How to Buy Sustainable Fish

Look for the label of the Marine Stewardship Council. From their website;

Sustainable fishing

Throughout the world there are fisheries using good management practices to safeguard jobs, secure fish stocks for the future and help to protect the marine environment. At the Marine Stewardship Council, we believe that sustainable fishing is a powerful solution. We want to see well managed fisheries recognised and rewarded, and we want to encourage more fisheries to join them. Through our certification and ecolabelling program we seek to reverse the decline of fish stocks, safeguard livelihoods and deliver improvements in marine conservation worldwide. Our blue ecolabel makes it easy for everyone to make the best environmental choice in seafood.

I saw this at The Green Miles, which also links to the Monterey Bay Aquarium pocket seafood guide.

The North Pole Is An Island

Thawing ocean: The North-West Passage (circled left) and the North-East Passage (top right) are clear of ice

We must elect Barack Obama who will deal with global warming; not McCain and his global-warming-denying running mate [vlad the polar bear im]Palin.

DailyMail: The North Pole becomes an 'island' for the first time in history as ice melts

The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history.

Startling satellite pictures taken three days ago show that melting ice has opened up the fabled North-West and North-East Passages - making it possible to sail around the Arctic ice cap.

The opening of the passages has been eagerly awaited by shipping companies which hope they will be able to cut thousands of miles off their routes.

But to climate change scientists it is yet another sign of the damage global warming is inflicting on the planet.

Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist, described the images as an 'historic event' - but warned they added to fears that the Arctic icecap has entered a 'death spiral'.

The pictures, produced by Nasa, mark the first time in at least 125,000 years that the two shortcuts linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have been ice-free at the same time.

DailyMail: The heartbreaking picture of the polar bears with 400 miles to swim to the nearest ice

Cool

Cape Cod Times
Sue Hayden holds an arrowhead that she found on Menauhant Beach, and which an archaeologist at the Robbins Museum in Middleboro dates to before the birth of Jesus.Cape Cod Times/Paul Blackmore

Boston Globe: Beachcomber finds ancient arrowhead

FALMOUTH, Mass.—A Falmouth woman out walking on a local beach found what she at first thought was a curiously shaped stone.

It turned out to be much more.

The diamond-shaped rock Sue Hayden picked up on Menauhant Beach turned out to be an ancient arrowhead at least 2,000 years old.

Jeff Boudreau of the Massachusetts Archeological Society in Middleborough says the stone is an Early Woodland Indian arrowhead from the Rossville Era that is between 2,000 and 2,700 years old.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: June 20, 2008

National Geographic: Kiribati Beach House
Photograph by George Steinmetz/CORBIS

A tiny group of Pacific coral islands, the Republic of Kirabati, with a population of less than a hundred thousand, will be submerged under the ocean in 50 to 100 years as a result of rising ocean waters. Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, population 150,000,000 -- One Hundred and Fifty Million Human Beings -- will be completely underwater by the end of this century, according to NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen.

And those estimates may be accelerated, as data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than it did last year. An example of the chaos that this will bring is in Iceland, where two polar bears were shot in the past two weeks when they showed up hundreds of miles from their habitat.

And what are the Bush Administration and their rubber stamps in Congress doing to address global warming? Nothing. No, take that back, less than nothing. Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to cut greenhouse emissions last week. The United States taxpayers are being forced to pay to build permanent bases in Iraq, which are surely to provide security for the oil companies (Exxon, Total, BP and Shell) which have just been awarded no-bid contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil fields. The Oilman-In-Chief sent thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths for the bottom line of Exxon.

Which of his crimes will Bush pay for? The torture he personally authorized? (though he is now trying to blame it on the soldiers, we know that it was the Bush Administration's official policy, memorialized in legal memos and West Wing meetings.) Maj. General Antonio Taguba writes this week that the Bush Administration committed war crimes, and recommends prosection. The Democratic Sheeple Party is unlikely to do so; we let everyone involved in Iran-Contra go, too.

By failing to prosecute the war criminals who perpetrated Iran-Contra, we populated the Project for a New American Century and all the other right wing "think tanks" with all those unindicted co-conspirators, who spent years conspiring on their next nefarious plan: to get us to attack Iraq. As Digby says: When you let Republicans get away with murder, they will do it again.

