Solutions

This week, the New York TImes ran the Op-Ed How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It by Taras Grescoe, who is author of a new book about ethically eating seafood. "One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species," explains the author. Jellyfish, Asian carp, cholera bacteria, seaweed, diatoms, clams, water fleas, shrimps, and others are invading waters around the world. Many of them find their new homes via ship ballast water. But to think the problems associated with marine invasive species are something new would be a shifting baseline…

Holy Mackerel, an article I wrote about how religion could help relieve overfishing, was published today in Science & Spirit. Despite numerous scientific studies demonstrating overfishing and its negative impacts on marine biodiversity, global demand for seafood continues to grow. Conservationists advocate 'raising awareness' as one solution to the fisheries crisis. But I work with scientists who are among the world's most informed about overfishing and nearly all of them eats seafood without much discretion. Curbing demand for seafood needs a miracle. Or maybe, in the U.S. where four…

According to Science Daily, the small-island state of Kiribati just established the world's largest marine protected area (MPA). The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) is the size of California, though the article does not provide a map nor does it mention what portion of the MPA will actually be closed to fishing (most MPAs allow some sort of activity inside). The article does mention that commercial fishing will be 'restricted'. Currently, around 0.6% of the seas were dedicated as MPAs (as compared to the 12% terrestrially). Furthermore, only 0.01% of the oceans are closed to fishing…

Bugmeal to replace fishmeal? We know it's wasteful to grind up one-third of our wild caught fish into fishmeal to feed it to pigs, chickens, and fish. But hope for our tiny fish might lie in an unlikely source: bugs. Apparently, a group of scientists and at least one entrepreneur is taking the need to find a substitute for fishmeal seriously. According to Seafood.com News, there is a new interest in mass-producing insects as a sustainable protein source to replace fish meal in fish and livestock feeds. Ernest Papadoyianis, president of Neptune Industries, said his company was searching for…

Each year, we grind up one-third of all ocean-caught fish to feed industrially raised pigs, chickens, and farmed fish. That's 30 million tonnes of fish turned into fishmeal and oil. What a waste. So tomorrow at the Science Bloggers conference in North Carolina, Shifting Baselines will launch and distribute the first 'Eat Like a Pig' seafood wallet cards. Now in production: The 'Eat Like a Pig' seafood wallet card (front/back). While I have written extensively about why consumers alone cannot save our fish, I hope this card can raise awareness (to the inexpensive tune of $20 for 1000 cards)…

Check out this slide show at BBC News about the Quirimbas National Park and Marine Protected Area (strongly backed by WWF-Mozambique).

A little bit of housecleaning here at Shifting Baselines. First, Sea Shepherd, the anti-whalers preparing for their campaign against Japanese whalers right now in Australia, have named one of their two boats after Steve Irwin, the deceased Crocodile Hunter. Over at Grist, Erik Hoffner has a nice post (and photos!) on fisheries bycatch that mentions a study from the Sea Around Us Project's Dirk Zeller and Daniel Pauly. Finally, our dear friend the manatee has a delayed fate. They are still safely on Florida's state endangered species list (for now), where they have been since 1979. The 2007…

That's the question posed by an article in today's New York Times. The answer? Probably NO, but the article explores the role of high end marketing in the environmental crisis and is worth a visit--if only just for the photos. In shishi corners of our society, rich designers are doing their part to make a better world (at least until the next fashion comes along). Like recycled wreaths and other earth-friendly Christmas decor. "Rudolph the Recycled Reindeer" is the brainchild of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York. He used empty soda cans like mosaics in his Christmas…

Would sexier oceans get a bigger budget? In 2006, the U.S. alone spent an estimated $13.3 billion on the sex and porn industry. Worldwide, it was estimated sex industry sales were $97 billion. Meanwhile, as of 1999, the entire world was spending only about $6 billion on nature reserves globally. The Sea Around Us Project will soon release a study showing the global cost of marine protected areas (MPAs) to be an estimated $1 billion. What's a marine protected area got to do? Do we need to make the oceans sexier to get money for them? Maybe some softcoral porn will do the trick. Before:?…

