Posts tagged with FISHING

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Lionfish for Lunch, But Also Here For the Long Haul

By Andrew C. Revkin
lionfish for supperCarl SafinaLionfish prepared three ways.

Just in case you missed it, my friend and occasional fishing tutor Carl Safina has a string of posts on Mark Bittman’s blog on the continuing invasion of American waters by lionfish, a reef denizen, studded with toxin-tipped spines, that was most likely brought here from Asian waters by the aquarium trade.

The latest piece describes a fishing derby and lionfish feast, but stresses that it’ll be impossible to deter this particular invasion with only a culinary counterattack, given that there are likely millions of these fish already inhabiting American reefs. (Here’s my earlier post on eating invasive species, including lionfish.)

It’s almost certain that any effort at controlling this species, as with the introduced Burmese pythons spreading in Florida, will at best be a holding operation. Welcome to the ecology of the Anthropocene — an era in which human decisions (or indecision) will exert a prominent, and in many cases dominant, influence on global systems with long-lasting results.

This is why I’m overdue to write my next song (some others here), to be titled “Tumbleweed Blues.”

Shark Fin Soup Off Menu at China’s Official Banquets

By Andrew C. Revkin
shark finsEuropean Pressphoto Agency Shark fins drying on a sidewalk near the docks in Hong Kong.

Here’s some great news, as reported by  in The Times Hong Kong bureau:

China said Tuesday that it would prohibit official banquets from serving shark fin soup, an expensive and popular delicacy blamed for a sharp decline in global shark populations. The ban, reported by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, could take as many as three years to take effect, and it remains unclear how widely it will be adhered to across a sprawling nation where orders issued by Beijing are often shrugged off by officials in faraway regions and provinces.

Still, the decision to stop serving shark fin soup at official functions was welcomed by environmental campaigners. Experts have long cautioned that soaring demand for shark fin soup over the past two decades has imperiled shark populations around the globe. “This is a very positive step forward,” said Andy Cornish, director of conservation at W.W.F. in Hong Kong. “It is the first time that the Chinese central government has expressed a decision to phase out shark fin from banquets funded by taxpayers’ money.” He said the move would send an important signal to consumers in China, the largest market for the fins. [Read the rest.]

As with tiger parts, exotic pets, elephant ivory, ebony and other rare, but coveted biological goods, stemming demand is as vital as clamping down on illicit trade. It’s great to see the powers that be in China shifting on shark fins.

Sylvia Earle on Optimism and the Up and Down Sides of Fossil Fuels

By Andrew C. Revkin
sylvia earleKip Evans Sylvia Earle in her element.

I was listening to the deeply engaging radio program “On Being,” created and hosted by Krista Tippett, while driving to Bard College on Sunday to participate in a conference exploring paths to new economic norms. Tippett’s guest was Sylvia Earle, the underwater explorer, marine scientist and conservation campaigner. It’s well worth listening to (their entwined voices are a mellifluous duet of curiosity, passion and joy). But you can also read the conversation here.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the transcript. First, Earle recalls the importance of basic rules for living passed on by her parents:

Dr. Earle: My mother used to come into my room and remind me that I should try to leave a place better than I found it. My father would watch me try to take things apart. It was my inclination to see how things worked. He reminded me that we should remember how to put things back together again when you take them apart. Try not to lose any of the pieces. I’ve taken that to heart over the years just looking at what we generally are doing to the planet. We don’t know how to put things back together again. We certainly are good at taking things apart and we have lost a lot of the pieces.

This resonated; for me it was my maternal grandfather who conveyed these messages, and they stuck. This speaks of the importance of parental (and grandparental!) engagement with children, which probably plays a bigger role in shaping modes of living than anything someone learns in school or through the media.

Then comes a passage that speaks potently of how access to fossil fuels has been an incredible boon, and the source of the prosperity that has allowed us to build the capacity to observe and comprehend planet-scale changes, but also helped accelerate and intensify our impacts on the planet’s biological and climate systems: Read more…

When Cod Piled High

By Andrew C. Revkin
cod-fishing boatCarl Safina A captain’s sketch of a fishing boat out for cod off Massachusetts in the mid 1800s.

Here’s a Dot Earth “Postcard” sent by the marine conservationist and author Carl Safina after exploring a branch of the National Archives near Boston that hold logs and other documents from the 19th-century cod-fishing fleets that once abounded in nearby waters:

A visit to the National Archives outside of Boston with marine historians Bill Leavenworth and Karen Alexander opened the world of New England fishing journals of the 1850s and ‘60s. One conclusion: We now have only 5 percent of the cod they had then. The fishermen fished for shares of the profits with handlines from the rails. Each fisherman usually hauled up dozens of cod daily. When the cod showed signs of depletion, the gear changed to longlines and then nets. One captain’s sketch indicates the density of boats, the density of birds (showing abundant prey fish for cod in the area), and the fishermen and their lines.

