jjacquet | December 19, 2007The Best American Science Writing 2007, that is. Seriously, this book is good. First off, many of the articles center around medical conditions and who isn't interested if they or someone they love might one day face prosopagnosia (aka face blindness), depression, Alzheimer's, a Cesarean, or a dissecting aortic aneurysm? Stories like this explore the most fascinating interface: that between humans and life-altering afflictions. My friend who is a nurse borrowed the book and loved it, but it's not only about medicine.
This is the type of book perfect for someone like me who thinks: Golly…
jjacquet | December 19, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
Let me be the first one to say, "I was wrong." Jennifer asked a few weeks back whether fisheries subsidies were an issue for Ocean Champions, and I rambled on with a response about how it hasn't really been an issue since the original days of the Magnuson Act, when we over-capitalized our domestic fleets while we were kicking out the foreign ones, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
Well, that was true until this weekend, when the Senate passed its version of the farm bill with an outrageous provision making fishermen eligible for the Farm Service…
jjacquet | December 18, 2007Cory Doctorow blogged about these posters earlier today at BoingBoing, calling the WWF campaign "effective and haunting". I agree.
jjacquet | December 17, 2007Dead Zone Widens. Thank You Ethanol!
Demand for ethanol is rising (dumb) and with it, an increased production of corn and use of nitrogen-based fertilizers. All those fertilizers in the corn belt make their way into the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone where nothing can live. According to the Associated Press:
The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.
And…
jjacquet | December 16, 2007It doesn't get any better than this. My old buddy Ove Hoegh-Guldberg in Australia is the lead author on a paper in Science this past week that basically says we can see the end for coral reefs and its not far away. It says, in relatively simple language, here is the threshold (atmospheric CO2 level of 500 ppm) beyond which coral reefs will vanish, and here's when it looks like we're going to cross that threshold (by the end of the century) given current trends.
Very lucid. No hesitating, qualifying, hedging. Just a simple, bold statement. Much like when the late Ram Myers said in 2003…
jjacquet | December 15, 2007Half of the fish we eat is farmed. Read about how at least some of it is raised in this excellent article on Chinese aquaculture in yesterday's New York Times.
jjacquet | December 14, 2007Sea grapes (served with coconut and curry), hand woven baskets full of urchins, sunsets, fishing boats, and yes, the invevitable McDonald's. Some photos from Suva, Fiji...
jjacquet | December 13, 2007I went to the library at the University of the South Pacific (USP) today. Man, they're tough (see photo). If I had gone to USP, I'd be broke. For a first noise offense, the library demands a ~$20 fine. Second offense, the fine is doubled. Third offense, suspension of your library card for a month. No bags can be taken in. Books from the Pacific collection must be checked out one at a time and not removed the premises. But, that said, the library is fully intact and things are where you want them to be.
I also found some tidbits in the National Archives from historical colonial documents…
jjacquet | December 13, 2007Check out this summary of new findings on how sea lice from fish farms threathen wild salmon population in today's New York Times. I thought the article's title (which is not chosen by the reporter), Parasites in Fish Farms Threaten Salmon, Researchers Say, cast an interesting shadow of doubt over the findings ("researchers say"), which were published in this week's issue of Science.
The lead author on the paper is Martin Krkosek, a Ph.D. student who presented much of his research at the Fisheries Centre in October 2005. After Krkosek gently ended his talk, Daniel Pauly encouraged a…
jjacquet | December 13, 2007Archeological records show that outrigger canoes have been used in Fiji since at least the early 1800s but perhaps as early as the 1440s. It's possible that they have been around even longer. In this photo (ca. 1880), the Camakau, or traditional Fijian canoe, is in full sail. Such canoes were commonly seen in the outer islands in the Fiji group.
But boat-building, at least in the canoe sense, is an endangered profession here in Fiji. According to Leon Zann's 1980 publication, Traditional and Introduced Fishing Boats in the South Pacific:
Rafts and crude dugouts are still used on some…
jjacquet | December 12, 2007This is the chair of one officer in Fiji's National Fisheries Division. Dr. Daniel Pauly was one of the first scientists to address the wide divide between fisheries science in the North and the South. In a 1994 essay on this topic, he wrote, "...those working with the management of tropical resources are forced to consider rural poverty...as a key variable affecting fisheries. This often widespread poverty seriously limits the range of acceptable options for management." But as you can see by this chair, the options for management were limited anyway.
