Category Archives: aquaculture

Fewer Americans Are Buying Guns Without Background Checks Than Previously Thought

by AbelMESLimmugw Posted on January 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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Is the case for background checks for gun buyers gaining momentum? In a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Tuesday, public health researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities found that 22 percent of all gun sales in the past two years around the United States were conducted without background checks—nearly half as many as previously thought. The new study asked 1,613 gun owners about when and where they acquired their most recent firearm, and whether they were asked to show a firearm license or permit, or to pass a background check. (The researchers note that the self-reporting study may have limitations, as it is based on the respondents’ memory rather than documentation.) The study is the first national survey of its kind since 1994, when an extrapolation from a survey of 251 gun owners estimated that 40 percent of all guns sales occurred without any background checks.

Yet, despite the lower percentage shown by the research, many Americans continue to purchase guns through so-called private sales with no official scrutiny: According to the study, 50 percent of people who purchased firearms online, in person from an individual, or at gun shows did so without any screening. That occurs most often in states with looser regulations on sales, where 57 percent of gun owners reported buying guns without background checks, compared to 26 percent in the 19 states that now mandate universal background checks.

The decades-old 40-percent figure was long a point of contention in the gun debate, criticized by gun groups as false (the NRA called it a “lie”), yet also widely cited among researchers and policymakers in the absence of any updated studies.

Despite a lack of federal legislation regulating private gun sales, the study’s authors suggest that state and local efforts to mandate universal background checks are making progress. And Philip Cook, a Duke University gun violence researcher who conducted the 1994 survey, told The Trace that the new results should be encouraging for advocates of stricter gun laws. “The headline is that we as a nation are closer to having a hundred percent of gun transactions with a background check than we might have thought,” he said. Referencing his previous survey, he noted that the updated figures mean “it’s more attainable, and cheaper, to pass a universal requirement than it would be if 40 percent of transactions were still being conducted without these screenings.”

Studies have shown that background checks can help curb gun violence, as well as limit interstate gun trafficking; it’s been well documented that guns originating in states with lax gun regulations inundate states with tougher laws and fuel gun crime. But even with a solid majority of Americans now undergoing background checks, the researchers note that millions of Americans continue to acquire guns free of any government oversight.

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Fewer Americans Are Buying Guns Without Background Checks Than Previously Thought

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Republican Congresswoman Discovers Her Followers Love Obamacare

by SallySteele079 Posted on January 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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With Republicans convinced they need to repeal Obamacare ASAP but unsure of how they want to replace it, Rep. Marsha Blackburn issued a public plea for help on Tuesday. The Tennessee Republican—and member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team—asked the Twitter masses to take a poll on whether they like the law. Turns out Blackburn’s followers are pretty big fans of the Affordable Care Act, with 84 percent of the 7,968 votes opposing a repeal of Obamacare.

Online polls are hardly scientific. But the GOP’s hopes to make Obamacare magically disappear without having to offer a replacement took a serious hit on Tuesday, when the American Medical Association—the country’s largest organization of doctors—wrote a letter to congressional leaders demanding that any tweaks to the health care law ensure that the 20 million people who gained insurance under Obamacare don’t lose coverage. That request would be impossible to meet under the various proposals floated by Republican politicians so far.

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Republican Congresswoman Discovers Her Followers Love Obamacare

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Read Deval Patrick’s Scathing Indictment Against Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

by IsidraMerrill Posted on January 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick—who in 1985 worked on the defense team that represented three black civil rights leaders targeted by Sen. Jeff Sessions in the notorious voter fraud case from Alabama’s Perry County—has penned a scathing letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders urging them to reject his appointment as attorney general.

Describing the Perry County case as a “cautionary tale” when political objectives are favored over facts, Patrick wrote: “Thirty years ago, because it was widely understood and appreciated that his appointment to the bench would raise a questions about this Committee’s commitment to a just, fair and open justice system, Mr. Sessions’ nomination was withdrawn on a bi-partisan basis. I respectfully suggest to you that this moment requires similar consideration and a similar outcome.”

