Fishing for the Halibut

April 26th, 2012

The Atlantic Halibut is an extraordinary fish, once one of the world’s largest. Old reports suggest males could have grown to 700 pounds and 15 feet (320 kg and 4.7 m). Long lived, slow growing, late maturing, and easily caught by bottom trawls and long lines, they were quickly overfished once people acquired a taste for them. Now not many are left, and the species is labelled Vulnerable or Endangered, depending on the agency assessing them.

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Halibut are bottom dwelling flatfish that prey on other fish as well as crustaceans. This is the Pacific halibut, which has been fished sustainably. Atlantic halibut are too rare to be able to photograph in the wild like this (marinesciencetoday.com)

Fishing along the New England coast and on the offshore fishing banks remains a disaster. Collapsed stocks like halibut recover very slowly, if at all, and even cod, which ought to be more resilient, have failed to show signs of recovery. Quotas are small and getting smaller, and so are fishing fleets.

An 8 foot, 444 pound Atlantic halibut caught off Norway in 2008, no doubt one of the last of this size (tiptheplanet.com)

Whole Foods Market is going to sell only the fish species considered sustainable by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute, and that includes the Atlantic halibut – as it should. Plenty of other markets exist, but it sets a good example. We simply should not be eating any wild caught Atlantic halibut.

A very new method of aquaculture involves submerged, ‘deepwater’ AquaPod Net Pens – geodesic spherical enclosures that have been used for cod, salmon, and other species, but not yet for halibut.

Now there is a proposal to farm Atlantic halibut in a bay on the central coast of Maine, starting with one Aquapod about 30 ft in diameter, tethered to the bottom by an 18,000 pound anchor, able to spin out with tide in a 150 ft radius.

An AquaPod Net Pen is lifted by crane onto a barge and then later into deeper water offshore (oceanfarmtech.net)

The halibut will be raised in a hatchery from egg to settled stage, and then moved to the AquaPod, fed fish pellets designed for halibut, monitored to prevent over-feeding, and grown rapidly to marketable size.

An AquaPod is neutrally buoyant, can be rotated to clean, and can be partly emerged or totally submerged depending on ocean conditions (ecofriend.com)

Will it work? It ought to. Of course there are legitimate environmental concerns about the impact of uneaten food and feces on the existing bottom community, but careful monitoring is promised, and the Aquapod will be set in the deeper water where the dozen or more lobstermen who work the bay don’t set their thousands of lobster pots.

Soon more half of the world’s marketed fish will be farmed – a reflection not just of the collapse of wild caught fisheries but also of the growth of farming.

Each year farmed fish make up more of the total fish production

Some halibut farming will be helpful. Done right, done carefully, it should work. There are probably other less trafficked bays where this experiment in aquaculture could occur, but having a lot of people watching from their cottages and their boats will help to keep it clean and honest.

We need the fish. We need to conserve the remaining wild fish – perhaps recovery is possible, provided we leave them alone for the next hundred years.

Meanwhile, let’s farm halibut. Let’s farm them in AquaPods. If any environmental damage occurs, designs can be modified, AquaPods can be moved.

This is a worthy experiment.

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The Acidification of Oysters

April 23rd, 2012

Maybe you read about this recently. It seems to me to be quite amazing.

A die-off of oyster larvae at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery on the Oregon coast has been correlated with – and almost certainly caused by – a small increase in the acidity of the sea water the larvae were exposed to in their first 24 hrs.

Oyster larvae need critical levels of CaCO3 for their shells to develop, and these levels drop as CO2 levels in the water increase.

Oyster larvae (marineticsinc.com)

The report was published in April in the journal Limnology and Oceanography by three scientists (Richard Feely, Alan Barton and Burke Hales). Then Jeff Barnard, Environmental Writer for the Associated Press, published a summary of the study, and pretty well everyone took notice. When I Googled ‘oyster larvae dying’, most of the first 300 hits were copies of his article republished by American and global news websites.

