That’s what a shark trader in Hong Kong who was interviewed by the BBC says:
Mr Ho says that the anti-shark fin campaigns are starting to hurt traders as he points to dozens of bags of processed shark fins that line the front of his shop. He says that a few years ago, the fins would have been sold immediately after they finished cleaning them. “Now they’re stockpiling in the shop. It’s tough to sell them,” he says, claiming that his sales dropped by 60% in 2012.
Shark fin traders say their sales have been hurt amid protests by environmental groups. And it is not just Mr Ho who has seen a decline in sales. Statistics from the Hong Kong government show that imports of raw and prepared shark’s fin between 2006 and 2011 ranged from 9,400 to 10,300 metric tonnes a year.
Much of the imports are consumed in Hong Kong or re-exported to mainland China. Conservation groups say that the Chinese territory accounts for half of the global trade. However, last year imports into the territory dropped by a third to 3,350 metric tonnes.
At the same time, Chinese authorities are also clamping down on lavish banquets, which traditionally served the shark fin soup. “That is hitting the shark fin industry hard,” says Mr Ho. Meanwhile, the anti-shark fin campaigns have resulted in some five-star hotels in the Chinese territory removing shark’s fin from the menu. Even flagship carrier, Cathay Pacific Airlines, has banned shark fin on cargo flights.
I’ll take any stats reported by a trader and Hong Kong officials with a grain of salt. But, if even partly true, it is an encouraging trend. Especially if the global take of sharks is indeed in the 100 million range.
I have long doubted it, but this guy thinks he may have cracked the code:
Goldman chose barramundi because their personalities are “tame, gregarious, and kind of patient” — well-suited to life in tanks. And, unlike most fish, which only obtain omega-3s from the plankton and algae — or other fish — that they eat, barramundi can actually synthesize them on their own. “They spend a lot of their early life cycle in freshwater, so they’re not exposed to the long-chain fatty acids,” explains Goldman. “They actually develop the ability to build omega-3s without necessarily having to consume them.”
This is key to the barramundi’s claims to sustainability. One pound of farmed bluefin tuna can require as much as 20 pounds of wild fish as feed; for farmed salmon, the ratio is often well above 3 to 1. That means a host of problems: depleting the biomass of the oceans at a faster pace, decimating so-called “forage fish” that serve as a staple in poor countries, and, since some estimates say aquaculture demands will outpace fish meal production within decades, undermining the industry itself.
“Everybody on the marine side is really focused on reducing fish meal and oil” in fish feed, says Goldman. “There’s a consensus on that — that it’s really, really important.”
It’s hard to say what the animal and environmental impacts of scaling this sort of operation to real significance will be. But my guess is that any flaws would begin to become pronounced at that stage. And like all industrial food farming operations it has a bit too much of a Sorcerer’s Apprentice feel to me.
Give Goldman credit for trying to address the very real problems of overfishing and environmentally destructive aquaculture. But maybe we should all just start coming to grips with the fact that our animal-eating tastes are overtaxing the planet and its other species, and start learning to love tofu.
Shark advocate and underwater explorer Scott Cassell gets a tiger shark to start eating a Go Pro camera. The result is an interesting view you personally never hope to experience yourself.
You can read more about Cassell and the underwater craziness he gets up to in this piece I wrote about him for Outside.
Another example of the climate change-carbon economy loop, in which burning carbon leads to warming which in turn leads to new fossil fuel economy opportunities.
In this example, the reduction in Arctic sea ice is opening the northwest and northeast passages to fuel shipping. The first liquid natural gas tanker recently left Norway, and is headed toward Japan, escorted by a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker:
“It’s an extraordinarily interesting adventure,” Tony Lauritzen, commercial director at Dynagas, told BBC News.
“The people on board have been seeing polar bears on the route. We’ve had the plans for a long time and everything has gone well.”
Mr Lauritzen says that a key factor in the decision to use the northern route was the recent scientific record on melting in the Arctic.