Patrick was among more than 1,100 practicing attorneys and legal scholars who wrote to Congress on Tuesday voicing similar opposition to Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general. “At a time when our nation is so divided, when so many people feel so deeply that their lived experienced is unjust, Mr. Sessions is the wrong person to place in charge of our justice system,” his letter continued.

Separately, multiple NAACP leaders who were protesting Sessions’ nomination inside his Alabama office were arrested.

The powerful denunciation on Tuesday marks the third time in nearly three decades Patrick, now the managing director at Bain Capital, has formally challenged Sessions. He first argued against Sessions in the 1985 Perry County voter fraud case, in which three civil rights leaders were wrongly accused of tampering with absentee ballots. The following year Sessions was nominated to become a federal judge, and Patrick testified against the appointment. Sessions was rejected to serve on the federal branch in large part because of the Perry County ruling and charges of racism that sprung from the case.

Sessions’ nomination has caused widespread alarm among civil rights leaders, many of whom have pointed out that his work as US Attorney in Mobile and as Alabama’s senator involved efforts to dismantle voters’ rights, allegations of racism, and staunch opposition to immigration. His hearing is scheduled for January 10th—the same day Trump has announced he would be holding a rare press conference for reporters.

Read Patrick’s letter below:

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Read Deval Patrick’s Scathing Indictment Against Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

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Megyn Kelly Is Leaving Fox News. Here’s Why She Belonged There.

by ChastityKeener Posted on January 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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After more than a dozen years with Fox News, Megyn Kelly confirmed reports on Tuesday that she was leaving the network to join NBC, where she’ll take on three new roles: daytime show star, Sunday news program host, and contributor to coverage of breaking news and political events. The official announcement ended speculation over Kelly’s future at Fox as she entered the final months in her contract with the network that made her a household name and a cable news star.

Media pundits were quick to lavish praise on NBC for landing the much-sought after anchor, but many on social media criticized the network for their high-profile hire, pointing to her frequent race-baiting questions and controversial conflation of Islam and terrorism. Kelly rose to to even greater prominence in breaking with Fox during her public feud with Donald Trump this election season, but she was still a standard bearer for many of the networks favorite causes: anti-immigration, race baiting, and Islamophobia. Here are some of Kelly’s most cringeworthy moments during her tenure at Fox.

December 2010: Kelly compares describing “illegal immigrants” as undocumented to calling “rape nonconsensual sex.”

December 2013: Weighing in on a story by an African American woman describing the pain she felt as a child when she constantly saw only white Santas, Kelly said, “Santa just is white…Jesus was a white man.”

December 2015: During a discussion about Obama’s statement in which he made a distinction between ISIS and Islam, Kelly argued that denying ISIS is Islamic is denying “reality.”

June 2015: After a video surfaced of a McKinney, Texas, police officer body-slamming a teenage girl, Kelly insisted she was “no saint either.”

January 2016: In yet another anti-immigrant moment, this time concerning Germany’s refugee policy, Kelly asked, “Is Germany over as we know it? Is Europe?”

Conservative pundits, however, considered her out of place at Fox and celebrated the news of Kelly’s departure.

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Megyn Kelly Is Leaving Fox News. Here’s Why She Belonged There.

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How Oyster Farming is Cleaning Our Water

by pauletteguajardo Posted on August 10, 2016

American palates are becoming more and more refined these days, with trends like pescetarianism and the farm-to-table movement increasing the demand for locally raised fish and shellfish. Overfishing remains a huge problem and so do contaminated waterwaysbut there may be a simple, natural solution on the horizon: oysters.

Increased Demand for Local Shellfish

Oyster farming on the East Coast has doubled in the past six years, according to NPR, and its no mystery why. Americans who can afford to do so are becoming increasingly interested in where their food comes from. They want local, sustainable, organic, antibiotic-free food and this desire has made a big mark in both foodie culture and agriculture.

