over 200 million people and 90% of these people are in developing countries.”

Signs of progress

The good news is that governance reforms have turned the tide in some fisheries, The Sunken Billions notes. “Strengthening fishing rights systems is fundamental to addressing the problems facing the sector,” said Ragnar Arnason, a Fisheries Economist at the University of Iceland and a co-author of the Report, pointing to successful experiences in Iceland, New Zealand, and Namibia.

Strengthening the use, access, or ownership rights of fishers is supported by a growing number of organizations that see the need to create incentives for responsible stewardship. Promotion of ‘rights-based fisheries’ features in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s Resolution on Sustainable Fisheries for Food Security for the ASEAN Region. The Abuja Declaration on Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture in Africa, adopted by the Heads of State Meeting of The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) “Fish for All Summit” Abuja, Nigeria, 25 August 2005 also endorsed ‘rights-based fisheries’. The world’s largest fishery, Peru’s anchoveta fishery, is also moving towards a rights-based approach, where it is proposed to make the fishery pay for a social safety net for fishers.

“Governance reforms are often politically difficult, particularly if some reduction in fishing fleets or in the numbers of fishers may occur,” says Kelleher. “And the rights and livelihoods of fishers should be secured in any reform process,” he added.

China's Sanlu milk scandal is New Zealand's disgrace

There is the headline story, and there is the real story which I suspect is much more important and far bigger. Long-term, the latter presents a more serious health threat to more people than the present media-hyped tainted milk scandal.

A partly-owned subsidiary of a New Zealand firm has been caught selling toxin-laden milk to Chinese mothers. New Zealand dairy conglomerate Fonterra is the major majority shareholder in China's Sanlu dairy. It has come to light that Sanlu milk has been contaminated with a resin used in the manufacture of plastics, cleaning fluids, and fertilizers that has sickened over one thousand Chinese babies and killed at least two.

Concerning the scandal, the leader of New Zealand's Alliance Pary has blasted Fonterra management:

Mr Billot says that there are inconsistencies about Fonterra's claim that it asked for a product recall in August 2008.

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra says it knew in August its Chinese joint venture partner was selling contaminated milk since linked to the death of at least one baby.

He says that as a major shareholder, Fonterra management are responsible and must be held accountable.

"What kind of checks and regulation by Fonterra of their Chinese operations were carried out? I'm sure they checked out how much cash would be in it for them, so why didn't they check the safety of the production facilities?

He says the tragedy exposes the utter hypocrisy and bankruptcy of the clean, green New Zealand brand, as our leading corporate is now implicated in selling poisoned food for infants.

Mr Billot says that under free trade agreements, New Zealand was opening itself up to a future where such incidents were common.

According to a comprehensive timeline of the scandal, New Zealand's embassy in Beijing was first informed of the tainted milk in mid-August.

There's something creepy about the sale of infant milk formulas -- especially when the consumers are mothers in the developing world. I think it's even creepier when the companies pushing the milk products -- marketing them "health foods" -- are based in the West. Do Asian infants have any real dietary need for cow's milk?

The Fonterra subsidiary pushes a product -- infant milk formula -- that may well be as bad as cigarettes for human health when used as a substitute for mother's milk for the youngest infants. Science shows that breastfeeding protects infants from a range of disorders; it seems reasonable to speculate that the antibodies contained in breast milk may be particularly vital helping Chinese infants to cope with China's polluted and disease-outbreak prone environment.

According to the Malyasia Star, "Sanlu dominates in poorer rural areas, where farmer and migrant workers often find milk powder is easier than breast-feeding, and sometimes believe it is also healthier."

The contamination issue aside, by owning a 43 percent stake in Sanlu, Fonterra was already invested in a line of business of questionable ethics.

Why does Bottom Trawling Continue? Blame Canada (seriously)

Are you against whaling? So am I. But there are worse activities than whaling. Top of my list would be "bottom trawling."

The world came very close to banning "bottom trawling" in the fall of 2006. Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the United States tried hard to get the UN General Assembly to ban this destructive fishing practice.

How destructive? It's unbelievable, you can read about it here.

Only eleven nations have high-seas bottom trawling fleets -- Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia and Spain.

But thanks in large measure to the efforts of the Canadian government, we are back to the status quo:

Supporters of the ban said Canada's stance compromised prospects for stronger UN protections. . . . Canada has a fleet of bottom trawlers operating within Canadian waters. Its concern has been that a moratorium on the high seas could later be expanded to cover areas within national jurisdiction.

Basically, Canada worked hard to get a compromise proposal that ruined the chance of securing a world-wide ban on this destructive fishing practice. As this Greenpeace report indicates, Spain was also an major obstacle, but Canada -- because they did not even have a deep sea bottom trawling industry to defend --bears the fullest moral burden for having allowed this barbaric practice to continue.

This video was made prior to the vote last November at the UN. In case you missed it, it's hilarious.
A vote and an opportunity may have been lost -- thanks largely to Canada -- but the issue needs to go straight to top of the global agenda. The first time round, this urgent issue never received a fraction of the publicity it deserved.

Fiji-Style Democracy

A recent post by Andrew Walker at NewMandala bears the headline: "New species of military democracy discovered in the Pacific"

Fiji's new military-appointed Prime Minister, as quoted in the The Sydney Morning Herald said: “Democracy might be all right for Australia and New Zealand but certainly not all right for Fiji, I can tell you that,” he said. “I think in Fiji we need a different type of democracy.”