Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know I just posted about the pearl mussel poaching over in Scotland last month, but today I came across this video by the BBC. The video is fascinating and has many superb shots of the natural, freshwater gem.Scientists in Scotland are doing their best to combat the increased poaching by reintroducing pearl mussels into the wild in secret locations. But the battle is a difficult one to fight. Just a single kill last year left the remains of 800 mussels. The average age of each mussel was 80 years. That is a combined total of 64,000 years of pearl mussel growth.
The fine for poaching a single mussel is £10,000 and mussel collection has been outlawed since 1998 and only two jewelers in Scotland are licensed to sell Scottish pearls. But in more than 10 years, not a single poacher has yet been brought to justice. There are simple too many rivers in Scotland, and collecting and killing the mussels is a quick and dirty job.
Poachers make me sick. You can expect a post featuring a popping bottle of champagne when one of those bastards is finally caught.
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3 comments:
The buyers are just as guilty as the poachers. Owning a rare Scottish strand of pearls is like owning a Koala skin rug.
The poachers, the buyers ....it really adds up to them and everyone in between being part of the problem. The natural world is disappearing faster than anyone can fix it, yet there are all these nice useless optimistic thoughts going around; "We are changing things!" "We are making progress!" "We recycle!" "Emissions are down!" Just more twaddle people repeat to each other to make THEMSELVES feel better. To hell with that. Wake up. As much as I would love to lynch the soulless poachers, it's not the only thing that the mussels have fought against. What about chemical water pollution? What about silt smothering mussel beds because of runoff from land that was deforested for farming along the shores? What about the severe overfishing from the 1950s on?---Who is responsible for that?
Damn right! I agree with you completely.
Love the comment...really!
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