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jjacquet | June 6, 2008I have also imagined that high levels of mobility exacerbate the shifting baselines syndrome since the baseline would then be spatially inconsistent. But there is hope: humans don't move too much. A new study published in Nature and written up in The New York Times tracked the movements of 100,000 Europeans via their cellphones and found that they don't move far from home. This is good news in terms of being able to recognize change in one's environment. It also inspires me because travel might not add to much to our quality of life since, on average, we seem to naturally be homebodies.…
josh donlan | May 25, 2008Back in 2005 when my colleagues and I proposed using closely related species to ecological replace extinct large North American animals, there were many who cried foul. Too risky, won't work, impossible to measure - were among the top of the list.
Danish ecologist Dennis Hansen and his colleagues just provided some data to suggest otherwise - at least on islands. Using giant tortoises from a nearby island to replace extinct tortoises on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Dr. Hansen found that the tortoises increased the survivorship of a critically endangered plant by dispersing its…
jjacquet | May 22, 2008This short video from KQED discusses how and why Stanford researchers, including tuna specialist Barbara Block, are tagging ocean inhabitants.
jjacquet | May 19, 2008A couple weeks ago, Greenpeace invaded the Brussels Seafood Expo and hung signs calling attention to the dismal state of tuna fisheries. Just a week later, Greenpeace-USA announced its forthcoming publication that ranks U.S. supermarkets in terms of procuring sustainable seafood. This is an analogue to the U.K. campaign that has so far been one of my favorite market-based seafood initiatives (read about it here) because it uses negative messaging to affect reputation.
Last week, I spoke with Greenpeace-USA's John Hocevar, who is spearheading the U.S. initiative. He revealed Greenpeace's…
jjacquet | May 7, 2008We know fishmeal has problems. After posting an article back in January on the potential for bugmeal to replace fishmeal in farmed fish production, several readers asked some hard questions and wanted more information. I like readers to get what they want, so I spoke with Dr. Lou D'Abramo, who has a doctorate from Yale University and has been working to create more sustainable aquaculture systems for freshwater prawns. He is also the lead scientist studying how striped bass are responding to insect meal at Mississippi State University and got encouraging results. I pointed Dr. D'Abramo…
jjacquet | May 3, 2008What a rogue. An Antarctic fur seal was caught in the act trying to have sex with a king penguin. The incident wasn't too unlike a Paris Hilton escapade--the act lasted for 45 minutes, was caught on camera, and then sleazy still photos were strewn about by the press (but rather than US Weekly it was the Journal of Ethology and BBC News). It's not clear the attempt was successful but at least the penguin survived. Marine life these days... Read more on sexual coercion in animals here.
jjacquet | April 28, 2008Greenpeace isn't only busy busting up the Brussels Seafood Expo. They also explore the world's deepest underwater canyons in search of new life. And they found some!
The newly discovered sponge from Alaska's Pribilof Canyon will be named Aaptos kanuux. This discovery will assist in Greenpeace's campaign to protect the Bering Sea, one of the richest marine ecosystems on earth.
"We named this sponge 'kanuux,' after the Unungan word for "heart," explained George Pletnikoff, Greenpeace Alaska Oceans Campaigner and a native of the Unungan communities on the Pribilof Islands. "These canyons…
rolson | April 27, 2008How bad is the situation with plastics in the ocean? Bad enough that the staff of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation are building "Junkraft," a raft made of 20,000 discarded plastic bottles for sailing the 2100 miles from California to Hawaii to call attention to it. I stopped by to check out the construction this morning on the front lawn of the Long Beach Aquarium. Good friend and long time Shifting Baselines supporter Anna Cummins is working with her boyfriend Dr. Marcus Eriksen, Joel Paschal and a group of volunteers, stuffing mesh bags full of the plastic bottles. Patagonia…
jjacquet | April 22, 2008I always say that the shifting baselines syndrome, the tendency for each new generation to accept a degraded environment as normal/natural, is partially a result of the short human lifespan. If we would only live 1000 years, we would do a much better job at taking care of the planet. With the average lifespan in the U.S. at 78** years, I thought it seemed we were heading in that direction. New research shows otherwise.
An article published today in PLoS Medicine shows that life expectancy is not improving for most Americans. Researchers led by Harvard University professor Majid Ezzati…
jjacquet | April 8, 2008Retirees in Florida are rockin' to the beat of a different drum...and they're not too thrilled about it.
Black drum mating calls travel at a low enough frequency and long enough wavelength to carry through sea walls, into the ground and through the construction of waterfront homes like the throbbing beat in a passing car.