Oyster life cycle (scienceinthetriangle.org)

All the reports, not just AP’s, emphasize that this is some of the first solid evidence of the potential impact of ocean acidification on a valuable fishery, though in fact oyster growers have been concerned about the threat of acidification for some years.

Anything that has a calcareous skeleton is sensitive to increased acidity (noaa.gov)

The event is worrisome, of course, for ocean acidification will continue for many decades, even once (or if?) we stop the increase in atmospheric CO2. Now we know that a very small change in ocean acidity can have a large impact on a sensitive species.

As atmospheric levels of CO2 increase, so do levels in the ocean, resulting in increasing ocean acidity (e360.yale.edu)

But what’s unexpected is the attention the journal publication and its AP description have received. It should signal to our political leaders in North America that in fact people really are worried about the accelerating effects of global warming.

How much evidence is needed? The death of some oyster larvae won’t change the beliefs of most of the US Congress, but it ought to.

It also won’t effect the politics and business of oil that dominates the Canadian economy, but it should.

They say we get the leaders that we deserve, but we don’t deserve this.

The die-off of the oyster larvae cannot be shrugged off as irrelevant or insignificant.

So we are warned.
Again.

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The End of Whaling

March 31st, 2012

It’s getting close.

The annual Japanese whaling season in the Antarctic has now ended. Granted a quota of 1000 minke whales by the International Whaling Commission to be killed for ‘scientific purposes’, they killed less than 300, along with a single finback.

Typical view of a minke whale, the smallest of the 'Great Whales'. (wildwhales.org)

Globally, about 2000 whales, mostly minkes, are still killed each year. Besides the whales they kill in the Antarctic, the Japanese also hunt several hundred in their own territorial seas in the North Pacific. Iceland and Norway illegally kill about 600 hundred whales, unsanctioned by the IWC. Another several hundred whales are killed annually, but legally, for subsistence reasons by native populations in Greenland, Russia, the US and Canada.

Greenpeace at work interfering with the Japanese hunt in the Antarctic (greenpeace.org)

The Japanese whaling in the Antarctic gets most of the attention, partly because everyone knows scientific whaling is a hypocritical mask for commercial hunting. One of the reasons for the reduced catch this year was the harassment by anti-whaling ships of both Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Sea Shepherd Society has again been the most militant, sending its ship the Bob Barker after the Japanese ships, trying to foul their propeller blades with ropes. The Japanese have responded with water cannons, as they have before. Not surprisingly, a collision occurred.

Collision: Sea Shepherd's 'Bob Barker' at work interfering with Japanese whaler, in the open sea, about 2400 km from southern Australia, not far from the Antarctic coast(news.com.au).

This has not been a conservation issue. The anti-whalers are there to defend ‘animal rights’, and they have had little difficulty raising funds to do so.

The Japanese are there in defense of a waning Japanese cultural tradition of eating whale meat, willing to sustain the hunt despite the disapproval of most of the world, but still oddly intent on keeping to the letter of the IWC laws prohibiting the killing of whales for commercial purposes.

The 'Brigitte Bardot' a scouting vessel of Sea Shepherd, before it got badly damaged by high waves near the coast of Antarctica this year. (birdseyeview.com.au)

But the taste and market for whale meat is declining everywhere – at least in Japan, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. The cost to the Japanese of hunting whales in the Antarctic is considerable, and is subsidized by the Japanese Government. The cost of the anti-whaling effort almost as much as cost of the hunting.

The anti-whalers won’t stop until the Japanese do, but there are indications that the Japanese might stop next year. The Japanese could use some help in saving face on this, for otherwise the farce could still drag on.

The 'Yushin Maru' leaving port to do some research on the whales it will kill. (Japantimes.org)

A couple of months ago a proposal in Nature got some attention: why not put a price on each whale in the Japanese quota and let the conservation organizations buy their freedom, removing them from the hunted quota? At $13,000 per minke and $85,000 per finback, the Japanese would make their money, the lives of the whales wold be saved from the hunt, and the anti-whalers wouldn’t have to spend the comparable millions in harassing the whalers.

