Sea Notes

Enjoy a Virtual Aquarium Experience in the Bay Area

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is bringing a virtual Aquarium scuba experience to concertgoers, Giants fans and participants at other public events throughout the Bay Area during a “Share the Love” summer.

How does this virtual Aquarium on wheels work? You  connect to the truck’s wifi connection on your touch-enabled smart phone. Then you can login as a male or female diver and swim around the tank full of sharks, turtles, penguins, sardines and jellyfish, all displayed on the side of the truck. When you encounter one of the creatures, you and the creature react and you win a “badge.” At the end of the interaction, you can post an image of the badges you won on Facebook.

Full schedule appears below.

June 19, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Sacramento, Rivercats Game: Concourse

June 20, 7 a.m., Sacramento, Good Day Sacramento – On Air Feature

June 22, 12 p.m., Petaluma, Sonoma Marin Fair

June 24, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., San Francisco, Justin Herman Plaza

June 25, 4 p.m. – 7 p.m., San Francisco, Giants Day: Willie Mays Plaza

June 26, All Day, San Francisco, Summerthing Concert: Golden Gate Park

July

July 1, TBD, San Rafael, Marin County Fair

July 2, All Day, Mountain View, Vans Warped Tour: Shoreline Amphitheater

July 3, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., San Francisco, Union Square Day

July 4, 3 p.m. – 9 p.m., Mountain View, SF Symphony 4th of July Firework Spectacular

July 7, All Day, San Jose, Music in the Park: San Jose

July 8, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., San Francisco, Corner of Battery & Sansome

July 9, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., San Francisco, Corner of Powell & Market

July 12, All Day, Monterey, Monterey Bay Aquarium (formerly July 10-12)

July 13, 10 a.m., Walnut Creek, KNBR Baseball Skills Clinic: Heather Farms

July 15, All Day, San Francisco, Hyatt Regency SF: Market and Drumm Street

July 16, All Day, San Francisco, Hyatt Regency SF: Market and Drumm Street

July 17, All Day, San Francisco, Hyatt Regency SF: Market and Drumm Street

July 18, 1-3 p.m., San Jose, Chaves Store with KISS FM

July 21, 10 a.m., Alameda, KNBR Baseball Skills Clinic

July 23, All Day, Santa Clara, KMVQ's Topless Car Giveaway: Great America

July 24, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., San Francisco, Giants Day: Willie Mays Plaza

July 27, 10 a.m., Redwood City, KNBR Baseball Skills Clinic

July 29, 6 p.m. – 11 p.m., Mountain View, Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow Concert: Shoreline Amphitheater

July 30, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., San Francisco, Farmers Market: Harry Bridges Plaza

July 31, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., San Jose, Mi Pueblo Food Center: Story & King

August

August 3, All Day, Mountain View, KFOX Kihncert: Shoreline Amphitheater

August 4, 8 a.m.-1:30 p.m., San Jose, KNBR Baseball Skills Clinic

August 5,  6 p.m. – 1 p.m., Mountain View, Toby Keith Concert: Shoreline Amphitheater

August 6, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Fremont, Fremont Festival of the Arts

August 7, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Fremont, Fremont Festival of the Arts

Fish with Six-Pack Abs, Black Penguin & Other Oddities

Who says there's nothing new under the sun? It's certainly not true under the surface of the water. Case in point these items, from the sublime to the absurd to the just-plain silly:

-- University of Rhode Island researchers have created a genetically engineered farmed trout with a body that looks more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Uma Thurman. With six-pack abs and a muscular hump, it's supposed to help aquaculture producers, since these meatier fish convert food into muscle more efficiently. Sort of like the super-salmon that other researchers are engineering. On looks alone, my reaction: Eeewwww!

-- On South Georgia Island near Antarctica, Andrew Evans reported for National Geographic Traveler that he encountered an all-black king penguin. And he has the pictures to prove it! It's a rare, but not unique, case of an animal producing excess melanin that colors its skin -- or in this case, feathers -- dark black.

-- Finally, if you've always thought that pet goldfish were bubbleheads without a dime's worth of intelligence -- think again! They're quite adept at learning complex behaviors, up to and including synchronized swimming.

Falling in Love with a Fish

While some chefs are willing to (illegally) serve meals that feature endangered species like whales, chefs like Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York are changing the world for the good with their cooking and their ideas.

Dan was a featured speaker at our Cooking for Solutions events in 2009. and told this story about an ecological fish farm in Spain. It blew my mind then, and is even more impressive here, at the TED Conference, in a context that offers a revolutionary and transformative vision for how we can feed ourselves -- and the planet. Enjoy!

Right on, Target!

Great news this week! Target Corp. announced it will no longer carry farmed Atlantic salmon at any of its 1,700-plus stores across the United States. It's a huge and very public step in support of sustainable seafood -- one that Target took in consultation with the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program.

Though Seafood Watch is best know for its consumer pocket guides(more than 33 million distributed since 1999, plus another 200,000 downloads of the Seafood Watch iPhone app), the science-based program is also deeply involved in partnerships with major seafood buyers. Those buyers -- including ARAMARK and Compass Group (the two largest food service companies in North America) and Santa Monica Seafood (the largest seafood distributor in southern California and the Southwest -- are using their buying power to demand sustainable seafood from their suppliers.

By putting their dollars behind sustainability, they're helping Seafood Watch change the way fish are caught and farmed around the world. And that  puts us on the path to a future with healthy oceans.

Added note: Safeway stores also announced plans this week to develop sustainable seafood purchasing criteria for its 1,700-plus stores. And Walmart has long been a leader in the field. The tide is indeed turning. And as Casson Trenor notes, that's reason to cheer.

New, Green Seafood Choices

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program updates its recommendations twice a year, with new scientific research reports behind any changes in sustainable seafood rankings.

The latest updates are out, including three new Best Choices (green) recommendations for species raised in the U.S. in closed systems: shrimp, freshwater prawns and freshwater coho salmon.

The salmon-farming recommendation is a first for Seafood Watch. Right now, the particular method is used by a single farm, and its production is largely spoken for, taken by a few major seafood buyers. But there's hope that other aquaculture operators will adopt the same closed-system approach.

You can download the Seafood Watch iPhone app, print out a Seafood Watch pocket guide for your region, or use your mobile device to access Seafood Watch recommendations wherever you go.

Regardless of method, you can use Seafood Watch to vote with your dollars for healthy oceans. It's abundantly clear that chefs and major seafood buyers are listening. 

What's the Sound of One Prawn Eating?

More to the point, why should anyone care what noises a prawn makes while chowing down?

Well, research scientists in Australia think capturing audio and video of feasting crustaceans could make prawn farming more sustainable. And since shrimp farming is one of the major aquaculture activities around the world today, that's a big deal indeed.

The researchers with CSIRO -- the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization -- in Australia want to learn three things: How much prawns are eating, how quickly they consume the food available to them, and how efficiently they convert food into more prawn.

That information could help prawn farmers adjust how much they feed prawns -- potentially reducing waste, which translates into less localized pollution and a smaller amount of wild fish caught and turned into prawn-feed. In the process, they'd also cut labor costs associated with shrimp farming.

Waste and food sources big issues -- key factors considered by our Seafood Watch fisheries researchers in assessing the sustainability of any aquaculture operation.

The Australian institute hopes to improve the sustainability of the nation's prawn aquaculture -- and of shrimp farming around the world -- by applying the results of its research. It's just one of several initiatives aimed at improving aquaculture practices, under CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans program.

Check it out, and listen to the sound of one prawn eating, on the Discovery News blog.