“We have studied lots of observation data – there is an observable trend that the ice conditions are becoming more and more favourable for transiting this route. You are able to reach a highly profitable market by saving 40% of the distance, that’s 40% less fuel used as well.”
Forty percent less fuel burned is good, I guess. But the whole thing, along with Arctic oil drilling, reminds me of a cartoon I posted on my Facebook page earlier today.
“Hey, don’t blame me. You guys are the ones who wiped them out in the first place.”
Let me see if I have this right: Humans overfish and wipe out the Atlantic cod population in the Gulf Of St. Lawrence. Cod fishing is banned (have you noticed how many fish bans get put in place when there are, um, no fish left?). But the Atlantic cod population is not bouncing back as expected. So now the plan is to wipe out a big chunk of grey seal population (on the assumption that the grey seals must be eating up al the cod and keeping the population down).
That’s classic. We wipe out a population, and when it seems we did such an effective job it stays wiped out, we conclude the solution is to wipe out another population. This would be sort of funny if it weren’t so stupid.
Luckily, a group of scientists (you know, those nerdy folks who study things, and bring fact into the argument) have stepped forward in opposition to Canada’s plan to kill grey seals so the cod population can revive enough for cod to be killed again, too.
Their argument? There’s no solid evidence that killing a lot of grey seals will revive the cod population:
In October, the Canadian Senate approved a controversial plan to kill 70,000 grey seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence under a bounty system next year, ostensibly to revive the cod stocks that the seals were eating.
But a group of marine scientists at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have said in a recent open letter: “There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest a cull of grey seals in Atlantic Canada would help depleted fish stocks recover.
“Seals are being used as a scapegoat, just like whales were once blamed for fishery declines,” said Hal Whitehead, marine biologist at Dalhousie, told the Guardian. He called the proposed cull an abuse of the science. “I don’t like the idea of slaughtering all these animals for no reason.”
Ironically, the seal population has grown dramatically because humans were forced to stop killing so many seals, too, when the fur market collapsed thanks to fur bans. That raises the question of how cod flourished in the waters before humans were killing either cod or seals. Seems like the cod did fine despite all those unkilled seals.
1) Sandy should not be “blamed” on climate change. Climate change does not cause storms and did not cause Superstorm Sandy. Storms form when certain weather ingredients come together. The historic record shows violent storms, some even more severe than Sandy, have struck the Northeast repeatedly..
2) While climate change did not cause Sandy, it may have been a performance enhancer like a steroid, injecting it with somewhat more energy and power.
3) Sea level rise from manmade climate change increased the water level along the Northeast coast 6 to 8 inches and, as a result, somewhat worsened the coastal flooding from Sandy.
4) There is speculation that decreased Arctic sea ice from manmade climate change altered atmospheric steering currents, strengthening the weather system in the North Atlantic that helped to push Sandy ashore in the Northeast. This idea is controversial.
5) Climate change is likely to slowly increase the intensity of hurricanes in the future, but trends in storm frequency are less certain and the number of storms may actually decrease. Sea levels will continue to rise adding to the coastal flood risk.
He goes on to examine each of these in detail, and includes lots of links to research and related articles. So if you want the full monty on Sandy and climate change I urge you to read the whole thing.
Minds in the Water, is a award winning documentary following the quest of professional surfer Dave Rastovich and his friends to protect dolphins, whales and the oceans they all share. Through Dave’s journey—a five-year adventure spanning the globe from Australia to the Galapagos, Tonga, California, Alaska and Japan—we see one surfer’s quest to activate his community to help protect the ocean and its inhabitants…[snip]
…Five years in the making, Minds In The Water is the story of one surfer’s international journey to help protect dolphins, whales and their ocean environment. Through the charismatic journey of one person’s life, witness an adventure spanning the globe from Australia and the Galapagos to Tonga, Alaska and Japan. See first hand how one surfer’s quest to protect dolphins and whales has blossomed into a movement of like minds. The film captures a key moment in one person’s life when apathy is no longer an option.
