Communicating
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 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 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…
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 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 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 13, 2007No, this doesn't have anything to do with shifting baselines, but I watched all ten episodes of HBO's "John from Cincinnati," which culminated last night and ... all I can say is pretty much, "whaaaaaaat?" I was a fan of the show because of the surf setting and because it was shot in Imperial Beach with our friends at Wildcoast playing a major role as advisors on the local conservation issues (none of which seemed to make it into the film).
My opinion of the show started low (couldn't follow the first episode), then went up when I re-watched the first episode (a surf buddy explained the…
jjacquet | August 9, 2007After making his documentary Flock of Dodos, Randy Olson (Head Dodo) stepped out of the spotlight and kicked back with some books--one of which was The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything by Gordy Slack. Slack's book explores that Dodorific subject of religion in the science classroom and how the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania came together to defend the separation of Church and State, a subject dear to Olson's heart. Olson calls Slack's book an "uplifting tale" and, for those of you who have a NewScientist subscription, you'll find a full review here.
jjacquet | August 9, 2007For five years I've been trying to tell everyone that someday Dr. Jeremy Jackson needs to give a talk about the oceans in which he is dressed up as the grim reaper, complete with black hood and scythe. Well, my dream almost came true last night at the premiere of Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie The 11th Hour as the good Doctor Jackson pretty much stole the show (in my biased opinion) with the grimmest pronouncement of the entire movie.
The Grim Reaper, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, brings the voice of doom to the green carpet at The 11th Hour premiere
It's actually an excellent sequence. The film has…
jjacquet | August 8, 2007Tonight the environmental documentary film The 11th Hour starring Leonardo DiCaprio (I'll resist comparing our planet to the Titanic) premieres in Hollywood--and two Shifting Baselines co-founders, Randy Olson and Jeremy Jackson, are turning out for the event. The film, which explores our environmental crisis, how it might affect humanity, and some innovative solutions, opens across America this Friday.
Jeremy Jackson, a marine ecologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in southern California, is actually in the film and late tonight I'll speak with him to find out what he thought…
jjacquet | July 19, 2007In 2003, after Randy Olson would give a lecture on ocean conservation, audiences would ask the inevitable: What is one thing I can do to help the oceans? Olson would respond: Boycott Chilean sea bass. Today, though the evidence for declines in Chilean sea bass is even clearer, the message is no longer so simple. For those of you still interested in Al Gore's eating or not eating of an overfished or, on second glance, sustainably caught fish, you can read this article I wrote on The Toothfish That Bit Al Gore and the confusion around sustainable seafood (indeed, the seafood market as a…
jjacquet | July 18, 2007The whole Gore/Chilean sea bass debacle calls into question Hollywood's role in the environmental movement. Gore, having received an Academy Award, now definitely qualifies as 'Hollywood'. One the one hand, Hollywood should not represent environmental causes because it is a liability (as in the case of "fur traitor" Naomi Campbell and PETA). Instead, the science should speak for itself. Eventually, there will be a tipping of the scale (e.g., smoking and lung cancer). Hollywood is not to be trusted in fora of ethics or science. On the other hand, the public responds to Hollywood and that…
jjacquet | June 29, 2007You might remember John Hocevar from Ocean Day. At the end of July, John and the Greenpeace crew will set out to explore the depths of the Bering Sea. They will use some pretty high-tech tools on the expedition, including these Deep Worker submarines, which they tested in a British Columbia inlet not too long ago.
Deep Workers are one-person subs capable of diving to 2000 feet/600 meters. They weigh about 2 tons each, and are smaller than a compact car.
From John Hocevar: The subs will be a good tool for us in the Bering Sea later this summer, where the Greenpeace team will use them to…
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 | 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 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 17, 2007Grab your seats and popcorn for the Evolution-Intelligent Design circus! Randy Olson's acclaimed film Flock of Dodos airs tonight at 5:30pm and again at 8:30 pm EST on Showtime. The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2006 and has raised the heckles from many anti-evolutionists. The Discovery Institute has recently written to Showtime (what's with the 'soft touch'?) in opposition of the airing. But PZ Myers had already refuted their claims back in February. Find out what all the fuss is about tonight at 5:30pm and 8:30 pm on Showtime.
p.s. For further…
jjacquet | May 15, 2007It is difficult to nail down the exact number of sharks killed every year for their fins and accidentally as 'bycatch', but studies estimate somewhere between 30 and 100 million--70 million being a reasonably firm estimate. Much of the killing is done illegally or never comes aboard the fishing vessel. One participant in the SBflix contest made an excellent short film about the plight of sharks globally and aptly called it: 70 million. Watch it here.
jjacquet | April 24, 2007FIRST ANNUAL SB FLIX CONTEST AWARDS GO TO:"WHAT'S WITH THE WATER," (1ST), "YOUR DINNER" (2ND), AND "OCEAN WAR" (3RD).
The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project announces the winners of the first annual SB FLIX Contest, sponsored by Patagonia, Disney Environmentality and Seed Magazine. The cash awards and prizes will go to three videos which are about water pollution, fish contamination, and a micro-documentary about the war President George W. Bush has apparently declared (at least in the filmmakers' imagination) upon the nation's oceans.
The winners are among over 70 submissions of one…