The Great White Shark Scientist by Sy Montgomery photographs by Keith Ellenbogen Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 Grades 5 and up It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, and it's the perfect time to review the latest Scientists in the Field book, The Great White Shark Scientist. Author, Sy Montgomery, and photographer, Keith Ellenbogen, have teamed up on another exciting marine biology story
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Blog: The Nonfiction Detectives (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: Playing by the book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Geography, Water, Oceans, Earthquakes, Geology, Construction, Exploration, Dollshouses, Daniel Mizieliński, Learning about the world, Cities/towns, Aleksandra Mizielińska, Antonia Lloyd Jones, Add a tag
Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizieliński (@hipopotam) started a revolution here in the UK, with the publication by Big Picture Press back in 2013 of their now famous Maps. With that beautifully produced book we started to see something of new departure for children’s non-fiction, with publishers realising that there was an appetite for gorgeously illustrated and finely produced information books which didn’t look or feel like school textbooks.
Since then we’ve seen several new non-fiction imprints established, dedicated to bringing us eye-catching, unusual and sumptuous non-fiction for children and young people, such as Wide Eyed Editions and 360 Degrees. This is great news, especially for younger children who report choosing to read non-fiction (42% of 7-11 year olds) almost as much as they do fiction (48.2% of 7-11 year olds, source), though you’d never guess this from the imbalance in titles published and reviewed.
It’s wonderful to see the return of the founders of the non-fiction revolution with a new title, Under Earth, Under Water, a substantial and wide-ranging exploration of what lies beneath the surface of the globe.
Split into two halves, allowing you to start from either end of the book by turning it around to explore either what lies beneath the earth, or under the oceans, this compendium of startling facts and quirky, fresh illustrations makes the most of its large format (a double page spread almost extends to A2), with great visual and verbal detail to pour over and a real sense of going down, down, down across the expanse of the pages.
The Earth pages cover everything from burrowing creatures to plant life in the soil, via extracting natural resources to industrial underground infrastructure. Tunnels, caves, digging up fossils and plate tectonics are all included in this rich and varied buffet brought together though a simple concept – simply exploring what is underneath our feet.
The Water pages explore aquatic life right from the surface down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, ocean geography, human exploration with the aid of diving equipment, the history of submarines and even shipwrecks.
Lavishly produced, with gorgeously thick paper it is a delight to hold this book in your hands. Wonderful design, featuring lots of natural reds and browns in the Earth section and soothing shades of blues and green in the Water section, ensures exploring the diverse content is a visual treat as much as it is a spark for thinking about the world around us in new ways.
My only question mark over Under Earth, Under Water is the lack of an index. Maybe this makes it more like a box of treasures to rummage in and linger over, the sort of space where you can’t be sure what gems you’ll dig up. Although perhaps not a resource from which to clinically extract information, Under Earth, Under Water offers a great deal to explore and a very enjoyable journey to the centre of the earth.
There’s so much we could have “played” in Under Earth, Under Water. We toyed with making submarines, visiting caves, planting seeds to watch roots grow, but in the end the animal burrows won out, and we decided it was time to make our own. This began with papier mache and balloons…
…which when dry were set into a cardboard box frame, and surrounded by layers of “soil” i.e. different coloured felt, to recreate the layering of different soil and rock types.
Then the burrows needed filling! Sylvanian families came to the rescue, along with nature treasures gathered from the garden.
And soon we had a dollshouse with a difference! (Can you spot the bones and other archaeological finds waiting to be dug up from the soil??)
Whilst making our underground burrow we listened to:
Other activities which might work well alongside reading Under Earth, Under Water include:
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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher, Big Picture Press. The book was translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones although she is not credited in the book.
Blog: Playing by the book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Bullying, Friendship, The Netherlands, Death, Loss, Horses, Oceans, Islands, Beaches, Nick Garlick, Add a tag
A finely woven novel exploring grief, hope and friendship, Storm Horse by Nick Garlick moved me to tears, even though I started reading it with a great sense of wariness, my inner cynic poised to be proved right with the slightest hiccup in plot, writing or characterization.
Having recently lost his parents, a young boy can’t believe he’ll ever feel at ease with the relatives who have agreed to take responsibility for him. But all that changes when he makes friends with a horse. A growing sense of trust and (self) belief enables him to find a place where he’s happy to belong, even though in the process he comes face to face with some of his greatest fears, loss and sadness.
This page-turner, with dramatic, breath-taking scenes worthy of the vast gloomy shore skies under which it is set made me nervous before I turned the first page; Storm Horse is set on the Frisian islands off the north coast of the Netherlands and is partly inspired by a very emotive true life story about a lifeboat disaster that devastated an island community.
Surrounded by huge and exhilaratingly beautiful sandy beaches, the lifeboat on Ameland was traditionally launched by horses who pulled the boat over the sand and then into the tide, enabling launches where no pier existed. But in 1979 eight horses drowned during a lifeboat launch and in this small island community their terrible loss was felt deeply and powerfully and is still remembered with great sorrow, but also pride, for launching lifeboats with horses was something unique to this particular community, long after other Frisian islands had given up on this tradition.
As it happens I know Ameland and this story rather well (the photo above shows M and J visiting the grave and memorial to the eight horses back in 2012, whilst the photos below show a re-enactment I once saw of how the lifeboat used to be launched), and so when I found out about a novel set on the Frisian islands, centered on horses and lifeboat rescues I was both curious and anxious.
Starting a novel when you already have an emotional investment in it is a scary thing. What if it doesn’t live up to your hopes? What if you feel it betrays the beauty / the sorrow / the wonder you feel about certain events or places or times?
But I took the plunge and turned the first page and…
…Well here’s why I think you might enjoy this book as much as I did, even if you’ve never heard of the Frisian islands and have not one ounce of hope at stake when you come across it in your local bookshop or library:
This is no literal re-telling of the terrible, heart-breaking events of the 14th of August 1979; Garlick sets his story on an imaginary island (though Ameland is briefly mentioned), and yet all the details ring beautifully true. The challenges of island life are not shied away from, but read this moving, convincing, vivid novel and I think you may nevertheless fall in love.
Now… what will my lifeboat-mad, Dutch husband who spent every childhood summer on Ameland think of this book? Well, somehow I’m going to have to find the time to read it aloud to him and the girls as I now know I needn’t have worried: Storm Horse is a cracker.
Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.
I would expect to find this book in the part of the bookshop/library aimed at 8/9 – 12/13 year olds.
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JacketFlap tags: Children's Books, kids books, oceans, Special Days, marine life, world oceans day, Arbordale Posts, activities for reading, ocean crafts for kids, Add a tag
June 8th is World Ocean’s Day and a day to celebrate the vast bodies of water and their inhabitants. Museums, aquariums and zoos will hold celebrations this weekend across the country. If you are lucky enough to live on the coast, a trip to the beach is a great way to celebrate this year’s theme “Healthy oceans, healthy planet”.