Another typical view, this time of a finback, one of the largest whales.(flikr.com)

This doesn’t sound unreasonable – other schemes of trade have worked to reduce carbon emissions and to conserve forested land. But as others have also pointed out, the whalers are in it at least in past for the tradition, not just the money, and the anti-whalers are not conservationists, they are animal-rightists, and funding for them is not an issue.

Interesting, though, to put a real price on the value of minke whale, the smallest of the whales, or on a much larger finback. This helps to focus our moral compass, don’t you think?

In fact the whole affair is neither comical nor tragic. It is just farce, absurd behaviour by all participants, wasting funds, energy, time and whales, in attempts to uphold two indefensible positions.

Brigitte Bardot when she was still an actress, before she became an animal-rights activist . (listal.com)

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Orca Aliens

March 26th, 2012

The orbiting, planet-hunting Kepler Telescope continues to find ever more planetary systems in our galaxy, and California’s Allen Telescope Array is again listening for signals from distant alien species. There really are likely to be small rocky, water-bearing and life-supporting planets somewhat like our Earth, orbiting their stars, scattered throughout our galaxy, and therefore throughout the universe.

The Kepler Telescope launched in 2009 and dedicated to identifying habitable planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy, is finding more planetary systems than anyone ever expected(nasa.gov)

Light travels about 16 trillion miles per year. The closest star to us, Alpha Centauri is four light-years away, and we are 50,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in turn is 150,000 light-years in diameter.

We’ll never travel to other stars and their planetary systems, so exchanging signals with other intelligent species much like ourselves over these immense distances is all we can hope for. Of course the conversations would be slow, considering that nothing exceeds the speed of light, not even Italian neutrinos.

Such a faint hope, then. Perhaps some of these planets, many light-years away, support life forms more complicated than bacteria. Among these, perhaps some species have evolved complex cooperative behavior, and have what we think of as intelligence.

What would they look like? How would they communicate with each other? Would they be aware of themselves? Of their communities? Of their planet? Of the rest of the universe? Would they try to communicate with intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy? Why would they? The questions are endless, and we may never get answers.

Sharing planet Earth with us are some intelligent, cooperative hunting mammals that have brains and anatomies sort of like ours. Wolves, chimps and dolphins come to mind. If we are going to succeed in communicating with any other species, we should start here.

Killer Whales – Orca - are the largest of the dolphins, and are as good an example as any to think about. We have tagged them, tracked them, mapped their DNA, counted them, figured out some of their life histories and their relationships with each other, observed and recorded their hunting behavior and their migrations, and recorded and analysed the sounds they make.

Orcas observe and circle a seal on an ice floe (nus.edu.sg)

The whales cooperate to rock the floe with a bow wave to dislodge the seal (telegraph.co.uk)

In the Antarctic, some Orcas hunt minke whales, some hunt seals, some hunt fish, and others hunt penguins.

But we have utterly failed to communicate anything important with them. What sort of language do they have? Do they have a language? We think they have sub-cultures that vary among families or pods. How do these emerge, how are they taught and communicated?

Orcas cruise the oceans of the planet, they are clearly intelligent by any definition, but they don’t build things. They are not going to emit signals out into space in an attempt to contact other imagined species on other extremely distant worlds.

Though exciting to contemplate, the odds of our receiving emitted signals from alien species on planets orbiting other stars must also be perilously close to zero.

A tagged female Orca swims from the West Antarctic Peninsula in a non-stop return trip to the warm waters off the coast of Brazil at the peak of the southern summer, traveling 9400 km in 42 days at about 12 km/hr. Such trips appear to be common, but their function is unknown, a matter of speculation.

There is no reason to think that intelligent species on other planets, if they exist, will be anything like us, let alone have any of our addiction to building things. And though the Universe may be filled with life – perhaps mostly bacterial in complexity, perhaps not – we are too far away from any other planetary systems to ever visit them.

