This morning our doorbell rang and when I answered the door there were two large Men in Uniform, who ruthlessly placed some kind of helmet on my head with a 25cm long antenna on top of it. “You must participate in our test” they said, “a factory has been planned in the area and we need to know who will be inconvenienced by this.”
I didn’t dare say anything and when the men had gone I continued walking around the house with that ridiculous helmet-antenna. I soon realised that I was unable to get through the doorway standing up. “Oh well” I thought, “you get used to anything” and if I walked slightly bent over it was okay, so I was not too bothered by it. Rather inconvenient though, was that when I went to take a shower, the antenna got hooked in the showerhead and could only be untangled with much effort, causing me almost to drown in the water.
When I tried to drive to work, I found out that my car was not high enough for the antenna either: I could only drive if I held my head tilting back sideways. During the entire journey I was only able to see part of the road. It was very dangerous.
It was impossible to sleep because the cursed antenna kept getting hooked up in the pillows and sheets, causing me severe neck ache.
When I bent forward to savour the tasty smell of a pan of soup on the stove, the dreadful antenna got stuck in the cooker hood so I almost got steamed by the hot soup. And so it went on for a couple of days.
Then, the Men in Uniform returned.
They wanted to know what my experiences were, because of the factory building permit. Well, I would tell them: I was dead set against it! As far as I can see the factory would
- restrict my freedom of movement;
- cause drowning;
- interrupt a good night sleep;
- be a danger to my safety on the road;
- pose a great threat to national health, especially in the case of fire safety.
Luckily, I was allowed to hand in my antenna-helmet. The Men in Uniform checked their screens and observed: “Hm. Almost normal behaviour. She went to work; drove her car; ate; slept, but that did not go so well. We will have to run some more tests.”
Is this a nonsense story? Well, not quite...
Seals are the victim of this kind of testing. They are not asked, but are forced to swim around with a kind of brick with an antenna around their necks. They can only hope that the transmitter will drop off after three months but if it is too securely stuck on, they may never get rid of it. Then, the scientists ascertain that the seals are greatly bothered by the thing that the scientists are researching. “They are no longer sleeping, so we must catch some more seals to be able to find out what is wrong”.
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Seals, enjoying the sun on a sandbank, are suddenly taken by surprise by people with nets. The females, heavily pregnant at this time of year, are trapped and fight for their life. In order to secure the transmitter to their skin, they are held with brute force (this is very stressful) for many minutes at a time. Sometimes, there are even casualties. However, this is necessary (apparently) to find out whether the animals are experiencing inconvenience from the sinking of piles for a factory that is being built further up. Animals are even being captured many miles from the planned activities for “baseline” data...
This really is a form of legal animal abuse. It has long been proven that a seals with a transmitter behave differently from seals without one. And it is not so difficult to understand that a seal becomes scared by activity in the water near him. The worst thing is that this research with transmitters, this animal abuse, has been carried out everywhere for years. However, many more animals will be subjected to this abuse, because budgets are still being set for this type of research. The wheel needs to be reinvented over and over; otherwise science will not be able flourish, don’t you agree? Who are actually wild animal’s biggest enemy? Seals have become laboratory animals and all in the name of the environment and wellbeing of seals.
Are you still with me?
To aid the development of the Eemshaven, seals are also being sacrificed: Not to gain more information – all necessary research has long been carried out. However, those who grant the permits (the ministry) require that such testing be done. This is the only way for a new company to obtain a permit. And really, it is only a couple dozen of seals. Surely it is okay to torture them in aid of the environment.
Three cheers for the Nature Conservation Law.
In any case, for seals in the Wadden Sea it is nothing but a nightmare.
An unborn young from a mother seal that was found dead with a ruptured uterus...
had...
04-08-2009 Source: SRRC Lenie 't Hart
June 28, 2009
June 17, 2009
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April 08, 2009
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March 20, 2009
