DRUG GANGS LINK TO WHALE DEATHS

A CYANIDE-BASED chemical used by drug traffickers may be what killed seven
grey whales off the Pacific coast of Mexico, according to a group of
Mexican environmentalists alarmed by the deaths among an endangered species.

Homero Aridjis, the group's leader and a noted author, is asking the
Mexican Government to investigate suspicions that the fluorescent chemical,
Natural Killer 19, or NK19, used by drug traffickers to mark drop zones in
the sea at night for aircraft carrying cocaine cargoes, could be responsible.

As the substance breaks down it releases toxic quantities of cyanide - two
molecules per molecule of the compound - into the sea.

"This greatly alarms us. Above all, we have to know whether it's due to
NK19 or to [other] pollution of their habitat," said SeF1or Aridjis,
before leading an inspection team to the area.

The California grey whales, which breed off the coastal states of Baja
California, Sinaloa and Sonora, have been a source of concern for
ecologists. Every winter they migrate 5,000 miles from the frigid waters
off Siberia and Alaska to the shallow, warm lagoons off Mexico's west coast
to raise their calves. Their numbers shrank in the 1960s and 1970s, before
making a strong comeback after they were declared an endangered species.

They have recently come under threat again.

Environmentalists have complained about plans to expand a large salt plant
jointly owned by the Mexican Government and the Japanese firm Mitsubishi
which they say is polluting the lagoon of San Ignacio, an important calving
ground on the western coast of Baja California.

The ecologists allege that the plant discharges chemicals and superheated
water into the lagoon, upsetting the fragile eco-system on which the mother
whales depend.