Of course Arbordale has many books that celebrate the ocean and many online activities that can be done right at home. So today on the blog we have a few fun ways to honor the ocean without leaving the comforts of your own home.
Draw your own Marine Mammal
from Waterbed:s Sleeping in the Ocean
Toothy Sharks
read: Shark Baby
Find more fun activities on the Marine Life Pinterest Board, or learn more about World Oceans Day!
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Blog: The Children's Book Review (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Ages 9-12, Science, Chapter Books, featured, Books for Boys, Oceans, Ocean Science, Animal Books, Environment & Ecology, Ellen Prager, Tristan Hunt and the Sea Guardian series, Add a tag
Ellen Prager, PhD, ocean scientist and author, brings ocean science to the young fiction audience with her Tristan Hunt and the Sea guardian series.
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JacketFlap tags: Books, marine biology, Mark Williams, oceans, Giordano Bruno, Jan Zalasiewicz, dredge, *Featured, Science & Medicine, Earth & Life Sciences, #ESA2014, Ecological Society of America, azoic hypothesis, deep sea life, Edward Forbes, Ocean Worlds, azoic, forbes’s, amsoc, pixabay, Add a tag
By Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams
It pays to be nice. One of the most absolutely, emphatically wrong hypotheses about the oceans was coined by one of the most carefree and amiable people in nineteenth century science. It should have sunk his reputation without trace. Yet, it did not. He thought the deep oceans were stone cold dead and lifeless. They’re certainly not that. Even more amazingly, it was clear that the deep oceans were full of life even before he proposed his hypothesis — and yet the idea persisted for decades. He is still regarded as the father of marine biology. There’s a moral in that somewhere.
Edward Forbes was born a Manxman who early developed a love of natural history. He collected flowers, seashells, butterflies with a passion that saw him neglect, then fail dismally in, his studies: first as an artist (he had a fine talent for drawing) then as a doctor. He drifted into becoming some kind of itinerant naturalist who naturally shook things up around him. Going to the British Association meeting in Birmingham, he reacted to the formal atmosphere by decamping to a local pub, the Red Lion, and taking a good deal of the membership with him. There, fueled by beef and beer, they debated the great scientific ideas of the day. They expressed agreement or disagreement with debating points not by a show of hands, but growling like lions and fluttering their coat-tails (Forbes’s technique with the coat-tails was held up as a model for the younger Lions).
In 1841, Forbes was on board a surveying ship, the HMS Beacon, in the Mediterranean. He noticed that as they dredged in deeper waters, the dredge buckets brought up fewer types of marine organism. He extrapolated from that to propose the “azoic hypothesis” — that the deep oceans were dead. It seemed not unreasonable — as one climbs higher up mountains, life diminishes, then disappears. For it to do the same in the oceans would show a nice symmetry. The azoic hypothesis took hold.
The trouble was, even then, commercial ships — with sounding lines far longer than the Beacon’s dredge buckets could go — were occasionally pulling up starfish and other animals from as much as two kilometers down. That should have killed the azoic hypothesis stone dead. But it didn’t. As luck had it, the first reports of such things happened to be sent in by ship’s captains who were either known for telling tall tales or who were plain bad-tempered. They couldn’t compete with Forbes’s eloquence or charm.
It took quite a few years before the weight of evidence finally dragged down the azoic hypothesis. We now know that the Earth’s deep oceans are alive, the thriving communities sustained by a rain of nutrients from above. Edward Forbes’s brainchild is simply one of many of the ideas through which we have gained — tortuously — a better understanding of the Earth’s oceans.
There have been other extraordinary characters, too, involved in this story. The scientists who concocted the inspired lunacy of the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC), for example, where every member automatically became a founding member, and where one of the rules was that there were no rules. Crazy as it was, AMSOC led to the Ocean Drilling Program, which revolutionized our knowledge of the deep ocean floors, of the history of global climate and of very much else. It’s also one of the great unsung revolutions of world science — but then there’s much that concerns the oceans that deserves to be more widely known.
There are extraordinary characters involved, too, in the new frontier of ocean science: the oceans that exist, or once existed, on other worlds. There’s the unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who imagined far-off worlds like our own — and who was burned at the stake for expounding these and other heresies. There’s Svante Arrhenius, who, a century ago, got Mars exactly right (no chance of canals, or water, he said) — but got Venus quite wrong (a thoroughly wet planet, he thought, and not the dry baking hell we now know it to be). There’s the wonderful mistake, too, of the contaminated detectors on a spacecraft on Venus — that led to the discovery of the oceans that likely once existed there.
We discover seas on other planets and moons, even as we still try to understand our own Earthly oceans. Just how have they lasted so long? And how will they change — in the next century, and in the next billion years? The story of oceans is really, truly never-ending.
Jan Zalasiewicz is Senior Lecturer in Geology and Mark Williams is Professor in Geology, both at the University of Leicester. They are also co-authors of Ocean Worlds: The story of seas on Earth and other planets.
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Images: Underwater sea life – Public Domain via Pixabay. Jellyfish – Public Domain via Pixabay
The post The life of oceans: a history of marine discovery appeared first on OUPblog.
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: products, quiz, Law, journals, Current Affairs, Multimedia, protection, oceans, pil, World Oceans Day, *Featured, international law, maritime, slickquiz, Quizzes & Polls, oupintlaw, Law of the Sea, maritime law, UNCLOS, expanses, Add a tag
Of the many things in our world that require protection, we sometimes forget the vast expanses of the oceans. However, they are also vulnerable and deserve our protection, including under the law. In recognition of World Oceans Day, we pulled together a collection of international law questions on the Law of the Sea from our books, journals, and online products. Test your knowledge of maritime law!
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Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.
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The post How much do you know about the Law of the Sea? appeared first on OUPblog.
Blog: Kid Lit Reviews (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Library Donated Books, Antonio Javier Caparo, Dr. Ellen Prager, Scaletta Press, Scarletta Junior Readers, super-powers, Middle Grade, Series, Books for Boys, middle grade novel, Oceans, sharks, Book Excerpt, Add a tag
The Shark Whisperer, a new middle grade series by Ellen Prager, with illustrations by Antonio Javier Caparo, released yesterday, May 1, 2014. To help promote this incredible ocean tale, Scarletta Junior Readers, an imprint of Scarletta Press, has released a sneak peek for Kid Lit Reviews’ loyal readers, visitors, and friends. “Follow Tristan Hunt and his …
Add a CommentBlog: The Miss Rumphius Effect (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: oceans, National Poetry Month, poetry pairings, Add a tag
As a child I wanted to be the female version of Jacques Cousteau. I even enrolled in the Coast Guard Academy (didn't stay), studied marine biology in college (though I switched my major to biochemistry), and worked as a boat-hand on a yacht (longest summer of my life). I did anything and everything to spend time on the water.