“As much food as possibly can go on my plate at the least amount of money I can spend used to be the way things were,” says Jimmy Parks, a chef and owner of the Butcher Station in Winchester, Virginia. “Now people are getting away from that, and they’re gravitating toward … cleaner sources.”

For some species, like salmon and tuna, this trend may be alarming. Fish farms are notoriously dirty and bad for the planet, with antibiotics, unnatural fish feed, overpopulation and huge amounts of waste putting a strain on oceanic and river ecosystems.

Oysters, however, are a different story.

Oysters as Natural Water Filters

For one thing, oyster farming has an extremely low carbon footprint. According to the environmental news blog Grist, oysters are one of the cleanest animal protein sources you can eat in terms of carbon emissions.

Additionally, oysters act as natural water purifiers. According to The Nature Conservancy, roughly 40 percent of U.S. waterways are currently considered too polluted for swimming or fishing. Oysters can help change that. Grist reports that a mature oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water every day. That means that just one acre of populated oyster territory can filter 140 million gallons of water per day.

The mighty bivalves are ocean filters, Grist reports. Oysters soak up nitrogen through their flesh, turning the nutrient into a benign gas. They absorb nitrogen into their shells, too, and can store it there for decades, or even centuries, long after the little creature inside its shell is dead. At their most plentiful, the Chesapeakes oysters were capable of filtering all 18 trillion tons of bay water in about a week, rendering it nearly crystal clear.

Gulnihal Ozbay, an oyster researcher at the University of Delaware, told NPR that oysters not meant for consumption could be added to polluted waterways to help purify them, hopefully making them more appropriate for swimming, drinkingand fishing down the road.

Rebuilding Ecosystems and Economies

Finally, oysters stand to improve the health of some very important ecosystems: those of local waterways and our own human economies.

“The coolest thing is within our cages we see these little shrimp-like creatures that actually eat the pseudofeces of the oysters, Tim Devine, a Maryland-based oyster farmer, tellsNPR. And then things like seahorses and crabs and other things eat those little guys, and then the food chain has begun.”

This helps create a reef-like ecosystem within the waterway, bolstering aquatic populations and filtering water to boot.

From a human population perspective, these mighty little mollusks also play a strong role in maintaining balanced local economies. For years, Chesapeake Bay fisherman survived on proceeds from oyster hunting and sales. When oyster populations collapsed due to overfishing, many oystermen considered making career changes.

I tell you, there was nothing left, fisherman Johnny Shockley told Grist. We knew every spot there was in this river that was a good oyster bottom, and they were all gone.”

Maryland only legalized aquaculture (oyster and clam farming) as recently as 2009. Since then, the economy around oysters and other shellfish has begun to recover, to the relief of many local fisherman and their families.

Oysters are small creatures, but they sure can make a big impact, and its tiny steps that could add up to big changes for our oceans and waterways.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How Oyster Farming is Cleaning Our Water

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Ocean acidification is eating into mussels

by EstelleHorrell Posted on July 7, 2016

flex your mussels

Ocean acidification is eating into mussels

By on Jul 7, 2016 11:55 amShare

Ocean acidification is bad for mussels. You may think you’ve heard this story before (cf. clams, oysters, scallops) but wait! This time it’s a little different.

It turns out that acidifying seawater prevents the tasty mollusks from attaching to rocks and other surfaces, scientists from the University of Washington found in a new study. And while mussels are famously good at sticking to things, it turns out they’re pretty useless at everything else. If they can’t cling to rocky surfaces near the surf line, they sink, and become easy targets for predators.

“A strong attachment is literally a mussel’s lifeline,” said lead author Emily Carrington.

This is especially concerning for mussels farms, where weak attachments are already responsible for loss of as much as 20 percent of mussels.

