Climate change is making it more dangerous to eat certain fish
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Climate change is making it more dangerous to eat certain fish
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What’s the catch? With seafood, it’s often a mystery.
That last time you ordered the sea bass, odds are you got some other denizen of the deep — maybe an endangered species. In a report out Thursday, the advocacy organization Oceana suggests that fish fraud is rampant. That, in tandem with climate change, poses a dangerous threat to the world’s food supply
Over the course of a monthslong investigation, Oceana took 449 samples of seafood from restaurants, grocery stores, and markets, then sequenced their DNA to see what species they really were. One in every five fish tested had been mislabeled. More than half of the fish called “sea bass” were something else, often Nile perch, or giant tilapia. A third of the fish on the menu labelled “Alaskan halibut” — a thriving fishery — was Atlantic halibut, a species struggling to recover from overfishing.
“To guarantee that we still have fish in the future, we need to make sure that the seafood we are eating is properly labeled,” said Kimberly Warner, senior scientist at Oceana.” “Without that transparency we can’t tell if it is legally attained, implicated in human rights abuses, or safe,”
It’s one of two major threats to the world’s seafood supply, a vital source of nutrition for half the world’s population. Thanks to climate change warming the oceans, the amount of fish people could sustainably catch is now 1.4 million metric tons less than it was in 1930, according to a recent study. The mislabeling monkeyshines make the problem worse, thwarting efforts to police overfishing, and protect vulnerable fish stocks.
In an effort to clamp down on fraudulent labelling last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started monitoring imports of 13 species of fish, including bluefin tuna, abalone, and dolphinfish. But the Oceana testing shows that fraud still abounds where the government isn’t looking.
The flimflam schemes allows miscreants to hide rule breaking and environmental damage, and it also hurts regular eaters, Warner said.
“Diners in the Great Lakes region are thinking they are getting a freshly caught local species,” she said, “and instead they are getting something that’s been shipped halfway around the world.”
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5 Human Habits Harmful to Ocean Health
By Jaymi Heimbuch, Planet Green
No matter where we live, even if we’re in the middle of the Mojave desert or the middle of farmland in the mid-west, our connection to the ocean is surprisingly direct. The planet’s marine systems are intricately linked with our daily activities, even when those activities seem trivial or distant. Here are five ways small choices add up to big problems for the ocean’s health.
1. Carbon Emissions and Ocean Acidification
Every time we flip on the lights, turn on the water faucet, charge a cell phone, hop a plane or in any other way create carbon emissions, we’re directly causing the acidification of the ocean and the harmful disruption of marine life that results. The ocean can absorb about two-thirds of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere, but the more CO2 it tries to absorb, the more acidic it becomes. This altered pH causes everything from the softening or thickening of crustacean shells to the bleaching of corals to the overabundance of jellyfish. As we pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, ocean acidification worsens and marine life is being thrown out of whack.
Decisions like skipping an unnecessary plane ride, eating less meat, and buying green power can radically reduce your carbon footprint, and help alleviate one of the biggest threats facing our oceans.
2. Packaging and the Pacific Garbage Patch
Americans generate a lot of trash. Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year, a vast amount of it from packaging. From plastic bags, to take-out containers, to packaging used for everything from toys to food, we use up and throw out an incredible amount of something that will never, ever disappear. In fact, much of it is making re-appearances in our oceans. The Pacific Garbage Patch and four other trash vortexes illustrate the problem of plastics in our oceans. Plastics are not only killing marine life, but also entering the food chain to ultimately end up on our dinner plates through the seafood we eat.
By making purchases that take into account the packaging of the products, and choosing to a) minimize as much as possible how much packaging we consume and b) recycling as much of what we do end up consuming as possible, we can make big strides in stopping the flow of plastic into the ocean.
3. Sushi Dinner and Disappearing Seafood
Our fisheries that once seemed endless are now reaching the brink of collapse. Scientists estimate that if our current practices continue, 100 percent of global fisheries will completely collapse by 2050. That is a very short time from now. Even if you think of yourself as a sushi addict in the worst way, or can’t seem to live without salmon or shrimp a couple times a week, you can still make sustainable choices.
By cutting back where you can, keeping an eye on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood Guide, and taking advantage of handy techy tools for buying fish, you can help ensure that our seas will have fish in the future.
Photo Credit: mdid via Flickr
4. Over-Consumption and Whale Deaths
Wait, ordering that toy from Amazon.com could cause whale deaths? The short answer is yes. While humans have been sailing the seas for millennia, the shipping industry has skyrocketed over the last few decades. Much of that is due to our rabid consumption habits. Raw materials are transported on container ships to manufacturing plants, and products are then loaded up on ships to be transported to the hands of consumers. The more stuff we consume, the more stuff needs to be shipped across oceans. But crossing paths with those container ships and carrier vessels are whales.