The ocean is a remarkable place, with vast portions of it still undiscovered. Today's book trio is inspired by this amazing natural resource.
From the shore to deep water, Coombs highlights the sights and sounds of the ocean and the creatures that live there. Here are my two favorite poems.
Sand's Story
We used to be rocks,
we used to be stones.
We stood proud as castles,
altars, and thrones.
Once we were massive,
looming in rings,
holding up temples
and posing as kings.
Now we grind and we grumble,
humbled and grave,
at the touch of our breaker
and maker, the wave.
One page in the book opens lengthwise with a huge blue whale poised with its tale out of the water, covering a large portion of the double-page spread and looming over a shipwreck at the bottom of the page. Here's the poem found there.
Shipwreck
Here lie the bones
of twenty trees,
lost far from home
under gallons of seas.
Poems ©Kate Coombs. All rights reserved.
Meilo So’s gorgeous watercolors nicely complement and bring Coombs' poems to life.
Viewed from space, the earth looks like a watery blue ball. Oceans cover more than two-thirds of the globe's surface, and well over half the planet lies beneath water more than a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) deep. We have explored only a small fraction of the oceans. In fact, more humans have walked on the moon than have visited the deepest spot in the sea.Jenkins' tour of the oceans begins at the surface and ends in the Marianas Trench. Each double page spread contains a paragraph (or two) of information about that particular depth, illustration of the inhabitants, and a depth meter. The depth meter appears on the right edge of each spread and extends from the top of the page (the surface) to the bottom (deepest spot in the ocean). The depth is marked with what looks like a red push-pin and is labeled with the distance below sea level (in both feet and meters) and the temperature (in both Fahrenheit and Celsius).
How much do we really know about the earth's oceans and the creatures that live there? The answer is, not much. In clear, concise text, Jenkins takes us on an unbelievable, fact-filled journey. The illustrations of the creatures, from the beautiful and familiar to strange and exotic (weird!), are gloriously rendered. (See images here, here and at this terrific review at Seven Imp.) At the end of the book are five full pages of background information on the animals in the book. Each section includes a diagram that shows the size of each creature compare to an adult human's body or hand. The final page includes a brief bibliography and another depth meter that shows how deep humans and sea vessels can descend.
As an oceanographer, Earle has led more than 60 expeditions worldwide and spent more than 7000 hours underwater in connection with her research. She is one of the few divers to explore the deepest spot in the ocean. In 1990 she was appointed as Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first woman to hold such a position. Today Dr. Earle is Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society.
While many "subject area" poetry books today include informational text or back matter, Coombs title is free of these additions and focuses solely on words and poetry. This is not a bad thing. Her poems invite readers into the ocean world and make them want to learn more. Following up with Jenkins' book will certainly further open up the ocean realm and encourage even more questions. I like to include Earle's biography here so that students can see anyone with a dream can achieve it, and that working as an ocean scientist is a real possibility.
For additional resources, consider these sites.
- National Geographic Kids has an interview with Sylvia Earle.
- SOS Kids has a wealth of resources about the oceans and marine life.
- The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a terrific animal guide, as well as some great games and interactives. (Print out a set of critter cards for even more fun!)
- Treasures at Sea: Exploring the Ocean Through Literature is a teaching unit that includes games and puzzles, writing activities, book recommendations, art activities and more.
- The Fish FAQ from Woods Hole Science Aquarium has answers to just about any question you might have about fish and other ocean animals.
- Sea World has a number of teacher's guides covering a range of ocean life.
- The National Marine Sanctuaries education site has a number of cool resources for kids, including games, coloring books, puzzles and more.
Blog: Brimful Curiosities (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Children's Books, Holidays, Book Review, Picture Books, Oceans, 2005, Add a tag
This morning we turned our dining room into a Father's Day card factory. The kids worked on special cards that look like portable GPS navigation systems (only our versions are a lot cheaper than the real deal and, best of all, they are each personalized). The Brimful Dad would really like a handheld GPS for Father's Day. When or if he decides to purchase one, we'll let him pick it out himself. In the meantime, we're positive he'll appreciate our GPS card creation! The kids also made GPS cards for all of their grandpas and their uncle.
I used Microsoft Word to create a template that looks like a car GPS for the kids to personalize. In place of the GPS map, they drew self-portraits along with a picture of the card recipient. Inside they added a heart made out of red foam paper. They glued the white GPS rectangles to black cardstock.
Our Father's Day GPS cards read:
Outside: Our [grandpa/dad] guides us each and every day.
Inside: But he doesn't need a GPS ... he lovingly guides with his heart! Happy Father's Day!
I've made the GPS Father's Day Card template [pdf] available for download from Google Docs, in case you'd like to borrow the idea.
In all actuality, a GPS and a father have a lot in common. A GPS system guides the trusting user to a destination. In a similar way, a father guides his children through life with love and compassion, despite the inevitable road blocks and detours. Here's a picture book that focuses on a father who guides with his heart.
Because Your Daddy Loves You by Andrew Clements, illustrated by R.W. Alley. Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 2005); ISBN 9780618003617; 32 pages (Review copy from library)
Because Your Daddy Loves You by Andrew Clements is a book about a very patient and loving father. The book starts and ends with bedtime, and the little girl and her father visit a beach during the day. The dad's patience never wavers and he remains positive and cheerful, despite m
Blog: Young Adult (& Kid's) Books Central (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: sea animals, currents, ocean habitats, undersea creatures, animal defense, fish, sea, oceans, octopus, sharks, anemones, Add a tag
The largest habitat on earth, filled with all kinds of creatures, many yet to be discovered. Discover the oceans with your child in this enchanting book exploring the its beauty and diversity. Click here to read my full review.
Blog: Brimful Curiosities (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: HarperCollins, Book Review, Picture Books, Animals, Crafts, Oceans, Balzer + Bray, Book crafts, Add a tag
A shark has the power to strike fear into the hearts of many. But what do sharks fear? Bob Shea presents a very silly scenario in his very humorous book, I'm a Shark, about the most awesome, self-assured shark ever.
I'm a Shark by Bob Shea. Balzer + Bray (April 2011); ISBN 9780061998461; 40 pages
Book Source: Copy from public library
"Well, I guess everyone is scared of something. I'm not."
"What about spiders?"
Shark has an ego the size of a whale and doesn't mind boasting a little to his two ocean friends, fish and crab. He's not afraid of anything -- not shots, not bears, not dinos. Not even the dark, as evidenced by his remark, "the dark is afraid of me. Dark heard I was coming and ran." But shark isn't as brave as he lets on. There's something itsy bitsy that does frighten him just a tad. In fact, Little Miss Muffet just might be able to offer that shark some helpful advice, though he's so full of himself that he probably wouldn't listen. From the unexpected picture of the author and son on the dustcover flap to the hilarious tongue-in-cheek text -- everything in this book works swimmingly.
