jjacquet | February 10, 2008Check out these photos of Dubai; the first is from 1990 and the second photo is the same street in 2003.
jjacquet | February 7, 2008American asses widen and interest in conservation wanes as real life turns virtual.
We've already discussed how the average American is gaining weight almost by the day and yet Americans see fat as normal as weight rises. But a new study by The Nature Conservancy shows, perhaps unsurprsingly, that virtual reality games are replacing outdoor activities (and calorie burning). This has also reduced appreciation for nature and has a number of other undesirable side effects. "Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic…
jjacquet | February 7, 2008The whale hunt is proceeding as planned and there is now photographic evidence to prove it. The BBC published some gruesome photos today. I'm not going to post any here because I don't want to get depressed every time I open my computer...
jjacquet | February 7, 2008I was staying away from politics on the blog but this one I can't resist. That's right. After making the fun and unique (and, apparently, narcissistic) YouTube video about her crush on Obama, (nearly 6 million views) Obama Girl then went and did something very unoriginal. She stayed at home for the primary. Single women, after all, are the least likely to vote. But I thought Obama Girl was different. Girl, you've got the t-shirt. Where's your follow through?
jjacquet | February 6, 2008In 1998, Pauly et al. published their seminal paper in Science on Fishing Down Marine Food Webs (FDFW). The paper has been cited nearly 1000 times and today it turns 10 years old. The paper has been influential, namely in establishing the mean trophic level of fisheries as a tool for measuring the health of the oceans. In 2000, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)--a treaty to sustain biodiversity adopted by every country except the U.S.--mandated that each country report on its the change in mean trophic level over time as an indicator of ocean health.
How did they do the study?…
jjacquet | February 5, 2008Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
The last month has seen enormous turnout in primaries and caucuses around the country, and today's Super Tuesday vote promises to be no different. Here's a prediction of a 40% turnout in one Missouri district. This is phenomenal for a primary election. There are general elections in this country that don't see that kind of turnout.
We saw similar high turnout in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. I cannot remember a primary election that produced more voter and media interest. TV execs aren't even worried about the writer's…
jjacquet | February 4, 2008Check out this wonderful article on shifting baselines by Colin Woodard in The Christian Science Monitor. Woodard describes UNH researcher Bill Leavenworth's hunt for cod fishing logs between 1852 and 1866. Back then, fishermen had no incentive to over or underreport their catch so what Leavenworth finds is more accurate than statistics today. He also finds, unsurprisingly, fishermen traveled less and caught more fish.
In the yellowing pages of these surviving logbooks lie the secrets of the ocean fisheries' past - and perhaps lessons for its troubled present.
Woodard's piece "Sea captains'…
jjacquet | February 3, 2008Lent is the biggest time of year for seafood sales (more on that soon) but, according to the industry supported news source IntraFish, the Superbowl unofficially launches the seafood selling season. Supermarket retailers everywhere offered plenty of seafood platters and party specials for Americans watching the big game.
jjacquet | February 1, 2008Bryant Gumbel, in last week's edition of his HBO show Real Sports, ended with a great shifting baselines editorial which would probably irk a lot of people who hate American pop culture. After talking about all the silly trivia that will fill the airwaves over the next two weeks addressing non-football topics (like which quarterback is cuter, Eli or Tom, or which coach is nicer) he finished by saying:
It is life in the modern age in a pop culture world, and is why Super Bowl Sunday's have been only partly about football, and mostly about American excess. Some may bemoan that fact and argue…
jjacquet | February 1, 2008
Molded surimi lobsters from Surimi & Surimi Seafood by J.W. Park (2005).
We've talked about surimi before, but it's worth a reminder on the official definition: "Surimi is stabilized myofibrillar proteins obtained from mechanically deboned fish flesh that is washed with water and blendedwith cyroprotectants." And then surimi is shaped into things people really want to eat, like lobster and shrimps (also in the photo). More than half a million tonnes of pulverized fish are shaped into things humans really want to eat every year...just another shifting baseline.
jjacquet | January 31, 2008Fifty-three sea lions were slaughtered in the Galapagos Islands. Thirteen pups, 25 youngsters, nine males and six females were all found with their skulls bashed in on Pinta Island. The New York Times questioned this week whether tourism is compatible with conservation. Are humans?
jjacquet | January 30, 2008Stop the presses. This sushi debate is getting out of control. I have had to revisit the YouTube of sea otters holding hands to remind myself that almost 10 million humans still have a soul--that it's not all about us and our mercury levels.
You probably know what happened. Marian Burros wrote an article about mercury in sushi tuna that got on the front page of the January 23rd New York Times. Blogs (including this one) peddled it. Later NYTimes articles espoused its findings, though said sushi-lovers would ignore them. The fishing industry cried factual errors (they wrote a letter to…
jjacquet | January 29, 2008Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
So my question to those of you out there in science blog land is this: does politics matter to you?
One of the best fish advocates in Congress could go down (If you don't believe me see today's Washington Post).
Gilchrest could be replaced by an anti-environment zealot.
Do you care?
Congress controls whether federal dollars get directed at ocean-related research.
Key members of Congress work to get science projects funded.
Do you believe that building relationships with these members makes a difference in funding, and to your work?
I can…
jjacquet | January 27, 2008Can you stay awake for a book? Or are books going extinct along with the American attention span?
According to Ursula Le Guin (notable sci-fi and fantasy author now age 78) in February's issue of Harper's, the Associated Press ran a poll and announced last August that 27% of respondents had spent the year bookless. Le Guin is less indignant about the fact that more than a quarter of Americans didn't read a book than that the tone of the AP piece was one of complacency--the author admitting that getting sleepy while reading was "a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify…
jjacquet | January 25, 2008Good news! Gasoline is back below $3 a gallon. What a bargain. Everyone can stop worrying about the rising price of gasoline.
Okay, let me date myself in a big way. The summer of my senior year of high school I worked at a gas station where the price was $0.19 a gallon. That's nineteen cents. And then in college it shot up to over a dollar during the OPEC oil embargo and the U.S. had a nervous breakdown. Huge lines appeared at filling stations and we passed a 55 mph speed limit to reduce fuel consumption.
Today its three times that price, everyone drives Hummers, and yeah, I guess some people…
jjacquet | January 25, 2008Bugmeal 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…
jjacquet | January 24, 2008Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
Lots of interesting developments in the Gilchrest race this week.
The Politico has this story about the massive amount of direct mail being directed at Gilchrest by hard-core anti-environmentalist Andy Harris.
Gilchrest's other primary primary opponent (no, that's not a typo - I meant to say "primary" twice), E.J. Pipkin, triggered the "millionaire's amendment" to campaign finance rules, allowing Gilchrest and Harris to raise three times the legal limit from individuals. That's because Pipkin has already pumped over $350,000 of his own money…
jjacquet | January 23, 2008The New York Times' Marian Burros has an article today on high mercury levels in tuna sushi:
Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Burros also wrote a complementary article reviewing research on the ills linked to mercury:
Elevated mercury levels may be associated not only with neurological problems but with cardiovascular disease among adults as well...[Another] study also suggested that…
jjacquet | January 22, 2008I got a tip on a Discovery show called Dirty Jobs that aired tonight and explored the slimy hagfishery off the coast of Maine. I was interested to see it but (I'll expose a little of my technological incompetence) was unable to download the software and so went in search of reviews. People seem to love Dirty Jobs and the slime eel show sounds particularly enticing:
Mike then heads to the coast of Maine to join forces with slime eel fishermen. Climbing around a hagfish boat, his first task is to separate buckets full of eels from their slime. Mike quickly learns why they're called "slime…