WITNESS THE BIRTH OF THE NEWEST AND GREATEST NATION ON EARTH; RISING OUT FROM THE DEPTHS TO BECOME THE BEST-INTENDED STATE IN EXISTENCE, FREE OF THE HUMAN FOOTPRINT.
The world’s Oceans have never been rightfully claimed by any legitimate entity. But now, with the formation of Oceanica on the 14th of July 2015, the Cetaceans, on behalf of all living constituents in the Sea, have declared the Oceans as their exclusive and rightful domain. Although it must be acknowledged, Oceanica has existed beyond written expression for time immemorial. This is a nation predicated on harmony; a ‘Culture of Life’ designed to be shared among all marine species. Therefore, for the purpose of creating a more perfect world and helping to correct humanity’s imbalance and deleterious impact upon the environment, they welcome an alignment with human allies under the auspices of the Life Systems Family Foundation. The foundation was originally founded in 1976 by Letters Patent granted by the Parliament of Canada with a mandate ‘To Determine humanities relationship with Nature.’ Life Systems Family Foundation has been re-constituted within the jurisdiction of Oceanica.
Along with 1001 other tasks needed to reinstate the health of the oceans, your donations will help us:
1) Support the growing chorus of people calling for the release of Oceanica cetacean nationals still imprisoned within the degrading confines of an aquarium.
This year more than 100 cetaceans were captured and held at a staging facility located in the Russian port of Nakhodka. From there, whales are being shipped to China’s 60 plus marine parks. The four companies controlling the operation are getting around international law, forbidding the sale of wild whales, by claiming the whales are “rented” out to other countries. Orcas sell for more than six million dollars a piece, creating a lucrative and disgusting form of slave trade. This outrageous activity must be stopped, but given the realities imposed by human greed, it will be very difficult to do.
2) End the devastating effects of naval explosions, sonar use and other ear-splitting military practices that can induce hemorrhaging or catastrophic level tinnitus in the ears of cetaceans and other marine mammals. Many of these acoustically sensitive beings have no means of evading these tortuous sounds, other than a mass-stranding in a desperate attempt to get out of the water. Hard to believe, it seems so unfathomable, but on November 16, 2015 The U.S. Navy was given Letters of Authorization from the National Marine Fisheries Service to “Take”, as they call it, or otherwise test the effects of explosives and other extremely loud devices by purposely harming or in some instances kill, as many as 11,862,623 individual animals spanning 45 different marine species, from the Great Blue Whale on down to the Smaller Smiling Dolphins. These staggering numbers were reported by the West Coast Action Alliance and came straight from the Navy’s Northwest Training and Testing Environmental Impact Statement. Such cruel, now apparently routine, military atrocities must be stopped: or there is no humanity to speak of.
3) Ban the production and use of all non-biodegradable plastic. According to Oceanic Society, it is estimated as much as 12 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, more than enough to cover every foot of coastline on the planet and that is expected to double in the next ten years.
4) To pursue what appears to be a simple inexpensive way to remove a trillion tons of carbon pollution from the atmosphere while bringing fish stocks back to numbers not seen in 200 years, it has been demonstrated that ocean “pastures” blossom when the necessary nutrients arrive. The most critical for stimulating the growth of phytoplankton, the foundation of the food chain, is iron. It also happens to be the rarest substance in the ocean, only 3 parts per trillion at the surface. This limited, but all important, supply of iron is provided naturally when dust from land or volcanic activity is blown across the seascape. When the concentration of iron increases, either due to natural conditions or artificially, it empowers phytoplankton to bloom and take-up large amounts of carbon dioxide in the process. It has been estimated, a mere shipload of iron sulfate, dusted over parts of the ocean, would be enough to pull 600 billion to a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it in the calcium carbonate shells of plankton. This is roughly equivalent to all of humanities anthropogenic discharge we now consider responsible for Global Warming and the impending Climate Crisis.
