jjacquet | September 25, 2007The contentious certification of New Zealand hoki by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) just got a little more dubious. Yesterday, according to news from Intrafish, New Zealand cut its hoki catch quota 10% from 101,040 metric tons to 91,040 metric tons. The fishery was certified by the MSC back in 2001 for a yearly catch of 250,000 tons. Since then, the government has continuously curtailed the quota because the fishery continuously shows signs of decline. Hoki is New Zealand's most valuable commercial fish.
The large amount of bycatch in the hoki fishery has also been a point of…
jjacquet | September 25, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
For those of us who follow the world of ocean politics (and politics generally), Leon Panetta is the closest thing we have to a rock star. Panetta served as the chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission, and prior to that was President Clinton's Chief of Staff, head of the Office of Management & Budget, and a seven-term Congressman from Sam Farr's current district (Monterey/Santa Cruz). He was the guy who brought all the players together to create the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and was a major force in creating the still-standing…
jjacquet | September 23, 2007When I was a student at USC Cinema School in the mid-90's I had a discussion with the Dean, Elizabeth Daly, in which she told me her theory of learning film. She said that film is a language which virtually everyone learns to read at an early age -- a one year old child quickly learns how to make the connection between a shot of a person picking up their car keys then a shot of the person driving, filling in the actions in between. But for some reason for the past 100 years only a few individuals have learned how to "write" in the language of film. But that is now changing, thanks to new…
jjacquet | September 23, 2007A federal report shows that loggerhead sea turtle populations, listed as 'threatened' under the Endangered Species Act, are decreasing. The news is particularly disappointing because the last report showed that from 1989-1998, the number of nesting sites had increased about 4% each year. According to The New York Times,..."the report showed nestings in the United States dropping about 7 percent a year on the Gulf of Mexico. In southern Florida, nestings were down about 4 percent a year, and populations in the Carolinas and Georgia have dropped about 2 percent a year." The Times speculates…
jjacquet | September 21, 2007The Canadian government has decided to cut spending on Environment Canada programs that address climate change by 80 percent. This budget cut comes in spite of "...poll after poll show[ing] environment and climate change are top of the list of Canadians' concerns." Read more here.
jjacquet | September 20, 2007Yesterday, the E.U. announced its decision to close the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean (that once vibrant, now empty) Sea for the remainder of the year. The decision is not particularly surprising because the fishers had already reached their quoto of 17000 tonnes and the Atlantic bluefin tuna has been in big trouble for a while. But the EU is not known for putting strict regulations on the tuna fishery and estimated upwards of 35 percent of the bluefin caught in 2006 was illegal.
While Japan accounts for 80 percent of bluefin tuna sales, there is a growing demand for bluefin in…
jjacquet | September 18, 2007An estimated 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. In 14 days, there will be an estimated 6,999. One language goes extinct about every two weeks, which is a faster rate of exinction those for plants, birds, fish, and mammals. New research reported at the New York Times found the five regions where languages are disappearing most rapidly: northern Australia, central South America, North America's upper Pacific coastal zone, eastern Siberia, and Oklahoma and the southwestern United States.
Researchers are currently traveling the world and making recordings of dying languages. As…
jjacquet | September 18, 2007Posted by Traci Reid, traci@oceanchampions.org
Wouldn't it be great if we could just get together people who know and care about the oceans with the people who make the political decisions concerning ocean protection? Not in any sort of pretentious or overly formal way, - no committees, hearings, "have my people contact your people", or - ahem, suggestive bathroom stall behavior. Just the right combination of really smart people with a shared vision of ocean protection. Sitting down over a beer. Exchanging ideas. Wouldn't that be a good thing?
Oh wait, we ARE doing that very thing, next…
jjacquet | September 17, 2007Remember the good old days when salmon would court one another in the eddies of rivers? After a long song and dance, the females would flap their tales and dig their nests by moving the gravel (some as big as oranges) before releasing thousands of pea-sized orange eggs for the chosen male to fertilize them. Voila! Baby fish.
But more and more salmonids face extinction. Often, we preserve the genetic material from endangered species by freezing it. But salmon eggs are to big and fatty to freeze. So researchers have figured out a way to produce sperm and eggs of rainbow trout within a…
jjacquet | September 17, 2007I suppose one could look at it in two ways: 1) Tilapia is quickly becoming one of the most successful fish species in terms of offspring. One day, tilapia might be the first fish from Earth to colonize a new planet. 2) Tilapia is crammed into what can only be called an industrial feedlot of fishes. It now also has the joy of being worn as swimsuits and might soon be living underground in Arizona. Let's discuss.
