Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara coast.

According to a new AP report, more than 100 birds covered in oil from the ocean floor have been recovered along the California coastline over the past two months.

“We have never seen this many oil seep Murres at once,” said Jay Holcomb, the director emeritus of the International Bird Rescue center in Los Angeles. Murres are “pursuit diving” birds common to the central California coast. Due to a lack of budget for rounding up birds affected by natural seep, those numbers are gleaned solely from birds brought in by people along Santa Barbara beaches. “Some years we receive even more natural oil seep birds than we do birds from a human-caused oil spill with a responsible party to cover the cost of their care – and, unfortunately, these birds don’t come to us with health insurance.”

If you have an “oiled wildlife sighting,” the IBR asks that you please call (877) UCD-OWCN.

JonathanR/Flickr

Cowes Week is an enormous regatta on the Isle of Wight. A deck shoe boat is an enormous deck shoe.

Apologies for the absence last week of what is likely your favorite part of the week, Song of the Week. Family matters forced my overlords to unshackle me from the blogging desk. Been out of commission for several days.

However, on this shortened week, I returned in time to report that the EPA and California are finally on the same page, and cruise ships and cargo vessels no longer can drop even treated sewage in state waters.

As far as I'm concerned, David Foster Wallace wrote the only nonfiction essay about the cruise ship industry; "The Love Boat" is the only television show to get down on the gritty below-decks politics of what happens when Halston, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Geoffrey Beene all guest star with Colonel Henry Blake from M*A*S*H, stop being polite and start being real; and The Greyboy Allstars have written the only funky song about strolling around the Lido deck. Song of the Week is "Deck Shoes," for the EPA and the cruise ship industry.

The state ban has been 7 years in coming; Cal EPA had to petition federal authorities for authority to enforce it. There are ways it's not very significant: while the federales emphasize that it'll keep 22 million gallons of treated wastewater out of coastal waters, it's worth knowing that hundreds of millions of gallons a day of treated wastewater continues to go into coastal waters from onshore sources, i.e., at least one refinery, and municipal treatment plants. Still, those discharges have to meet pretty high standards. And this is the first wall-to-wall (state line to state line) ban, along 1600-plus miles of coastline, that the EPA has authorized. They're looking at Seattle and Hawaii next. 

While you're listening to "Deck Shoes," maybe try imagining yourself boogie-ing around the promenade deck. No, I don't know much about cruise ship decks either. But I do know that deck shoes have white, non-scuffing bottoms. And you probably don't want solid waste on the bottom of your top-siders. So why would you want treated bilgewater in your ocean? Billions of blistering blue barnacles!

Listen to all of the songs of the week, 2012 style.

The 161-year old race for the Auld Mug is on its way to San Francisco. The America's Cup itself isn't till next year, but plenty of events happen along the way to the final series. For all of them, for some time, environmentalists have been concerned about the impact a huge sailing race will have on the San Francisco Bay and the ocean waters around it.

Those double-hulled racing yachts are sailing under wind power, right? Sure, but the event's a huge tourist draw. That's going to bring in cruise ships and other spectator boats. And air pollution and water pollution their engines will bring, too.

And there's all the temporary development on shore. Most recently, environmentalists shut down plans for a giant floating TV screen in Aquatic Park (the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club threatened to swim around that area in protests). The Sierra Club pointed to "concerns about water pollution impacts and other criticisms of the project's final environmental impact report, which the state requires before construction can begin." Now that's sorted out; the San Francisco Chronicle reports that San Francisco Supervisors addressed those concerns in the last several days. 

Instead of seeing the Cup events as a potential for disaster, Dan Pingaro sees the America's Cup as a huge environmental opportunity. Pingaro heads Sailors for the Sea, "a new voice for ocean conservation based in the greater boating community." Sailors for the Sea has been prominent at America's Cup run-up events, promoting conversations about global warming, marine debris, and ocean conservation efforts. 

The group was founded by David Rockefeller, Jr. Rockefeller leads the board of directors. The group's day-to-day operations are thriving now with Pingaro at the helm. Pingaro's the CEO and executive director. But first and foremost, he's a sailor. And that's how his involvement with Sailors for the Sea started. 

"I was racing 50 days a year in San Francisco," he remembers. Pingaro came from an environmental policy background; in northern California, he was taking some time to be an entrepreneur. A Surfrider meeting caught his attention. "Here’s all these folks organized to go sailing on the weekend. Any one of them are smart intelligent people," Pingaro continues. "I just had that aha moment walking on the dock. There’s nothing in sailing that's similar. Let’s start something like that."