Under the leadership of ocean ecologist Russ George, and with support from the Canadian Government, the Haida Nation of British Columbia dusted a 10,000 sq. kilometer patch of ocean called the Haida Eddy with 4000 50lb. bags of mineral iron sulfate. This area is known to ocean science as an important nursery pasture for baby salmon that have gone to sea. As a result of the increase in food, beginning with a proliferation of phytoplankton, the number of Pink Salmon caught in adjacent waters, after a year and a half feeding in the eddy, grew from 14 million fish in 2012 to 226 million in the Fall of 2013. Bravo! Finally, there’s a solution to the cataclysmic collapse of ocean life. But instead of accolades, it all came to a grinding halt. In a police raid, the projects scientific data (160 thousand electronic data points and over 10 thousand wet plankton samples) were taken under a Canadian federal warrant before it could be presented for review.
Oceanica intends to get to the bottom of what appears to be an outrageous disservice. By and large, marine scientists critical of this stunningly successful experiment are now vilifying Russ George and the Haida because this team solved a problem, they want unsolved apparently only to justify their own existence and authority over environmental policy. The layers of stifling bureaucracy and outright favoritism is so endemic and pervasive that most scientific research dollars are spent making tiny steps that pat colleagues on the back rather than make meaningful steps in progress. There are too many two-faced people haunting scientific bureaucracies. A prime example came at a meeting between Ocean Life Systems Society members and the ten senior scientists at the Canadian Fisheries Research Board. Nearing the end of our presentation one of the scientists interjected, “We don’t regard Killer Whales intelligent.” I countered, “Well that depends on how you define intelligence, maybe we should take this opportunity to each in turn give our definition of intelligence.” Frightened merely by the suggestion, all ten scientists turned as white as startled squid in an instant. Finally regaining his composure, the Director of the Fisheries Research Board stood up and said, “Look at it this way, what we say to you is one thing, what we say amongst ourselves is another, and what we tell the public may be entirely different.”
On a positive track, the overall effect of iron fertilization might well
be the greatest gift we shall ever receive. It is imperative this work
be continued without delay. Oceanica will not be denied such a promising
survival tool as this. Clearly, the Earth would be best served, if we
can all work together and see how we can make this process iron clad in
practice. Starving Orca can’t wait. Please join with us and bring the
salmon back.
PLEASE DONATE NOW.
Preamble To The Declaration of Independence
Whales and dolphins are willing to give us their best. Can we
reciprocate with the moral equivalent?
Hear the words of Henry Beston:
“We need another, and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves, and therein we err and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with us in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of Earth.”
In the United States of America 2015, five orca whales have been named as plaintiff in a lawsuit against Seaworld Parks claiming they deserve the same constitutional protections from slavery as humans. The lawsuit invokes the 13th Amendment which abolished “slavery or involuntary servitude” in the United States. Jeffery Kerr, the lawyer representing the five whales, said: “For the first time in our nation’s history, a federal court is hearing arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human.”
Also in the year 2015, India’s Ministry of the Environment and Forests has proclaimed that cetaceans, “Should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights.”
As well, the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a Declaration of the Rights for Cetaceans, stating, “We affirm that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty, and wellbeing.”
The declaration states:
1. Every individual cetacean has the right to life.
2. No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.
3. All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.
4. No cetacean is the property of any state, corporation, human group, or individual.
5. Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.
6. Cetaceans have the right not to be subject to the disruption of their cultures.
7. The rights, freedoms, and norms set forth in this Declaration should be protected under international and domestic law.
Unless common sense and practical action prevail, pollution will continue to contaminate animals around the world – and the bodies of our children as well. It is incumbent on humanity to work at improving the environment with immediacy, tenacity, and absolute dedication or else suffer the backlash we can expect from spiraling pollution, global atmospheric warming and the acidification of the sea.
We live our lives bathed in petro-chemicals, burning ourselves with its ancient sunshine. As a result, a climactic demon is about to rear-up pulling the trigger for runaway algae blooms which then explode in aquatic anoxia. Under these conditions, a thick band of bacteria could soon cover a giant plankton graveyard embalmed with hydrogen sulfide. Poisoned, lifeless water, and an atmosphere entombed in carbon dioxide, not only usher in global warming, but a super-greenhouse event. Already, 450 dead zones have appeared, pushing back evolution 500 million years, to where only jelly fish, bacteria, and slime once again rule large pockets of the world’s oceans.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has attempted to set rules for governing the Oceans. Its scope is vast: it covers all ocean space, with all its uses, including navigation and overflight; all its resources, living and non-living, on the high seas, on the ocean floor and beneath, on the high continental shelf and in the territorial seas; the protection of the marine environment, and basic law and order. Despite all the good intentions, and by the United Nations own admission, “The state of the world’s oceans continue to deteriorate.”