The loud sounds of ships — or acoustic smog — makes it hard for whales to communicate with one another, which means heightened stress levels and decreased opportunities for mating and feeding, among other consequences. Even worse, collision with ships is a major problem for whales, including threatened and endangered species.
Reducing our consumption of material goods can literally help threatened whale populations recover.
5. Driving and Deep-water Oil Wells
Unless you’ve been living far, far away from any media source, you’re probably well aware of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to Deepwater Horizon, a BP-owned offshore oil rig that has been leaking since late April. It takes just the tiniest leap of logic to connect our reliance on oil to our car-dependent culture. Currently the US uses about 19.7 million barrels of oil a day, of which 71 percent goes to transportation via cars, trucks, buses, airplanes. So, the longer we stay reliant on fossil-fuel powered vehicles to get from point A to point B, rather than bikes and public transportation, the longer we stay dependent on drilling for those rapidly diminishing fossil fuels, which means a high likelihood of risky wells placed in deep water areas of the ocean and the statistically inevitable occurrence of another disaster like the one playing out in the Gulf of Mexico.
Minimizing our reliance on oil equates to keeping our oceans safe from deadly pollution.
Related:
10 Surprising Ways We Can Restore Our Oceans
12 of the Biggest Threats Facing Our Oceans
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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Giant Trawlers Are Gobbling Up Fish in Critical Marine Ecosystem
Industrial fishing operations are scouring the waters of the Barents Sea around Norway,threatening more than 200 fish species and potentially endangeringmillions of seabirds, seals, whales, sharks, and walruses.
Using satellite data and field work, researchers for Greenpeace spent three years documenting the devastating impact industrialtrawlers have hadon whatmany scientists call the “Arctic Galapagos.” In their report, “This Far, No Further,” Greenpeace concludes that”the largely unexplored and vulnerable northern part of the Barents Sea ecosystem is at the mercy of destructive fishing practices, due to the current lack of action to protect it by the Norwegian government or the fishing and processing companies.”
The report specifically implicates companies like Birdseye, Findus and Iglo, which are buying millions of pounds of cod fish caught by the destructive trawlers, as well as haddock, northern prawns and halibut. Greenpeace wants food companies, restaurants and retailers to refuse to traffic in fish caught in the Barents Sea. They are also calling for the Norwegian government to create an off-limits zone in the region.
There are several reasons why industrial trawling is such a big problem. First, itis simply “one of the most destructive methods of fishing,” says marine conservation biologist Calum Roberts, a professor at the University of York, England. “Over the last 200 years, it has converted once rich and complex seabed habitats to endless expanses of shifting sands and mud.”
The trawlers are “weighted with heavy metal rollers; they smash and crush everything in their path.” They can destroy deep-water coral reefs and kelp forests that provide food and breeding grounds for all manner of oceanic wildlife.
The sheer volume of fish that trawlers can catch is also extraordinary. Overfishing has already caused fisheries in other parts of the world to collapse, to the point where some scientists believe we could not just overfish but outfish the oceans by 2050. The increasing number of trawlers, fish processors, exporters and distributors that are now operating in the Barents Sea are putting the entire ecosystem there at risk, as well.
Plus, trawlers catch millions of other animals besides fish. “According to some estimates,as much as 40 percentof fish caught around the globe is discarded at sea, dead or dying,”reports Lee Crockett, Director of U.S. Oceans at the Pew Charitable Trusts. That means millions of whales, turtles, seals, seabirds and other marine life are indiscriminately being caught, killed and thrown back into the sea.
Greenpeace and other conservationists are advocating establishment of a marine reserve to put the most sensitive areas of the Barents Sea completely off-limits to all extractive uses. The organization is also urging fish processors to stop doing business with suppliers that are fishing the northern Barents Sea waters.
Consumers, meanwhile, can put pressure on retailers not to buy fish from producers that can’t document that their fish did not come from the Barents Sea.
Consumers can alsoalso consult the recommendations made at SeafoodWatch.org, a resource created by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California to help people choose seafood that’s been farmed or fished in ways that minimize their environmental impact.
