Daniel Pauly just pointed me toward a story that will compete with Deer Meat Sushi as the Shifting Baselines story of the year. The Sunday Times ran A Trimmer Gun to Spear Smaller Fry about how there is finally a speargun sold in the U.S. to hunt smaller fish. Americans are known for hunting big fish (because we had some) with bulky spearguns. But lately there seems to be a growing vogue among American speardivers for smaller fish like croakers and snappers (decide for yourself whether it's because the fish are getting smaller).
Shifting Baselines
The Cure for Planetary Amnesia
The Shifting Baselines Blog
Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.
Search this blog
New Projects & Publications
August 2008: Josh Donlan is co-author on a new paper titled Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles published in Biological Invasions.
August 2008: Jennifer Jacquet is co-author on a new paper titled Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries published in Conservation Biology.
August 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Journal of Applied Ecology titled Diversity, invasive species, and extinctions in insular ecosystems.
July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.
July 24, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a talk on biodiversity offsets to The Alcoa Foundation and the Alcao Intalco Aluminum Plant in Bellingham, Washington.
July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.
July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.
July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.
July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.
May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.
May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.
April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.
April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.
Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.
Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card
Recent Posts
- Pleistocene Rewilding Meets Assisted Migration
- Signs of Ancient Overfishing in a Giant Clam
- No Baracknophobia Here
- Best YouTube Clip Ever
- Fishermen Killing Rats As A Public Service
- Aussie Cats Eat More Seafood Than Their Owners
- The Last Giant Kangaroo
- JUNK RAFT Days Away from Hawaii!
- NewScientist Reviews Sizzle
- The Rise of Slime
Recent Comments
- eamonn on More Stylish Seafood: the Fishkini
- eamonn on Tilapia: Lucky to Be Loved or Ill-Fated FIsh?
- doug l on Pleistocene Rewilding Meets Assisted Migration
- Tom Rooney on Pleistocene Rewilding Meets Assisted Migration
- BlueMako on Signs of Ancient Overfishing in a Giant Clam
- Nathan on No Baracknophobia Here
- Left_Wing_Fox on No Baracknophobia Here
- Orac on No Baracknophobia Here
- Brian on No Baracknophobia Here
- razib on No Baracknophobia Here
Archives
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
Online Resources and Blogs
- Altered Oceans
- Blog Fish
- Brian Halweil at Worldwatch
- Framing Science
- Intersection
- Loom
- Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
- Muffy Moose Memo
- Natural Patriot
- Nexus
- Oceana
- Ocean Champions
- Pharyngula
- Real Oceans
- Shaping Room (Jim Moriarty)
- Surfider
- The Origin of the Term 'Shifting Baselines'
- The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project
« Politics Tuesday: Bad Tidings for Red Tide = Good Tidings for the Oceans | Main | Whisking Down the Food Web »
Shifting Spearguns: Hunting Smaller Fish
Category: Losing Track
Posted on: August 1, 2007 3:05 PM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet
Comments
I was an avid spear fisherman in Australia and it was a shock to me to find legal spearfishing on SCUBA, here in the US. Making SCUBA spearfishing illegal is to me more important, than the size of the speargun. ps. I'm out of touch these days, maybe it is already illegal.
Posted by: Hans | August 2, 2007 7:01 AM
Spearfishing on SCUBA is still legal in the U.S. (finally confirmed this with friends who do it). Can you give us details on when and maybe even based on what science (if any) why Australia banned it? Thanks for this information, Hans!
Posted by: Jennifer Jacquet | August 8, 2007 11:10 AM
Unfortunately, the New York Times article is a little misleading in the title and may not represent a ‘smoking gun’ for shifting baselines in the US. Euro style and other small spearguns have been used in the US for quite a while now. However, Riffe, the company mentioned in the article did not make them. As a spearfisher in Florida, a lot of us had a euro or smaller style gun in our quiver for different occasions. As mentioned, the some of the larger Riffe guns can be bulky in the water and are not ideal for catching smaller maneuverable reef fish for dinner (not everyone is out to hunt large trophy fish). Riffe, which has been made popular by their amazing blue water guns (large powerful guns used to shoot pelagic fish), is basically diversifying their product to capture another part of the spearfishing market. In fact it mentions that over half of their new style guns are going to Europe. In the US, where Riffe already has a big name for itself among spearfishers, people in the market for a more slender gun may choose their model over one of there competitors such as Omer. However, it doesn’t necessarily show that the fish are getting smaller as previously smaller spearguns were bought through from other companies making spearguns.
As an aside, the speargun in the picture is a large gun and although not used to shoot tuna, is by no means for small fry.
The ability to use scuba to spearfish can be a controversial issue among spearfishermen (note that for spearfishing world records, mentioned in another post, only freediving (no scuba) is accepted). I would be very interested to learn more about when and how no scuba for spearfishing came into place in Australia. In the US, which already has a large base of scuba spearfishers, I would imagine a change in policy to be very difficult.
Posted by: David | January 12, 2008 9:28 AM
Great comment guidelines. I think you’re on the right track here. Some of those comments should go somewhere else.
Posted by: Adult Forum | January 16, 2008 3:46 PM