Pro surfer Dave “Rasta” Rastovich went from an ocean minded admirer to an ocean activist when he embarked on a personal mission to help stop the worldwide commercial slaughter of dolphins and whales. While unsure at first, Dave quickly found his activist sea legs and helped build a core team of filmmakers, journalists, musicians, eco-pirates, celebrity surfers and even a professional mermaid to help spread the message. All this has been documented in the film, Minds In The Water.
The message of the film is two fold: The power of one individual to inspire people to take action and make a difference and if ocean minded people are to pass on a sustainable culture, then they must become responsible stewards of their coastal environment.
Sometimes decisions made years ago end up leading us into blind alleys that have no safe or easy way out. A perfect example is California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (whose idea was it to build a nuclear reactor in a place called Diablo Canyon?).
The nuclear power plant opened in 1985, and generates electricity for more than 2 million homes. Here’s the thing, though: it turns out that Diablo Canyon was built on not just one geological fault, but two (the second discovered in 2008). The risk of building a nuclear power plant anywhere in earthquake country has always been controversial, but in the wake of the Fukushima Disaster, fears about what might happen at Diablo Canyon are suddenly very acute. That has prompted licensing authorities to want to know a lot more about the earthquake risks attached to Diablo Canyon. Which in turn has led California’s PG&E utility, which owns and operates the plant to propose an intensive program of seismic airgun testing right off the coast of Diablo Canyon. And that, in turn, could be a disaster for the marine mammals who thrive in those waters.
But what if the research itself causes terrible environmental harm? That’s what the staff of the California Coastal Commission says would happen if plant owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is allowed to proceed with its proposal to blast underwater air cannons every 15 seconds in Morro Bay, for about 12 days a year over four years, to produce three-dimensional images of geologic faults. PG&E needs the commission’s permission to carry out the sonic imaging, but the staff is recommending against it.
Thousands of marine mammals, with their sensitivity to underwater sounds, would be affected in unknown ways by the disturbance, a staff report says. Of special concern are Morro Bay’s 2,000 harbor porpoises, a distinct population that remains in that area and doesn’t interbreed with other harbor porpoises. If they were driven from the bay by the cannons, their ability to survive would be uncertain. In addition, the blasts would kill millions of fish and other forms of sea life.
The editorial hopes that PG&E will be able to do other testing and surveys that will minimize the need for seismic airgun work, but in the end argues that the risk of a nuclear disaster is so terrible that some seismic testing may have to go forward. Somehow, the question of shutting down a nuclear power plant that almost certainly should never have been built, doesn’t seem to come up. Which is odd, because the very fact that there is a felt need to survey two geological faults suggests that there is a non-trivial earthquake risk. So it is hard to imagine how anyone could ever feel reassured about the risks the plant poses, no matter what the testing shows.
Point Buchon State Marine Reserve and Marine Conservation Area
According to a PG&E representative at an informational meeting, “the proposal calls for a 240-foot ship to tow a quarter-mile wide array of twenty 250 decibel “air cannons,” along a 90-mile stretch of California’s Central Coast. The cannons will shoot deafening underwater explosions once every twenty seconds, day and night, for 42 days and nights. The region where this devastating assault on wildlife is expected to take place includes the “protected” Point Buchon State Marine Reserve.
The decision occurs at a time when humpback and blue whales have appeared in shockingly large numbers off the California coast to feed on krill. The seismic testing will kill great blue whales, gray whales and others, dolphins, porpoises, seals, sea lions, otters, and fishes. PG&E has offered to buy-off commercial fishermen in the area to compensate for anticipated losses if the plan is allowed to go forth.
