jjacquet | January 7, 2008Surfrider's State of the Beach report is designed to encourage the measurement of "beach health indicators" to see if coastal zone management (CZM) programs are succeeding in their goals to balance conservation with economic development. In the 30 years of CZM, are things getting better or worse?
Surfrider is looking to measure ocean health in a consistent way so that they can adequately answer this question. And this year, Surfrider has decided to add British Columbia to the 2009 report based on research done during during the summer of 2008. This will be Surfrider's first international…
jjacquet | January 5, 2008The Golden Globes are so dumb. Not only are they holding the event (January 13th) in spite of the writer's strike, but they've decided to take the Patagonian toothfish (aka Childean sea bass) down with them (maybe it's a badly written joke?). That's right, this January 13th, attendees at the Golden Globes will sit down to feast on sauteed fillets of Chilean sea bass with shitake mushroom a la creme.
As many of you might know, Chilean sea bass is heavily overfished--a national boycott of the delicious fish began in 2002. You might remember the assaults on Al Gore (including my own) when…
jjacquet | January 4, 2008As the result of a NRDC lawsuit, a federal judge yesterday ordered the Navy to adopt measures for protecting marine mammals during midfrequency sonar exercises off San Diego County and other parts of Southern California. I wrote about the previous decision to overturn lowfrequency sonar use by the Navy in The Skeptic in 2004 in an article titled Sonar Ban Sounded Good. Pursuing a ban on midfrequency sonar is certainly a step up from pursuing a ban on lowfrequency--almost every navy boat in the world has midfrequency sonar and uses it regularly.
The ban is great news for acoustic feeders off…
jjacquet | January 4, 2008Goro Yoshizaki wants to breed bluefin tuna from mackerel, a technological challenge that Olivia Judson recently blogged about at the New York Times. She writes:
At first, I thought he was joking. After all, it's a bit like saying you want to breed elephants from hamsters. It's not just that tuna are much bigger than mackerel (a fully grown tuna can weigh more than 1,300 pounds (600 kg) and reach more than 13 feet (4 meters) in length, whereas the typical mackerel is a mere snackerel). It's that part of what makes a mackerel a mackerel is that when they mate and reproduce, you get more…
jjacquet | January 3, 20082007 was The Year of Climate Change. Scales were tipped, talks were commenced, and global warming became the new culprit of...everything. (Wait, didn't this happen in the 1980s?) I suppose the excuse of 9/11 was wearing thin. Plus, it was very hard to blame 9/11 for declining fish stocks. In this article from the Oakland Tribune, there are some obvious problems with Senegal's fisheries:
"In my childhood, say 10 years ago, fisherman didn't have to go too far to get fish. But now (we) have to go as far as Guinea-Bissau or to some neighboring countries to get fish," said Ba [a fisherman], 25…
jjacquet | January 3, 2008As I've mentioned previously, Michael Pollan will release this month another book on "the tangible material formerly known as food." In Defense of Food grew out of his brilliant essay on nutritionism. Read an excerpt from the first chapter, a review of the book, and check out his book tour. And here are some of his thoughts on omega-3s:
In the years since then, egg producers figured out a clever way to redeem even the disreputable egg: By feeding flaxseed to hens, they could elevate levels of omega- 3 fatty acids in the yolks. Aiming to do the same thing for pork and beef fat, the animal…
jjacquet | January 2, 2008Jared Diamond has a great Op-Ed in the New York Times today comparing consumption between the developed and developing world. Thirty-two times. That's how many more resources we consume (the one billion people in developed countries) than the 5.5 billion people in developing nations. Gross, huh? But Diamond says giving some stuff up (and a lot of it is just nondescript stuff) shouldn't make us nervous.
Real sacrifice wouldn't be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing…
jjacquet | January 1, 2008The book The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts, a marine ecologist at the University of York in England, is the 2007 shifting baseline story of the year. Roberts pulls together the best historical studies of fisheries, photos, and woebegone descriptions of former marine abundance. A whole chapter is dedicated to the shifting baselines concept but the entire book echoes the syndrome (read more at the book's website). Included are accounts of a 24-square foot halibut, the great profusion of sharks in the eastern Pacific, and why the year 1900 is a bad baseline for the North Sea…
jjacquet | December 31, 2007Happy New Year's Eve!!! I will announce the grand prize winner for the shifting baselines story of the year tomorrow (something to look forward to in 2008). Today, I give you the runners-up:
1st place: The story from the New York Times on the new Euro series speargun that was introduced 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...
