Losing Track
jjacquet | July 11, 2007Marriage is nothing like it used to be. That's true. But lots of things we consider to be new and unprecedented are actually traditional (e.g., adultery, single parenting, politicians having affairs). And the things we consider to be old-fashioned are actually new (e.g., marrying for love, the expectation of fidelity). Historian Stephanie Coontz spoke about the warped view of marriage's past at Seattle's Town Hall last month: Courting Disaster: The Worldwide Revolution in Love, Sex, and Marriage, which NPR made available online. Listening to Coontz reminds us of the marital baselines…
jjacquet | July 6, 2007Wildcoast asks its readers to write letters of concern about beach closures to the new Imperial Beach mayor -- best letter wins a free Hepatitis A vaccination...
What do you do when your favorite beach (Imperial Beach, on the California border with Mexico) ends up being called a "Death Beach" by Forbes magazine? As Wildcoast's Benjamin Winkler-McCue writes, "To regular ocean users in Imperial Beach this came as no surprise. To put it bluntly, they are used to surfing, swimming, and fishing in sh*t."
And what he's talking about with this is exactly "shifting baselines"-- the idea that the…
jjacquet | July 5, 2007 From the author of The HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came a wonderful book: Last Chance to See. Published in 1990, Douglas Adams (in photo) and zoologist Mark Carwardine head off with the BBC to make radio programs about some of the world's rarest species. Adams poses as the science novice, commentator, and weary traveler: I didn't notice that I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.
I realize I am about 17 years late in this discovery, but better late than never (thank you KAB). Many of the animals Adams and Carwardine…
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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 7, 2007Happy World Ocean Day! (Soon there will be a Happy Anti-Celebration Day in the same way we have Buy Nothing Day; each and every day will be filled with some Hallmark turf--the branding of our calendar year). Don't forget this Ocean Day to 1) check out the newly added book lists and 2) visit the Carnival of the Blue over at Blogfish.
This Ocean Day my thoughts are with the ocean underdogs. I'm talking small pelagics, sea cucumbers, eels, hagfish, limpits, blennies. I am talking about the little things that make the oceans tick. I am even talking about salmon.
Salmon? Yes, salmon.…
jjacquet | June 6, 2007 In his 2002 Op-Ed in the LA Times, Randy Olson wrote about the concept of shifting baselines and uses this analogy: "If your ideal weight used to be 150 pounds and now it's 160, your baseline--as well as your waistline--has shifted." But get this:
Due to global climate change (which has cascaded into changes in feeding patterns), female polar bears weigh an average 20 percent less than they did in 1980. This I heard yesterday from a Program Officer for the UN Convention of Biological Diversity (which the U.S. has signed but not ratified--our "signature" move). Skinnier polar bears, just…
jjacquet | June 5, 2007One hundred years ago, who would have imagined that a paper would be written with this title and its findings would include that sandy beaches--as an ecosystem-- are a) better than concrete and b) in peril...? Welcome to the new millenium. Sandy Beaches at the Brink was just published and then picked up by the Surfrider blog, whose constituency lives for where ocean meets land. But the fate of the shoreline is not only of concern to surfers. Worldwide, 40 percent of the human population lives near the coast (future ghost?).
Sandy beaches: an ecosystem at risk
jjacquet | June 3, 2007This weekend I heard from my sister--a biomedical engineer who did her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. At 33, she has decided to become a physical therapist and must now take introductory biology courses to qualify for the program. Her reintroduction to academia was a shock to her system and she sent me a slideshow presentation she made up along with a rant on how the academic world has changed (how the baseline has shifted, if you will). I found enjoyment in her horror at the rampant use of Wikipedia and, moreover, her 'Letter to a…
jjacquet | May 31, 2007Ever since Canada backed out of Kyoto, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, climate change policy has been in a fog (or was it smog?). Yesterday, the Ottawa Citizen published an article on the Canadian climate change charade. The author opens,
It is easy to get lost in the complexities of the fight against climate change -- the multiple deadlines, shifting baselines and arcane technicalities of the file. And lost is just where Stephen Harper's government seems to hope voters will stay.
What is this shifting baseline? Apparently, Canada's Environment Minister expresses support for the…
jjacquet | May 30, 2007Hagfish are gaining popularity in Korea by the minute! Caravalho Fisheries is now trying to develop a live market for the "primitive and somewhat disgusting eel-like creatures". About 5,000 pounds of hagfish, peacefully coiled at the bottom of their tank, were shipped to Seoul, where they should arrive this weekend. The hagfish are not exactly a status food but more like a comfort food (the delightful article below compares them to jalapeno poppers). And yes, the shipping costs more than the hagfish themselves, which, given the chance, would enter a dead body and eat it from the inside…
jjacquet | May 24, 2007New regulations were put into place yesterday that require stricter record keeping and observer programs onboard hagfishing boats. Hagfish have been dubbed as the most "disgusting" of all sea creatures and they seem to even be disgusted with themselves--knotting their bodies to rid themselves of their slime (see photo taken by NOAA of hafish at 280 meters).
When cod stocks off the East coast first showed signs of trouble in the 1980s, fishermen started to go after the spiny dogfish and monkfish. Predictably, dogfish and monkfish then also became overfished. Now fishermen are moving…