All day I had the captains who authored those 150-year-old logbooks whispering in my head. They would have been amazed by our sonar, radar, GPS, internal combustion engines, rods and reels, bananas, and bags of potato chips. But to see that the bay where they’d earned their livings catching cod was now totally devoid of cod-fishermen; that would have had them utterly astonished.

cod-fishing log bookCarl Safina One document in the archives listed fishermen and their individual catches.

There’s more on the past and future of cod in my recent post on “Putting the Cod Back in Cape Cod.” And of course the history of this fish, and fishery, is beautifully explored in “Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World,” and “Four Fish.” Another important book on fisheries and oceans is “The Unnatural History of the Sea,” by Callum Roberts.

Send in a postcard of your own if you find yourself somewhere, or experiencing something, related to the themes of this blog.

Europe’s Bad Habit of Fishing for Jobs

By Andrew C. Revkin

Can Europe end its lamentable habit of using a variety of costly subsidies to prop up unsustainable fishing fleets?

The European Union fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, wants this, as she made vividly clear in a speech in July as she issued proposed reforms.

Marine conservation groups want it even more, chief among them Oceana, which released a report yesterday tallying the various subsidies and mapping the intense fishing pressure that this level of government support produces.

Here’s one of the more jarring findings:

Thirteen EU countries had more fishing subsidies than the value of the landings of fish in their ports.

Here’s a detail from Oceana’s map of different countries’ globe-spanning fishing efforts. The report notes that half of the estimated $4.5 billion in subsidies in 2009 were for fuel costs, enabling globe-spanning fishing trips. Click the map or this link to view the full image.

But 14 European Union nations, ranging from relative newcomers like Latvia to France, have signed declarations insisting that subsidies are vital to their interests, according to Common Fisheries Policy Reform Watch, a Web site created by three members of the European Parliament.

Read the report, The European Union and Fishing Subsidies, for details.

Agence France-Presse quoted Commissioner Damanaki reacting to the report by saying that cutting back subsidies was “one of the priorities of fisheries policy.”

So far, there are few signs that European Union member states share her view. I’d like to think that the new report might prod things along, but I’m not holding my breath.

On Fishing as a Path to Caring About Fish

By Andrew C. Revkin

As I mentioned recently, while camping in Montauk, N.Y., earlier last month, I broke away with my younger son, Jack, and three of his friends to head offshore with Carl Safina, the marine conservationist and author, for a half-day fishing expedition. (Safina is also a masterful angler.)

I recently was able to edit some video I shot of that excursion, which you can watch above. There’s a point where I inserted a cautionary note, “Warning – stomach contents ahead,” because the boys were interested in what the bluefish they caught had been eating and so did some dissection while cleaning the fish. Be forewarned. The video also shows two approaches to cooking bluefish, which has an unjustified reputation for fishyness. (I’ll ask Mark Bittman for his appraisal.)

On his Web site, Safina has posted a reflection on the outing, and on the value of fishing as a portal to broader engagement with, and respect for, the non-human living world, otherwise known as “nature.” This line particularly echoes my feelings: Read more…

On the Merits of Parks and Bluefish

By Andrew C. Revkin
Andrew C. Revkin The beach at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, N.Y., after a rainstorm.

I owe an apology to regular readers — and comment contributors — on having Dot Earth go silent for the past week without hanging out a “Gone Fishing” (and camping and swimming) sign.

In what has become an annual tradition for a batch of friends from Philipstown, N.Y. — we were camping behind the dunes, and almost entirely off the Internet and power grid, at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, N.Y. The park, like so many other state, county and local preserves and public spaces, is proof that one doesn’t need a lot of money to reconnect with natural landscapes and seascapes.

Even when times are tight, or perhaps especially then, it’s vital to invest in and maintain public spaces that can be utilized by all citizens, rich or poor. What’s your favorite?

Campers nearby were sanitation workers and boiler inspectors and car-service drivers and retired police officers. We all compete ferociously nine months ahead of time as tent sites become available on the Web or phone at $155 a week. A few miles west, where Hamptons lanes are lined with Bentleys and Maseratis and high privet hedges, that amount might buy one person one lobster dinner with a nice bottle of local white. Here it bought hordes of children exercise, skinned knees, sandy sleeping bags, breaking waves, shooting stars and wide smiles.