After seeing the bold, enticing cover of I'm a Shark, my shark fanatic son couldn't wait to read this one with me. Neither of us was disappointed. The book contains all the elements of a fun read-aloud: lively dialog, sharp illustrations, and plenty of humor. Add in the snappy shark with an attitude and my son has a newest favorite book. Plus, like many kids, my son understands the shark's fear of spiders. He hates them, probably even more than shark. Pick this book up before Shark Week ends!
Related Links:
Bob Shea - Website
Bob Shea - Facebook & Twitter
Earlier this year, Almost Unschoolers posted one of the neatest shark crafts I've ever seen. I knew someday my son would enjoy making one, so I saved the link. Visit her blog for the complete directions.
We didn't alter the craft much. My son wanted the inside of the mouth to look red so he colored the interior of the mouth with a marker. What's a shark without a little blood? He tried to cut some of the teeth out of the paper plate himself, but that task proved a little too challenging for his preschool skills. And as a tie-in to Shea's I'm a Shark book, we attached a construction paper spider to the shark's fin. My daughter said it looks like the shark has a spider yo-yo. Maybe that's just what the shark needs to help him get over his arachnophobia?
Blog: Brimful Curiosities (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Oceans, 2010, Star Bright Books, Bedtime Book, Book Review, Picture Books, Animals, Add a tag
Getting the kids to bed on time sometimes seems like an impossible task. By the time we eat, finish with the baths, brush teeth and read a few books, it's already time for bed. Then the creative delays begin. "I need a drink of water. I need to say good night to the cat." Both kids have even tried to hide their blankies in an attempt to postpone bedtime. We're pretty firm parents and stall tactics don't work long here, but the minutes still add up and invariably time sneaks by. Author Janet Halfmann, with four kids and four grandkids, knows about all the bedtime tricks. In her newest book, a cute little sea otter tries to delay his bedtime, but eventually he drifts off to sleep.
Good Night, Little Sea Otter by Janet Halfmann, illustrated by Wish Williams. Star Bright Books (September 2010); ISBN 9781595722546; 32 pages
Book Source: Review copy from publisher
"Then it was bedtime, but Little Sea Otter wasn't ready to sleep."
Against a colorful sunset sky, Little Sea Otter and his mama prepare for bedtime. But before he falls asleep, Little Sea Otter must say goodnight to all the creatures above and below the ocean. First he speaks to the harbor seals, sea lions and a seagull and then he dips his head below water and wishes fish, sea urchins and others a good night. As the stars twinkle above and the sea sings a soft lullaby, Little Sea Otter says his final "Good Night" while his mom wraps them both in ribbons of kelp, anchoring them safely for the evening.
Reading this gentle and sweet story to a child is the perfect way to end the day. Little Sea Otter's pleasant waves of goodbyes, one after one, will relax and comfort readers like the murmur of sea waves. Wish Williams surrounds Little Sea Otter in a dreamy rainbow of sea colors. At one point, kids get a chance to point out orange, yellow and purple fish. His illustrations provide a lovely backdrop for the story. The beautiful sunset sky gradually darkens and eventually stars appear. The sea looks quiet and calm. I especially love that Janet Halfmann briefly mentions how Sea otters use kelp as anchors while sleeping. The brief educational moments paired with images of the adorable mama and baby sea otter make this a worthwhile and enjoyable bedtime read perfect for toddlers to early elementary-aged children.
Related Links:
Janet Halfmann - Author Website
Sea Otter Facts, Video and Sound on Defenders.org
Earth Day is a good time to consider the consequences of our daily actions and to learn abou
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: temperatures, oscillation, oceans, atmospheric, Add a tag
By Arnold H. Taylor
At the time of writing, the British Isles and much of Europe are experiencing their second cold winter with record low temperatures. Roads are blocked by snow, trains are disrupted and airports closed. Meanwhile, conditions over the other side of the Atlantic Ocean are unusually mild. The reason for this is that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a great swaying of the weather patterns over the region, is currently in a weak phase.
This climatic swaying is one of the long, slow dances into which the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are locked, and which catch up living populations in their wake. The largest of these, the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), distorts weather patterns all around the equatorial regions of the planet. In each case, atmospheric pressure rises (or falls) in one area at the same time as it falls (or rises) in distant region. The atmospheric seesaw is east-west between Australia and Tahiti in the ENSO phenomenon but north-south between Iceland and the Azores in the NAO.
Another important difference between the two is that the NAO is basically a winter phenomenon rather than occurring throughout the seasons. Strong values of the NAO correspond to intense westerly winds with mild winters over Europe but cold winters in eastern Canada and the USA. With weak NAO’s there are less pronounced westerlies and the temperatures are reversed.
But the ENSO and the NAO also have something in common: at the root of each is a melodic ballet of ocean and atmosphere. For the NAO this has been demonstrated by Mark Rodwell, Dan Rowell and Chris Folland at the UK meteorological Office who showed that the variations in the NAO over the last 50 years could be reproduced by a model of the atmospheric circulation, provided that the observed temperatures of the world’s oceans were included. They went on to infer that heat exchanges in and out of the North Atlantic Ocean were a critical process for this. However, when Martin Hoerling, Talyi Xuby and Jim Hurrell in Boulder, Colorado used another model to see which aspects of the oceans’ temperatures were most vital for reproducing the NAO changes, they found it was the progressive warming of the tropical regions.
Can these two alternative causes of the NAO, heat exchanges in the North Atlantic and tropical warming, be reconciled? One possible scenario is a resonator in the ocean and atmosphere of the North Atlantic that is driven by remote events in the tropics. A resonator is any object or system having a natural frequency. Perhaps the most familiar example is a playground swing. Pushing a child in time with its period will make the swing go higher and higher, but attempts to push it at a faster or slower tempo result in smaller movements. In the resonator model, the variations in the tropics constitute the external forcing and the conditions in the Atlantic the state of the resonator.
In 2005, I published a simple model of this kind in Geophysical Research Letters. This model used observations of global temperatures and of the ENSO cycle to make its predictions (see figure above). The paper included a forecast of the trend in the NAO up to 2025, a forecast that predicted the likelihood of weak NAOs around the present time. Last winter and the current one seem to be bearing
Blog: Saipan Writer (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: oceans, The End of the Live, Add a tag
Light showers before dawn--not enough to quench the thirsting earth.
__________________________
This article from today's Variety, about the activities this week at the American Memorial Park:
On Thursday, the free movie is entitled “The End of The Line” and it will be shown at 5:30 p.m.
This is a movie that looks beyond the surface of the seas to reveal a troubling truth beneath — an ocean increasingly empty of fish.
I haven't seen this movie, but it sounds worthwhile.
