jjacquet

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Jennifer Jacquet

I am an American post-doc based at the University of British Columbia, where I also completed my Ph.D.

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April 3, 2008
The green issue of Vanity Fair is out again this year (along with a barrage of other green issues of magazines) and the Board of Directors for Oceana is featured in the Green Heroes section, including my advisor and inventor of the term 'shifting baselines' Dr. Daniel Pauly (4th from the left)! It'…
April 3, 2008
It took mammals and reptiles over two weeks on a raft of floating vegetation and a stroke of luck before they reached the Galapagos Islands. For Homo sapiens, it requires ~$400 (from Quito) and a few hours before arriving at the Galapagos airport. From there, a boat tour is assuredly the best way…
April 1, 2008
Imagine a verdant eight hectares of native Galapagos plants and a misty overlook of a bay dotted with boats. Imagine fresh lemons, oranges, grapefruit, papaya, pineapple, guava, passionfruit. Imagine yuca, sweet potatoes, corn, beans. lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, and tomatoes. Then imagine…
March 31, 2008
Jason Ensler, Hollywood director and co-founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, released a short film he made on living locally in a digital age. The film spotlights NPR correspondent and now goat-herder Doug Fine and is a segue to Fine's latest book Farewell My Subaru--a disclosure…
March 28, 2008
A chain of undersea volcanoes Rumbled and then rose Erupted on the equator And thousands of years later We call the islands Galapagos. Birds flew in and built their nests On shores sea lions came to rest Reptiles by way of floating plants Sharks and rays swam through by chance And us. But we are…
March 27, 2008
There are 19 species of seabirds that spend a portion of their lives in the Galapagos Islands and one seems a very unlikely resident. The Galapagos penguin, Speniscus mendiculus, is the only penguin to live as far north as the equator. Speniscus mendiculus is most likely a descendant of the…
March 27, 2008
Call them Pavlov's fish: Scientists are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by swimming into a net when they hear a tone that signals feeding time. If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size,…
March 24, 2008
As the folks behind Science Debate 2008 continue to push for a broader voice for the science world, David Sloan Wilson is probing into a similar issue with his column on the Huffington Post. He's asking whether the HuffPost should have an entire section dedicated to science. We think so. If you…
March 24, 2008
I should have added this one to the Galapagos drama that has occurred over the past year: this albino whale shark was spotted last September off the northern island of Darwin. Seeing is believing. Check it out:
March 18, 2008
Well, I'm back in the Galapagos Islands for a couple weeks. The last time I was here was May 2007 and a lot has happened in the last 10 months (i.e., humans, including myself, continue to stamp their footprints all over this delicate archipelago). First off, Galapagos tourism continues to grow…
March 14, 2008
Young Mexicans have a warped view of what is 'normal' in the Gulf of California. This was first shown in a marvelous 2005 study on Rapidly shifting environmental baselines among fishers of the Gulf of California where the authors interviewed 108 fishermen. Compared to young fishers, old fishers…
March 12, 2008
Q1: How do you skillfully publicize a mediocre movie? Create a good story around it. Q2: What lies at the heart of a good story? A good source of tension or conflict. Q3: Are preview screenings of a mediocre movie a good source of tension or conflict? No. Q4: Are preview screenings where you…
March 10, 2008
Just yesterday, Stuart Sandin from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography wrote a piece for the San Diego Tribune on shifting baselines and our marine environment. In older (but still worthy) news, this National Geographic piece explains that scientists estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 metric tons of…
March 9, 2008
This is the bottom line I've been waiting for. I've been sort of picking up this vibe with the advance word, but here it officially is--the film critic for the Orlando Sentinel reviewed Ben Stein's anti-evolution movie, "Expelled," and, bottom line, said: "It just isn't particularly funny." That's…
March 7, 2008
Lost, derelict fishing gear as old as 60 years continues to 'ghost fish' and kill lots of marine life across Washington State's Puget Sound all for the sake of nobody. At the American Fisheries Society meeting of the North Pacific International Chapter I attended this week, Ginny Broadhurst the…