Some days reading the news is nihilistic. I'm going to take the weekend off from political blogging & regain my equilibrium.

Deval Patrick, Environmentalist

(Mark Wilson/Globe Staff and Dave Fuller)

Two young bald eagles have a panoramic view of the Quabbin Reservoir from their nest, one of eight there. Photographer Mark Wilson handed a preset camera to state wildlife technician Dave Fuller, who carried it up a tree and clicked the shutter.

This is why I voted for Deval Patrick for governor. While the Boston Herald reports nothing but his spending to upgrade his offices (what did Mitt Romney care about his offices, he was NEVER IN THIS STATE. Grrrrr.) this is the kind of positive change we expect from Governor Patrick.

Boston Globe: Eagles getting assistance, but still endangered

Governor Deval Patrick banded two five-week-old bald eagles today, assisting in the effort to keep track of the endangered birds.

“I am so proud that our restoration program has helped keep these magnificent birds soaring over our Commonwealth,” Patrick said in a statement.

NYTimes: Massachusetts Law to Manage and Protect Ocean Waters

BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law Wednesday a measure that will establish the nation’s first management and protection plan for a state’s ocean waters.

The law sets ground rules for all offshore projects and businesses, including energy ventures and conservation areas that lie in state waters. The state controls all water within three miles of the coast, about 1.6 million acres of water.

Lawrence Eagle-Tribune: Creating 'green collar' jobs: Massachusetts groups striving for stronger position in environmental market

[I]n Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi have been promoting their own green initiatives, which would dedicate $100 million over the next five years to clean-energy research and business development.

[]

Quincy Vale, president and CEO of PowerHouse Enterprises, a Lawrence company that designs environmentally friendly modular homes, said in the past, former Gov. Mitt Romney "said the right things" but didn't back up his words with funding. Gov. Patrick's administration, however, "gets it. Patrick has shown a lot more action," Vale said.

Zoological Glass Works

Harvard Museum of Natural History
The glass work of Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, now on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in an exhibit titled "Sea Creatures in Glass," includes jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, polyps and many other specimens.


I'm making plans to go to this show of beautiful glass sea creatures that were created to teach zoology, but are seen today mostly as spectacular works of art.

The 58 mostly life-size works on display were drawn from the Museum of Comparative Zoology's collection of 430 of the Blaschkas' glass invertebrates, including jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, polyps and many other specimens.

When Harvard first acquired the Blaschkas' glass specimens, Sacco said they were important tools for teaching zoology because, unlike actual creatures preserved in formaldehyde, they didn't lose their color or collapse.

Metrowest Daily News: Masters of glass

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is located on 26 Oxford St., Cambridge.

All the HMNH exhibits are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Day.

Other exhibits include "Nests & Eggs" through August 2008 and "Arthropods: Creatures that Rule" which is ongoing.

Tickets: Adults, $9; seniors and non-Harvard students, $7; children, 3-18, $6. It is free to Massachusetts residents Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon and Wednesday afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m., September through May.

The museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call 617-495-3045 or visit the Internet Web site, www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

Chinook Salmon Fishery Collapse

FILE/THE OREGONIAN
Prized chinook salmon would be off-limits to fishing this year under a unprecedented proposal to halt all salmon fishing from Point Falcon in Oregon south to the Mexican border.

In the long term, the collapse of the salmon stock in the California rivers is a far graver threat to the world than the Bear Stearns (and the Bush economy) collapse. This year's Chinook salmon fishing season off the coasts of Oregon and California is likely to be cancelled, because the fish have disappeared. While no one is completely sure of the cause, the scientists who have been consulted believe changing ocean patterns, caused by global warming, are to blame.

NYTimes: Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

But federal and state fishery managers and biologists point to the highly unusual ocean conditions in 2005, which may have left the fingerling salmon with little or none of the rich nourishment provided by the normal upwelling currents near the shore.

[]

Bill Petersen, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research center in Newport, Ore., said other stocks of anadromous Pacific fish — those that migrate from freshwater to saltwater and back — had been anemic this year, seading him to suspect ocean changes.