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Down, Down, Down: A Journey To The Bottom of the Sea. By Steve Jenkins. 2009. [May 2009]. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 40 pages.
Can a book take you on a journey? This one can. (If you let it that is.) It will take you places where very few have gone. Jenkins takes readers on a journey into the depths--the dark depths--of the ocean.
Each spread offers readers information in an appealing and easily accessible way.
Glowing in the Dark
Nine of every ten animals live beneath the sunlit layer of the ocean are bioluminescent (by-oh-loo-muh-nes-uhnt) - they can produce their own light. Animals use bioluminescence to lure prey, confuse or startle attackers, or make themselves difficult to see. Animals also use light to attract a mate or send messages to one another. Because the ocean is so large and so many animals live here, bioluminescence is the most common form of animal communication on earth. Only the slightest glimmer of sunlight reaches this depth, and only animals with extraordinary sensitive eyes can detect it.
What an amazing book this is. The thing is if you'd asked me before I started it how interested I was in the ocean, in finding out more about ocean life, I would say not all that much. But reading this one, well, it made me interested, it made me curious. I'm so glad I read this one!
© Becky Laney of Young Readers
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Click at the top to change the fish! Use your mouse to make it swim!
Above all, protect the environment and Earth!
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I found this at habitat media , in the section on its movie, EMPTY OCEANS, EMPTY NETS. They have transcripts of interviews with prominent scientists interviewed for the movie.
Many of the interviews are interesting.
They have interviews from the Philippine perspective, the scientist who says we have only 10% of our large marine animals left since industrialized commerical fishing, and the Harvard professor who talks of the need for marine reserves, among others.
But for me, the one I've published in full below is the one to read first. In this one, we hear wisdom, as well as knowledge. It's pretty powerful stuff.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT - Dr. David Suzuki
Dr. David Suzuki is a geneticist, founder of the David Suzuki Foundation and a Professor at the University of British Columbia. He also hosts the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's science television series, "The Nature of Things" and is author of "Science Matters."
Do you believe we have reached the limit for growth on this planet?
All over the world, whenever I happen to visit a place like Africa or Madagascar, New Zealand, Australia, anywhere I go, I try to seek out elders who’ve lived in an area for 70, 80 years. And I ask them, "What was this place like when you were a child?" And everywhere I go around the world, people tell us that the planet has changed in a fundamental way. They talk about fish as far as you could see. Our elders in British Columbia talk about going out in a little row boat and being able to rake from the seaweed and fill a punt with herring in a matter of minutes. They talk about going out in a rowboat with a shovel and just shoveling abalone off the rocks into the boats and filling it in no time. They talk about salmon in runs that were so massive you could hear them coming from miles away. All over the world, elders are a living record of the enormous changes that have happened in the 70% of the planet that is covered in water. It’s happened in a lifetime. And if it’s disappeared in each of these regions, do we think there are massive areas of ocean waiting for the things we drive out to go somewhere else! If they’re not here where we knew them as children, they’re not anywhere. So our elders are the best way to verify the enormous changes that are going on. And it is simply not sustainable. We can’t continue to deplete the ocean resources the way we have and think that this can go on indefinitely.
Since salmon was listed as an endangered species in the US there’s a belief that to ultimately save this species it will require a complete reshuffle of the economic base of the pacific northwest. Do you agree?
The problem we face today with something like salmon on the west coast of Canada and North America is that where the salmon have disappeared there is absolutely no assurance that even if we were to try a massive program of restoration that the salmon would ever come back. I mean we’ve so altered ecosystems, up and down the coast. The notion that we are clever enough to say "Oh-oh, we made a mistake, we’ve got to start now, pouring massive amounts of effort into trying to get them back," is still a conceit that we know enough to be able to restore them. So from my standpoint, it’s not at all clear that we will ever get anything like what once was, even if we have the commitment, the will to do it and the money to do it. In terms of asking the question, "Would it be worth making the investment, to take down dams on the Snake Rivers and to try to restore the Fraser River?"
I don’t think that anything like that could ever be argued in economic terms. It’s simply an issue that goes far deeper than anything economic. It’s a question of "What is our place on this planet?" and "What is our relationship with the rest of life on earth?" Is this planet a place where other creatures can live rich full lives as well, to accompany us, because we live here for a very brief moment in time. Right now we seem determined to domesticate every possible thing that we can on the planet, in the service of whatever our needs are. And, of course, it’s suicidal in the long run because we are still a deeply embedded species in the rest of the nature around us. But we seem compelled to try to imprint our image of what we want from the planet. And it wont’ work! I think it leaves us spiritually bereft. The cost, to me, of what we have done and continue to do is a spiritual cost, not an economic one.
In what way do you think salmon are perhaps an ultimate indicator species for an ecosystem that’s out of balance?
Biologists talk about key species or indicator species; critical species that if you remove them or reduce them in an ecosystem, it may lead to a collapse. My own feeling about keystone species is that it’s a conceit on our part to think that we know which elements of an ecosystem are crucial. The knowledge base that we have of ecosystems, of what makes up an ecosystem and how the components interact is so limited that we have no idea what a keystone species is. Of course there are charismatic species like grizzlies or elephants or whales. And salmon are, to me, a charismatic species. Their abundance, the magnificence of their life cycle is an inspiration. It’s inspired the First Nation’s people that lived up and down the coast. It was what their cultures were built on. And we understand why we focus on salmon. The biomass mass represented by the salmon runs every year must have been unbelievable in pre-contact times.
So of course, extirpating that biomass mass must have an enormous impact. But again, we know so little. How can we even begin to assess it? When you think of 60 million bison that ranged up the center of this of this continent and were extirpated in a matter of a century…I mean the impact of that, ecologically, must have been tremendous. But we didn’t have total collapse, and chaos. We extirpated over three billion passenger pigeons in a matter of a hundred years. And again, it wasn’t that there were total collapses. And yet, they must have been keystone species.
So with regards to your question of what is a keystone species, is the salmon the critical or key indicator species? My own feeling is that it’s going to be some little thing out there in the ocean that we haven’t even discovered yet that will suddenly be found to be an absolutely critical component.
I think that as a species which boasts of being intelligent, we ought to have far greater humility with what we can say about systems that exist out there. If we were going to manage something far simpler than say, wild salmon…let’s say a shoe factory. I would think that any manager of a shoe factory would require at least two things in order to manage that factory properly. You’d need an inventory of everything in your factory. And then you would need a blueprint that tells you how everything in the inventory is connected. And if you knew that, you might be able to manage it indefinitely. Now you think about the natural world out there. What the hell do we know about a forest, about the soil, about the oceans? We know diddly. We know nothing. When you look at the estimates of how many species exist in the world, it’s estimated anywhere between 10 and 30 million. Now a going number seems to be 10 to 15 million species. Of those species that exist, scientists have identified about 1.5 million. That just means that somebody has taken a dead specimen and given it a name. It doesn’t mean we know anything about how many are there. Where do they live, how do they eat, how do they reproduce, how do they interact with other species? It means someone has given a dead specimen a name. Okay. So let’s say they’ve given one and a half million names and there are 10 million species of which we know 15% by name. Out of that 15%, we know a fraction of 1% of any of them in any kind of detail to say that we know something about their biology. So how can anyone have the conceit or the arrogance to say that we can manage natural resources? It’s absurd. I say, anyone who says that seriously is either lying or is a fool. Because we don’t know enough to be able to manage that.
