June 19, 2011

Radioactive Whales 650 Km from Fukushima

copy and paste this energy news story:

http://enenews.com/radioactive-whales-caught-650-km-from-fukushima-plant

June 10, 2011

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Releases New Aquaculture Policy.

http://aquaculture.noaa.gov/pdf/doc_aquaculture_policy_2011.pdf

Every other word is “sustainable.” I hope to read and comment on this later today.

June 8, 2011

Marine Stewardship Council Scoffs at Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Objections to North Sea Plaice Certification

Two articles in the most recent edition of Samudra, a publication of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, slammed the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for its failures to protect fish, ecosystems and communities.See “Get Out of the Spotlight” and “The Costs of Certification” available online at: http://icsf.net/icsf2006/ControllerServlet?handler=SAMUDRA&code=viewFullIssue&issueno=58&language=EN&subsiteId=2

Yesterday the MSC took another hit. Danish fisheries activist Jeppe Host reports that the WFF (Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly the World Wildlife Fund) objected to the Marine Stewardship Council’s decision to certify another North Sea trawl fishery for plaice as “sustainable.”

Citing the damage that trawling does to the seafloor, and the absence of information regarding impacts on the North Sea ecosystem, the WWF advised the MSC to use the precautionary aproach and withhold certification.

“WWF believes that a fishery ‘should be conducted in a way that maintains the natural
functional relationships’ (MSC Principle 2: Criteria 1). We argue this trawl fishery in the North
Sea that does not implement any form of spatial management in the face of poor habitat
information is not consistent with this Criterion.
As a consequence we do not think this fishery should have scored as highly as it did, and we
do not believe the Certification Body complied with the rules set out by MSC,” wrote Richard Holland, Chief Conservation Officer of the WWF in the NEtherlands.

The WWF helped launch the MSC in 1997, and a rebuke from one of its parent organizations might cause the MSC to review its decision. But the corporate funded certification body, which recently certified an Antarctic krill fishery, and another for the poorly understood Patagonia toothfish, has chosen to reject the WWF objection and has certified the fishery. 

May 28,2011

Carl Safina speaks in Maine

I went to hear Carl Safina speak last night at the Marine Environmental Research Center in Blue Hill, Maine. He is a great informative speaker. Among other things he mentioned the immorality of slavery as an economic system, and wondered if future generations will look back at our economic system, which has robbed them of resources and cursed them with nuclear waste and trashed ecosystems, and consider it immoral. I imagine so. But I stumped Carl during the Q&A when I asked about the stock market, as a driving force in that immoral system. Almost everyone in the room, including Carl, owns stock (except me, but I do benefit indirectly from the stock market as it funds the grants I have lived on).

This is an important question, it is the 300 pound gorilla in the room of sustainability discussions. Carl made a great point that the economic system we live under was invented before people knew the earth was round, before we knew there were limits. It seems like a logical conclusion based on how the stock market works and what it does that it need to be overhauled at the least, preferable dismantled. Yes people should be able to help start ups by investing in them, but the stock market has become a form of slave owning at a polite remove.

Catch shares: laud-defunding-of-wasteful-catch-shares-program/”>http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/advocacy-groups-fishermen-applaud-defunding-of-wasteful-catch-shares-program/
Gulf Oil Spill: Look for Paul Moyneaux’s upcoming story in the July 2011 issue of National Fisherman Magazine
Marine Stewardship Council Eco-labels in Developing Countries: Check Paul Molyneaux’s article “Get Out of the Spotlight! in Samudra: http://www.icsf.net/icsf2006/ControllerServlet?handler=SAMUDRA&code=viewFullIssue&issueno=58&language=EN&subsiteId=2
Iceland Artisanal Eco-labeling: Look for Paul Molyneaux’s article in the September 2010 issue of National Fisherman Magazine