We were drenched by astounding deluges for the first couple of days, but the kids dug pits in the beach, we moved one tent inside another, and took in a special rainy-day matinee of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” at the small local theater.

And of course there was fishing. My son, Jack, and three buddies took bluefish and fluke fishing lessons from a master teacher, Carl Safina, the marine conservationist and author of a string of valuable books, including “The View From Lazy Point,” a mesmerizing reflection on global ecological trends and the web of life around his beach house on a bay near Hither Hills. Here’s my son fighting a five-pound bluefish: Read more…

Putting the Cod Back in Cape Cod

By Andrew C. Revkin

I love fishing, which was one of the ways, growing up in Rhode Island, that I developed my broader passion for the wider living world outside of the human-built one. As a kid paddling around in a dinghy, I could “feel” the otherwise invisible seabed by bouncing my weighted hand line off the bottom. While waiting for a bite fishing for mackerel from a floating dock, I’d stick my head down close to the water and peer at the fascinating assemblage of small shrimp, sea squirts and other creatures growing on the immersed wood and floats.

I only went offshore on a cod-fishing party boat once, and still recall the forest of bent rods and piles of round-bellied fish in the bins. It had the feel of a binge, and it was. That’s why this short film on the once and future New England cod fishery, produced by the Pew Environment Group, hits home: Read more…

More on Sunspots and Sushi Choices

By Andrew C. Revkin
bluefin tuna sushiRamsay de Give for The New York Times Bluefin tuna being prepared at Masa, a sushi restaurant reviewed by Sam Sifton for The Times.

A couple of pieces in The Times relate to ongoing coverage here of the causes and consequences of variations in solar activity and the issues raised by the burgeoning human appetite for sushi-bound fish, particularly bluefin tuna.

Tuna Surprise

First, Sam Sifton’s assessment of the bluefin tuna at Masa, an extraordinary (both for its food and prices) Japanese restaurant in midtown Manhattan, elicited a storm of feedback on Twitter and blogs, prompting him to seek reader comment on the Diner’s Journal blog. Have a look and weigh in. When I saw the blog post, this is what I wrote on Tumblr:

It’d be great if diners could swipe something across a sample and figure out through DNA if it were Pacific or Atlantic bluefin as a starter (Pacific bluefin are also overfished, but not nearly as much).

Also, there are many fabulous substitutes for over-exploited species enjoyed in sushi bars. Albacore, for instance, can be sustainably fished and is as buttery and luscious as hamachi (yellowtail).

I shot the video above for Dot Earth at Bamboo Sushi, a restaurant in Portland, Ore., that catches its own albacore with its own boat and serves only fish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.

Sun Trouble

DESCRIPTIONNASA Solar variability matters on Earth.

An Op-Ed article by two solar scientists in today’s paper explores the implications for human affairs of both peaks and lulls in solar activity.

It relates both to my exploration of predictions of a protracted solar minimum and post touching on the vulnerability of our information and financial webs to solar storms.

Report Reveals Forces Destroying Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

By Andrew C. Revkin

A powerful and innovative international journalistic effort has revealed the web of interests — from boat captains to European government agencies to fish auctions — behind the devastation of Atlantic bluefin tuna.

I encourage you to explore the reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a companion documentary by Television for the Environment. (Also known by its lower-case acronym, tve, the nonprofit documentary unit was created in 1984 by WWF, known in the United States as the World Wildlife Fund, the United Nations Environment Program and the Britain’s Central TV). Here’s a video summary:

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There’s been plenty of fine reporting on the assault on this extraordinary ocean-roaming predator, which has become a coveted delicacy that often has a six-figure price tag attached once prized specimens are delivered to auctioneers in Tokyo.

But I haven’t seen a report anywhere that lays out so clearly the full sequence of steps in the chain: from boats to “ranches” where illegally caught fish are fattened for market before they had a chance to reproduce to government offices in France, Spain and other countries eager to prop up the fishing industry despite the ecological cost.

The online package is also notable for its design, using Treesaver, a flexible and highly effective presentation technology. It also confirms that compelling investigative reporting can be undertaken even as conventional media go through a turbulent transition to whatever comes next.

The relationship of the television production to a United Nations agency and an environmental group can prompt questions about objectivity, but the package, over all, appears robust. (At the bottom of this post you can read a comment from WWF on the limits of the group’s relationship to the production. I’m seeking responses from European officials and the treaty organization responsible for conserving Atlantic tunas.)

Here are some highlights from the summary: Read more…