Nature : Greenland Shark (and Trawling)

I'm a big fan of nature, I like it a lot, what I'm not a huge fan of is fish, as I suffer massively from ichthyophobia.  I'm also, incidentally allergic to shellfish & fish oil, so there maybe some link, whatever... 

My phobia aside, I read recently about their finding out the Greenland shark was the oldest living vertebrate, with an individual being at least 250+ years old.  And their not reaching maturity until they're at least 150 years old, hence at the moment we have lots of teenage Greenland sharks and very few babies out there.

The reason we need the babies is that they were over fished, back years ago, they were used to make very good machine oil.  Again I guess something I'm a little happier about, as they're no longer used for this.

But in the study they had to use part of the sharks eye for the study, and they got these eyes from sharks caught by accident in giant trawling nets.

All the news outlets have focused on the scientific discovery of the age of these amazing animals, but no-one, not a single place I've looked has covered the tragedy that they had accidentally caught, killed and butchered this magnificently long lived female shark.

It's dead... It is no more... It was dragged out of the sea in which it had lived since the late 1700's and it was slaughtered on the rolling grimy deck of a trawler, or it may have already been dead in their great massive water hoovering net.

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE ABOMINATION!

No-one talks about this, I find fish repellent, but even without that in my mind, are fish from the ocean farmed?... No... So we go out and destroy whole ecosystems, whole magnificent creatures, they focused on dolphins getting stuck in Tuna nets, they focused Amazon forest clearance for beef cattle, but not on the fact we land dwelling, tree evolved monkeys, go out to a place so alien to us that we evolved away from it millions of years ago, and we trawl it clean of life.

We even make heroic TV programmes, "Trawler Men" and "Toughest Catch" and "River Monsters", though I admit the latter seem to put things back, and we vaunt how difficult it was to catch these fish; no-one stops to think we're destroying these huge swathes of ocean.

We have tiffs with other countries (The Cod Wars with Iceland, the EU Fishing Rights with Spain etc).


Then there's the utter hilarity of some countries and communities claiming it's some historic right, Japan or the Inuit (they know who I mean) catching Wales!


It's all so ridiculous, my grandfathers spent a lot of time in two different world wars shooting Germans, does that give me the right to claim I can go shoot them in some tradition?... No, because I'm a rational, normal, law abiding human being.

And we should show some human compassion towards other species, like the Greenland shark, before we hove into view with massive massive metal ships and drag them out of their living rooms to their death.

I hate it, I hate the thought of it.

If you like fish, farm your fish, like we do Loch Salmon.  Don't go destroying wild eco-systems.

This rant is at an end.



P.S. Yes I eat meat, but it's FARMED, smart arse, I don't eat wild plains buffalo, I eat animals kept in nicer conditions than some people, whom were bred, raised and put into the food chain for me, they did not destroy any wild infrastructure... (well a bit, but you know what I mean)

Beagle 2 - Found!

On the 8th May last year I had the sad post regarding Professor Pillinger passing away, at the time we could only say his enthusiasm was a shining star and it got Beagle 2 to Mars.

Very happily, but tinged with a little sadness, we've heard that not only did the Professor get the probe to Mars, but it landed intact...

It does appear the  petals didn't open, quite why we don't know as yet, however, it got there.

Lets hope if Professor Pillinger did go anywhere when he departed this mortal coil, he took a jolly up there and took a look for himself, I'm sure he spotted whatever went wrong.

Full Article - From BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30784886

RIP Colin Pillinger

Sad day when one of the most enthusiastic and interesting folks in the UK Space sciences passes away, Professor Colin Pillinger...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27322166

I have the pleasure of owning a copy of this rather rare book of his, and made mention of it on my blog before, in relation to his tense relationship with the UK Space Science establishment.

A great loss to Britain is loosing Professor Pillinger.

It Floats... It must Float...

So, I recently got through reading Professor Colin Pillinger's biographical account of his trial and tribulation in getting the Beagle2 Probe built and out to Mars on the back of the Mars Express mission by the European Space Agency (ESA).  I recommend the read, I really do, it's a great roll through the foothills of the frustrations he encountered and his f**k you all attitude to get the job done... something which has been sorely missed from the overall field of human space exploration since the Apollo Programme was axed in the early 1970's.  And what's more, Professor Pillinger made all his efforts under a big British flag... its not often we can say "we did that", but Professor Pillinger can.

His book is called "My Life On Mars: The Beagle 2 Diaries" ISBN: 978-0-9506597-3-2, if you can't get it from Amazon I'd recommend trying the British Interplanetary Society as a source.

But this blog post is not directly to do with my evening reading habits, its actually about a character who cropped to me as part of the Beagle 2 mission, a chap whom works for ESA (back then) and still seems to be working for them now.  His attitude has somewhat changed since Beagle 2, but thanks to Professor Pillinger I know how full of shit this guy is.

I'm talking about the so called Professor (read that as "dipshit") David Southwood.  He is the ubiquitous flotsam to which the blog post title refers, and from the read of Professor Pillinger's book I think I'm somewhat in a position to say, this guy is a knob, a class A variety Knobber.  The kind of person whom if they worked anywhere near me would be burned in effigy nightly to relieve the stress they cause...

And what has me shocked is this... look at this image...

(c)2011 - BBC - The Sky At Night

That is a still from my BBC iPlayer window which I have had playing away merrily next to me, and I have been watching the momentous 700th episode of "The Sky At Night".  Yet suddenly up pops the topic of exploring Mars, of getting out of this hiatus of stopping manned exploration of the solar system, and low and behold here comes Professor *cough*dipshit*cough* Southwood... and he's only saying he's right behind exploring Mars...

I then flick through the pages of Professor Pillingers book to read "The really bad guys from ESA: David 'call me anytime' Southwood,".

Now, in the programme shown Southwood (I can't be bothered to call him Prof no more, he may as well just accept if I ever see him in person he's going to get heckled) is only going on about exploring Mars "I want to see us explore Mars"... Really?  Really Dave?  Do you?  Then why did you throw every spanner in your bag into the cogs and gears of the Beagle 2 mission?  Why did you stir the shit?

Dave was saying on the show that he is part of the joint ESA/NASA accord to explore Mars, which makes sense as in the book he was going on and on about NASA this and NASA that, too bad it was often found to be putting words in to their mouth for them (NASA that is) when they'd said no such thing.  And then when NASA were ever checked on Dave's commentary for them they (NASA) usually said the opposite.

And I was just amazed that having read the book this guy appeared on the special 700th episode of "The Sky At Night"... I do hope one of the many host/co-hosts there, who are very learned people, had read Professor Pillingers book and gave Southwood what for before he left the studio...

However, I was even more amazed to realize that Southwood still works for ESA... I'm glad to see the UK's 260 odd million quid contribution to ESA for 2011 is being spent on such *cough* quality staff.

And it just backs up the old adage, that even shit can float.