Related
Overfishing is Actually Worse Than We Thought
12 Problems with Ocean Fish Farming
Photo Credit: g.norðoy
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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Giant Trawlers Are Gobbling Up Fish in Critical Marine Ecosystem
How microbes can make plastic from sunshine, carbon, and a little bit of love
How microbes can make plastic from sunshine, carbon, and a little bit of love
By Suzanne Jacobson 17 Aug 2015commentsShare
We build with it, eat from it, wear it, let our kids play on it, drive around in it, and decorate our houses with it. It fills our landfills, pollutes our oceans, occasionally leaches toxic chemicals into the environment, and makes your neighbor’s lawn look like toy purgatory. It’s plastic, and like it or not, it’s everywhere. Plastic is as much a part of our identity as humans as that one sweatshirt was a part of your identity as a middle schooler (that sweatshirt, by the way, probably also contained plastic). Unfortunately, a lot of plastic contains ethylene — a chemical made from petroleum and natural gas in a CO2-emitting process.
But fear not! Scientists are working on a greener way to make ethylene using genetically modified algae. Here’s the scoop from Scientific American:
The researchers were able to accomplish this by introducing a gene that coded for an ethylene-producing enzyme—effectively altering the cyanobacteria’s metabolism. This allows the organisms to convert some of the carbon dioxide normally used to make sugars and starches during photosynthesis into ethylene. Because ethylene is a gas, it can easily be collected.
Making ethylene doesn’t require many inputs, either. The basic requirements for cyanobacteria are water, some minerals and light, and a carbon source. In a commercial setting, CO2 could come from a point source like a power plant, Yu said.
But before you go toasting to the wonders of algae with your high fives and your plastic cups (seriously, would it kill you to use a glass?), you should know that taking a something like this from the lab to the market is a long process. And it could very well turn out that using algae to produce plastic will prove untenable on a large scale. Regardless, this is a cool example of scientists trying to use synthetic biology to address environmental concerns.
What’s synthetic biology, you ask? Here — let me explain it to you using legos and skateboards.
Source:
Genetically Modified Algae Could Replace Oil for Plastic
, Scientific American.
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Oceans 15
How much plastic is in our oceans? Ask the woman trying to clean it upCarolynn Box, environmental program director of 5 Gyres, talks about what it’s like to sail across the ocean, pulling up plastic in the middle of nowhere.
How catching big waves helped turn this pro surfer into a conservationistRamon Navarro first came to the sea with his fisherman rather, found his own place on it as a surfer, and now fights to protect the coastline he loves.
What seafood is OK to eat, anyway? Ask an expertWhen it comes to sustainable seafood, you could say director of Seafood Watch Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly is the ultimate arbiter of taste.
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How microbes can make plastic from sunshine, carbon, and a little bit of love
Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, solar panels, Ultima, Uncategorized
Tagged alo, anchor, article, ethylene, g & f, gmos, radius, seafood, solar panels, unfortunately, woman
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It turns out we’ve been trying to control the weather since forever
It turns out we’ve been trying to control the weather since forever
By Amelia Urryon 14 Aug 2015commentsShare
Don’t let the recent hype around geoengineering fool you — our attempts to control the world’s weather and climate way, way predate our current climate crisis. This week, historian James Fleming appears on The Adaptors to chat about humanity’s earlier attempts to literally make it rain, starting back in the 1870s. “General” Dy’renforth took it upon himself to attempt to end the Western drought by recreating Civil War battles in West Texas, the reverberations from which were intended “shake” the rain out of the clouds.
Did it work? Well, not really — but that didn’t stop Dy’renforth from taking credit for what rain did fall during the three weeks he spent firing cannons at the sky. But Fleming says we can give him the benefit of the doubt — he wasn’t a crackpot, just “sincere and deluded.” Which, of course, opens a bigger can of worms: What do we do about so-called “pathological science” — when well-meaning and even well-respected scientists can’t see past their own delusions — today?
The Adaptors host Flora Lichtman and Fleming talk out the macho roots of scientific culture, the ups and downs of geoengineering, and more. Listen to the full episode below, and, as always, subscribe here:
, The Adaptors.
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Oceans 15
How catching big waves helped turn this pro surfer into a conservationistRamon Navarro first came to the sea with his fisherman rather, found his own place on it as a surfer, and now fights to protect the coastline he loves.
What seafood is OK to eat, anyway? Ask an expertWhen it comes to sustainable seafood, you could say director of Seafood Watch Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly is the ultimate arbiter of taste.
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It turns out we’ve been trying to control the weather since forever
A huge, toxic algae bloom is basically eating the West Coast alive
spoiler alert!
A huge, toxic algae bloom is basically eating the West Coast alive
By Amelia Urryon 7 Aug 2015commentsShare
Remember that big algae bloom that was sweeping the West Coast a few weeks ago? Here’s an update: It’s still there, and it’s bigger, denser, and more toxic than anyone suspected. You know what this means, don’t you? Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, where we bring the worst news from our changing climate, straight to you.