The group has developed a certification process for events at yacht and boating clubs. "Clean Regattas" include certification standards for everything from trash to the paper regatta awards are printed on to water discharge and waste disposal. Pingaro calls the America's Cup "the pinnacle of sailing." Sailors for the sea is the only nonprofit focused on sailing and the environment. Pingaro says he wants to engage the sailing and the boating community to leave behind a clean, healthy ocean. 

The America's Cup is the biggest effort in this vein to date, with the America's Cup Events Authority committing to sustainable practices at race and meet events throughout the runup to the Cup races themselves, and at multiple locations. They even organize sailors to pick up trash along the coast on their days off racing.

Beyond the Cup activities, Sailors for the Sea has developed marine science education for young sailors. "We’ve found a very receptive audience," Pingaro says. Members of the sailing community can calculate their "carbon wake" on line too. 

My most burning question for Dan Pingaro proved to be the most difficult. I asked him why this has all happened in the last three years; why it took so long for sailing to make the connection to the ocean's health. "I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before. It takes a unique set of circumstances to galvanize a whole new constituency."

John Moore/Getty Images

St. Louis, MO had a slave-auction re-enactment earlier this year. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claims that orcas are being enslaved at Sea World. Sea World dismisses the whole thing as a stunt.

I wish I knew where Derek St. Pierre is. Derek was in my first year law school study group. He was and probably still is a guy who cares and knows about animal rights law. I wonder what he'd think of PETA's lawsuit news, that we reported yesterday. I would have liked to ask him, like in the old days, when we were having bomb threats at UC Hastings and going to vegan pizza restaurants in the Tenderloin.

So I didn't get to speak to Derek or any other legal expert about the merits of the orca suit claim I reported yesterday. But today I read this in the ABA journal:

Animal rights law professors contacted by AP didn’t give the suit much chance of success. Law professor David Favre of Michigan State University predicted an early dismissal. “The court will most likely not even get to the merits of the case, and find that the plaintiffs do not have standing to file the lawsuit at all," he wrote to the wire service in an email.

The problem with animal rights claims in American courts is always standing. Courts are for laws; laws are for people. Animals might have ethical rights; those rights have little-to-nothing to do with human laws. (This animal rights group in the U.K. has sort of a fascinating breakout of theories under which one can conceive of animals' right to standing on moral grounds.)

Legal theories about how to treat animals and why are incredibly imaginative and innovative. They're also relatively untested and rarely successful. No small part of that is because courts mostly just don't buy that animals were supposed to be thought of when someone wrote a law originally. At the same time, law school course offerings and even advanced degrees are growing as interest in this area of law grows too. 

The Nonhuman Rights Project, spearheaded by animal law scholar-expert Steven M. Wise, aims to transform common law interpretations of animals from things to people. Their goal: 

The Nonhuman Rights Project intends to demand that American state high courts declare that a nonhuman animal may possess at least one legal right. Once a court recognizes this possibility, the next legal question will appropriately shift from the irrational, biased, and overly simplistic question, “What species is the plaintiff?,” to the rational, nuanced, value-laden, and policy-enriched question, “What qualities does the plaintiff possess that are relevant to the issue of whether she is entitled to the legal right she claims?”

A slightly different tack to take than just asserting in federal court that animals are enslaved. 

All this is to say that I think that grounding in the larger picture of animal ethics and rights might tell you a little something about the current lawsuit as you read its explanations of standing. Here's what the current lawsuit says about why the dolphins need "next friends" to represent them: 

Plaintiffs cannot bring this action to seek relief for themselves due to inaccessibility and incapacity.

I'm really curious: do you think that should get the dolphins and their lawyers into court? 

A downside of blogs is that I now reveal what I really do in the field to the literally tens of people who read them. Hopefully today that doesn't include my editor. 

Yesterday I was out in a dinghy out of King Harbor with Seth and Jose, two aquarists from the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. (I decided it was slightly moronic that I had never checked the aquarium out the whole time I've lived here, but I have been on the Ferris wheel.) They were working: gathering kelp and algae for their exhibits, talking to me about how they do it, where they do it, and what their conservation concerns are. I think I was working. It's hard to remember. 

On our way back from P.V. we ran into a pod of dolphins and so I pulled out the fancy camera I don't know how to use yet. Jose called the dolphins "assassins of the sea" which is sort of awesome; I wish I had a job description like that.

Playing with the dolphins of course put me in mind of one of my favorite monologues from A Long Day's Journey Into Night, and made me wish I was just being there instead of trying to record stuff all the time. 

I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!

Let me just say this: I'm a radio reporter, people. Yesterday I was practicing a Grant Slater-approved method of photography. "Spray and pray." KPCC pays Grant to make videos, so I know that's legit.