jjacquet | June 7, 2007Happy World Ocean Day! (Soon there will be a Happy Anti-Celebration Day in the same way we have Buy Nothing Day; each and every day will be filled with some Hallmark turf--the branding of our calendar year). Don't forget this Ocean Day to 1) check out the newly added book lists and 2) visit the Carnival of the Blue over at Blogfish.
This Ocean Day my thoughts are with the ocean underdogs. I'm talking small pelagics, sea cucumbers, eels, hagfish, limpits, blennies. I am talking about the little things that make the oceans tick. I am even talking about salmon.
Salmon? Yes, salmon.…
jjacquet | June 7, 2007On May 27th, Rachel Carson would have turned 100 years of age. Instead, the world lost this gifted woman and writer at just 56--but not before she kickstarted the environmental movement with Silent Spring (see newly posted booklists) and wrote her ode to the oceans, The Sea Around Us (for which the project founded by Dr. Daniel Pauly was named). A quirky tribute was paid to her (and Elvis) by Alan Fargo at the Orlando Sentinel.
jjacquet | June 6, 2007 In his 2002 Op-Ed in the LA Times, Randy Olson wrote about the concept of shifting baselines and uses this analogy: "If your ideal weight used to be 150 pounds and now it's 160, your baseline--as well as your waistline--has shifted." But get this:
Due to global climate change (which has cascaded into changes in feeding patterns), female polar bears weigh an average 20 percent less than they did in 1980. This I heard yesterday from a Program Officer for the UN Convention of Biological Diversity (which the U.S. has signed but not ratified--our "signature" move). Skinnier polar bears, just…
jjacquet | June 5, 2007One hundred years ago, who would have imagined that a paper would be written with this title and its findings would include that sandy beaches--as an ecosystem-- are a) better than concrete and b) in peril...? Welcome to the new millenium. Sandy Beaches at the Brink was just published and then picked up by the Surfrider blog, whose constituency lives for where ocean meets land. But the fate of the shoreline is not only of concern to surfers. Worldwide, 40 percent of the human population lives near the coast (future ghost?).
Sandy beaches: an ecosystem at risk
jjacquet | June 5, 2007WHO: Dave Wilmot and Jack Sterne, co-founders of Ocean ChampionsWHAT: A blog about ocean politicsWHEN: Every TuesdayWHERE: HereHOW: Using the magic of cyberspaceWHY: Because scientists do a lot of talking about policy (not as much listening), but often understand very little about politics. Dave and Jack will share the down and dirty details of ocean conservation, politics-style.
About Ocean Champions: As co-authors of the 2003 report, Turning the Tide, Dave and Jack urged the ocean conservation community to participate fully in the political process. Then they took their own advice and…
jjacquet | June 4, 2007For the past year, since the completion of Flock of Dodos the standard question has been, "What's next?" I'm finally digging into the next project, which is a small (though possibly eventually large) piece of media about the sad state of affairs in the coastal waters along the border with Mexico in California. Specifically, I'm working with the good folks at Wildcoast (with support from California Sea Grant) on at least a flash slide show about the situation with Imperial Beach. A huge amount of raw sewage from Tijuana flows directly into the Tijuana River, which divides the U.S. and…
jjacquet | June 4, 2007It seems like most of us agree: Wikipedia is blessed though, like pop music (or an ugly partner), it is easy to love it and then deny one's affection for it publicly, especially in the science world. Now, with the introduction of Wikispecies, started in August 2004 by Wikimedia, several other debates of how an open source, free content catalogue of all things living can work.
Daniel Pauly is not only the father of the term "shifting baselines" but co-father to Fishbase with Dr. Rainer Froese. This online database is a multilingual melange of expert information, including taxonomy, growth…
jjacquet | June 3, 2007This weekend I heard from my sister--a biomedical engineer who did her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. At 33, she has decided to become a physical therapist and must now take introductory biology courses to qualify for the program. Her reintroduction to academia was a shock to her system and she sent me a slideshow presentation she made up along with a rant on how the academic world has changed (how the baseline has shifted, if you will). I found enjoyment in her horror at the rampant use of Wikipedia and, moreover, her 'Letter to a…
jjacquet | June 1, 2007Yesterday, I was part of a panel on sustainable seafood at the International Food Conference. The future for seafood security, especially in the developing world, was discussed as was the proliferation of salmon farming. Chile just oupaced Norway in terms of farmed salmon production and looks to double its output over the next several years...
By coincidence, this week's issue of Science also takes up the issue of the future of seafood in an intellectual defense of the Worm et al. study published in Science last year (a co-author of which was Shifting Baselines' own Jeremy Jackson). Press…
jjacquet | May 31, 2007Ever since Canada backed out of Kyoto, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, climate change policy has been in a fog (or was it smog?). Yesterday, the Ottawa Citizen published an article on the Canadian climate change charade. The author opens,
It is easy to get lost in the complexities of the fight against climate change -- the multiple deadlines, shifting baselines and arcane technicalities of the file. And lost is just where Stephen Harper's government seems to hope voters will stay.
