Discarded fishing line and other marine debris are killing wildlife in huge numbers.
More than one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from marine debris,according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fishing line is the number one culprit cleanup volunteers encounter when they try to save wildlife,according to the Ocean Conservancy organization.
“When these animals get caught in this line, it’s a slow and agonizing death,” said Jim Walker spokesman for Mississippi’s Department of Wildlife Fisheries & Parks.
The whale-killing ship, Reinefangst – photo: Erwin VermeulenYou can’t say Spitsbergen is unspoiled. The massacres perpetrated by the Dutch and other European countries since the 17th century made sure that even now the once plentiful Bowhead whale is rarely spotted among these islands in the Arctic. There are beaches here, full of the bleached and weathered skulls and bones of hundreds of slaughtered belugas, and the walrus was almost hunted to local extinction. Still it is the scenic beauty and remaining wildlife that today attracts thousands of tourists to these snow-covered peaks jutting from the cold waters.
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