Shifting Baselines

Happy 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. Yesterday, I heard acclaimed B.C. naturalist Alexandra Morton talk about the threats to pink salmon. The smallest of the five species of Pacific salmon, the tiny pinks (or humpies--thanks to the males humped back at spawning season), are the least appreciated salmon and not only for their size, but due to a stigma against their taste and their lack of recreational fishing potential. But these little salmon, which used to wiggle in droves up the B.C. coastal rivers are faced with a monstrous problem the size of a flea: sea lice.

At the time this photo was taken in 2001, young salmon were so infected with lice that only 22 percent were expected to live long enough to spawn again. In other words, 78 percent would die. Morton and partners have worked hard to fight the source of sea lice in Broughton Archipelago: salmon farms. They have succeeded in tightening industry standards, "But," Morton says, "what does it matter if there are 3 sea lice or 77 sea lice on a salmon if both kill them?"

Next up, Atlantic menhaden. Chad Nelsen at Surfrider sent over this radio piece from Marketplace on Atlantic menhaden.

It lacks the glamour of dolphins and whales, but at the bottom of the food chain, the lowly Atlantic menhaden might be the most important fish in the sea. Bruce Franklin suggests we get it an agent or maybe a celebrity spokesperson before it dies out.

All of our prized marine mammals, seabirds, and fish feed on menhaden. Unfortunately, so do pigs, chickens, and farmed fish. Menhaden are a great species to turn into fishmeal (my thoughts on that). Menhaden doesn't have a Bono yet, but John Hocevar at Greenpeace has led efforts to put limits on factory fishing for menhaden in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, which lack any catch limits despite the enormous scale of the fisheries and the species' ecological importance.

As a salty treat this Ocean Day, John Hocevar will contribute a guest blogpost any minute now...