Shifting Baselines : From Randy Olson: New Shifting Baselines Flash Video for Puget Sound

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.

Scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

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New Projects & Publications

July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.

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

Online Resources and Blogs

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From Randy Olson: New Shifting Baselines Flash Video for Puget Sound

Category: Communicating • Losing Track
Posted on: April 8, 2008 7:50 PM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet

Last fall I was contacted by the folks at the newly created Puget Sound Partnership regarding the "shifting baselines" predicament they face with Puget Sound. Their phone polling showed that over 90% of the people of Seattle are in favor of protecting Puget Sound, but over 70% think the Sound, as it is today, is pretty much pristine. That is a case for shifting baselines.

So over the past four months we produced this new 5 minute Flash video to help convey the fact that even though, when you stand on the ferry and look out at Puget Sound it all appears flawless, the real situation is considerably different. Kevin Ranker of Surfrider in Washington was the guy who originally saw the need for a communication effort like this, and Surfrider eventually helped get Pearl Jam to give us the song, "Oceans," for it. Check it out.

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Comments

Ugh...that word again, "pristine". I'm expecting to see the next sport utility vehicle hybrid being introduced in an ad campaign in all the media and it will be called "the Pristine". In my mind it's becoming synomymous with the phrase "thar she goes".

Posted by: doug l | April 9, 2008 6:57 AM

Are you kidding me? The video ends with bikini clad chicks playing in the ocean, ya maybe after some global warming. Have you stepped foot in Puget Sound? It is cold as heck..

Posted by: jim | April 16, 2008 11:11 AM