In fact, lots of fishes, including the toadfish (see his handsome mug below) make sounds and today's New York Times has a wonderful article (with lots of extras) all about ocean noise. Also, check out Fishbase for sound recordings of fishes (click on "sounds" link under "…
josh donlan | April 7, 2008A new study published this month in the journal Ecology elucidates an ecological dance between wolves, coyotes, and pronghorn. Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist Kim Berger and colleagues analyzed wolf distribution data from the Yellowstone Ecosystem to evaluate the whether the observed increase in coyotes, resulting from the extirpation of wolves, accounted for high rates of coyote predation on pronghorn fawns. Take home message: wolves beat up on coyotes, and when wolves are not around - it's open season on baby pronghorn for coyotes. In areas where wolves are abundant, pronghorn fawn…
jjacquet | April 7, 2008This is the title of a new song out from Chris Brown. Just kidding. But it is the topic of an article in Science this week. Harmful algae blooms, as the name suggests, are harmful. They can kill fish and produce toxins, which can cause serious and occasionally fatal human diseases. Nutrient overenrichment of waters by urban, agricultural, and industrial development are most often seen as the culprits behind these blooms but rising temperatures also seem to facilitate the rise of slime.
Rising temperatures favor cyanobacteria [harmful algae] in several ways. Cyanobacteria generally grow…
jjacquet | March 27, 2008Call them Pavlov's fish: Scientists are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by swimming into a net when they hear a tone that signals feeding time. If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear the signal.
Check out the full story at the CBC.
This particular experiment might seem harmless fun setting fish out to pasture, in the big picture, does evoke the rapid, large-scale domestication of marine species that has occurred…
josh donlan | March 21, 2008Now this is some pretty interesting research. Here's the punch-line: Lap dancers earn more when they are fertile.
Because ScienceBlogs readers may be unfamiliar with the gentlemen's club sub-culture, some background may be necessary to understand why this is an novel setting for understanding real-world attractiveness effects of human female estrus.
Given that estrus - the outward signs of female ovulation - is concealed in humans, it is commonly thought that men cannot detect when women are fertile. Think again.
This theory is based on the idea that in evolutionary terms it benefits women…
jjacquet | March 14, 2008Young Mexicans have a warped view of what is 'normal' in the Gulf of California. This was first shown in a marvelous 2005 study on Rapidly shifting environmental baselines among fishers of the Gulf of California where the authors interviewed 108 fishermen.
Compared to young fishers, old fishers named five times as many species and four times as many fishing sites as once being abundant/productive but now depleted. Old fishers caught up to 25 times as many Gulf grouper as young fishers on their best ever fishing day.
Their results were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and a…
josh donlan | March 13, 2008We all would love to see a moose and its calf along the roadside, right? I woke up to one on my front deck last week. Well in Yellowstone National Park, your chances are better than ever. Moose may be smarter than you think though: they are using you and your car as a shield. Human shields.
University of Montana and Wildlife Conservation Society Biologist Joel Berger has been studying Yellowstone moose for decades, and he started noticing that moose were hanging out along roads a bit more than in the past. Why? To hide from grizzly bears. "We think they are doing it because they've figured…
jjacquet | March 10, 2008Just yesterday, Stuart Sandin from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography wrote a piece for the San Diego Tribune on shifting baselines and our marine environment.
In older (but still worthy) news, this National Geographic piece explains that scientists estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen wash off swimmers annually in oceans worldwide, and that up to 10 percent of coral reefs are threatened by sunscreen-induced bleaching. Of course, people only blow the alarm whistle on coral reefs after the reefs are already heavily degraded...
This is your coral. This is your coral on…
josh donlan | March 6, 2008A new study by Wildlife Conservation Society chronicles the disappearance of white-tailed jack rabbits from the Yellowstone ecosystem. The scary part is that the bunnies have disappeared from Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks - those treasures set aside to "preserve, protect, and share natural heritage legacies" - with few people even noticing! Historical records for over 130 years show that the jack rabbits were abundant (and apparently reproducing like rabbits). The last confirmed sighting in Yellowstone was 1991.
The disappearance remains a mystery. "It could be disease, extreme…
jjacquet | February 28, 2008Norwegian scientists have just unearthed another pliosaur fossil and this one is the largest on record. This Jurassic sea reptile measures 50 ft. and its jaws were strong enough to "to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half." How about that for a baseline? Read more about this great sea reptile and look at cool fossil photos at the BBC.
jjacquet | February 20, 2008Daniel Pauly just lent me the book Your Inner Fish, a book that divulges that we can thank fish for so much of our physiology, including bony skulls and backaches. The New York Times yesterday had a great, short review of the book and I'll add my own thoughts soon enough...