March 4, 2008
Want to Save a Coral Reef? Bring Along Your Crochet Hook--that's the title of an article in today's New York Times on how the Wertheim sisters are recreating an environmental version of the AIDS quilt. So far, their cochet coral reef spans over 3,000 square feet. Check out more photos of their…
March 1, 2008
You might have noticed the new face here at Shifting Baselines along with the new banner (more on that soon) and, in just a little while, lots of new content. Just one month shy of Shifting Baselines' one year anniversary at SEED's ScienceBlogs, we're branching out--expanding our blogging team and…
February 29, 2008
NPR has a great story today about what happened in one Nevada neighborhood after new suburbanites complained about an old neighborhood resident--a braying donkey named Gambler. Gambler was shipped out of town and his 4-acre pasture might now be sub-divided into two lots to make way for more…
February 28, 2008
Holy moly! Check out this article in the New York Times reporting on a study that shows today 1 in every 100 Americans are behind bars (the overall number of prisoners has tripled since 1987).
February 28, 2008
Norwegian scientists have just unearthed another pliosaur fossil and this one is the largest on record. This Jurassic sea reptile measures 50 ft. and its jaws were strong enough to "to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half." How about that for a baseline? Read more about this great…
February 27, 2008
Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org As this Wall Street Journal piece points out, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest's primary loss two weeks ago accelerated the decline of another endangered species: the Moderate Republican. Organizations like the Club for Growth, which raised and spent over $1…
February 27, 2008
Andy Revkin also has a great blogpost at the New York Times on Our Exhausted Oceans. With opposition to aquaculture by many scientists as well as support for more marine protected areas, Revkin asks where we think seafood will come from in the future? My own answer: If we're smart, we'll eat like…
February 25, 2008
Three shifting baselines to note today: 1) An article in today's New York Times by Andrew Revkin discusses how "scientists are setting baselines to gauge future effects on the seas." The article is a nice summary of some of the latest attempts to document the decline in ocean health even if it's…
February 25, 2008
I spend a lot of time complaining about the ineptitude of the science world when it comes to mass communication and function in mainstream society. But all of a sudden here is this Science Debate 2008 effort that is being run with shockingly good style and savvy. Who in the world is behind such a…
February 25, 2008
It's not suprising that the only place you'll find a title like Endless Ocean is in the virtual realm. Endless Ocean was released last year for Nintendo Wii. In the game, players go diving to all sorts of nooks and crannies seeking wildlife and treasure (the game-makers made everything benign--you…
February 22, 2008
This week, the New York TImes ran the Op-Ed How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It by Taras Grescoe, who is author of a new book about ethically eating seafood. "One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species," explains the author. Jellyfish…
February 22, 2008
This week, the L.A. Times ran an interesting profile of a sea urchin/sea cucumber fisherman from California. Though the author pushes us to feel sympathy for the aging diver and a declining fishery, any fisherman who was able to send his two sons to "13 years of prep school in Palos Verdes, and…
February 21, 2008
Randy Olson (co-founder of Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project) has been hard at work for the past two months on a collaboration with the new Puget Sound Partnership on a 5 minute Flash slide show, "Shifting Baselines in the Sound." Pearl Jam has officially lent their song, "Oceans," to the…
February 20, 2008
Holy Mackerel, an article I wrote about how religion could help relieve overfishing, was published today in Science & Spirit. Despite numerous scientific studies demonstrating overfishing and its negative impacts on marine biodiversity, global demand for seafood continues to grow.…
February 20, 2008
Daniel Pauly just lent me the book Your Inner Fish, a book that divulges that we can thank fish for so much of our physiology, including bony skulls and backaches. The New York Times yesterday had a great, short review of the book and I'll add my own thoughts soon enough...