Q: Which parts of the human body could you design better? A: I would redesign the human appetite to prefer food high in fiber and vitamins rather than our well-evolved craving for sugar and fat. The consequences of this vestigial appetite include our current unsustainable model of industrial agriculture, our unhealthy corn-based diet, not to mention our systematic overfishing (i.e., overeating) of seafood species after seafood species. The redesign is particularly applicable in the U.S. and other heartily fed countries, where we feast on fat and sugar under the antiquated premonition that…

Check out this comparison of Seattle to Vancouver from one Good Magazine. Vancouver trumps Seattle for its "functioning environment for its inhabitants." p.s. I knew immediately this was written by a person living in Seattle. Canadians are far less competitive...

One-fifth of the advice on how to save our oceans in the current issue of Conservation Magazine came from two-thirds of my graduate committee. Check out the ocean advice of Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila and the other eight ideas in 10 Solutions to Save the Oceans. Any favorites?

Last year, President Bush set aside a large tract of coast off the northern Hawaiian Islands as a marine protected area (MPA) and National Monument. Politically, islanders tell me, this was not too difficult because U.S. fishing interests in the northern Hawaiian islands are relatively small. In the main islands, it's a different story. At present, only 0.3% of the the main Hawaiian islands' coast is protected. Scientists, such as NOAA's Alan Friedlander (lead author on a study published in April's Ecological Applications on main Hawaiian island MPA's) believe that 20% of the coast needs…

Today's New York Times ran an article about the increasing interest in marine biology in today's youth culture (some of you believe I should now go confirm this story--check their sources and double-check their stats; I will not). In the U.S., about 50 summer camps, most of them near the ocean, now specialize in marine biology studies, which is up from 40 camps in 1998. Perhaps we can expect a growth in the number of marine biology majors in another ten years time (and, better still, more ocean awareness at the polls).

Every day planes leave Kona, Hawaii with live yellow tangs loaded in the cargo hold, most of them destined for a U.S. aquarium. Craig Schmarr of Ocean Riders Seahorse Farm believes the "self-regulating fishery" is a threat to Hawaiian reefs.There is now a market for captive-bred, eco-friendly seahorses for private aquarists in the U.S., but this message has not been taken onboard by public aquaria. Nor has captive-bred production been considered for many other reef fish victims of live fish trade, such as the yellow tang. The live fish trade--as 'bushmeat of the sea' and as ornamentals for…

Aloha from Hawaii's Kona coast where I spent the day yesterday learning about captive-bred seahorses from Craig Schmarr who, along with his wife, marine biologist Carol Cozzi-Schmarr, owns Ocean Riders Seahorse Farm . The couple breeds seahorses (all 35 species) to sell to private aquarists in the U.S., where there is high demand for captive bred seahorses (rather than wild seahorses, which are often caught using harmful reef-ruining means, such as cyanide). Seahorses are considered an endangered species due to habitat loss and overfishing to supply the growing demand for seahorses by…

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…

Sequestering 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…

On May 27th, Rachel Carson would have turned 100 years of age. Instead, the world lost this gifted woman and writer at just 56--but not before she kickstarted the environmental movement with Silent Spring (see newly posted booklists) and wrote her ode to the oceans, The Sea Around Us (for which the project founded by Dr. Daniel Pauly was named). A quirky tribute was paid to her (and Elvis) by Alan Fargo at the Orlando Sentinel.

It seems like most of us agree: Wikipedia is blessed though, like pop music (or an ugly partner), it is easy to love it and then deny one's affection for it publicly, especially in the science world. Now, with the introduction of Wikispecies, started in August 2004 by Wikimedia, several other debates of how an open source, free content catalogue of all things living can work. Daniel Pauly is not only the father of the term "shifting baselines" but co-father to Fishbase with Dr. Rainer Froese. This online database is a multilingual melange of expert information, including taxonomy, growth…