What you have just said speaks volumes with regards to the precautionary approach to fisheries resource management. It’s meant to serve as a means to start guiding some decisions within fisheries management. What is your view on this?
To me, one of the most pernicious approaches to management of nature is to set up a committee with all the quote, "stakeholders" at the table. If you’re going to deal with management of salmon, then of course we have to have an international committee because our salmon are so stupid, they don’t know they’re Canadian salmon, they get stuck in American nets and Korean nets and Russian nets. So we have to have all of the countries involved in taking those fish. And then we have to have of course, the commercial fisherman present and the native fishery. We have to have the sports fishers. And then of course we have to have the Minister of Forests whose activity affects the fish and the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Energy, Urban affairs.
And all of these people come with different perspectives and they’re there to fight for their turf in terms of the way it interacts with those fish and what they want out of the fish. But it makes absolutely sure that the most important stakeholders are never at the table. And that’s the fish themselves. Who looks out for the fish and makes sure that their biological history and their future is insured? We don’t start from the idea or the simple notion that fish lead a very complex life. And because of their abundance and their health, we human beings are able to parasitize them to a certain extent, and make a living. And we ought to be very careful about the degree of predation that we impose on those fish. But instead it’s, "I’m a commercial fisherman, damn it, and it’s my right to take my share, and I want to get as much…." And so if one asks, "Well are we coming to any kind of precautionary approach to the resource?", the answer is I don’t see much evidence of that. And it is stymied, I think, in large part, so long as we commit ourselves to a process of allowing all of the stakeholders and forgetting then what the real issue is. The real issue is the long-term survival and resurgence of the salmon.
When there’s a decline of fishery resources, say a decline in salmon for example there’s sometimes a response from the capture fisheries to say, "Hey, aquaculture’s the answer!". What’s your view on this?
It may very well be that aquaculture will be able to take up some of the slack when we’ve found that we simply cannot restore wild stocks of marine fishes. I personally think it’s far too early to begin to think of that. Because the mentality, the bureaucratic mentality, of course, is that, those in power can see fish farms being set up very quickly and results start coming out of these pens very quickly. So it’s a very nice, political time frame. You can say, "I’m going to invest a huge amount of money and give support to aquaculture," and you can see a payoff in numbers of jobs and amount of income coming in within a matter of years. In terms of the wild stock, in order to restore those rivers — if we can ever restore runs back to the rivers that have lost their stocks, you’re talking now about decades or perhaps generations. And of course, that’s a time frame that is far beyond anything a politician can afford to look at. So we have the terrible dilemma that politically, fish farms are very, very attractive. And if the wild stocks are gone, what the hell, it’s too expensive anyway, so let’s just repopulate the whole coast with fish farms.
Now I personally think that this is a spiritually bankrupt approach. But I also think it is an ecologically, potentially, very devastating, activity. Sure, fish farms may work, especially if they’re in hard containers and especially, if they were on land, which is where I think that we ought to have our fish farms, in hard containers on land, or hard containers in the water. But we were assured by government, DFO, that Atlantic Salmon, for example, grown in net pens, would not pose a hazard on the West Coast. One, that they would never reproduce. When they were actually found spawning, we were told by DFO that they will never, the fry will never hatch. And when the fry were hatched they said, "Well, they’ll never survive." And now we’ve got two-year-old Atlantic Salmon.
And DFO actually had the nerve to suggest that maybe it was environmental groups that had actually seeded these fish in the rivers to prove their point.
So DFO has been horrifyingly wrong at every point. And yet the encouragement is to have fish farms in which you have exotic species brought into Pacific Waters. We have five native species of salmon, for heaven’s sake, on the West Coast. Why do we need another species, an exotic one, with all of the problems of disease, escapes and potential replacement by an exotic species.
The Great Lakes in North America are an ecological disaster area; Lake Ontario, the fifth lake in this chain, has been planted with Pacific salmon, chinook and coho and Atlantic salmon. And a few years ago I went to do a film on these fish. And we set a net in the lake, pulled out about 300 salmon. About three quarters of them were coho and chinook. Every single one was dead. Some were only caught by the teeth, but they were all dead. The rest were Atlantic salmon, every single one was alive and kicking. Some were caught by the gills. When we took them off and let them go, boom, they were gone. Now what does this mean? Pacific salmon has evolved to live its life, run up the river, spawn and die; it’s got one shot at it. And so I believe they have a life force. They hit the net, they give it everything they’ve got; they run out of their life force and they die. The Atlantic Salmon is a survivor. It runs up the rivers, spawns goes back, runs up again another year and spawns — five or six times in its lifetime. They are repeat survivors. And so they hit the net, they fight but they’re going to survive. They’re going to fight and keep going.
Now we have a case on the West Coast where we have depleted rivers with the Pacific Native stocks, we introduce now, alien species, the Atlantic Salmon, which is a survivor. My own feeling is that these are potentially the rabbits in Australia. Once they establish a toehold, because they are survivors, they are going to really wreak havoc in these ecosystems. Now I think anyone who says, "Well, that’s good, the Pacific Salmon are disappearing anyway; it’s good to get another biomass in there to replace it" has no understanding of what ecological systems are and about the nature of the interaction of various components.
We’re supporting a study here showing that not only do the salmon need the forest - we know that. Because when you clear cut the forest, the salmon disappear. The forest needs the salmon. The salmon represent the largest single pulse of nitrogen fertilizer that the forest gets each year. Because the salmon are taken by the bears and the eagles and the ravens into the forest where they fertilize the trees. If we have Atlantic salmon that don’t die that way, you’re going to remove all of that potential biomass from the forest. And do we think the forest isn’t going to feel the effect of that. So people just don’t think properly. If they think, "Well, we’ve extirpated Pacific Salmon, so let’s stick in another exotic", it’s crazy.
I hear of efforts here in Vancouver to genetically modify salmon for the aquaculture industry. What are the potential risks with this?