2nd place: In her talk at UBC on Nov. 8, Alana Mitchell, who is writing…
jjacquet | December 31, 2007Hundreds of beach-going Brazilians were stung by a smack of jellyfish yesterday. "Authorities blamed an extreme heat wave over the southeastern region." Jellyfish smacks and stings: the Christmas gift that keeps on giving (thanks J.R.).
jjacquet | December 30, 2007The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon (~$75), a story book of the biggest Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) caught since the 18th century, is an unexpected best-seller this year. A special edition of the book priced at $1311 sold out before it was even ready to be shipped. Good thing the Atlantic salmon has been immortalized. A WWF study a few years ago found that:
Atlantic salmon have been completely eliminated from no fewer than 300 out of over 2,000 river systems in their original range, and stocks hang by a thread in many others. In Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech…
jjacquet | December 27, 2007Great news! All the hard work by the team at the Intersection and beyond is paying off and there are now two Congressmen supporting the call for a debate. From the press release:
NEW YORK - A Republican and a Democratic member of the United States Congress, who are each also scientists, are leading an effort to push for a presidential debate on science and technology policy.
Congressman Vern Ehlers, R-MI, and congressman Rush Holt, D-NJ, have agreed to co-chair the non-partisan initiative, called ScienceDebate2008.com, whose signers also include fourteen Nobel laureates, several university…
jjacquet | December 26, 2007Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley titled her blog post "Fish Oil Reduces Alzheimers Risk." Who can blame her? ScienceDaily did it, too. I haven't seen the title of the original article in the Journal of Neuroscience, but I suspect the researchers might have even included something about fish oil, too. But in their attempts to frame science, they're encouraging fish consumption for no good reason.
What all these authors really mean is that eating omega-3 fatty acids reduces risk of getting Alzheimers. But wild fish is just one of many good sources of omega-3. Flax seeds, for instance, have…
jjacquet | December 26, 2007Shifting baselines is about the failure to notice change. Here, sort of sadly, is a prime example of it, from my buddy Jason Ensler who is a director with NBC (he directed episodes of "My Name is Earl," and "Chuck" this season as well as co-creating the under-appreciated "Andy Barker, P.I."). It's a Christmas promo for CBS in 1966 which I even remember (yeeks).
Anyhow, look at the promo. It's so slow and sweet that today it would loose a half billion viewers before it's over -- everyone switching to the new reality show, "Who Can Dance with the Fattest Slob." And did you notice this year…
jjacquet | December 24, 2007In the true spirit of Christmas, a man in Bremerton, Washington nailed Santa to a cross in his front yard. Horrible? Gruesome? Repulsive? Art Conrad says his crucified Santa is an artistic piece condemning the commercialization of Christmas. His neighbors are more disturbed, though, by the headless carol-singing Santa on Conrad's front porch...
jjacquet | December 23, 2007Seafood science is indeed a pet obsession. And I got an early Christmas gift in an email about the latest product from the Maryland-based seafood company Phillips: a new formed jumbo lump crab product (see photo). Called "culinary crab" the items consists of 4 to 8 gram formed lumps of crabmeat.
According to Seafood.com News:
Phillips says they have "developed a technique for forming large lumps of crab meat utilizing sections of meat from the crab. Blue swimming crab meat is bound together by natural crab proteins giving customers consistently sized pieces shaped similar to jumbo lump crab…
jjacquet | December 22, 2007The New York Times ran a great article today: As Cars Hit More Animals on Roads, Toll Rises.
Wildlife-related crashes are a growing problem on rural roads around the country. The accidents increased 50 percent from 1990 to 2004, based on the most recent federal data, according to the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University here.
The basic problem is that rural roads are being traveled by more and more people, many of them living in far-flung subdivisions. Each year, about 200 people are killed in as many as two million wildlife-related crashes at a cost of more than $8…
jjacquet | December 21, 2007Australia elected a new prime minister a month ago on the platform of having their country join the rest of the world (sans U.S.) in Kyoto. Now look at what one of his first actions is--to call the Japanese on the carpet for their stupid whaling antics.
Australia's new environment minister: Uncle Fester in da hizzouse
jjacquet | December 21, 2007Beware the Huckabee. He knows how to use the medium. Scientists, take note. He knows what he's doing.
Holy Huckabee, Batman, could that cross be an accident?