INTERESTING, just a couple of weeks after telling you about a new, gigantic marine reserve created around New Caledonia in the south western Pacific, comes news of a newer and even bigger one.
The United States government is in the process of declaring a reserve that will eventually encompass over two million square kilometres of the Pacific, covering seven uninhabited islands between Hawaii and American Samoa in the south west.
I hasten to add that the two reserves are not linked or even close to each other, but then the Pacific is a big place.
The new reserve, called the Pacific Remote Islands Area, contains some of the world’s most pristine marine environments and all fishing, mining and other such activities will be banned within it. Good news indeed.
Bad news is that Japan’s northern whaling fleet is home with 30 minke whales it has hunted off that country’s northern coast, while another fleet is still operating somewhere in the north eastern Pacific.
This is all despite the recent ban on Japan’s Antarctic whaling expeditions by the United Nations International Court of Justice.
A couple of pieces of irony is that whale meat is no longer popular in Japan, while the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has just included a particular Pacific sea eel, which is a popular snack food in Japan, on the Red Data endangered list. Someone should tell the Japanese about plain, good old fish’n’chips.
Much closer to home, I have had two reports of samango monkeys right down on the coast, both confirmed reports, one from Leisure Bay and one from Munster. This is interesting because one associates samangos, down here at least, with the Oribi Gorge.
It’s also a bit worrying because in that delightful book, KwaZulu-Natal: A Celebration of Biodiversity by Jacana, it says of this monkey, ‘Normally peaceful, samangos become aggressive and very clever when fed by humans’.
Which brings me to this, I recently told you about a pineapple thieving monkey, well, he’s been back. I am, of course referring to our beloved vervet.
Our Sunday treat, my wife and I, is toast and home-made marmalade for breakfast. So, we’re sitting here quietly in the Hide a couple of Sundays ago, listening to the surf and the bird party, looking out for whales, when a monkey raid ensued.
They were everywhere, all over the roof, in the trees, running up and down the deck, as we sat there. We both became quite irate and remonstrated with them, my wife eventually stood up and chased them, stamping her foot and vocalising.
I was watching her when I noticed a monkey dash passed waving a piece of marmaladed toast. He’d pinched it off the table, off my wife’s plate, not a foot-and-a-half from me!
Eventually it all settled down, I naturally gave my wife what toast I had left and the offending monkey sat in the tree munching marmaladed toast. We were not happy breakfasters, although the monkey clearly was. Cheers!
Sources: News24.com and the BBC.