What’s going on today in genetics, and I’m a geneticist by training, is nothing short of miraculous. I see experiments going on now, in laboratories, at undergraduate university laboratories that I never dreamt I would see in a lifetime. So it’s easy to understand why scientists are intoxicated with what they’re. We can take DNA out of one species, read the sequence of genes that have letters in the genes. Take those genes, stick them in another organism. And it’s truly revolutionary. But because it is such a powerful revolutionary technique, it seems to me that we ought to be even more cautious about what we’re doing. You see, right now we’re in the very early phases of genetic manipulation. And what I like to tell people is, "Don’t you understand that the way that cutting-edge science works is by advancing, by proving our current ideas are wrong?" That’s the nature of cutting-edge science. I graduated with a Ph.D. in 1961, and man I was hot! I was as hot as anybody at the time. When I tell students today what we believed genes were and chromosomes and DNA in 1961, they fall on the floor laughing. Because in the year 2000 what we thought were the hot ideas in 1961 are ridiculous. But then I tell these hot-shot students, "You’re not going to believe this. But when you’re a professor, 20 years from now, and you tell your students what you believed about genes in the year 2000, they’re going to fall on the floor laughing at you."
Most of our current ideas are wrong, and that’s the way it is in any hot, exciting, revolutionary area. So that’s not a denigration of the science, it’s simply the way it is. Why do we want to rush to apply every incremental insight that we get, when the chances are overwhelming, the reason we’re trying to do the manipulation will prove to be wrong. And if that’s the case, it will prove to be downright dangerous. Now most of our principles in genetics have been derived by breeding a male and a female of one species, crossing them, looking at their offspring, crossing them and, and following them on down. This is called vertical inheritance. You look at breeding within a species. What genetic engineering allows us to do is take a gene from this species and transfer it, laterally or horizontally, into a different species, and then follow that gene down. Now geneticists make a fundamental error when they think that the principles they’ve developed by looking at vertical inheritance now apply when you taken genes and stick them in horizontally. They think because it’s DNA, you’re manipulating DNA, "So what difference does it make, we take it out of this fish and put into a tomato plant; it’s DNA." That is a fundamental error. Because DNA, of course, is DNA. But genes don’t evolve by natural selection on each gene, alone, separately.
What you have is the entire genome, the sum total of the genes in a fish, let’s say, are selected by nature, on the way those genes interact to produce the fish. So the whole genome is an integrated entity. When you take a gene out of a fish and stick it into a tomato plant, as scientists are doing, that fish gene finds itself surrounded by a tomato gene that is going, "Whoa, where am I?" Because you’ve changed the context within which that gene operates — still DNA, same stuff that you find in the tomato plant, but it’s a totally different context. And there is absolutely no basis for saying the behavior of that gene will be exactly the same as if you just bred the tomato plant as just another tomato plant. And that’s the fundamental error that I’m shocked that most bio-technologists haven’t seen that that’s not a valid assumption to make. So I don’t say that they’re going to be "frankenfoods" or dangerous things happening; I’m just saying "Hey, we don’t know." We don’t know what the behavior of those trans-genes will be. And until we can, in the lab, reproduce results, start being able to predict the exact behavior of these genes we’re flipping around we sure as hell ought not to be releasing these creatures out into the wild or growing them in fields. And we sure as hell ought not to be testing them out by doing an experiment with people — by letting them eat it. It’s not that I’m against all this manipulation; our ignorance is too great.
In our research I was told certain types of Pacific Salmon are being farmed. Are they modifying the genes of those fish?
You know, I’ve had students who were out taking genes from one species and putting them into salmon growth genes and trying to get more rapid growth. And you can do all of that in a test tube or in a tank; that’s easy. I mean you… I can tell you a very simple way to get bigger, bigger salmon in a tank. What you do is you go and edectomize them, you remove their testes or ovaries. Those fish will not die on cue at four or five years as they do out in nature. They will keep on growing and they get bigger and bigger and they’ll live for years and years. That’s been known for years. Now in fact, it was a guy then that said, "Hey, this a great idea, we’ll just go and edectomize a whole bunch of fries, release them. And they’re going to come back in eight or nine years huge. Well they let go thousands and thousands of these creatures that didn’t have gonads, and they never came back of course. Because the idea of what you do in the lab and manipulate and so on, then release them in the wild, and they’re going to behave as you predicted, is absurd. It’s absolutely absurd.
So you take a gene and I don’t… this is a hypothetical thing, take a gene out of a shark, stick it into a salmon and get the salmon suddenly in a holding tank to grow six times faster, into these giant salmon. Well do we think for a minute that then we just have to breed up a bunch of these and release them and they’re going to come back that much bigger. I mean we’ve had thousands of years of natural selection to hone the entire genome of the salmon. And the idea that we can do something as crude as taking a gene from another species and ramming it home into that genome and get an organism that is going to function out there and compete in the natural world is…well, let’s say it’s naïve at best.
With regards to genetics and fisheries-hatcheries, we hear a lot about the other horror story which is the dilution of the gene pool from wild stocks. What is your view on this?
The reason we have such an enormous abundance, and some people think it’s a waste to have a massive return of salmon that clog the rivers and overshoot the ability of the river to support. And this is the kind of terminology I hear. Well of course, what this is a wonderful cauldron for constant selection then from the animals that are returning. They have been selected throughout their life cycle. Then they make the final run up the river. That is a way of providing you with a wide gene pool within which survivors, or gene combinations can exist that will allow the species to survive over long-term change. See the nature of biological systems or the planet, is that over time the planet has changed enormously. When life evolved 4 billion years ago, the sun was 25% cooler. It’s increased in its temperature by 25%; there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was much more carbon dioxide. The poles have shifted around and gone back again; there have been all sorts of enormous changes, and yet life has persisted, how? Life has persisted we now understand by maximizing the amount of genetic diversity that exists within each species. So as things change, you’ve got a pool of genes within which to select out possible survivors out of that. When we impose a human agenda, which is to say, "Let’s set up a hatchery" we’re going to select on a very limited number of features. We’re going to look for size or beauty or whatever you want to impose as a selective agent. And then we’re going to breed up millions and millions of eggs from a limited number of individuals that fulfill our expectations.
What you do then is immediately reduce the size of the gene pool that you’re drawing from. But we’re undergoing enormous changes right now. If ever there was a time when we need maximum gene diversity, it’s now. The planet’s getting warmer. We know that the temperature of water and rivers is going up. We know that there are much more pollutants. There is greater runoff. All kinds of things are happening that are altering the path of the salmon. This is a time when we need huge amounts of genetic diversity. And yet if we think we’re going to go in and start selecting with an attitude like, "Oh the water is getting warmer; we better have some heat-tolerant salmon and start selecting on that basis." This is crazy because we’re just restricting the gene base on which these creatures depend.
Part of what we’re looking at in our series is the new eco-label for the Marine Stewardship Council; the idea being that consumers, by voting with their pocketbook, can actually create changes in the way we fish. What do you think individuals can do to have a positive influence on sustainable fishing methods?
