Solutions
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 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…
jjacquet | May 9, 2007It is first worth noting that all Galapagos fishers operate within the boundaries of the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). In 1998 the Ecuadorian government extended the GMR from its 15-mile radius to a 40-mile radius surrounding the archipelago. The reserve now encompasses 133,000 square kilometers of ocean and 1,300 square kilometers of coastline, inflating the reserve's status to the third largest marine reserve in the world.
With this expansion also came the complete ban of industrial fishing though the GMR does allow for artisanal fishing and thus is not considered part of the National…
jjacquet | April 19, 2007The U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Act, key legislation protecting our oceans, was reauthorized in January this year and its first goal is to end overfishing by 2011. It may strike you as ironic, then, that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is attempting to change the rules that protect our ocean fish. NMFS is revising its process for environmental review of fishing activities and for public comment on fishery management. If the current process is watered down, the public will not have a voice in managing our ocean ecosystems. The National Environmental Trust is working hard to get…
jjacquet | April 12, 2007This month, National Geographic ran an issue on overfishing. In the article on marine protected areas (MPAs), Blue Haven, shifting baselines is discussed, though not explicitly, by the article's author and Bill Ballantine, the director of the University of Aukland Marine Laboratory in New Zealand.
Marine reserves are an antidote to this collective amnesia. They provide a scientific benchmark against which changes in the wider ocean--the exploited ocean--can be measured. "If nothing is left intact or pristine, how can you know that damage has occurrred?" Ballantine asks. Indeed, how do you…