To think we are somehow going to communicate with other species on other planets is also beyond unlikely. We can’t even do it with species we co-exist with here.

Even if the Universe is teeming with life, the distance are so great that we really are on our own. This makes it ever more critical that we conserve, protect, and recover what we can of our own ecosystems. We should celebrate the extraordinary complexity and beauty of the other intelligent species we share this planet with – elephants, chimps, wolves, ravens, sperm whales, dolphins, and all the rest.

Meaningful communication with another species would be so amazing.

These are harsh years on this planet, but why not dream?

The Allen Telescope Array searches for signals indicating intelligent elsewhere in our galaxy, an expensive and futile effort (seti.org)

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Cod, the Fading Icon

March 6th, 2012

The sad saga of cod decline on the east coast of North America continues. Fisheries scientists now say that their surveys and models indicate that the remaining population of cod in the Gulf of Maine has reached a dangerously low level and that continued harvesting will push the stock to collapse.

The stock of cod in the Gulf of Maine has always been accessible to small boats fishing from shore communities. That could soon be over. (gma.gov)

Though they didn’t recommend complete closure of the fishery, along the lines of the Canadian relatively permanent moratorium on cod fishing, they did recommend such a deep cut that fishermen said cod fishing in the Gulf of Maine would no longer be worth the effort. In frustrated response, the fishermen say their own catches indicate there are still plenty of cod in the Gulf of Maine to sustain a decent harvest.

Fishing boat carrying cod into Gloucester, Mass (nytimes.com)

Both of course cannot be right. The conflict is a familiar one, played out in practically every fishery that has ever been regulated by non-fishermen. The fishermen base their conclusions on the ease with which they find and capture the fish, and they distrust the scientists’ models. The fisheries scientists don’t reject what the fishermen report, but base their own conclusions on a wider set of data, and of course
they believe in their models.

So are there enough cod to sustain some sort of fishery, or aren’t there? The reality is that we don’t know for sure, either way. Such uncertainty is what all fisheries scientists – and all ecologists – live with, a defining feature of their science. But such uncertainty drives everyone else nuts – fishermen and politicians especially.

Cod landings in the gulf of Maine over the past century: now seriously low (NAFO.org)

Decisions still get made, and over the past decades, they have usually favored the fishermen – until things get truly drastic, and a moratorium on fishing a particular species is forced on everyone. In the case of Gulf of Maine cod, the fishermen have won once again…maybe.

The regional New England Management Council requested that NOAA approve a one-year emergency extension of the existing quota, instead of the devastating 82% cut previously announced. Under great pressure to agree, NOAA has agreed to a one-year extension, with just a 22% cut in quota.

So what happens a year from now? Will the cod population magically recover this season, and allow for continued fishing? It won’t. Instead, it will probably be worse off, closer to collapse, and facing an even longer recovery period. A full moratorium then becomes ever more likely.

A full size cod - memory or dream, but no longer reality (mass.gov)

It is odd that that the cod fishing will continue this season, despite the advice of the fisheries scientists. The NOAA is committed to protecting all of its fisheries, with the intent of supporting sustainable fishing in all of them. Applying the Precautionary Approach, it has made a lot of headway, despite the resistance of fishermen and politicians.

Why not this time? Perhaps this an election-year decision, driven by powerful Congressmen and disdain for the NOAA.. It certainly isn’t simply empathy for the fishermen.

The outcome, though, is that a once-great cod population dwindles ever closer to oblivion.

A sad icon, indeed. Perhaps next year we will be wiser.

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Still Eating Jellyfish

February 28th, 2012

I reserved Eating Jellyfish as a domain name about 6 years ago, when the prospect of eating jellyfish seemed an absurd outcome of overfishing, coastal development and pollution now clearly associated with the occurrence of schools or blooms of jellyfish. Jellyfish as the top predators in coastal ecosystems are now even more common. As we are forced to adapt, the idea of eating jellyfish is no longer as absurd as it was. And yes, of course, some cultures have a long history of eating certain species of jellyfish: it is just a very alien idea to the rest of us.