After studying changes in the once-predictable pattern of the Northern Pacific climate, Mr. Petersen found that in 2005 the currents that rise from the deeper ocean, bringing with them nutrients like phytoplankton and krill, were out of sync. “Upwelling usually starts in April and goes until September,” he said. “In 2005, it didn’t start until July.”

Mr. Petersen’s hypothesis about the salmon is that “the fish that went to sea in 2005 died a few weeks after getting to the ocean” because there was nothing to eat. A couple of years earlier, when the oceans were in a cold-weather cycle, the opposite happened — the upwelling was very rich. The smolts of that year were later part of the largest run of fall Chinook ever recorded.

Yahoo News: Salmon fishing ban possible this year

In most years, about 90 percent of wild chinook or "king" salmon caught off the California coast originate in the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

Only about 90,000 adult salmon returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries to spawn last year, the second lowest number on record and well below the government's conservation goals, according to federal fishery regulators. That's down from 277,000 in 2006 and a record high of 804,000 in 2002.

Biologists are predicting that this year's salmon returns could be even lower because the number of returning young male fish, known as "jacks," hit an all-time low last year. Only about 2,000 of them were recorded, which is far below the 40,000 counted in a typical year.

Other West Coast rivers also have seen declines in their salmon runs, though not as steep as California's Central Valley.

Experts are unclear about what caused California's collapse.

Some marine scientists say the salmon declines can be attributed in part to unusual weather patterns that have disrupted the marine food chain in the ocean along the Pacific Coast in recent years.

Dailykos: Don't Mess With Mother Nature

Back in the late 1960's it was possible to walk across the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers on the 14ft, open boats, each with 1 or 2 fishermen hauling in their limit of salmon swimming up stream to spawn. Freezers all over the Valley were filled with cleaned, dressed salmon that weighed 35 ot 40 lbs. each. By the mid 80's the size and the weight of the catch had decreased by half. Early in 2000 a salmon that weighed 15 lbs was cause for celebration.

Pic of the Day

yahoo: Stormy seas hit coastal sea defences and a lighthouse at Seaford in Sussex in southern England March 10, 2008. A storm rushing in from the Atlantic lashed the south west on Monday as high winds and tides brought the risk of coastal flooding.
REUTERS/Toby Melville (BRITAIN)

Take Your Own Grocery Bag, Save a Whale

Sickening sight: Wildlife experts examine the dead whale which washed ashore on the Isle of Mull
DailyMail (uk): Banish the bags: This whale washed up on a British beach. In its stomach....the remains of 23 plastic bags

Oceans in Peril

National Geographic: No Pristine Oceans Left, New Map Shows
Telegraph (uk): Man's effect on world's oceans revealed

Almost half of the world's oceans have been seriously affected by over-fishing, pollution and climate change, according to a major study of man's impact on marine life.

LATimes: Dead zones off Oregon and Washington likely tied to global warming, study says

Although scientists continue to amass data and tease out the details, all signs in the search for a cause point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet.

Next Time They Hand You a Plastic Bag

Independent (uk): A scavenger in a dugout canoe paddles through a sea of garbage along a Manila waterway

Think of the plastic soup, the huge floating plastic garbagebergs in the Pacific Ocean that are twice the size of the United States.

Independent (uk): The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

Independent (uk): Steve Connor: Why plastic is the scourge of sea life

Daily Mail (uk): Rubbish dump found floating in Pacific Ocean is twice the size of America

Daily News & Analysis (India): Pacific Ocean could turn into a 'Plastic Ocean'

Bush to Whales: Drop Dead (Updated, below)

Conservationists criticized President Bush's decision to exempt the Navy from an environmental law so that it can keep using sonar in its training in California, a practice they say harms whales and other marine mammals.
Photo Credit: By Reed Saxon -- Associated Press

The Bush Administration is pressing to overturn the federal court's ban on the Navy's use of sonar, which kills whales and other marine life in violation of several federal laws. It doesn't sound like Bush has a legal leg to stand on, but that hasn't stopped him in the past.

