Tag Archives: Peter Corkeron
Doctors and experts are skeptical, doubt lobster diver’s being “swallowed by a whale” claim
A lobster diver has been accused of lying about being swallowed whole by a humpback whale he says spat him back out because it didn’t like how he tasted. One doctor at Cape Cod Hospital, where self-described whale swallowing victim Michael Packard, 56, was treated, said Michael Packard should have suffered hearing loss following the freak accident.,, Other fishermen were also wary of Packard’s whale encounter. ‘People who are in the fishing industry, and people who know whales, are finding this hard to believe. It’s a first-ever that this would happen,’ said another lobsterman. photos, >click to read< 09:50
From the sea floor to the courtroom, the fight to save right whales
The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most endangered species on the planet. Scientists announced last month that there are only about 360 of the animals left, down roughly 50 from the previous year’s survey. They live along the East Coast, from northern Florida to Canada, where the 50-foot-long, 140,000-pound leviathans must navigate through millions of commercial fishing lines primarily, lobster traps, and one of the world’s most crowded shipping channels. Too often they become tangled in those lines, or are struck by a ship, (Ships, A LOT of ships). The fight to save them, led by biologists and conservation groups, has grown urgent — in the water and in the courts. >click to read< 11:28
Northern Right Whales Are on the Brink, and Trump Could Be Their Last Hope
The task of responding will fall to an unlikely champion, President Trump, whose recent appeals for support from Maine lobstermen could clash with the task of saving the right whale. Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium who spent nearly a decade chronicling the gruesome deaths of right whales as the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s research program for large whales, said he feared the listing would have little impact. “Lobstermen certainly recognize the dire circumstance that the right whale species is in right now,” Patrice McCarron, “We’re in this awkward situation where right whales are not doing great, and it’s certainly not the fault of the commercial fisheries.”PEER also filed a complaint last year with the inspector general of the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA, arguing that federal officials intent on reopening fishing areas have been ignoring their own scientists on climate change as well as other threats to whales. >click to read< 11:37