What is this shifting baseline? Apparently, Canada's Environment Minister expresses support for the…
jjacquet | May 30, 2007Hagfish are gaining popularity in Korea by the minute! Caravalho Fisheries is now trying to develop a live market for the "primitive and somewhat disgusting eel-like creatures". About 5,000 pounds of hagfish, peacefully coiled at the bottom of their tank, were shipped to Seoul, where they should arrive this weekend. The hagfish are not exactly a status food but more like a comfort food (the delightful article below compares them to jalapeno poppers). And yes, the shipping costs more than the hagfish themselves, which, given the chance, would enter a dead body and eat it from the inside…
jjacquet | May 29, 2007We have a social trend in this country that is sloshing back in forth in the past few months. It is the question of whether you are allowed to criticize the movement you are part of (or at least share the same goals with).
Last year I made a film, Flock of Dodos (still airing this week on Showtime), that had a double message to it. The first message met the expectations of my presumed "peer group" of evolutionary biologists, which is that intelligent design is not science and anyone advocating it is probably part of a flock of dodos. But the second part of the message was that scientists…
jjacquet | May 28, 2007This week I am part of a sustainable seafood panel at Cultivating Appetites for Knowledge, the International Food Conference at the University of Victoria. Mark Powell wrote about the very topic of sustainable seafood last week over at blogfish. Daniel Pauly, a genius (as in: any fool can make things complicated, it takes a genius to make them simple), says that sustainability relies on only one premise: things stay the same.
Therefore, bottom trawling is inherently unsustainable because it erodes the very habitat upon which fish extracted from it depend. Shrimp trawling is also…
jjacquet | May 24, 2007New regulations were put into place yesterday that require stricter record keeping and observer programs onboard hagfishing boats. Hagfish have been dubbed as the most "disgusting" of all sea creatures and they seem to even be disgusted with themselves--knotting their bodies to rid themselves of their slime (see photo taken by NOAA of hafish at 280 meters).
When cod stocks off the East coast first showed signs of trouble in the 1980s, fishermen started to go after the spiny dogfish and monkfish. Predictably, dogfish and monkfish then also became overfished. Now fishermen are moving…
jjacquet | May 24, 2007In The Rise of Seafood Awareness Campaigns in an Era of Collapsing Fisheries Daniel Pauly and I write about the barriers that exist to eco-labeling seafood in the Asian market. BUT! It appears the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has since made some major headway and at least one chain of Tokyo stores now carries the logo. The logo alone does not imply success, but progress is evidently being made toward Asian seafood awareness. Congratulations to the MSC and I'll be watching intently as this new market develops...
jjacquet | May 22, 2007Salmon farmers have to convert their open salmon pens to closed-containment systems in five years--at least that's the recommendation approved by the aquaculture committee of the British Columbia government last week. Not suprisingly, salmon farmers are outraged at the proposition.
The B.C. legislature's sustainable aquaculture committee voted 5-4 to recommend the province become the world leader in developing alternative methods to growing salmon in the ocean. Now those recommendations are voted on by the provincial legislature (likely to happen in October). If the new recommendations are…
jjacquet | May 21, 2007Blogging lacks a lot of things (fact checkers, to name one). But, after spending three weeks in Galapagos as a new blogger I came away with the impression that blogging most of all lacks a developing world perspective. Blogging is so First World. Most of the people I spoke with in Galapagos--even the scientists at the Charles Darwin Station and the conservationists at WWF, CI, and WildAid--had barely heard of a blog let alone read or written one.
Which led me to wonder:
If blogging is this wonder tool that can advance science so quickly, as Carl Zimmer pointed out recently at The Loom,…
jjacquet | May 19, 2007The Voyage of the Beagle by The Man Himself. I look forward to the Galapagos with more interest than any other part of the voyage, wrote Darwin. And he was not disappointed. Darwin gives lots of anecdotes from the Beagle about the abundant life in the Galapagos: The Bay swarmed with animals; Fish, Shark & Turtles were popping their heads up in all parts. In fact, Galapagos tortoises were then so numerous that Darwin knew of one ship that caught 500-800 in only a short time.
Darwin's Fishes by Daniel Pauly. Darwin's keen interest in Galapagos fish is detailed in this encylopedia (due…
jjacquet | May 18, 2007Tourism is experiencing rampant growth in the Galapagos. Tourism is also the reason for human population explosion in the islands (due to immigration from the mainland). Before Ecuador erodes the very resource on which it relies--the Galapagos National Park and Marine Reserve--it should do what few have done: look at the past and project into the future.
Tourists come to Galapagos to see the wildlife, not the night life or the edifices. They currently pay $100 just to enter the park, but they would pay more. Galapagos should take a leaf out of the Bhutan book: they have had strict limits…