Ocean acidification already threatens coral, crabs, and other shelled organisms that may not survive as their environment grows more acidic. The oceans are already over 30 percent more acidic than they were 200 years ago; by the end of the century, they could be 150 percent more acidic. Beyond lost biodiversity, the effect on aquaculture could threaten both global food security and the seafood economy as a whole, which employees an estimated 10 to 12 percent of the world’s population.

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Economies of Scale: Smart Ideas to Fight Fish Fraud

by DorothyWbb Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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When you buy fish from the grocery store, it’s not always clear exactly what you’re getting. The industry is fragmented and murky, plagued by seafood fraud—when fishermen or processors take cheaper, lower quality fish and disguise or mislabel it to try and make more money. Don’t count on regulators to catch this deception. In 2009, the Government Accountability Office took a hard look at the three agencies responsible for detecting seafood fraud, and concluded they were failing to “effectively collaborate with each other”—putting consumers’ wallets and health at risk.

Monica Jain, the founder and executive director of Manta Consulting Inc.—and also our guest on this week’s episode of Bite—believes innovative businesses may hold the key to solving some of the industry’s woes. Drawing on a background in marine biology and decades of experience in environmental consulting, in 2013 Jain founded the Fish 2.0 conference, which pairs smart seafood start-ups with investors looking to make an impact.

At Fish 2.0 2015, held at Stanford in November, entrepreneurs from 37 companies pitched everything from portable algae farms to skateboards made from reclaimed nylon fishing nets to a room of tony impresarios.

“Take out your duct tape, paper clips, tools,” urged Jain in her opening speech. “Think like this guy!” she exclaimed, as the screen behind her flashed to a cheesy poster for MacGyver, the ’90s television show about the secret agent whose name has become synonymous with resourcefulness in any situation. “If we all do it, I think we can change the future of the oceans.”

Several of the companies that pitched at Fish 2.0 focused on making seafood more transparent and safer to eat. Here are a few that just might have landed the next big idea:

Better tracking: Vessel tracking systems are little boxes placed on boats that work with GPS and satellite systems to follow where fish is being caught. Some new versions have cameras that capture footage, says Jain, helping to show whether the boat is complying with quotas, using the right gear, and throwing bycatch—sea creatures caught accidentally—back into the ocean. Pelagic Data Systems makes a solar-powered box that sends data via cellular networks, marketed to small-scale fishermen who can’t necessarily afford fancy new technology. The company hopes to make it easier for fishermen to gather and pass along information about what they catch.
Snazzier transparency tools: TRUFish hopes to create “fraud-free” fish. The company’s founder, Roxanne Nanninga, teamed up with a lab at Duke University to use DNA-sequencing to verify the true genetics of any type of fish, “fresh or frozen,” no matter what’s on the label.
Thoughtful brands: Let’s be honest—not many of us know how to distinguish tilapia from cod or halibut after it’s been skinned, fileted, and frozen. So it can be tricky to know when we’re the victims of seafood fraud. Several seafood brands now provide customers with detailed information about a fish filet’s source. California-based Salty Girl Seafood (deemed the early stage business with the “strongest market potential” at last year’s Fish 2.0 competition) sells pre-marinated filets that arrive in packaging displaying the species of fish, where it was caught, and a code customers can enter online to view more details about what they’re eating.
Farmed fish redemption: Love the Wild, based in landlocked Colorado, promotes traceable farmed fish, which arrives with a sauce so you can quickly whip up a dinner of “Red Trout with Salsa Verde” or “Catfish with Cajun Creme.” Though fish farming historically has a bad rap—mostly based on mistakes made by massive unregulated fish farms in Asia—aquaculture is undergoing something of a renaissance in the United States. Fish farmers control every step of the growing process, which makes it easier for interested farmers to raise food in an environmentally friendly fashion. Says Jain: “People want their systems to be less wasteful and polluting because those are not just better for the environment—they’re more profitable. It creates more production risk to do it unsustainably.”

Bite is Mother Jones‘ new food politics podcast. Listen to all of our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS.

