It is not too late to save the remaing narwhals so please email DFO Minister Gail Shea at
The Hon. Gail A. Shea
Shea.G@parl.gc.ca

This is yet another example of DFO's lack of emergency preparedness. The
many examples include that it took a firefighter on holidays to setup his
equipment to save a stranded gray whale in Boundary Bay, BC and it took DFO
3 days to get to the Robson Bight diesel spill when their office is located
only 3 hours away. Lifeforce has been urging them to create a marine mammal
response team.

Recently DFO asked Lifeforce if they could call upon us
respond to seal cases in our area. Heck we've been doing this for over a
decade. We've been gathering equipment too - we bought the first set of
pontoons to refloat cetaceans in Canada many years ago.

We should remind DFO that in 1988 there was a joint US and Russia successful
rescue that freed two gray whales trapped in ice off Alaska. There would be
even a greater need to save these narwhals because the loss of this many
would impact their genetic diversity and threaten their survival. There is
still time to save maybe a hundred narwhals so get the ice breakers in
there.

In the following years there should be zero hunting permitted since this has exceeded their hunting quota of 130 animals. They don't need to kill any more. And they shouldn't eat more highly contaminated narwhals - no safe levels of mercury there.

By the way, the slaughter at Pond Inlet was the hunting grounds for the
Vancouver Aquarium when in the 70s they capture 6 narwhals. The narwhals
starved to death in Vancouver because the "experts" didn't know exactly what
they ate.

Peter Hamilton
Lifeforce
www.lifeforcefoundation.org
604-649-5258
lifeforcesociety@hotmail.com