PG&E plans to produce a 3-D map of the shoreline fault’s deeper regions. Hydrophones in the water and geophones on the seafloor would collect data on the sound as it resonates through sea and earth, and the resulting data is expected to help geologists map the fault. Nothing of this scope and power has ever been done in California waters before and according to the Environmental Impact Report, the toll on marine life from this kind of testing is staggering. In regions where this sort of testing has been done, countless dead marine animals wash ashore for weeks during and after testing, blood dripping from areas such as their eyes, nose, ears or mouth — a sign they have suffered catastrophic internal hemorrhaging.
This seismic testing is expected to yield only moderate mapping results and, according to Fish and Game Commissioner Richard Rogers, would “cleanse the Point Buchon State Marine Reserve of all living marine organisms” including Sperm, Pygmy Sperm, Humpback, California Gray and Great Blue Whales, and many other species of fish and marine mammals, right down to the plankton.
1) Testing will, without question, harm or kill thousands of marine mammals. The only question is how many, and how many will die or be permanently disabled.
2) In the best case scenario, the testing might reveal a reduced risk of earthquake danger. But Diablo Canyon will still be located in a zone that carries earthquake risk.
3) In the worst case, testing might reveal a serious danger from earthquake.
4) Either way, decommissioning is really the only way to eliminate the risk of a serious nuclear tragedy.
5) Seismic testing won’t really change, or shouldn’t really change, the fact that decommissioning is the only way to make Diablo Canyon safe (and in fact it might simply emphasize that point if the testing reveals serious earthquake risk), so why kill and injure thousands of marine mammals when we already know this is the reality?
6) A Meta-Point: the decision to build Diablo Canyon despite the earthquake risk was a human decision. The electricity Diablo Canyon produces is consumed by humans. Why should marine mammals pay the price of human folly and consumption? (I know, that is a question that could be applied globally to almost any number of issues, but that only makes it THE critical question). In the end, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is entirely a human construct. Whatever costs are attached to dealing with the risks and dangers it poses should be borne not by marine mammals that had nothing to do with it, but by humans. It’s called taking responsibility.
The hedge expressed by journalists is that many variables go into creating a big storm, so the size of Hurricane Sandy, or any specific storm, cannot be attributed to climate change. That’s true, and it’s based on good science. However, that statement does not mean that we cannot say that climate change is making storms bigger. It is doing just that—a statement also based on good science, and one that the insurance industry is embracing, by the way. (Huh? More on that in a moment.)
Scientists have long taken a similarly cautious stance, but more are starting to drop the caveat and link climate change directly to intense storms and other extreme weather events, such as the warm 2012 winter in the eastern U.S. and the frigid one in Europe at the same time. They are emboldened because researchers have gotten very good in the past decade at determining what affects the variables that create big storms. Hurricane Sandy got large because it wandered north along the U.S. coast, where ocean water is still warm this time of year, pumping energy into the swirling system. But it got even larger when a cold Jet Stream made a sharp dip southward from Canada down into the eastern U.S. The cold air, positioned against warm Atlantic air, added energy to the atmosphere and therefore to Sandy, just as it moved into that region, expanding the storm even further.
Here’s where climate change comes in. The atmospheric pattern that sent the Jet Stream south is colloquially known as a “blocking high”—a big pressure center stuck over the very northern Atlantic Ocean and southern Arctic Ocean. And what led to that? A climate phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—essentially, the state of atmospheric pressure in that region. This state can be positive or negative, and it had changed from positive to negative two weeks before Sandy arrived. The climate kicker? Recent research by Charles Greene at Cornell University and other climate scientists has shown that as more Arctic sea ice melts in the summer—because of global warming—the NAO is more likely to be negative during the autumn and winter. A negative NAO makes the Jet Stream more likely to move in a big, wavy pattern across the U.S., Canada and the Atlantic, causing the kind of big southward dip that occurred during Sandy.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
The resistance to both the logic and the science of global warming and weather is stupefying to me. But not surprising, sadly. We are a species that is sleepwalking through history.
I have long doubted it, but 
Here’s
Sometimes decisions made years ago end up leading us into blind alleys that have no safe or easy way out. A perfect example is California’s 
The Earthist Chronicles 