I think there are a lot of things that we, as individuals can do. Of course, the global situation is just so massive and terrifying, that people often feel dis-empowered because they have a sense that "I’m so insignificant, what the hell difference does it make? If I go out and catch two more salmon what the hell difference does it make?" I think there are many, many things that we can do. For one thing, we definitely are catching way too many salmon — either commercially or by sports fishing. And the idea that you can catch a fish, or catch an animal and play around with it while it’s in its death throws; it’s fighting you for its very life. And then we bring it into the boat. We remove this hook and let it go and we say, "That’s sport fishing.… we’re catch and release." This is madness. I mean you’re torturing an animal for your pleasure. And do you think for a minute that animal is going to survive? I mean that animal has been exhausted; it’s played it’s life out. I just think that we have to get over this idea that we have the right to just go out and torture an animal and then we can feel good about it because we let them go. If you’re not going to eat it, don’t go fishing. It’s as simple as that. But you can go out in a boat. There are many other things that you can do to enjoy the experience of being out. But if you’re interested in the future of salmon, don’t catch them if you’re not going to eat them. I think we also can, by the way that we buy things, we can certainly influence the kind of policies. Carl Safina who wrote The Blue Ocean has published a list of a number of commercial fishes that you often seen in restaurants, and shows the ones that are in danger or are at risk. And that certainly, for me, had a profound effect.
Our Foundation started a tiny project a few years ago that has been amazing to me. In 1900 there were estimated to be 50 or 52 rivers and creeks in the City of Vancouver that had salmon runs, unique salmon runs. Today there is one. And the only reason it continues to exist is that it runs through the Musqueam Indian Reserve, and they have valued that run. Now it was down to, I think 10 or 12 salmon one year. And we got involved with the Musqueam trying to restore that river or creek. Now the amazing thing is there had traditionally been a great deal of mistrust between the native community and the non-native community that lived right around that reserve. But the community began to see that the Musqueam were trying to restore the salmon run. And the community itself took possession of that, as theirs’, as part of their heritage. And it was very exciting to see old ladies walking along the road, bailing out the Musqueam people who were trying to preserve the creek, saying "Get out of there; that’s our salmon creek, get out of there," you know, and just feeling that it mattered to them. And I’d, I’d find all across this country, there are communities that are trying to restore salmon runs and it’s a very uplifting experience. The commitment you see from kids and elders trying to return those fish is absolutely inspiring. People want to do something and you can do something. Go out, give money to support people, volunteer to organizations, change the way that you buy things; change the way that you fish or deal recreationally, all of those things. Each person is insignificant. But if you add millions and millions of insignificant people, it adds up.
Part of what we’re looking at in the series is the world population growth and the idea that marine resources is finite, not infinite. What’s your view on eating lower in the food chain?
I was a boy in the 1950s going to high school. And my teacher said, "The oceans are an infinite source of renewable protein." Maybe in the 1950s the oceans were an endless source of renewable protein, but we know for sure that it isn’t today. Those vast resources that existed there, in my lifetime, are gone. And it’s absolutely shocking to hear scientists like Daniel Pauly tell us that perhaps up to 90% of the fish that were once there are now gone. I mean my wife and I wept for days after hearing that. We are now lamenting what has happened to the oceans; we are grieving. We are grieving not for us, we’ve lived off the abundance of that ocean, but we’re grieving for our grandchildren. My grandson calls me all the time and says, "Grandpa, please take me fishing where your dad used to take you." I can’t because there is nothing to take him fishing for. And that’s what I’m grieving for, that what we took for granted when we were children isn’t there. Now what is the cause of that? Well of course, a lot of it is greed. Instead of really talking about sustaining resources and caring from a biological standpoint, we’ve got in and mined the resources as quickly as we could get them, because money doesn’t represent anything. If you mine out all the fishes, well you just take the money and put it in trees. When the trees are gone you put it in computers. Money doesn’t stand for anything and it grows faster than real things. So the economic system drives you to trash the resources that you’re dealing with.
Blog: Saipan Writer (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: oceans, Pew Charitable Trust, National Marine Monument, Add a tag
Our oceans are dying. We've had strong scientific evidence reported in the media here and here, as well as elsewhere, about this worrisome phenomenon.
We need to stop that decline. It's not too late.
A national marine monument protecting the ecosystem around Uracas, Maug, and Asuncion would be a step toward recovery of our oceans. Insisting on keeping the ocean open to expanding fisheries will only help ensure the loss of our ocean life.
Who is behind the opposition to the national marine monument?
The most prolific and vociferous opposition has come from John Gourley. He currently lists his business interest as Micronesian Environmental Services. His former business was called Micronesian Clam Company. Both appear to be related to commercial fishing.
Also significantly, he's listed as a member of the council advisory panel to WESPAC, one of the divisions under the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a branch of the federal agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Does Mr. Gourley speak for WESPAC? Not officially, but WESPAC stands to lose control of the designated ocean area if a national marine monument is created. And their control allows them to protect commercial fishing interests at the expense of our oceans. WESPAC officials are under investigation for lobbying, have been accused of having conflicts of interest, and have been sued for gross failure to protect marine environments. (See earlier posts.)
So it seems WESPAC is at least allowing Mr. Gourley to mouth all of the confusion and vitriol he can muster to put the kibosh on CONSERVATION, the only goal of the national marine monument.
Who else is among the opposition?
John Gourley mentioned a "new" fishing venture in the CNMI called Crystal Seas that wants to have access to fishing around Uracas, Maug, and Asuncion.
I think this is the same business that has previously been called "Northern Marianas Fisheries, Inc.", and "Lady Kimberly, Inc.", as reported in a March 2007 article in the Marianas Variety.
Their website includes contact names, including Courtney Zietzke, who was at one time affiliated with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), as shown on a letter from Idaho Power with an xc to him. (Remember WESPAC is under NMFS.)
There's a little more information about Crystal Seas out there: it is mentioned in the recently promulgated draft amendments that would regulate long-line fishing around the Marianas--well, allow it that is.
And although Crystal Seas is reported to be a relatively new company, starting their fishing in just 2007, they've already been sued in federal court by Seattle Refrigeration Company for breach of contract.
So back to the topic at hand--our oceans are dying. The devastation is extremely worrisome and dangerous for our well-being. Conservation-putting entire ocean eco-systems beyond the damage of commercial fishing-would help.
Why should we listen to those who oppose this environmental aid?
We do need to be afraid-but not of "losing" 1/3 of the U.S. EEZ to conservation. We should be afraid of not protecting it, afraid of the harm done by those who want to shut down the discussion of a possible marine sanctuary that would help our oceans recover. We should be afraid of not doing what needs to be done--establishing protection for the unique eco-system the Marianas Trench provides around Uracas, Maug and Asuncion.
Blog: Read Write Believe (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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We are about to have a very enlightened conversation about art:
ZOE, PLEASE ADOPT ME!!
Seriously,
Simone.
Consider it done Simone