This kind of toxic algae bloom — sometimes called a “red tide” — is not uncommon. But scientists have never known one to be this bad before, according to Reuters:
The bloom, which emerged in May, stretches thousands of miles from the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and has surprised researchers by its size and composition.
“It’s just lurking there,” Vera Trainer, research oceanographer with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Washington state, told Reuters on Thursday. “It’s the longest lasting, highest toxicity and densest bloom that we’ve ever seen.”
“It’s just lurking there.” Is it just me, or does that sound like the beginning of a creature feature flick about mutant mollusks? Before you ask, we’re not certain climate change is fully to blame — but we’re pretty sure we could be seeing more of these supercharged red tides in the future:
Researchers have yet to determine whether longer-term global climate change from rising levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions are playing a role, but the massive bloom may be a harbinger of things to come in any case, she said.
“Whether this is or is not due to climate change, I think it provides a window to the future of what we could see happen under climate change scenarios,” Trainer said.
What we do know for sure is that it’s costing us big time:
NOAA said in a statement that the closure of a Washington state razor clam fishery resulted in $9.2 million in lost income and has also damaged the state’s $84 million commercial crabbing industry.
First, with the salmon, then with the razor clams and crabs. It’s as if climate change is trying to turn us all into vegetarians — though that’s maybe not the worst idea, it’s not great news for my cioppino habit.
Source:
Massive toxic algae bloom reaches from California to Alaska
, Reuters.
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A huge, toxic algae bloom is basically eating the West Coast alive
Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized
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This giant algae bloom is ruining all the clams, making you cry
This giant algae bloom is ruining all the clams, making you cry
By Grist staffon 19 Jun 2015commentsShare
Remember how we told you that climate change is killing everything you love? If you live on the West Coast, chances are you love your seafood — especially when you can dig it out of the sand yourself. But a recent bloom of toxic algae — thanks to unusually warm ocean conditions — is clobbering the West Coast, making all those razor clams and Dungeness crab and, yes, even sardines, a lot less edible. I’m sorry to say: Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, your source for the (heart)breaking news on what climate change is fucking up this week.
Here’s the sad, fishy scoop from Quartz:
The algae in the bloom, named Pseudo-nitzschia, produce domoic acid, a neurotoxin, which was originally detected in California’s Monterey Bay in early May. By the end of the month it had reached “some of the highest concentrations… ever observed” in that area, according to UC Santa Cruz. Similar assessments are being made off the coast in Oregon, according to Michael Milstein of the NOAA Fisheries …
Fish like sardines and anchovies eat the algae and the nearby plankton, accumulating the toxin in their bodies. Kudela says researchers are still sorting through the data, but have measured toxicity in shellfish as high as 95 parts per million (ppm), and in anchovies from approximately 100 to 400 ppm. The legal limits are 20 ppm for both. The fish can then pass those toxins up the food chain to the birds and sea lions that eat them, causing neurological problems.
As bonus, here is a very sad video of a sea lion experiencing a seizure brought on by the toxins. If you need a pick-me-up after that — you will — look no further than the Puffin Cam.
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There’s a giant, toxic algae bloom stretching from Southern California to Alaska
, Quartz.
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This giant algae bloom is ruining all the clams, making you cry
Tom’s Kitchen: ¡Ceviche!
Mother Jones
I’m reading Paul Greenberg’s superb new book American Catch. In it, Greenberg teases out Americans’ weird relationship to the sea. “We are a nation of coasts,” he writes, in which “nearly half of the population chooses to live less than ten miles from the sea.” Yet on average, we eat just 15 pounds of fish and shellfish annually per capita, vs. 100 pounds of red meat. Don’t even get me started about how growing loads of Midwestern corn, mainly for livestock feed, takes out huge swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, the mainland US’s greatest fishery. Of the fish we do eat, a startling 91 percent is imported—much of it farmed under dodgy conditions and barely inspected by food safety authorities. Meanwhile, we export nearly a third of our own abundant wild catch.
Contemplating these contradictions made me want to eat some damned fish. So I went to Austin’s stellar old-school fish monger Quality Seafood to see what I could get from the seascape nearest me, the Gulf of Mexico. The display included a gorgeous stack of black drum filets, a firm white fish subtly streaked with red—and rated a “good alternative” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which scrutinizes fisheries based on their sustainability. Contemplating the brutal heat outside and my stash of produce at home—tomatoes, a red onion, serrano chiles, limes, etc—inspiration hit me: ceviche, that sublime, no-cook Mexican answer to sushi. Well, it’s not exactly like sushi—the acid in the lime juice breaks down the fish, effectively cooking it. Which beats the hell out of firing up the oven on a hot day.