The whales, and the US, must survive another 368 days being ruled by the House of Bush.

Los Angeles Times: Bush sides with Navy in sonar battle
He cites national security in aiming to override a judge's injunction aimed at protecting marine mammals off Southern California. An environmental group promises to fight his move.

President Bush on Wednesday moved to exempt Navy sonar training missions off Southern California from complying with key environmental laws, an effort designed to free the military from court-ordered restrictions aimed at protecting whales and dolphins.

The president's directive was designed to short-circuit a long-running battle in which environmental groups have won court victories that frustrated the Navy's preparations for nine training missions over the next year, the first one set to begin next week.

[]

Some legal scholars Wednesday questioned what they called the administration's self-manufactured emergency, noting that it had not surfaced as a legal argument until after nearly a year of litigation.

If the Navy had complied with the National Environmental Policy Act to begin with, it wouldn't be in an emergency situation, said Daniel P. Selmi, an environmental law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

At the same time, he said, he was impressed with the "full-court press" of the White House, the Pentagon and federal agencies, including the filing of a classified affidavit by Navy admirals that can be seen only by the judges.

"The federal government is pitching it as a full-blown matter of national security," Selmi said. "That puts an enormous pressure on judges to defer to the government."

[]

Citing the Navy's own studies, [Federal District Judge] Cooper concluded that planned exercises off Southern California "will cause widespread harm to nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including five species of endangered whales and may cause permanent injury and death."

Mid-frequency active sonar, first developed in the later days of World War II, has grown more powerful and has been used increasingly in coastal waters, the habitat of most marine mammals.

NYTimes: White House Exempts Navy From Sonar Ban, Angering Environmental Groups

WaPo: Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif.
President Cites National Security in Order

Looks like I wasn't the only blogger (and not the first, sorry) channeling the New York Daily News:

Lawyers, Guns & Money: Bush to Whales: Drop Dead

And the Ford to City: Drop Dead formulation is popular throughout the media:

salon.com: Bush to Arab world: Drop dead

The Nation: Bush to Children: Drop Dead

Counterpunch: Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead

Will Durst, CommonDreams: Bush to Poor: Drop Dead

TomPaine.com: Bush To Earth: Drop Dead

There are many more of these.

Farmed Salmon Killing Wild Salmon

Young salmon infested with sea lice. Adult salmon can generally live with the lice, but wild juveniles migrating out to sea are particularly vulnerable because they are small and thin-skinned.
Alexandra Morton - Salmon Coast Field Station

Remember this the next time you are tempted by that pasty pink stuff in the grocery case:

WaPo: Salmon Farming May Doom Wild Populations, Study Says

Action Alert: Oppose Navy Use of Sonar

No more beached whales

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has released a Proposed Rule, Number 062206A. This proposed rule would allow the Navy to use Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar in most oceans for the next five years.

LFA is bad stuff. The sounds of sonar travel thousands of miles in the ocean and harm the things that live there. For more information, click on the Fact-Esque link at the bottom of this post.

Only 15 days were allowed for comments, and today is the last day. So please send a comment opposing LFA!

Send an email to this address: PR1.062306A@noaa.gov

You can copy the comment I sent:

To the National Marine Fisheries Service:

I am writing this email in opposition to Proposed Rule Number 062206A.

I oppose the use of Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar for the following reasons:

(1) LFA sound can travel at levels that are harmful to the marine environment for thousands of miles underwater.

(2) LFA causes mass strandings and deaths of marine mammals.

(3) Our oceans are already under pressure from pollution and global warming. Adding LFA will just further harm ocean inhabitants.

(4) The NMFS is supposed to protect fish, not harm them. This rule does not further your agency's goals and is not congruent with the latest scientific research on LFA.

(5) I agree with the following groups that have opposed the use of LFA: the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission, the United Nations Law of the Sea deliberations, the European Union Parliament, and the IUCN-World Conservation Union.

Please do not approve proposed rule number 062206A.

Thank you for your consideration of these comments.

Sincerely,

hat tip to Fact-Esque, which I saw on Newsfare

Fact-esque: Very Easy Anti-Sonar Action - Deadline for Public Comments TODAY