Sea Notes

Good News for Sharks

There's been no shortage of troubling news about sharks in recent years. And when a shark makes headlines, it's usually not in the best light.

So it's great to be able to report two pieces of excellent news this week. First, the House of Representatives passed legislation that further cracks down on shark finning. The bill, H.R. 5741, the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, now goes to the Senate for action.

And in Australia, a team of divers tracked down and rescued an endangered grey nurse shark found with a 9-foot-long fishing gaff stuck in her throat. The 6-foot-long female shark was spotted one day and a rescue team from Sea World Australia organized to remove the gaff.

"This was a difficult and dangerous operation and I congratulate everyone involved for their professionalism and speedy response," said New South Wales government official Ian Macdonald in a story reported in the Daily Telegraph. "She was pale, which you'd expect after such an ordeal, but once released she swam back to the other sharks." (And here's a video clip from CNN.)

With stories like that, and the good work of WildAid as it enlists Olympic athletes in a campaign to end shark finning, this year the phrase "summer of the shark" may take on a whole different meaning.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, our own white shark research project continues this summer. We and our research partners have tagged four juvenile white sharks in southern California waters. We still hope to bring a young white shark to Monterey for a brief stay before as we've done three times in the past four years.

(Credit Grahame Long for both photos, including the great shot of Sea World veterinarian David Blyde reaching through a PVC pipe to remove the gaff from the nurse shark's throat. Copyright 2008 News Limited.)

Fish, Fuel & the Future

The skyrocketing price of oil is having unintended consequences on the high seas.

From Europe to Asia, fishing fleets are staying in port and fishermen are rising in protest at the staggering cost they have to pay to fuel up their boats if they want to go fishing.

Right now it's a short-term crisis. But if oil remains expensive, the economics of fishing could well undergo a sea change.

And the results -- which are going to be painful for fishing families and the fishing industry -- could have some benefits for ocean wildlife.

There's general agreement that there are too many fishing boats in the world, many underwritten by huge subsidies from national governments, chasing too few fish.

Will those fleets shrink in size in the face of expensive fuel? Will that mean fewer hooks and nets chasing the fish? And will that, in turn, give resilient fish populations " target="_blank">a chance to rebound from the overfishing that has led scientists to warn that global fisheries could collapse by 2048 if we don't change our ways?

Time will tell.

If nothing else, some fishermen may do what U.S. shrimpers are doing: using biodiesel fuel and going green as a way to set themselves apart in the eyes of consumers who are looking for more ocean-friendly approaches to commercial fishing.

(Wild-caught U.S. shrimp is a Good Alternative of the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Check our other recommendations for ways to select seafood and preserve healthy ocean ecosystems.)

Ocean Goddess, Ocean Art

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we believe that helping people fall in love with ocean life is a powerful channel through which they can become active protectors of the ocean.

The idea's not unique with us. The great quote by Senegalese environmental leader Baba Dioum sums it up well: "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

So, how to foster a culture in which love of the ocean and its creatures is a social norm?

The folks at UCLA's Fowler Museum are giving it a try this summer and it's wild!

It starts with an exhibit of spiritual/ethnographic art about the African water goddesses called  Mami Wata, offers a film festival that includes the likes of The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Secret of Roan Inish and Splash, and mixes in a series of children's art workshops with ocean themes.

The end result is something that could -- just maybe -- help to change our consciousness about the ocean.

In any case, it looks like a lot of fun. I haven't seen Mr. Limpet since I was a kid, but I remember it as a fun film -- a blend of live action with animation as Mr. Limpet transforms from man into cartoon fish and helps battle German submarines during World War II.

I'll miss that movie, since it screens at high noon on Wednesday, July 9. But I'll be down in L.A. with my 8-year-old son in a couple of weeks. I definitely plan to check the Fowler programs out. I hope to see you there!

(Mami Wata painting by Zoumana Sane, courtesy the Fowler Museum)

Carnival of the Blue 14

It's that time again -- when the best ocean blogging from across the web comes together in the monthly Carnival of the Blue.

This month's edition is hosted by Anthony Townsend at The Blue Economy. Check it out.

The Perils of Penguins

Penguins have had a good run in the popular media over the past few years, from March of the Penguins to Madagascar to Happy Feet.