Tilapia is one hot fish: it's healthy, inexpensive, and has flaky white flesh fancied by U.S. consumers. In the U.S. alone, the demand for tilapia has skyrocketed in recent years…
jjacquet | September 15, 2007I don't eat fish (as has been established) or any meat so I find I get served a lot of mushrooms, which I don't mind. I recently enjoyed some hand-foraged chanterelles from the B.C. forest at Vancouver's Pair Bistro so much that I asked myself: Why? I think this is the reason: mushroom and fish are the two last wild food sources consumed with any regularity by Westerners. I don't eat the latter, thus fungus is my only source of savage food.
Like most things, the U.S. is also eating more mushrooms. U.S. per capita consumption of mushrooms has quadrupled since 1965 while per capita seafood…
jjacquet | September 14, 2007It takes about 15 bodies of tilapia dried and dyed to make this bikini (the size for a supermodel). The flesh of the fish is eaten and the skin is turned into leather, adding significant value to the farmed fish and in the end, setting a fishkini consumer back about $75. The appetite is now joined by the fashion industry as another source of demand for fish. And p.s., you'll have to suffer some advertising from this clip before getting to see the blue and red fishkini.
jjacquet | September 14, 2007A Lebonese restaurant in Dubai launched these ads earlier this year as a way to get fashion conscious consumers (who in Dubai isn't?) to eat their new Friday seafood lunch. Any coincidence the lunch is on Friday (think Friday Fish Fry)? In the midst of the marine fisheries crisis, demand for fish globally continues to grow.
jjacquet | September 13, 2007Check 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...
jjacquet | September 13, 2007The latest release by the funky electronic group the Chemical Brothers is a song and video titled "The Salmon Dance". Just one (minor) glitch--the fish in the tank is not a salmon (thanks for the tip, CW). Have a look.
I don't mean to be fussy. The song is catchy and the video enjoyable. The lyrics are even pretty legit in terms of salmon facts. I applaud the Chemical Brothers for an awesome mixture of biology and popular culture. But what happened when it came to the graphics?
Read the lyrics to "The Salmon Dance" after the jump...
Hello boys and girls, my name is Fat Lip
and this is…
jjacquet | September 12, 2007For unknown reasons, I found myself reading a USA Today from last Wednesday (Sept. 5). In it, there is a nice little article that reports on the decline in milk deliveries. The reporter 'frames' the story in a positive light: milk deliveries have not declined any further since 2001--they've stabilized at a paltry 0.4% of the U.S. milk market. Anecdotal evidence suggests milk deliveries might even be increasing. But at less than one percent of market share, it seems silly not to reminisce. Back in 1963, milk deliveries accounted for nearly one-third of the milk we drank.
Milk delivery is…
jjacquet | September 11, 2007The New York Times reports today that Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist asked to delay the vote today to reclassify the gentle, gigantic manatee as threatened (rather than endangered). The Governor hopes the delay will give the panel more time to review the issues, including the fact that there were 417 manatee deaths last year and will ultimately "preserve one of our state's beloved natural resources."
It takes backbone to protect manatees (the grace of Fred Astaire, the body of Fred Flintstone) from the coalition of Florida speedboaters.
jjacquet | September 10, 2007"There are times when life imitates art. Then there are times when life imitates science fiction," the Loom's Carl Zimmer writes in todays' The New York Times article on the jaws of moray eels. And there are times when the jaws that belong to that life latch down on your left ring finger and you shriek in pain, as I did when a baby jeweled moray eel bit me while exploring a Galapagos tidepool. Read all about the moray's feisty bite here. The article is better than the real thing.
jjacquet | September 10, 2007The grey whale is always held up as an icon of success of the Endangered Species Act. While it's true that gray whale numbers have rebounded from near extinction to 22,000 whales today, a new study released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the grey whale population before whaling was 96,000 animals, three to five times greater than it is today. What is the baseline for success?
It comes as no surprise Stanford University's Steve Palumbi is a co-author of this study, given his participation in the 2003 paper in Science that showed North Atlantic whale…
jjacquet | September 9, 2007It's been a long road since our premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April of last year, but the movie is FINALLY being released today nationally on home video by New Video ($26.95) as part of their acclaimed Docurama showcase and is currently featured on their home page. It also will continue to air on Showtime over the next two years. If you haven't heard of "Flock of Dodos", you can read about the film and its reviews on our website. The DVD costs a bit less on Amazon.
Over the past year and a half I've attended about 50 public screenings, almost all of which have been followed by…