jjacquet | December 5, 2007A 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…
jjacquet | December 5, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
I have to confess, I got nothin' this week.
Oh sure, there were articles this week in the New York Times on how red tide is causing major problems for California sea lions, and plenty of gloom and doom in other areas. Although the global warming meeting in Bali, while not likely to lead to major breakthroughs, is a potential bright spot just because it's happening.
But really, I'm drawing a blank, and so is everyone else on our team, which is why you didn't see a post yesterday. So instead, I'll just pose a question:
Does the presidential race…
jjacquet | December 5, 2007 An evening with Yann Martel
Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, spoke on campus last night and I was smart enough to attend. I cannot possibly impart all of his wisdom here so I'll give you what I found to be the most interesting snippets. My own wisdom: if you haven't read Life of Pi, please do. To be courteous to those who have not, I'll begin with Martel's politics and end with his writing.
On His Lonely Book Club with Stephen Harper:
About 8 months ago, Martel attended an event for the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa, where he said the politicians were largely absent and the…
jjacquet | December 4, 2007From 1998-2000, the Give Swordfish a Break campaign requested that chefs boycott swordfish until the international fishery commission cut quotas--700 chefs joined in. Here in Vancouver, a sustainable seafood event doesn't happen without the involvement of chefs. Since it opened, there have been a bizillion articles about Hook, D.C.'s sustainable seafood restaurant (including this one in Fortune yesterday, featuring head chef Barton Seaver--in photo).
"The Roman writer Livy once warned that when society's chefs come to be regarded as consequential figures, it is a sure sign that society is…
jjacquet | December 3, 2007Friday night I went to the opening of Cameron MacDonald's "Catch of the day" exhibit at Little Mountain Studios here in Vancouver. The walls were covered in large-scale drawings of fantasy fish on 500 feet of thermal fax paper and there were several framed faux nutrition labels.
The new exhibit was a sequel to MacDonald's 2006 exhibit "Liquidation", a mixed media work that examined the issues of over fishing, globalization and food security. For the duration of "Liquidation":
Little Mountain Studios (formerly The Butchershop) was transformed into Little Mountain Market. 1800 cans, comprising…
jjacquet | December 2, 2007Dead on arrival.
November was the month for Atlantic bluefin tuna. Well, it could have been. The New York Times was optimistic but alas, after a week of debates in Turkey, the international tuna commission, in its brilliance, decided to increase the quota for bluefin by 1000 tonnes.
The bluefin is revered by most seafaring people, including Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean and promoter of the Sea Ethic. In a guest essay for Grist, Safina explains that ICCAT is "completely broken":
The 43-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas met this month…
jjacquet | November 30, 2007An excerpt from a 1933 article in the journal Nature--imagine seeing a passage like this today:
In the spring of 1933, while Mr. Vincent Astor of New York was cruising among the Galapagos Islands, a specimen of this huge fish was seen and captured...It was swimming at the surface but sounded immediately when harpooned. For an hour and half it towed the launch, weighing about three tons at varying speeds (at times as great as six knots) and mostly in circles. Then it came to the surface and swam about sluggishly for about two and half hours before it succumbed to repeated harpoonings and a…
jjacquet | November 30, 2007Last week while I was home for U.S. Thanksgiving, I missed this event for Sounds Like Canada on CBC. David Suzuki, Canadian environmental hero, and his daughter, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki (also a student of Daniel Pauly's) spoke in front of a crowd of 250 people about climate change, fisheries, and hope. John Robinson, a UBC professor and contributor to the IPCC report, was also present and slips in a nice shifting baseline anecdote: "People don't remember, but Canada used to lead the world in energy programs in the early 1970s."
Referencing George Monbiot's Heat, David Suzuki discussed how…
jjacquet | November 29, 2007That'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…
jjacquet | November 29, 2007Does anyone have anything that can compete with:
Georgia Cannonball Jellyfish Trawl Fishery?
p.s. This is an experimental mid-water trawl fishery that has recently started up off the Atlantic seaboard. We can expect (as the posts below attest) more jellyfisheries in the future.
jjacquet | November 28, 2007And just in case there are some of there out there who agree with the statement from Wikipedia: "There is very little reason or evidence to suppose that Jellyfish even require a collective noun." This important article, Invasion of Jellyfish Envelops Japan in Ocean of Slime in yesterday's Wall Street Journal removes all doubt.
