jjacquet | July 1, 2007We keeping eating more and more as a nation and as a globe. Last year's per capita seafood consumption data for the U.S. was just released. Seafood consumption has increased: from 16.2 lbs per capita in 2005 to 16.5 lbs. per capita in 2006. Many conservationists had hoped the pace had slowed after data from 2005 showed a decrease from the record 2004 consumption of 16.6 lbs. per capita. Not so.
Annual U.S. per capita consumption of seafood (kg), 2001-2006
In the U.S., annual per capita consumption of seafood has increased by roughly 30 percent since 1910. Couple demand with population…
jjacquet | June 29, 2007You might remember John Hocevar from Ocean Day. At the end of July, John and the Greenpeace crew will set out to explore the depths of the Bering Sea. They will use some pretty high-tech tools on the expedition, including these Deep Worker submarines, which they tested in a British Columbia inlet not too long ago.
Deep Workers are one-person subs capable of diving to 2000 feet/600 meters. They weigh about 2 tons each, and are smaller than a compact car.
From John Hocevar: The subs will be a good tool for us in the Bering Sea later this summer, where the Greenpeace team will use them to…
jjacquet | June 28, 2007Due to some technical difficulties with comments, I have had to re-post this entry. Some comments may have been lost in so doing...
After the New York Times ran this week's article, Waiter, There's Deer in My Sushi, they followed it up with two more: U.S. Accuses Europe of Overfishing in the Atlantic and then, two days later, an editorial on Japan's Tuna Crisis.
The east Atlantic and west Atlantic populations of bluefin tuna are both overfished.
The first article calls us to sympathize with Japan and sushi's glum future of deer and horse meat. The second article nails the supposedly…
jjacquet | June 28, 2007
Stephen Colbert loves this: bald eagles were removed today from the U.S. Endangered Species List. What Stephen won't like is that the delisting serves as a testament to government regulations and the hard work of environmentalists (such as Rachel Carson and her denouncement of the egg-ruining pesticide DDT in Silent Spring; see booklists).
The bald eagle was declared an endangered species in 1967 when there were a measly 417 nesting pairs. After the government banned DDT and zoos began sponsoring captive breeding programs, eagle populations began to rebound. Today there are more than 10…
jjacquet | June 26, 2007Maybe it's because people became increasingly uncomfortable with marine mammals in captivity. Maybe it's because they are low maintenance. For whatever reason, it seems jellyfish exhibits at aquaria are on the rise. Monterey Bay's Jellies: Living Art pays homage to the medusas. Vancouver Aquarium's jellyfish exhibit has also recently expanded (and now includes the flower hat jelly; photo by Lee Newman).
An Amazon query of 'jellyfish' children's books yields 1410 search results. Granted, a 'shark' search yields 5663 results, but 'swordfish' a meager 321. My name seems to be (…
jjacquet | June 25, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
A couple of weeks ago, the Senate "easily" beat back a proposal by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) to open the coast of Virginia to drilling for natural gas.
My what a difference a year makes! It seems like just yesterday that we were battling one bad proposal to open our coasts to offshore drilling after another.
The reality is that it was last summer, and conservationists ultimately had to agree to a deal that let the oil industry drill in a new part of the Gulf of Mexico as the price for protecting the moratorium that banned new drilling off the…
jjacquet | June 25, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
As I talked about earlier, last November millions of voters changed the face of Congress, and conservationists made headlines for playing significant roles in the elections.
We're now starting to see some of the fruits of those efforts in the ocean arena
For instance, this week alone, lawmakers in both the House and Senate are set to vote on several ocean bills including:
-HR 1205 (Rep. Faleomavaega): Would reauthorize The Coral Reef Conservation Act of 2000 and create a coral reef task force and expand the coral reef conservation program. The…
jjacquet | June 25, 2007This could possibly be the shifting baselines story of the year. In today's Business Section of the New York Times is the article, Waiter, There's Deer in My Sushi. Japanese chefs are considering using smoked deer meat and raw horse as just a couple of odd alternatives to the ever-scarcer tuna supply. Just since last year, the price of frozen imported northern and Pacific bluefin tuna has risen $13 a pound.
"It's like America running out of steak," said Tadashi Yamagata, vice chairman of Japan's national union of sushi chefs. "Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi."
Japan currently…
jjacquet | June 24, 2007Jeremy Jackson calls it "The Rise of Slime". Daniel Pauly sees a future in jellyfish burgers. And given that this week is the 2nd International Jellyfish Bloom Symposium--where D. Pauly will deliver the keynote address (having not been able to attend the 1st symposium in Alabama in 2002)--it seemed fitting this week should be dedicated to jellyfish bloom and gloom.
Jellyfish, given their lowly position on the marine food chain and their penchant for degraded ecosystems, are, after all, the darlings of shifting baselines. They are the reality of our marine future unless we decide to change…
jjacquet | June 22, 2007Marine protected areas are meant to be one way to counteract our 'collective amnesia' of what marine ecosystems should look like. Last week, a judge annulled a marine park buffer zone area in Brazil, just one year after its creation. The zone was overturned in favor of economic opportunities, including the potential for shrimp farming in the area. (What won't we do for shrimp?)