Outside of movie theaters, the story's not as great. Penguins in temperate regions already faced a are in decline because of a quadruple whammy:  mining of guano, egg harvesting, commercial fishing and oil spills.

Now comes a new study indicating that climate change is adding new stresses, as penguins are forced to swim farther from shore to find food. The loss of sea ice and icebergs means fewer places where their prey species can aggregate.

No polar bears in the Southern Ocean, no penguins in the Arctic, but these ice-dependent creatures face similar threats.

Dee Boersma of the University of Washington spells out the details in a paper just published in Bioscience.

There's a lot we can do as individuals to reduce our carbon footprint. And we can take ownership of the overfishing issue by using a Seafood Watch pocket guide when buying seafood, or becoming a Seafood Watch Advocate and encouraging businesses to change their seafood buying practices.

It won't happen overnight, but our incremental changes will make a different -- for polar bears and penguins.

The State of the Seas

Not a day goes by without a headline or broadcast report about something happening to the health of the ocean. The news isn't always good, but at least more attention is focused on the largest living space on the planet. With awareness, you open the door for solutions. (In the case of the ocean, ignorance definitely isn't bliss.)

With that in mind, the bad news first:

In the Mediterranean, new research estimates that shark populations are down more than 90 percent from historic levels 200 years ago -- with all the negative impacts on overall ecosystem health that result when you all but eliminate the top predators in the system. Hammerheads, mackerel sharks and blue sharks have been wiped out as accidental bycatch, or killed as pests by fishermen who don't value their place in the ocean's living web. And, sadly, there are still few regulations in place to protect sharks in the wild.

There's also disturbing news about the presence of chemical pollutants in the deep ocean. Scientists surveying deep-water cephalopods in the northwest Atlantic Ocean have detected chemical pollutants (like tributyltin and PCBs) in the tissues of deep-sea squids. Tissue samples from deep-sea squids and octopus -- including the cockatoo squid (Galiteuthis spp.) and the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) -- yielded surprising concentrations of persistent organic pollutants. Chemical like tributyltin (TBT, used in anti-fouling paint on boats), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and flame retardants were documented in tissue samples collected by scientists in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Why worry? Because these cephalopods are an important part of deep-sea food web -- including a source of food for deep-diving whales and dolphins.

On the good-news front, Southern California Edison is spending $40 million to create an artificial reef off the coast of Orange County as mitigation for damage to native kelp forests caused by discharge from its San Onofre nuclear power plant.

The 2.5-mile-long reef, mandated by the state Coastal Commission, is intended to provide footings to anchor giant kelp that will become the basis for a restored kelp forest ecosystem where wildlife can thrive.

Here in Monterey Bay, the return of sea otters from near-extirpation by fur hunters in the 18th and 19th centuries provided conditions for a similar revitalization of the kelp forests. Today, you'd never know that the bay was denuded of kelp by sea urchins, abalone and other grazers after otters were eliminated in the bay. They returned in the early 1960s, and the kelp forest followed them. Keep your eyes on San Clemente to see if the reef there has the same effect.

Finally, a celebration reported this week for "the most important microbe you've never heard of." NPR's Joe Palca took part in commemorating the discovery of a marine bacterium called Prochlorococcus. Why? Because it's super-abundant in the ocean, and is probably responsible for the oxygen in one out of every five breaths you take. Although it's one of the most abundant organisms on Earth, it was utterly unknown to science until 20 years ago.

Friday's Featured Film: Wingless Flight

When your goal is a future with healthy oceans, you have to keep a sharp eye on the land. That's because the impact we humans are having on planetary ecosystems don't stop at the shoreline.

With that in mind, and with gasoline prices in my neighborhood soaring toward $4.75 a gallon for regular, I was delighted to discover this small car company that plans to bring a sleek all-electric car with a 120 mile cruising range and a top speed of 85 miles per hour to market before the end of the year.

Called the Aptera and built in Carlsbad, California, it will retail for less than $30,000; carry two passengers, an infant/toddler car seat, and quite a bit of cargo ("15 bags of groceries, two full-size golf club bags or even a couple of seven-foot surfboards"); and is flat-out gorgeous, in a futuristic way.