Nomura's jellyfish, Nemopilema nomurai, in the Sea of Japan. Like all jellyfish, it grows to full size in a single season. (natruresmightypics)

Recent reports of unexpected and large jellyfish blooms have come from most parts of the world – from the seas of Japan, China and Europe especially, but also from West Florida and the Gulf of Maine. What actually causes the blooms is not certain, for until recently nobody was really interested enough to try to find out.

But what we know is this: jellyfish blooms are associated with coasts of dense human populations where overfishing, eutrophication, habitat modification, invasive species, and a warming climate may all be involved. One of the most famous and clearest cases occurred in the Black Sea, where overfishing, warmer water, and nutrient enrichment from the Danube made for perfect conditions for a succession of jellyfish to explode in number.

Probably the other most famous blooms involve the giant Nomura’s Jellyfish in the Sea of Japan, each a monster, hard to harvest even if you wanted to, and immensely damaging to fisheries and fishing nets.

Nomura's Jellyfish in the Sea of Japan, is a huge challenge to harvest without sinking the boat.(naturesmightypics)

The most prolific and widespread is Aurelia aurita, the moon jellyfish, for it is globally distributed, and capable of explosive growth into very large populations. I have fond memories from when I was kid on the coast of Maine heaving dead washed up moon jellyfish at my sisters.

The moon jelly, Aurelia aurita, beautiful, graceful, and in every ocean (fins.activin.com)

Why are jellyfish so successful in degraded conditions? In a health ecosystem they compete with fish for access to food – mainly zooplankton. Where overfishing has removed the competing fish, they have few limits to growth. In eutrophic conditions, for instance around the mouths of major rivers carrying high loads of P and N, they also tolerating the lower levels of dissolved oxygen that fish avoid: where coastal nutrients increase, so to do jellyfish. The result is a trophic cascade, a regime change, an ecosystem that is free of fish predators, dominated by jellyfish, and of very little value or interest to humans.

Dan Pauly's famous illustration of the impact of fishing down the food chain, a trophic cascade that ends up with jellyfish as the top predator (ecomarres.com)

What’s ahead, then? All of the stresses – overfishing, eutrophication, warming waters, habitat modification, human population densities are all likely to keep increasing along our coastlines.

We can do a couple of things about this. Of course trying to recover such stressed ecosystems, restoring fish as top predators, is the best, but not most likely outcome. Instead, we can also learn which species of jellyfish are actually possible to harvest and eat (some taste horrible). There are also likely to be some yet-to-be discovered medical uses of some species. And perhaps jellyfish have some potential as supplements to animal feeds.

We also need biologists who can help integrate knowledge of jellyfish ecology with that of the whole ecosystem, making jellyfish part of what fisheries scientists must consider in their attempts to manage both fisheries and ecosystems.

Jellyfish as components of fisheries, and jellyfish as components of our own diets, are facts of life in this critical century.

We just have to suck it up. They’re mostly water anyway.

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Pipelines to the Coasts

February 2nd, 2012

The arguments over two new North American pipelines out of the Alberta oil sands – the Keystone XL Pipeline to the Texas coast, and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimat on the coast of British Columbia – get ever shriller. The Harper Government, once known as the Conservative Party of Canada, is committed to both pipelines. Now hearings have begun on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, and they should be particularly worth watching.

The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat on the Douglas Channel (investnorthwestbc.ca)

The Northern Gateway pipeline would be aimed west from the Alberta oil sands, through the mountains to the BC coast. The coast is remote, wet, indented by deep fjords, and sparsely populated by both indigenous and non-indigenous people.