The buffer zone at Abrolhos Marine Park, located about halfway down the Brazilian coast, was created to protect the main protected area and require any development in the 95,000 square km around the main marine park…
jjacquet | June 21, 2007Sequestering carbon in the oceans using large amounts of iron has been proposed as one way to offset our fossil fueled lifestyles. A host of burgeoning companies (e.g., TerraPass) have responded to the public's request to sequest.
One of them, Planktos, would now like to dump iron filings in the ocean around the Galapagos Islands to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (perhaps paid for by tourists to Galapagos with guilty consciences), which conservationists oppose. Dumping carbon in the ocean causes plankton blooms that can sequester carbon but the long-term effects of such an…
jjacquet | June 20, 2007This week, Japan announced the first-ever manta ray to be born in captivity (watch some of the pregnancy here). The baby female manta was gestated for over a year. Manta rays are often caught incidentally by longline and purse seine fisheries. Their global populations, like most elasmobranches (cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and rays), are largely unknown as is their lifespan (thought we do know they feed on plankton). Manta birostris has been listed on the IUCN Red List. But maybe someday we can supplement wild ray populations with aquarium-born ones. Babies born in big glass pools…
jjacquet | June 18, 2007Posted by Dr. David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
Last week I made the case that if you care about good public policy, you should care about politics. I suspect my strong bias that the key to ultimate success in the public policy arena is political power/leverage with elected officials came through loud and clear. Now taking a step back, where does communication fit in? In our Turning the Tide report, public communication and grassroots support are the foundation for building political strength, while lobbying and direct involvement in the electoral process gives this foundation a voice…
jjacquet | June 18, 2007After Oceans Week 2007 concluded, the National Fisheries Institute did what any group committed to fishing would do: ran a PR campaign. An article titled NFI Reaffirms Support for Sustainable Seafood was published that included the following:
In reality, the seafood industry is largely sustainable because of international regulatory systems for wild capture as well as aquaculture, which is part of the solution to growing global demand for healthy fish.
Huh? Sorry, how can the seafood industry be largely sustainable (recall Daniel Pauly's definitition of sustainable: things stay the same),…
jjacquet | June 17, 2007Today the Loom's Carl Zimmer wrote for the NYTimes: Take It Slow, Don't Have Many Kids and Enjoy Cold Water. Zimmer examines what influences the lifespans of animals. Lifespan is ultimately the largest influence on the phenomenon of shifting baselines: humans simply do not live long enough to remember how much they have changed things. Bowheads or the Rockeye rockfish have a more informed opinion of the past, given that each can live more than 200 years.
jjacquet | June 15, 2007If you were looking for Nemo, you would be much more likely to find him in sushi (the raw fish movement that has spread from Japan to the remote reaches of the world, including landlocked Ohio) than a dentist's aquarium. Last weekend, Jay McInerney's review in the NYTimes, Raw, covered two books about sushi. Given that bluefin tuna populations are 20 percent of their 1970s levels (and that percentage would likely be smaller if we had older data to consider), understanding the sushi and sashimi movement is imperative to understanding where some of our fish has gone.
jjacquet | June 13, 2007The Galapagos National Park announced last week that the Ecuadorian government will open sea cucumber fishing in the Galapagos Islands beginning on June 25th for 50 days or two million sea cucumbers, whichever comes first. This news is a disappointment to many conservationists in the islands and means a lot more work for Dr. Idrovo and his treatment of decompressed fishermen.
One echinoderm (Stichopus fuscus) can cause a lot of excitement.
In 1991, after sea cucumbers had been depleted from the continental Ecuadorian coast, an uncontrolled sea cucumber fishery began in Galapagos. Harvest…
jjacquet | June 11, 2007Posted by Dr. David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
I'm back home in California after a week in Washington, DC for Capitol Hill Ocean Week. It was an exciting week and, considering it was the first week in June, I can't even complain about the weather. Oceans obviously received a lot of attention because it was, after all, "Ocean Week", and in future blogs I'll talk about the prospects of turning talk and good intentions into action. However, after spending a week wandering the halls of power, I want to talk about the importance of politics--a common theme for this blog. Simply put I believe…
jjacquet | June 11, 2007This weekend, the New York Times Magazine focused on the income gap, which included Lauren Greenfield's latest documentary pieces on Kids and Money. They're nothing magical--just a straightforward look at L.A.'s teenagers, who represent the demographic with the largest spending power in the U.S.
Last night, I also watched the film "Bobby"--with a remarkable cast and less than remarkable storyline. The film succeeded only in moments that used clips from Robert F. Kennedy's real speeches. In one, RFK was in rural coal-mining town where he spoke about the economic hardships and the hungry…
jjacquet | June 8, 2007I am looking forward to a World Oceans Day where I can kick back with a beer and relax, knowing that the oceans are in great shape. I sincerely hope this won't involve time travel or an inter-galactic voyage.
Anyone paying attention knows that the oceans are in serious trouble, and that overfishing - and use of destructive and indiscriminate fishing methods - is at the heart of the problem. Climate change is starting to make a run for the ocean enemy # 1 prize, but for now unsustainable fishing is safely in the lead. The good news, I suppose, is that in theory we should be able to do…