“As new threats to the health and viability of the oceans emerge, most of the problems identified decades ago have still not been solved and many have become worse, according to studies carried out by the United Nation’s Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of the Marine Environmental Protection. At risk are the vast resources of the oceans, and the many economic benefits that humanity derives from them, estimated to be about 7 trillion dollars per year. Municipal, industrial, and agricultural waste introduced into the sea are growing worldwide. These pollutants include sewage, persistent organic pollutants, radioactive substances, heavy metals, oils, pesticides, fertilizers along with other agrochemicals and litter – all substances that are washed or blown off the land into the oceans. Human waste also introduces significant amounts of plastic, now occupying an area estimated to be the size of Alaska in the mid-Pacific, threatening marine life through entanglement, suffocation, and ingestion. When lost fishing lines, nets, and ropes are added to the mix, this vast swarm of rubbish will keep killing for decades.”
The United Nation’s Convention on the Law of the Sea statement over the state of the oceans continues, “The Oceans cover almost three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, comprise nine-tenths of its water resources and are home to over 97 per cent of all life. The health of the Oceans is vital for the world’s economic and ecological well-being. Urgent action is needed to protect the marine environment and its resources from all sources of pollution and over-fishing. To do less would contribute to the continued degradation of the marine environment. Having declared the seabed, beyond the 200 mile limits of national jurisdiction, the ‘common heritage’ of mankind, the Convention established the International Seabed Authority to organize and control activities in the ‘Area’, particularly with a view to administering its resources…” And therein the problem belies; trying to administer the Oceans as an annual 7 trillion dollar prize all taken with the over-reaching assumption a Hominidae can claim dominion over the briny seas. Cetacea begs to differ.
Throughout human history, a raft of demigods and demagogues, along with the other ‘Great Pretenders,’ have led people down a crooked path ever further from the Garden, exhorting the sophistry that exclusive dominion over the earth justifies unlimited exploitation of other species and natural resources. It is time humans end their self-appointed pre-eminence and celebrate whales and dolphins, and all other life forms, for their intricate and venerable histories. It is crucial we all fasten ourselves upon the ‘Culture of Life’ and reclaim, under the Umbrella of Mother Nature, our respective worlds.
Oceanica Declaration of Independence
Cetacea, in conjunction with all Marine Life assisted by Life Systems Family Foundation, Hereby claim All Rights and Title, intra et ad coelom, to the Oceans and Seas of Planet Earth that has always connected them with one another and thereby assume among the Terrestrial Powers of the World the Separate and Equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s Creator Entitled them; to Serve and Protect, Conclude Peace, Contract Alliances and do all other things which Independent States may do, including the Right to rebuff unwanted intrusions, to impose Levies, Fines and Judiciously Exact Restitution from other Nations and Governmental Jurisdictions, Corporations, and Individuals Deemed to be contaminating the Environment or otherwise Diminishing the Vitality of the Ocean Ecology as a result of any human activity on Land or at Sea. The Express Purpose for such Levies and Requitals will be to Employ People to Perform the Labour of Love necessary to Resuscitate, Replenish, and Safeguard the Life Systems of Oceanica, Forever.
With the Great Spirit as our Witness,
signed on behalf of the Parties
first listed above:
July 14, 2015
THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNING LAWS OF OCEANICA
There is no law that applies to the indigenous subjects of Oceanica, other than The Laws of Nature. The appellation of Nature’s law and its effects are revealed by the Creator through the manifestations of creation and enforced simultaneously as they occur.
Oceanica is governed in accordance with the Universal Harmonics afforded by the cetacean sovereign deity Nommo Die, whose earthly presence is marked by a rainbow day or night. This aquatic realm, extending over the Earth’s oceans and seas, will be administered by a Regency Council composed of members of the Life Systems Family Foundation having responsibility over matters pertaining to humanity and their institutions.