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Economies of Scale: Smart Ideas to Fight Fish Fraud

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A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

by TiaZABcztkkghe Posted on March 5, 2016

Mud flats sit where water used to be next to the Great Salt Lake Marina. REUTERS/George Frey

A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

By on 5 Mar 2016 7:00 amcommentsShare

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up, thanks to 150 years of human diversions from the rivers that feed it. That’s the takeaway of a white paper released by a team of Utah biologists and engineers. And if those diversions continue ramping up, as a bill working its way through the Utah legislature proposes, the waterbody may face a withering fate similar to other dried-up salt lakes around the world.

The namesake of Utah’s capital city, the Great Salt Lake is the the state’s defining geographic feature and one of its economic anchors. A 2012 report by the Great Salt Lake Council estimated that the total economic output of the waterbody at $1.32 billion, between mineral extraction from the lake, brine shrimp egg production (used in aquaculture all over the world), and recreation that takes place in and around it. It also serves as an essential migration flyway for millions of birds each year.

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But the lake, which approached record-low water levels last year, is under threat. According to the Utah researchers’ calculations, since the mid-19th century, consistent reductions from the rivers that feed the lake have caused the lake’s elevation to drop by 11 feet, lose roughly half its volume, increase the lake’s salinity, and expose approximately 50 percent of the lake bed.

Those numbers are unrelated to natural fluctuations over wet and dry periods, including the current drought. Since the lake is a closed basin, the only way water leaves it is through evaporation. That makes it fairly simple to calculate just how much water has been lost to agriculture and urban growth.

Utah State University

Currently, the Utah Senate is debating a bill that would fund a number of water infrastructure projects, including the controversial Bear River Development Project, which would dam and divert more water from one of the Great Salt Lake’s main feeds. Supporters of the project say it’s designed to support the state’s growing population and water consumption needs. But the researchers estimate that the project would lead to an additional 8.5 inch drop in the Great Salt Lake’s elevation, and another 30 square miles of exposed lake bed.

Not only does that spell trouble for the lake’s economic and ecological importance, a dried-up lake would ramp up dust storms in the Salt Lake City area, which already suffers some of the worst air pollution in the country. It doesn’t take much searching to find an example of how damaging such withered lakes are for the people around them. In nearby California, the researchers write:

Diversions from the Owens River for the city of Los Angeles desiccated Owens Lake by 1926, causing it to become one of the largest sources of particulate matter (PM10) pollution in the country. This dust affects about 40,000 permanent residents in the region, causing asthma and other health problems.

Lake Urmia in Iran and the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are other examples of how massive water diversions from closed basins for human uses can create environmental health disasters.

To meet the needs of a growing population, and to protect their future health, the researchers stress that Utah policymakers should focus on taking less water, not more, from the Great Salt Lake — especially when it comes to agriculture, which consumes the majority of all that diverted water. Like so many states throughout the arid American West, Utah has to weigh its future against a history of overdrawn resources.

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Tip for getting people to use the metro system: Block all the roads

by Victoria39L Posted on June 25, 2015

Tip for getting people to use the metro system: Block all the roads

By on 25 Jun 2015commentsShare

“Not nearly enough people are taking advantage of the hands-down best way to get to Charles de Gaulle,” thought Paris-area taxi drivers. “How on earth can we get people to actually take advantage of this fairly fast and direct public transit to the airport, even if it sometimes smells a tiny bit like vomit?”

“Je sais!” piped up one visionary. “Under the guise of protest against this American leech-company with a dumb German name — which, ugh — that has come in to take over the cab industry with its fancy apps and cheaper fares, let’s block all roads to the airport so that would-be travelers have no other option but to take the metro.”

A chorus of French cabbies arose: “Mais oui! C’est génie!”

