Word: drifting
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...created from them. Over the years, elephants by the thousands have been slaughtered so that their ivory can be used, for example, in Japanese signature seals, and wedding ornaments are fashioned from the shells of endangered hawksbill turtles. Japanese fishermen have drawn impassioned criticism for their use of huge drift nets across vast expanses of the Pacific. The nets, which are up to 40 miles wide, are intended to catch squid and tuna, but also entangle many other kinds of fish as well as seabirds and marine mammals. Roger McManus, president of the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation...
...trade, gives Japan measured praise for its attempts to control commerce in endangered species. Says he: "Japan has gone from being the worst of the worst to being on a par with the worst of the European countries -- Italy and France." But on the issues of tropical logging and drift-net fishing, environmentalists are much more skeptical. Observes Japan's Yoichi Kuroda, co-author of a study titled Timber from the South Seas: "The government is simply talking about the rain forests. There is no plan and no thought to regulate the timber trade...
...industries is perhaps most pronounced when it comes to fishing, which provides a staple of the country's diet. Japan is currently embroiled in a dispute with the U.S. and several Pacific nations about the charge that the Japanese squid fishermen inflict untold damage on marine life with their drift nets. Taiwan and South Korea also have extensive drift-net operations, but Japan's are the largest. And though U.S. fishermen, as the Japanese are quick to point out, use drift nets, they tend to be much smaller than the Asian variety...
...LaBudde, a biologist with Earthtrust, a Honolulu-based wildlife protection group, describes drift nets as "the single most destructive fishing technology ever devised by man." Drift nets work by entangling sea life in their nylon mesh. Ships later reel in the nets, taking out the squid or fish and discarding unlucky marine bystanders. It is like hunting for deer by poisoning every animal in the forest...
...addition to enraging environmentalists, the drift netters have drawn protests from commercial fishermen around the world. Americans and Soviets complain that the nets kill large numbers of sea trout and salmon, a charge the Japanese deny. Australia and New Zealand, concerned that Japanese and other Asian fishermen were catching too many albacore tuna in the South Pacific, recently outlawed drift nets within 200 miles of their shores. The two countries have offered the services of their navies to smaller Pacific nations that support...