So I snatched a filet of black drum and got busy with the cutting board. Here’s what I did. This dish brings together a lot of sharp, bright flavors in a lovely way.
Simple Ceviche
1 pound filet of a firm white fish—preferably from a nearby source—cut into ½ inch chunks
1 red onion, cut into ½ inch chucks
Sea salt and black pepper
4 limes, juiced; and at least one extra, in case
1 ripe tomato, cut into ½ inch chucks<
1 clove of garlic, smashed, peeled, and minced into a fine paste
1 hot chile pepper, such as serrano or jalapeño, minced fine<
A little extra-virgin olive oil
1 avocado, cut into ½ inch chucks
1 small head of cilantro, chopped
Put the fish, the onions, and a good dash of salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the lime juice and toss. There should be enough juice to fully submerge the fish. If not, juice another lime and add it to the bowl. Let the fish/onion/lime juice combo sit in the fridge, covered, for an hour or so (here’s an excellent Serious Eats guide to how long to let ceviche marinade based on your taste).
To finish, add the tomato, the garlic, the chile, a lashing of olive oil, and the avocado and cilantro (if someone in your crew hates cilantro, parsley and even mint work great). Toss, taste for salt, and serve with chips.
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Fish are great at fighting climate change. Too bad we’re eating them all.
Fish are great at fighting climate change. Too bad we’re eating them all.
Climate change may be screwing with your seafood, but it turns out your seafood has been fighting back.
Fish, like Aquaman, might not seem to have a lot of relevance in the world-saving department. Never mind that the world is 99 percent ocean by habitable volume: We’re up here in the 1 percent of living space we care about the most, and they’re stuck breathing through gills and riding around on sea-ponies.
But in a DC Comics-worthy plot twist, a new study shows that fish have been doing a lot more world-saving than we thought, by way of sequestering carbon to stave off climate change — which on the danger scale is up there with supervillain plots like blocking out the sun or moving the moon. The catch (har) is that we can’t eat all our fish and have them save the world, too.
The sea absorbs about half of the billions of tons of CO2 humans emit; if it didn’t, it would already be absorbing quite a few of us. But it’s not like the oceans are just a giant sponge passively sopping up our atmospheric mess. They’re more like a forest — a really, really big one in which plants and animals grow and photosynthesize and eat each other and die, intaking carbon as they go. And a forest is made up of trees, or in this increasingly literal metaphor, phytoplankton and fish and other organisms. You can’t cut down all the fishtrees and expect your oceanforest to keep sucking up carbon.
Though we used to think that phytoplankton near the surface of the ocean did all the work of sequestration on their own, by taking their carbon with them when they died, it it now clear that the process is a little more vigorous than that. Instead of just waiting for carbon-laden plankton to get on their level, certain deep-dwelling, nightmare-inducing predators actually hunt down the tasty upper-level nibbles before swimming back into the extreme depths where all that carbon is effectively trapped for good.
And scientists recently learned that there are 10 to 30 times more of these mid- to deep-sea fish than they thought (and I made sushi jokes about them). Since these elusive fish turn out to make up 95 percent of the biomass in the ocean, they have a lot to do with why the ocean is so good at vacuuming up all our carbon. It goes (roughly) like this: Phytoplankton near the surface gobble up CO2 and are in turn gobbled by mid-level fish who swim up for their nightly buffet. These fish, once they head back to more familiar depths, are then gobbled by even deeper sea fish. It’s the circle of extremely creepy-looking life.
As with any cycle, there is a danger that even small changes can disrupt the whole system. In this case, overfishing scoops up lots of important mid- and deep-sea fish, either as bycatch or in the form of tasty endangered species like orange roughy or Chilean sea bass. A 2008 report on deep-sea fisheries from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea found that the pressure of overfishing on these ecosystems was especially severe:
A large proportion of deep-water trawl catches (upwards of 50 percent) can consist of unpalatable species and numerous small species, including juveniles of the target species, which are usually discarded … The survival of these discards is unknown, but believed to be virtually zero due to fragility of these species and the effects of pressure changes during retrieval … Therefore such fisheries tend to deplete the whole fish community biomass.
So eating lots and lots of fish is good for the climate, but only if you’re a fangtooth cruising the mesopelagic for takeout. The rest of us now have one more reason to check Seafood Watch before digging into that sustainably caught, bycatch-free, preferably local and abundant filet-o’-fish.
Source
Fish can slow down global warming—but not if we keep eating them, Quartz
How fish cool off global warming, Scientific American
Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.
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Fish are great at fighting climate change. Too bad we’re eating them all.