Douglas Channel, near Kitimat, one of the world's most extensive and beautiful fjords (telus.net)

The Northern Gateway pipeline would end at Kitimat, 90 km from open coastal waters (bcwaters.org)

The Douglas Channel is one of the very deepest, longest and most spectacular fjords on the planet, 90 km from Kitimat to the coast.
Kitimat is a town of about 12,000 that was carefully designed and built in the 1950s to serve as an aluminum refinery by Alcan – bauxite is shipped in, and refined into aluminum. The process requires a lot of energy, and at Kitimat it comes from a huge hydro dam built especially for this purpose.

Kitimat, at the eastern end of the fjord, combines natural beauty, and golf course, with industrial development along the shore. (tourismkitimat.ca)

A little later LNG built a natural gas pipeline from the Alberta gas fields, to take advantage of the port built for the aluminum tankers, and ship liquid natural gas, at -160 degrees C, across the Pacific to Asian buyers.

Now, the same logic has brought Enbridge to Kitimat. The closest tanker port to the oil fields of Alberta, with a short route to Asia, looks irresistible, and so the Northern Gateway proposal is now before us. Actually, the proposal is for two pipelines, for a condensate is added to the oil sludge in Alberta so that the oil will actually flow, and the condensate would then be removed at Kitimat and pumped back in a smaller pipeline to Alberta.

There is no quicker way to get Alberta oil to Asia than through a BC tanker port (investnorthwestbc.ca)

This time is different though. No matter the extensive precautions that Enbridge proposes to take, spills and leaks are likely. The crude oil pipeline would pass through 800 km of land of many First Nations, and then supertankers would carry it out Douglas Channel, through the territory of the Haisla First Nation.

The Haisla do reject industrial development – they have at least tolerated and benefited from the aluminum and natural gas initiatives. Perhaps they may yet approve the Enbridge proposal. But they are smart and experienced, and the land and the fjord are theirs to protect.

Super-tankers are huge. The route down the fjord is long. High winds and extreme fogs are not uncommon. Tankers have accidents despite highly trained pilots, reinforced hulls, and escort tugs. And the impact of a spill of any magnitude would be horrendous. Yet despite the obvious risks, Transport Canada has now approved supertanker traffic to Kitimat.

A black bear fishes on the shore of Douglas channel(markhobson.ca)

An alternative exists: build the pipeline to Prince Rupert instead. Prince Rupert lies on the coast, not at the end of a long fjord. It is already an industrialized port, handling tankers. A natural gas pipeline has been in place since 1968. There are some steeper parts to traverse or tunnel through near the coast, and avalanche risk is greater there. But it avoids the greatest risk, the long tanker trip through Douglas Channel to transport the oil.

Hearings on the Northern Gateway Pipeline have only just begun, and will last a couple of years. If approved, the pipeline could be commissioned in 2017 – though legal challenges could delay it far longer. There is time, and reason, to explore the Prince Rupert option.

Until alternative energy is truly available, we are stuck with making the best of bad deals. We should not stress the Douglas Channel any more than it is at present, for it is irreplaceable.

Huge halibut are still caught in Douglas Channel (bcadventure.com)

At the same time, we can work to make the whole process of oil and gas recovery less horrible, less destructive of the only natural world we will ever have.

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The Ever Opening Arctic

January 13th, 2012

Alaska is disappearing under the snow this winter. The only US ice breaker, the cutter Healy, is currently plowing through 2-4 feet of ice, leading a Russian tanker full of fuel to Nome, on Alaska’s west coast, to ensure the town has sufficient to get it through the winter.

The one remaining decent US ice breaker is currently leading an oil tanker to Nome, Alaska. (cnn.com)

Sounds like old times? It isn’t.

Last summer, the Arctic ice cover melted enough once again to allow some ships through the Northwest Passage along Canada’s Arctic coast, and a lot more traffic along the Northeast Passage, or Northern Sea Route, along Russia’s Arctic coast. Multiyear ice is less every year, making it increasingly easy for ice breakers to manage.

Extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2011. Both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route along Russia's coast are still wide open. (noaa.com)

Speaking of ice breakers, Russia thoroughly dominates, with four that are nuclear powered, six that are smaller and conventional, and six more on order, including three nuclear powered. It’s largest is 160 meters long, over 1 1/2 football fields. The US has two ice breakers that need replacing, and one that is still good. China is building, and expects to be a powerful presence on the new trade routes. Germany has built a large research ice breaker. South Korea has also commissioned one, and is strengthening cargo ships to be able to break through thin ice. Canada seems to be slipping into oblivion in this particular race, and probably will not be a contender.

The Arctic is now expected to be ice free in summer in about 30 years. Free for the sea routes, free for oil exploration and exploitation, and free for fishing. In the middle of it all lies the large ‘donut-hole’ of unexploited international waters.

International waters in the Arctic will be ice free in summer and open for business in about 30 years. The red line indicates the current limits of the international waters (oceannorth.com)

Where are we with fishing and seabed rights to these international waters? Well, pretty well nowhere. Russia still claims a lot of that area for itself, and so does Canada, but a more likely outcome is that the central Arctic Ocean, the donut hole, will remain international waters, and subject to few regulations.

One of the responses comes from the Pew Environmental Group, whose ambitious mission is ‘to work globally to establish pragmatic, science-based policies that protect our oceans, preserve our wildlands and promote the clean energy economy’. They have organized a petition to attempt to protect the international waters of the Arctic from fishing until we know what there is is to be fished, and how it can be fished sustainably. This is really not impossible. Have a look. Sign if you wish.

Meanwhile, In coastal waters from the Beaufort Sea to Siberia, oil companies – Chevron, Imperial Oil, and yes, BP – are all developing their exploration efforts as regulations diminish to ensure they do so safely. Controlling them successfully seems to be far less likely.

The stakes in the Arctic continue to grow. Will we rationally and sustainably share the resources of the international high seas and the seabed below them, or will we once again all try to grab whatever is possible before it disappears?

We’ll need to work this out soon.

New Northeast Passage shipping lanes are opening up in the summer as the Arctic ice continues to melt (nytimes.com)

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The Gulf of Mexico: High Hopes.

December 14th, 2011

Dr. Nancy Rabelais continues to monitor, analyse and comment on the everlasting Dead Zone in the Northern Gulf of Mexico.

Nancy Rabelais is still at it. She deserves awards not just for her research on the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, but also for her enthused persistence for about the last 30 years. She has monitored the Dead Zone, warned relentlessly about it, pushed hard for corrective action, while the Dead Zone continues to recur every year. In fact, she just won the Heinz Award and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Ketchum Award honoring her extraordinary effort and ability.

The Dead Zone in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Red indicates hypoxic (oxygen depleted) water. (earthsky.org)

The Dead Zone, a result of runoff of fertilizers from the endless cropland of the immense Mississippi watershed, is, of course, just one of the discouraging stresses that have largely wrecked the Gulf Coast. Fish have been overfished, wetlands lost, barrier islands eroded, estuarine habitats degraded, pipelines laid, shipping channels dug, levees built, freshwater flow diverted – and then the ecosystem was hit first by Katrina and then by the pollution from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Existing (red) and planned (blue) oil and gas pipelines: it is getting crowded (eoearth.org)

What a test of resilience, for both a natural ecosystem and for the affected human communities.

In response to all of this, The Gulf Coast Restoration Task Force has just published its report, and it’s a report to want to believe in. The Task Force, established by Presidential Executive Order, was composed of representatives from the five Gulf States and from 11 Federal Agencies. The group listened to everyone – state and federal agencies, tribes, communities, academics, local government, business and industry, NGOs.

The Task Force report insists on the integration of the coastal human communities as a critical part of the ecosystem. It recognizes that waiting for scientific certainly is inappropriate, and that adaptive management should guide us through the restoration efforts. It calls for extensive monitoring and modelling by scientists, which is what they do best. It imagines a restored ecosystem, with improved water quality, protected coastal resources, sustainable fisheries, and enhanced community resilience.

