jjacquet | September 9, 2007The New York Times has an article today on the 4000 artificial reefs sunk off the coast of New York and New Jersey. Barges, cranes, subway cars, army tanks, ice cream trucks, human ashes lovingly encased in concrete: they're all down there, providing footholds for coral and tiny shellfish and havens for bigger fish and lobster, which in turn draw anglers and scuba divers by the thousands.
The article has some useful historical information about arificial reefs:
Man has been creating reefs to make the seas more productive since at least the 17th century, when the Japanese sank building…
jjacquet | September 5, 2007Daniel Pauly gave me a copy of the February issue of Eurofish magazine, which at first had me raise my eyebrows in skepticism. But the magazine was filled with delights, particularly an article about the Estonian seafood manufacturer Kriskal.
From the Kriskal website: Due to growing popularity of shrimp and crab imitation products during the '90s, a favorable situation occurred for introducing analogous products, close to natural products, to the market.
Kriskal's financial bread and butter is pulverized fish--our old friend surimi turned into 'crabsticks'. An interesting element of…
jjacquet | September 4, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
O.K., I know that "Politics Tuesday" is supposed to be about D.C. politics, not mass mobilization, but what's a political junkie to do when Congress is on vacation but think about how to move the masses who don't seem to care about your issue?
Congress is finally back in session today, and so hopefully we'll have some scoop to report next week. Word on the street is that we may start to see some action on OCEANS-21.
In the meantime, though, let's finish up the mass mobilization thread, because it's really a crucial piece of politics as it's…
jjacquet | September 3, 2007Then this book might sit well on your coffee table. Ocean Treasure: Commercial Fishing in Alaska is a nice overview of Alaska's fisheries. My favorite parts of the book are the drawings of different fishing gears (ever wondered how a gillnetter worked?) and the chapter on subsistence fishing, particularly the bit on spears and hooks. There are great photos of old carved halibut hooks and how they were rigged with floats to catch the big groundfish. I substitute a photo of a Haida halibut hook from UBC's Museum of Anthropology (below).
jjacquet | August 31, 2007And speaking of shrimp, Steven Levitt over at the New York Times blog Freakonomics has a great post analyzing different responses to his question: Why are we eating so much shrimp? He found, in conjunction with another hypothesis, that non-economists (i.e., anyone who didn't major in economics) mostly thought that we are eating more shrimp because of demand-based reasons (e.g. the movie Forrest Gump, a rise in the number of vegetarians who will eat shrimp, etc). Levitt, however, concludes that shrimp consumption has risen due to an increase in supply (and a subsequent decrease in price) due…
jjacquet | August 31, 2007The Houston Chronicle ran a nice story about a shrimp boat captain who had to deliver a baby onboard while 30 miles offshore. Though she wasn't due until September, Cindy Preisel's water broke Wednesday. What was a shimp boat captain to do? Some highlights from the article:
[The mother] showed off the piece of green shrimp net twine boat captain Edward Kiesel used to tie off [the baby's] umbilical cord .
The baby's first bottle was an emptied and boiled soy sauce bottle with a nipple made from the finger of a rubber shrimper's glove. He was swaddled in paper and cloth towels.
The baby is…
jjacquet | August 30, 2007The good news: The white-beaked, nearly blind bajii dolphin was spotted in the Yangtze river relieving fears that it had gone extinct. The New York Times has more on the sighting but the elements of shifting baselines are here: In the late 1970s, scientists believed several hundred baiji were still alive, but by 1997 a survey listed just 13 sightings...China has set up a reserve in a lake in Hubei Province but has found no baiji to put in it.
The bad news: Mexican police forces just seized a group of six men with more than 57,000 turtle eggs, representing around 570 endangered olive ridley…
jjacquet | August 28, 2007Some stories are worth repeating. Seven years ago (to the day), the BBC ran the story Giant cod conceals ghastly secret. After centuries of humans eating cod, the predator-prey relationship was reversed...
And speaking of predator-prey reversal, last week a new fish fashion was advertised. Almost as bizarre but not as life-threatening as man-eating cod: China's Fish Spa, where tiny fish will nibble away at guests' skin diseases.
jjacquet | August 28, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
I'd like to go a little farther with points that both Dave and Randy have made in the last week, and that's the relationship between a mobilized constituency and our ability to achieve real political change for the oceans. I'm fond of saying that politicians need two things - money and votes - and if you can't get them either of those things (and preferably both), then there's a limit to what they will do for you.