From Al-Jazeera:

French media showed images of burning tires blocking part of the ring road around central Paris, as well as scuffles between protesting cabbies and other drivers, while police in riot gear at one point intervened by shooting tear gas at demonstrators. …

“We are faced with permanent provocation [from Uber] to which there can only be one response: total firmness in the systematic seizure of offending vehicles,” G7 taxi firm head Serge Metz told BFM TV.

“We are truly sorry to have to hold clients and drivers hostage. We’re not doing this lightly,” he said.

Well played, French cabbies. Well played, indeed.

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French taxi drivers strike in Uber fight

, Al-Jazeera.

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Farmed fish are breaking out of their pens at an alarming rate

by DomingaArce Posted on June 25, 2015

Farmed fish are breaking out of their pens at an alarming rate

By on 25 Jun 2015commentsShare

If you’re a child of the 90s, you might feel something like this when it comes to sea creatures escaping from captivity. But it’s now 2015, and we farm fish on the reg, so it’s time to grow up. Wired explains why:

Aquaculture is fast becoming the main way that humans get their seafood fix. But fish aren’t cattle; they don’t turn passive when cooped up. Every year, hundreds of thousands of salmon, cod, and rainbow trout wriggle through damaged or defective cages and flee into the open seas, never to be recaptured. In addition to costing farmers millions in lost revenue, these escapees can wreak havoc on their wild brethren by polluting gene pools and spreading pathogens.

Trine Thorvaldsen, a researcher in Norway, where it’s a criminal offense to let farmed fish out of captivity, has been studying how these fish escape. Turns out, it often comes down to human error:

“There was one instance in which fish were being pumped from one cage to another, but the workers didn’t realize there was no net to keep them,” says Thorvaldsen, who is a cultural anthropologist by training; by the time anyone noticed the silly mistake, 13,000 salmon had swum away. Most of the fateful miscues that lead to mass “fishbreaks,” however, are less spectacular in nature. Workers sometimes have difficulty operating equipment, for example, and brush the vessels’ destructive propellers against the containment nets. Or they inadvertently tear those nets while using cranes to adjust the weighted tubes that maingtain the shape of underwater cages. Farmers are often unaware of these small fissures until hours later, at which point it’s often too late to dispatch recovery teams to the site.

Scroll down to the end of that Wired article if you want to read about a few of the more “spectacular fishbreaks of recent vintage” — like the time 30,000 rainbow trout escaped captivity in Scotland after otters ate through their net.

Fish escapes are an especially big concern when it comes to farming genetically modified salmon, like those that Massachusetts-based company AquaBounty Technologies designed to grow faster and bigger than normal Atlantic salmon. AquaBounty has been trying to get FDA approval to sell its fish for more than two decades, NPR reports, but many are concerned about what would happen if the modified salmon make their way into the wild:

Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.

Genetically modified salmon contain the growth hormone gene from one fish, combined with the promoter of an antifreeze gene from another. This combination both increases and speeds up growth, so the salmon reach a larger size faster.

Altering a fish’s genes also changes other traits, the review found. Genetically modified salmon eat more food, spend more time near the surface of the water, and don’t tend to associate in groups. They develop at a dramatically faster rate, and their immune function is reduced.

It seems like a fat, immunocompromised, anti-social fish wouldn’t last a day in the wild, but as one of Devlin’s colleagues told NPR, that’s not a given — there are plenty of examples of invasive species thriving where they weren’t supposed to.  Fortunately, AquaBounty farms on land in tanks, and according to the FDA, the company has screens, filters, and nets blocking off the drains and pipes that might otherwise offer an escape route.

Still, humans are so good at messing things up, so maybe we should just move all this fish farming to — I don’t know — Nebraska? Better yet, let’s just make these giant salmon so fat that they couldn’t fit through those pipes even if they tried!

Source:
KEEPING FARM FISH LOCKED UP KEEPS ECOSYSTEM CALAMITY AT BAY

, Wired.

Genetically Modified Salmon: Coming To A River Near You?

, NPR.

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Farmed fish are breaking out of their pens at an alarming rate

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