The Japanese government last year counted about 50,000 incidents of jellyfish trouble.
So the Japanese are trying to make the best of it. Dr. Daniel Pauly has been talking about a future of jellyfish bugers since the late 1990s, but did not foresee jellyfish-…
jjacquet | November 28, 2007Last night at dinner, I asked whether a group of jellyfish was called a 'smuck' or a 'smack' to settle the debate on the blog last week. Though Wikipedia cites collective jellies as a 'smack', the three scientists I was eating with agreed it was 'smuck' and we even went to a big, tattered 1993 Webster's dictionary that confirmed a group of jellyfish was known either as a 'brood' or a 'smuck'. Knowing this term will become increasingly important, so we should settle it once and for all here. Does everyone agree on SMUCK?
If so, might some jelly expert volunteer to change the jellyfish page…
jjacquet | November 28, 2007To eBook or not to eBook? That is the question. I am particularly curious how authors feel about eBooks. Recall the singers' rebellion (revolution?) against Napster and other music sites, despite the fact that singers make most of their money off performing. Could the eBook jeopardize the writer's livelihood? Here are some other pros and cons of eBooks summarized from the comments on last week's Kindle post.
jjacquet | November 27, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
When you hear the news that Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, you might not think that has anything to do with the oceans. But, oh does it.
In the first place, Sen. Lott has always been terrible on fisheries issues, carrying the water for Gulf shrimpers and anyone else who wanted to grab as much of the Gulf's marine life as they could get away with. And, that would have been fine, it was ineffective, or if he lacked credibility, but the only U.S. Senator who may have more power on fisheries issues is…
jjacquet | November 26, 2007Would 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:…
jjacquet | November 23, 2007That's smuck, not schmuck. And it's the official term for a swarm of jellyfish, according to Jonathan in the last jellyfish post. The name was just created in 2000 (the need for a name for a swarm of jellyfish, just another shifting baseline). Apparently, after wiping out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm, the smuck has now moved on to Scotland.
jjacquet | November 22, 2007Recently, the NGO Oceana distributed subsidy snowglobes to WTO delegates from 150 nations. The subsidy globes each contain one fish, one factory fishing boat, and with a little agitation, lots of lots of coins that reign down on both. An index card of facts comes with the globe. The first fact: "Reducing fisheries subsidies is the single most significant action that can be taken to address global overfishing."
Acclaimed fisheries biologist Peter Larkin once described the government funds that keep fisheries afloat as "a long mane of hairy subsidies." Worldwide, fisheries subsidies are…
jjacquet | November 22, 2007In what was probably the largest Thanksgiving feast this week, a swarm of billions of jellyfish attacked a salmon farm in Northern Ireland yesterday and ate $2 million worth of fish. Jellyfish and slime are taking over the oceans, just as Dr. Jeremy Jackson always warns. Billions of jellyfish feasting on more than 100,000 salmon, just another shifting baseline.
jjacquet | November 20, 2007If you stop by Amazon, you'll see Jeff Bezos has launched their latest product: Kindle. Jeff promises that "reading on Kindle is nothing like reading on a computer screen." Weighing in at less than a paperback (but costing much more: $399) and with room for 200 novels, Kindle (and the other many 'electronic paper' systems of its kind) is probably the future for reading.
I remember the discussion long ago that J.K. Rowling could have single-handedly launched e-books if she had chosen to only release her Harry Potter electronically. My young neighbors were less than fond of the idea. Even…
jjacquet | November 20, 2007Posted by Traci Reid, traci@oceanchampions.org
On Nov. 7 more than 58,000 gallons of oil spilled into the San Francisco Bay, killing coastal birds, closing fisheries, and making lots of 5:00 news programs. Over the last two weeks the spill has spread beyond the Bay and into coastal waters designated as National Marine Sanctuaries.
So what does it mean to have areas designated as Marine Sanctuaries if they aren't protected from disasters like this? Admittedly, I've made more than one presentation extolling the virtues of designation as a Marine Sanctuary. Unfortunately, if you strip the…