A Win for Sanctuaries in AmSam

Too often in law, the results of your court victories don't come to much, a paper judgment that will never get paid, a dismissal that bounces around on appeal for years or motions that the judge sits on until they forget about it. So for once it's nice to see a postive, actual result for one of my cases. Back in December 2011, I had to defend the America Samoa Government's ability to revoke the clearance of a fishing boat accused of pollution violations in an injunction hearing. Maybe all the news outlets didn't get my name right, but it was a nice win in a preliminary injunction hearing on only a few days notice.

Jump ahead a year, and now ASG is looking to receive half-a-million dollars for its Nation Marine Sanctuaries Foundation from the criminal conviction of that pollution case. So there's a few years of funding for the Marine Sanctuaries of American Samoa that I had a small hand in securing. Yay!

Whales

Right now is whale season here in American Samoa. The Southern Humpbacks migrate here to birth their offspring and nurse them up, during the Southern Hemisphere winter. Sara and I's biologist friends have had multiple sightings of the Southern Humpback Whales and Pygmy Killer Whales, sometimes of up to 16 different individual whales in a day.

Us simple office drones haven't had the opportunity to see even a single whale spout. That was until yesterday, when on the way to work we had possibly the most disappointing whale sighting, ever. As we hit the coast road on our commute into work, at the same spot where a fishing boat washed onto the reef a few months ago, we saw a large grey mass sitting on the fringe reef. It was beat up and looked as if it had just washed up. People were just starting to pull over and stare.

As we drove by, I speculated that it was a dead whale. Turns out I was right, it was a sperm whale that washed up on the reef. It died weeks before it beached itself here, but still not the whale sighting Sara and I had hoped for. We'll need to dedicate some weekend time to seeing some living marine mammals.

PS: We'll also post about our trips to California and Samoa and Spencer and Britt's visit, but needed to get the current news up first.