Ocean Links of The Day
Thanks to Pharyngula(who’s your source for all matters invertebrate and is also the sccourge of ID-ers everywhere) for this cartoon from Ted Rall:
And an unexpected Guardian plea from Sir Max Hastings, Thatcher war groupie, former Fleet street editor and all-round Tory and pillar of the establishment, on our continuing rape of the oceans:
The world’s oceans are being plundered, and nobody seems willing or able to stop the slaughter. Some fish and crustaceans are successfully farmed: trout and oysters, to name but two. Stocks of others are sustainable, such as herring, sardines, whitebait and mussels. Many species, however, are in desperate trouble, including tuna, plaice, monkfish and cod. Over the past half-century, the world’s annual fish catch has risen from 18m tonnes to 95m. The latest figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that 52% of commercial fish species are fully exploited, 17% overexploited and 8% depleted.
It is striking to contrast the wave of alarm, if not panic, sweeping the world about avian flu with our indifference to the plight of fish. As long as there are fillets in the shops, we buy them.
Unfortunately, his article seems not to take into account the rapacious and bottomless pit that is the global free market but appears to blame quotas, tariffs and protected markets. And it will all be OK if only we pay premium prices to the greedy food retailers who are actually driving the market to catch more and more obscure and threatened species:
All credit to Greenpeace for identifying the simple thing each of us can do, to fight back against the threat to the oceans: buy fish from Marks & Spencer or Waitrose. These stores, according to the new survey, have by far the best record of selling sustainable and legitimately sourced species.
I don’t doubt that they do have the best record, in the UK – but it’s hardly the point. Even if nice middle-class people buy their expensively-sourced fish from these stores it won’t affect the thousands of Russian, Korean, Spanish and Japanese factory ships trawling their way along the sea bottom, destroying everything in their path, including the possibility of future regeneration.
Before and After
“Towing a heavy trawl net through a cold-water coral reef is a bit like driving a bulldozer through a nature reserve.”
David Griffith
Sir Max goes on:
“When species vanish, people shrug and eat something else.”
Let them eat cake then. Or maybe not –
Lobster becoming everyday in Britain
LONDON, Oct. 29 (UPI) — A lobster dinner in Britain has been a luxury for centuries, but today it’s becoming an everyday item.
“Salmon was once considered a luxury that only a few could afford — that is no longer the case,” said Carlos Diaz, the seafood specialist for Marks & Spencer. “In the same way, lobster is more readily available now and it is becoming more and more popular.”
Thanks to rising lobster imports from Canada and U.K. hatcheries that stock baby lobsters, the amount of lobster sold in supermarkets has increased by almost 20 percent in the past year alone, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.
One British supermarket chain is offering customers whole lobster this Christmas at about $8, but also popular is “chilled lobster.”
“If you buy chilled lobster …, it’s all been done for you — there’s no preparation, it’s the ultimate convenience food,” said Peter Hunt, the director of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain. “All you have to do is put it on the plate. You are getting restaurant food at home.”
The lobster is not yet an endangered species, but it won’t be long
Despite the fact that lobsters are not endangered, there are still questions about how they are going to fare in the future. Relatives of the American Lobsters, Homarus gammarus, that live on the other side of the Atlantic along the coast of Europe and down into Africa, have been over-harvested in the past. It is only now that they are being restocked by the introduction of young lobsters raised in captivity (Lavalli, Cowan, and Barshaw, 1998). The US Federal Government has labeled the American lobster population as “overfished,” but the general increase in abundance, coupled with the increase in catches over the past twenty years brings into question the posibility that lobsters are being overfished (Fish Research.Org, 2002).
