# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Audre Lorde - The complete last reading in Berlin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elephant Seals | Life in the Freezer | BBC Earth

# data[].attributes.body
On the recovery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Narwhals: The Unicorns of the Sea! | Nat Geo WILD

# data[].attributes.body
Fishing and by products from fishing have made this species endangered, freshwater dolphin!

# data[].attributes.body
Oil Drilling may harm their habitat, we must reverse these harmful legislative decisions

# data[].attributes.body
Let them be obscure!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scientists believe they've discovered new whale species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the sealing age, humans hunted sea lions from mainland New Zealand. Now industrial fishing is threatening to help drive the population from one of its last sub antarctic outposts.

With fewer than 12,000 individuals, New Zealand sea lions - rāpoka - are one of the rarest in the world. The inhospitable Auckland Islands, 500km south of Bluff, is their main breeding location.

But pup production there has declined by approximately 55 per cent in the last two decades.

Now, Forest and Bird is proposing a last-ditch plan to reduce the number of sea lions caught in fishing nets, one of the causes of death for the threatened marine mammal.

READ MORE:
* Fishing company pulls boat after four endangered sea lion deaths
* What NZ sea lion whiskers tell us about by-catch
* Sea lion numbers roaring back to health at NZ's first new breeding site in 150 years

The southern squid fishery operates around the Auckland Islands and overlaps with the sea lion foraging grounds.

The conservation organisation wants a ban on trawling in a small area around the islands. It would be a temporary measure, in place until 2022.

Katrina Goddard, marine conservation advocate, says the plan is vital to protect adult female sea lions in the rookery.

Although climate change, disease and nutritional stress are also killing off the creatures, bycatch is the only threat that can be tackled in the short-term, she said.

"New Zealanders feel pretty passionate about the conservation of our native species, like kākāpō and kiwi, and the New Zealand sea lion sits right up there," she said.

"We are not going to recover them if we don't manage the things we can manage. Direct fisheries bycatch is one thing we can manage - the species needs all the chance to recover and this is the only way we are going to that.

"Breeding females are restricted in the area that they forage because they have pups onshore that they must go back to. We know from satellite tracking data where they go, and where they forage - they don't have alternative supermarkets that they can go to."

Nine sea lions were killed in the fishery this year, four were killed by one Sanford vessel.

Fisheries NZ is currently developing a new "operational plan" for the squid fishery, but this does not include any trawling bans.

Fisheries NZ believes the fishery is having less than a 1.5 percent impact on the sea lion population.

Officials are proposing making Sea Lion Exclusion Devices (SLEDs), an escape hatch built into fishing nets, mandatory in the fishery.

However, their efficacy has been questioned as sea lions may have drowned in the net and fallen out, or not had enough air to reach the surface once released.

The proposal also suggests putting a limit on the number of sea lions that can be accidentally caught in the fishery before it is closed. And they would ensure observers are present on 90 per cent of the fleet.

Forest and Bird says these three options aren't enough to turn around the population decline. So, working with other environmentalists and scientists, they've come up with a fourth option, for an exclusion zone in 17 per cent of the fishery during two breeding season.

Goddard will meet with fishing company Sanford on Wednesday to discuss the plan.

The company confirmed the meeting and said: "We are really focussed at Sanford on keeping sea lions safe and our Threat Management Plan submission will reflect that," a spokeswoman said.

A spokeswoman for Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said the consultation process closed last week. "All submissions will now be analysed by Fisheries NZ officials who will then report to the Minister on the public feedback and options for next steps later this year," she said.

The southern squid trawl fishery has been harvested for arrow squid since the late 1970s, but the catch and number of vessels has declined from 63 in 1990 to 17 operating in 2017. Last year, the export value of the fishery was estimated at $56.6 million, down from $68 million in 2016.

Earlier this year officials changed the threat classification for sea lions from "threatened - nationally critical" to "threatened - nationally vulnerable."

And experts have been buoyed by the stabilisation of the sea lion population on Campbell Island, and a new rookery established on Stewart Island last year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trawling ban could help stop endangered sea lion deaths at Auckland Islands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the sealing age, humans hunted sea lions from mainland New Zealand. Now industrial fishing is threatening to help drive the population from one of its last sub antarctic outposts. With fewer than 12,000 individuals, New Zealand sea lions - rāpoka - are one of the rarest in the world.

# data[].attributes.body
Native population trying to help save local orcas from major threats.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lummi Nation launches new campaign to save dwindling orca population

# data[].attributes.body
Re imagining American culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Conversations in Color: Bernice McFadden and Alexis De Veaux, March 16, 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conversations in Color is a free public cultural series created by the Amistad Research Center that features artists, educators, and community activists in talks about their work and its impact on social change. www.amistadresearchcenter.org

Black Women Writers and the Re-imagination of American Culture

The Amistad Research Center hosted Bernice L. McFadden, 2017 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction in a dialogue with Alexis De Veaux, 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Fiction about black women’s literature and its shaping of American culture.

About:
BERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), and Glorious, which was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. She is a three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA). She lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Book of Harlan is her latest novel which won the 2017 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction.

ALEXIS DE VEAUX. PhD is an activist and writer whose work in multiple genres is nationally and internationally known. Born and raised in Harlem, her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, and she is the author of Spirits In The Street (1973); an award-winning children’s book, Na-ni (1973); Don’t Explain, A Song of Billie Holiday (1980); Blue Heat: A Portfolio of Poems and Drawings (1985); Spirit Talk (1997); An Enchanted Hair Tale (1987), a recipient of the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award presented by the American Library Association and the 1991 Lorraine Hansberry Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature.
She also authored Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde (2004). The first biography of the pioneering lesbian poet, Warrior Poet has won several prestigious awards including the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award, Nonfiction (2005), the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award (2004), and the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Biography (2004).

Ms. De Veaux was a member of the faculty of the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 1992-2013; teaching, most recently, as an associate professor of women’s and gender studies in the Department of Transnational Studies. Recently back in New York City, she completed a novel, Yabo, published by Redbone Press (2014) and winner of the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a member of the U.S. delegation of the “Feminists, Artists, Activists, and Academics: Crossing Black Geographies” dialogues, co-sponsored by NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Inkanyiso Collective (South Africa).

About Amistad Research Center:
The Amistad Research Center (ARC) is committed to collecting, preserving, and providing open access to original materials that reference the social and cultural importance of America's ethnic and racial history, the African Diaspora, human relations, and civil rights. 

ARC houses more than 800 collections, including:15 million original manuscripts and rare documents ranging from the 1780s to present;2,000+ periodicals dating from the early 19th century; 250,000 photographs dating from 1859; 400+ oral histories by musicians, civil rights activists, writers, military figures and community members;400 works of African and African American art, including works by several internationally renowned 19th and 20th century African American masters; and 25,000+ monographs, books, articles and dissertations on the history of African-American and ethnic groups.

# data[].attributes.body
Generous and social dolphin, mingles with other spinner dolphins in large pods.

# data[].attributes.body
Prominent journalist and activist, one of the NAACP founders.

# data[].attributes.body
The power to break through sea ice, and live up to 200 years, beautiful!

# data[].attributes.body
Famous for freeing slaves via the underground railroad on heroic journey's. Tubman exemplified bravery and resilience.

# data[].attributes.body
The most endangered large whale species. Vessel strikes and entanglement are the largest danger.

# data[].attributes.body
Jimi, a revolutionary musician and artist.