That said, Fiji seems to have a…
jjacquet | December 12, 2007Check out this slide show at BBC News about the Quirimbas National Park and Marine Protected Area (strongly backed by WWF-Mozambique).
jjacquet | December 11, 2007Carl Zimmer has written another excellent article for the New York Times. It's all about scientists who are solving "gastronomical mysteries of these leviathans by creating the first detailed biomechanical model of a feeding fin whale." One of these scientists is friend and fellow UBC Ph.D. candidate, Jeremy Goldbogen.
The whale grinds to a halt, the scientists concluded, by opening its mouth. Water floods in, pushing its giant lower jaws back until they hang perpendicularly from its body. Suddenly the whale is producing colossal amounts of drag. "The whales are beautifully streamlined so…
jjacquet | December 11, 2007You can't have commercial fisheries in Chesapeake Bay, and eat your oysters too. That's the thesis of Angus Phillip's excellent article in the Washington Post on how Chesapeake's Oyster Population Has Reached Rock Bottom.
[Phillips] asked about the Chesapeake Bay Agreement of 2000, which set a goal of increasing the oyster population in the bay tenfold over a baseline of 1994 by the year 2010. How was that going?
Seven years into the effort, "There's less oysters in the bay than we had then, according to the Department of Natural Resource's own biomass data," Baynard said. "We're going…
jjacquet | December 11, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
All right, here's more grist for the mill on the issue of whether climate is a campaign issue, and the answer is pretty clearly "No."This story on Grist analyzed the stump speeches of the major candidates and how much time they devoted to the issue of climate change in those speeches.
The result? "Climate change remains a minor issue for the major Democratic Party contenders for president, who devoted, on average, just 15 seconds -- or 2.6 percent of their speeches -- to the problem."
Very depressing, considering that the "officially unelected…
jjacquet | December 10, 2007But first, support it. It's simple. There ought to be a Presidential debate devoted to science and technology in the 2008 election cycle. Already, many prominent scientists agree. Here at Shifting Baselines, we have added our name to a list of blogs that also rally behind a political discourse on science and technology. Read more on the call at the Intersection. Then voice your support and spread the word!
p.s. Sorry for the late post. I am in the South Pacific for the next couple weeks collecting data so expect posts at odd hours...
jjacquet | December 9, 2007In today's New York Times Magazine, there is a great short article on Fish-Flavored Fish to confuse your logic and your tastebuds. To feed demand from the fast food industry (who needs the fishy flavor before they deep fry) one aquaculture company has come up with a way to put the fishy flavor in farmed fish.
This spring, after 10 months of testing, the aquaculture company HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries created what it calls "sea-flavored" tilapia, the first farmed fish manipulated to taste like a wild fish. "It met 10 out of our 10 taste parameters," says HQ's president and C.E.O.,…
jjacquet | December 9, 2007Earlier this year supermarkets removed monkfish from their menus admist concerns about depleted populations. Now, thanks to shifting baselines, monkfish is not overfished after all. According to an article at Seafood.com News published on Friday:
A new monkfish stock assessment has concluded that the resource in both the Northern and Southern Fishery Management Areas is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. The conclusion completely reverses the scientific community's previous understanding about monkfish, which until now was considered to be overfished and in significant need of…
jjacquet | December 9, 2007Warmer waters bring wads of jellies.
Global warming seems to be nurturing a worldwide explosion of jellyfish, not only allowing greater numbers of jellies to survive through the winter but also heating up north Atlantic waters where conditions are becoming favorable for Mediterranean jellyfish to thrive. Recall the smack that killed all 100,000 fish in an Irish Sea salmon farm. If you have a New Scientist subscription, read more here.
jjacquet | December 6, 2007 I was raised in the teeny town of Granville, Ohio. There were 112 kids in my graduating class and only one high school in the town. So you can imagine my surprise when, during my visit to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival back in October, I ran into an old high school friend, Melissa Salpietra, who was there as a nominee for the "Best Newcomer" award for her film Longfin, which she co-produced with Lindsey Davidson (see more photos after the jump).
After saying our respective "Holy cows", Melissa gave me a copy of Longfin, which I held off on watching it until the arrival of my new…