If it is actually possible to restore a large-scale ecosystem, the Gulf Coast should be an excellent place to try. As always, the needed ingredients are knowledge, ability, incentive, cooperation, funds, and political will. Challenging, to say the least.

The Gulf of Mexico - large, complex, rich in resources, threatened but fixable (eoearth.org)

Of course it is a long-term plan, but nothing in the proposal is impossible. Much of it should have started sooner, in response to Rabelais’ work, and as a result of Katrina’s impact. Maybe this time it will become reality.

High hopes, yes. Based on past practices, we should limit our expectations.

But this is a chance, a rare opportunity to do the right thing. Let’s do this. And show ourselves and the world that it can be done, that large ecosystems can be restored to something that might be sustainable. They don’t need to deteriorate to sterility and oblivion.

Go Gulf.

Futile attempt at adaptation on Dauphin Island - a typical migrating sand bar, a barrier island off the coast of Louisiana. We're smarter than this (clui.org).

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Leadership Exists

December 7th, 2011

A young Canadian Inuit hunter, Jordan Konek and his cousin Curtis Konek, have traveled from Nunavut to Durban, South Africa, to the very sad UN climate change summit occurring there. They carry the message that the Arctic is melting and that their hunting culture will soon be lost.

Jordan (left) and Curtis Konek, Inuit from the Canadian Arctic, are in Durban, calling for action(theglobeandmail.com).

They are there because Canada once again is the pariah, the voice for taking no action on controlling carbon emissions. No country in the world, not even the US, is more disappointing than Canada, which continues to advertize the Alberta tar sands as the ‘ethical alternative’. Such an embarrassment.

Joesph Konek accepts the Colossal Fossil mock award on behalf of Canada at the UN climate talks in Durban (globeandmail.com)

Other industrialized countries of course have succeeded in taxing carbon emissions.

The best recent example is Australia, where per capita carbon emissions have been the world’s worst – greater than in both Canada and the US. Now the 500 most polluting companies in Australia will have to pay $24 per ton on CO2 emissions. The target is 80% reduction of 2000 levels by 2050. The resistance to this has been great, and will continue to be so. But it has happened.

Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, announcing the new carbon tax (independent.co.uk).

Carbon emission taxes have in fact existed in the four Scandinavian countries since 1990-1992, and the United Kingdom since 2001. Some taxes exist in India, and even China is indicating plans to limit emissions.

Despite of the unfortunate official federal positions of Canada and the US, a few states and provinces are going their own ways. A cap and trade scheme is pending in California; nine North East states established the Regional Greenhouse Initiative for cap and trade in 2006 and 2009, though New Jersey’s Governor Christie wants out; the US Western Climate Initiative, involving California (the 6 other states withdrew in November) and 4 Canadian provinces has at least not totally collapsed in the current political climate; Quebec province and British Columbia have carbon taxes; and Ontario has an encouraging Green Energy Act.

Lisa Jackson, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, is a rare effective environmental leader in the US at the national level (politico.com).

Even some North American cities are going it alone. Boulder, quite famously, started a Carbon tax in 2007, and is the greenest city in the country. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco are moving toward sustainability. Vancouver plans to be carbon neutral by 2012, and to be the greenest city in the world by 2020.

A movie worth looking for is The Island President, currently doing the film festival circuit (it won the award for best documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival in September). Directed by Jon Shenk, it follows the efforts of the extraordinary president of the Maldives as he tried in 2009 to get the international community at Copenhagen to pay attention to the impact of global warming on low lying island nations.

Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives (nytimes.com)

Leadership may not come from our nationally elected leaders – though as Australia and the Scandinavian countries tell us, that isn’t impossible – but it can come from smaller jurisdictions, and this certainly should continue to give us hope.

It’s all a reminder that strong, passionate and intelligent leaders do exist.

We should encourage them wherever we can find them.

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