The Nation of Oceanica endeavors to apply state policy to ensure good quality of life for all oceanic species. It is committed to peace and amity throughout both the aquatic and terrestrial worlds. Oceanica strives to promote conditions that will enable the joyful pursuit of life with freedom for all life forces, all together in harmony.
Oceanica, born only yesterday, would develop superbly, throwing off the mask of its ambitions and taking a prominent place in the universal concert of nations.
– From The End of Books by Octave Uzanne, 1851-1931
In accord with the edification brought by cetacean consciousness, being the authoritative mind in the waters, the Life Systems Family Foundation in alliance with other organizations, will endeavor to take the lead in establishing environmental justice throughout Earth’s aquatic bio-sphere.
The founding of Oceanica, on July 14, 2015, came at the behest of the Cetacean deity Nommo Die as conveyed by cosmological ambassadors. Bruce Bott founder and president of Life Systems Family Foundation is now charged with the duties of Chief Regent for Oceanica ex officio. Mr. Bott began his professional life directed by a vision, “For the truth you seek go into the sea.” Taking this to heart and following its guidance, he soon became a diver exploring along the craggy coastline of British Columbia. In 1970 Bott saved a White Orca, Kullamuchem, from drowning (Coast Salish for ‘Long Life Giver’). Chief Ed Underwood of the Tsawout Band was quoted in the Victoria Daily Times: “If Kullamuchem is harmed or is lonely beware. She has much power for she is queen of the deep. Each person has a guardian spirit, the power of these varies; the white orca, a rarity, is one of the most powerful. To acquire her as a guardian could be very good, or very bad, depending upon one’s relationship with her. In Indian legend, Khalls, the transformer or supernatural being who shaped the animal world, changed a group of skilled fishermen in to orca. He told them as he changed them into mammals of the sea that when their species became extinct, the world would come to an end”.
As a result of his growing association with both captive and free orca, Mr. Bott founded Ocean Life Systems in 1970. In the summer of 1973, Bott led Project Apex, a seagoing expedition to befriend and film resident pods of free Orca from the vantage point of his engine-less 1905 yawl ‘Four Winds’. Utilizing specialized naval hydrophones, requisitioned by A.L Colker Rear Admiral Commander, Maritime Forces Pacific, a film titled ‘Orca’ was produced documenting the first ever documented and unquestionable inter-species communicative exchange between free orca and humans. The film premiered at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theater and was used to launch the Greenpeace ‘Save the Whale Campaign’.
Over the test of time, members of the Life Systems group have maintained meaningful contact with the Nommo whales, either by coming together upon the water or pure psychic means. A good number of these thought-provoking whale tales, often involving synchronicity, can be found in Bruce Bott’s memoir, ‘Swim, the Politics of Splashing’, published in 2011.
In his review of the book, Graham Saayman, a distinguished Jungian psychologist writes, “Swim will continue to be of historical interest to the environmental movement. For those concerned with depth psychology and the structure and dynamics of the psyche, concluding chapters review the role of cetacean in mythology associated with the origins and evolution of consciousness.”
Oceanica will now attempt to create strategic alliances vital to enacting edicts critical in ameliorating a backlog of grave concerns threatening the endurance of the Breath of Life held stubbornly all across the Maternal Sea. To aid in this pursuit, we hope to acquire a suitable ocean-going vessel to serve as Oceanica’s seat of government and ambassadorial flagship. Once preparations are complete, we will embark on a round-the-world Chautauqua. This voyage will be focused on scientific and diplomatic ecological missions needing universal position statements and action. As an ultra/ intra/interspecies communication endeavor, this shall be an historic expedition of epic proportions marking the beginning of diplomatic relations between Oceanica and other nations, uniting with cetaceans for the purpose of protecting Ocean and Earth. With a profound sense of humility, it is hoped, word of our collective achievements will be triumphantly brought home in the blessed company of dolphins and whales.
Coming forth, from the depths of Oceanica, it is Life System’s prime directive to form a vibrant colloquium, not only with other nations, but with various non-governmental organizations as well, en route to active collaboration between all parties as needed to resuscitate, replenish and safeguard the Ocean for all time. In this pursuit, we hope everyone will join with us.
Please lend your support and donate now.