One of the reasons that Dave and I started Ocean Champions was to be able to participate in the political game, and to give…
jjacquet | August 27, 2007In November, 2002 I gave a talk at a biodiversity workshop at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the audience was at least one ocean conservation patron worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I said in my talk, "invigorating a mass movement to save the oceans is simple--just give me $5 million to make a television commercial which we can air during the next Super Bowl."
The crowd laughed and at dinner that night the patron, when asked what he thought of my concept, replied that he thought it was "cute." And that's been about the extent of the understanding of such an idea over the…
jjacquet | August 26, 2007Wyland has been described as the "Marine Michelangelo". He has painted nearly 100 murals of whales around the world. We even have one here in Vancouver (see photo). I am crazy about Wyland murals. My loved ones know this and they have found a number of Wyland products to substitute for the murals, which they can't afford.
First, I got some notecards...
And then I got a bread plate...
And then I got Wyland Monopoly...
And then a desk calendar...
When I was in Kona, Hawaii last month, I visited a Wyland gallery. The art seemed to target the sport fishing crowd with sculptures of billfishes…
jjacquet | August 24, 2007Remember Greenpeace's John Hocevar? He made an appearance here on Ocean Day and then in post about his upcoming Bering Sea research. He reported in from the field a couple weeks ago but his message and photo was temporarily lost in my email box to be recovered now.
John wrote: As I type, I'm listening to the subs on the radio - one just reported that she found obviously visible trawl tracks.
Everything's going well so far. We only lost one day to weather (out of six), and are covering ground more quickly than expected so we may even be able to make up for the one missed day. The bottom'…
jjacquet | August 23, 2007I recently came across the 2005 Greenpeace report A Recipe for Disaster, which aims to improve seafood buying behavior by supermarkets in the UK. The report makes a few points worth noting here. First off, in regards to shifting baselines: nearly 90% of seafood sold in the UK is done so through supermarkets (such as Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury's). Compare this to 50 or 100 years ago when most people bought their Friday supper from a fishmonger (which means supermarkets now have extraordinary seafood buying power and influence).
I also like the three options the report gives for…
jjacquet | August 22, 2007Check out this website (in English as well as Spanish) on shifting baselines in the Gulf of California, Mexico. There are three recently published papers featured, too, each documenting some consquence of the shifting baseline syndrome (and each led by scientist Andrea Saenz-Arroyo).
The first shows that Gulf grouper populations declined long before official statistics were collected. The second shows that, when compared to younger fishermen, older fishermen from the Gulf of California name five time as many species as once abundant but now depleted. The third presents descriptions of the…
jjacquet | August 21, 2007Posted by David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
In honor of the Congressional recess, Ocean Champions is taking a blog vacation this week. However, I can't resist following Jennifer's lead on Joan Walsh's review at Salon.com of Bai's book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. By the way, Jennifer is correct - the article is worth a quick read.
Here is what caught my attention:
"Let me be clear: Like Bai, I would like to see more political will (the ideas are there; it's a mobilized constituency behind a few key ideas that's missing) to do…
jjacquet | August 21, 2007This is Politics Tuesday and the Ocean Champions should be by any moment. In the meanwhile, I found something politically charged and provocative over at Salon.com. Joan Walsh reviews Matt Bai's book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, which she describes as a "heralded anatomy of Democratic disarray in the Bush years".
Bai implicates left-wing bloggers in what he sees as a two-part crime that will cripple the Democratic party: the failure to put together a big, bold social policy for the 21st century, and the "disabling hatred" of George W.…
jjacquet | August 20, 2007Recently, The End of the Line film crew came to the Fisheries Centre to interview Daniel Pauly, who is one of the characters in what will soon be a "cinematic documentary thriller" about overfishing. In the film's treatment, Daniel is described as "the man who blew the lid off the story [of overfishing] through 25 years of scientific investigation." I read and enjoyed The End of the Line (see booklists), especially Clover's allegation of diet, fashion and health advice in the fisheries crisis. I'm not quite sure how this will transpire on film and how the film will differ from other…
jjacquet | August 19, 2007Small fish can cause a big stink. A New York Times article reports that fishermen in France and Spain are fighting about fishing for anchovies in the Bay of Biscay. Because the bay was overfished, the European Union implemented a total ban on fishing for anchovies until 2008. But fishermen in both Spain and France are afraid that saving the fish might mean losing part of their identity and, of course, economy.
The article also reports:
...Fishermen here had begun to fish for anchovies in the last 20 years or so. Before that, sardines were their stock in trade. Virtually all the anchovies…