By 2010 they intend to produce and sell a gas-electric hybrid that gets 120 miles PER GALLON of gas. The only bad news: Initially, it will only be be available here in California.

Check it out in this Popular Mechanics test drive:

A Seafood Webcast

Want to sharpen your sustainable seafood smarts? And pick up some tips on selecting and cooking  seafood?

You'll find all that and more during a Monterey Bay Aquarium video webcast this Friday, June 13 featuring Dory Ford, executive chef of our Portola Restaurant, Seafood Watch Outreach Manager Sheila Bowman, and yours truly.

Dory and Sheila will will offer recommendations on what to order at restaurants and what to buy at the market. And they'll share some exquisite sustainable seafood recipes from our annual Cooking for Solutions celebration.

Along with everything else, you'll learn how you can be an advocate for our oceans and spread the word about sustainable seafood in your community. And you can submit questions via email for a Q&A session during the webcast.

You can register here for the hourlong webcast.

I hope you'll join us!

Celebrate the Ocean

We'll celebrate World Ocean Day this weekend at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and I hope you'll find ways to connect and celebrate as well.

For all the threats to ocean health (and they are abundant), there is still great cause for hope. And our connections with the ocean are joyful, whether it's a walk on the beach or a whalewatching trip, or just the view of a sunset over the sea.

So in honor of the day, here are some celebratory photos and items of news -- starting with this incredible photo of a breaching humpback whale in Monterey Bay. (Yes, that's the aquarium in the background.)

There was more encouraging news on the marine mammal front in a report from the National Marine Fisheries Service that both spotted and eastern spinner dolphin populations are finally recovering from the huge losses they sustained from tuna fleets before the mandate for "dolphin-safe tuna".

As scientists tell us repeatedly, the oceans and marine life are incredibly resilient -- if only we'll give them a chance to recover.

And overfishing is on the agenda, here in the United States and around the world. NBC News featured the issue in a Thursday night broadcast, and will highlight it again as part of The Today Show on Sunday -- World Ocean Day. (Part of the solution -- both Seafood Watch and the Marine Stewardship Council certification program -- are featured prominently.)

We'[re not there yet, but step by step we're getting closer.

And that's cause for celebration, today and every day.

Cooking Up a Storm

The connection between what we eat and the health of the oceans is becoming clearer every day. Scientific journal reports on the disappearance of 90 percent of the ocean's major predators, or the prospects for all commercial fisheries worldwide to collapse by 2048 if we don't change our ways give a sense of urgency to the issue.

That's why Monterey Bay Aquarium created the Seafood Watch program. And its why our Cooking for Solutions events include a day-long Sustainable Foods Institute for members of the media. We want to get the issue onto the radar of food editors as well as environment writers.

This year, we had an unprecedented turnout of top writers, from established publications like the Washington Post and Bon Appétit Magazine to writers and bloggers for newer online outlets like Sustainable Food News and Grist.org.

And they've already had a lot to say about what they learned.

- Gourmet Magazine's Barry Estabrook has posted three times, looking at the impact of climate change on agriculture, and twice about how to make good seafood choices. (And thanks to Gourmet for the photo.)

- Roz Cummins, who blogs for the environmental news site Grist.org, found a renewed sense of hope as a result of her participation, and offers up one of Rick Moonen's recipes (for Chicken-Fried Trout).

- Bonnie Powell of The Ethicurean explores in depth the issue of sustainability and what it REALLY means, tapping into the wisdom of Fred Kirschenmann, senior fellow at Iowa State's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. She also dives into the topic of sustainable seafood, with the help of Edible San Francisco Magazine.

- Sam Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc. and writer of the Chews Wise blog, was astonished (as we were) to learn from Chef Rick Moonen that Las Vegas serves up 60,000 pounds of shrimp every day -- and probably not much sustainable shrimp in the lot. Rick was an Institute panelist, and the author of Fish Without a Doubt.

- Radha Marcum of Delicious Living offers some bullet points for individual action (learn to love sardines is No. 1 on her list).

These are just the early web posts. Many more articles are likely to follow in print media, and beyond.

Last note: You know the message is getting through when bloggers like The Slow Cook's Ed Bruske take culinary leaders to task for serving up a cornucopia of Red List seafood at a showcase event in Washington, D.C.