Blogs / The Intersection

This is the seventh in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

I don’t want to write a post all about climate change on Chris and Sheril’s blog because my fire-retardant suit is at the cleaners. So I won’t. But I will write about what marine scientists can learn from what climate scientists are doing (no “Oceangate” jokes, please).

Each week, I write in this space about a different threat that will inevitably doom our oceans if we fail to act. But which threat is the most critical? At least climate scientists have agreed on a general consensus: most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations as a result of human activities. UC San Diego’s own Naomi Oreskes, in a 2004 Science essay, analyzed nearly a thousand abstracts published in the ISI database between 1993 and 2003 that contained the keywords “climate change.” Three-quarters of them accepted the consensus view and not a single one challenged it. This means climate scientists know the problem (greenhouse gas emissions) and how to address it (reduce emissions). Of course, it’s not that simple, but it’s a basic cause and effect that advocates can rally behind.

It’s not quite so straightforward for marine scientists. (more…)

On Monday, experienced Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau drowned when a 12,300-pound orca named Tilikum pulled her into a tank after the popular Dine with Shamu show. The tragedy took place in front of dozens of tourists with varying accounts of what exactly occurred.

In the days since, I’ve received many questions about orcas like Tilikum. Several of  you want to hear my take on the ethics of captive lifestyles for animals. Some use terms like “compassionate conservation” while others talk about “cruel imprisonment.” Meanwhile, lots of advocacy groups have been speaking out by making lump judgments on all zoos and aquariums–which is not right. To be fair, there is a very broad spectrum in terms of the value of–and responsibility at–each. Further, most handlers I’ve personally met are well-intentioned, and focus on conservation and science. So rather than go into a lengthy discussion on the merits and faults of parks, let’s stick to orcas and this very sad story.

Orcas have evolved to be highly intelligent, social animals, communicating to pod members using sounds that travel underwater. They are also powerful hunters. Tilikum was born wild off the coast of  Iceland, where he could travel vast distances until he was captured in 1983. Since then, he’s lived in a comparatively small enclosure, siring offspring, and performing simple tricks for us, over and over and over again.

It’s relatively simple to understand why something might go wrong in this situation.

This is the sixth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

It seems simple enough: we should manage our marine resources to protect the whole ecosystem, not just a single species. That’s the basic premise of ecosystem-based management (EBM), the topic of this week’s class at Scripps (Read a previous post on EBM by Sheril here). EBM is all about interactions: between predator and prey, parasite and host, nutrients and phytoplankton, humans and our environment. The need for EBM comes from too many cases of a single-species management practice resulting in unintended impacts on the surrounding environment. (more…)

This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

In my favorite movie of all time, Jurassic Park, scientists clone a bunch of dinosaurs from the blood of prehistoric mosquitoes.  I’m sure you’ve seen it.  In the sequel, The Lost World, a Tyrannosaurus rex escapes from a cargo ship on mainland U.S. soil and wreaks havoc on my current hometown of San Diego—if this happened in real life, San Diegans would just shrug, grab their surfboards, and look for the next set of good waves.  What if the T-Rex hadn’t been tranquillized and returned to its island?  What if multiple dinosaurs had propagated on our continent and formed stable populations?  We would label them invasive species.  Or would we?  After all, dinosaurs were native to North America about 70 million years ago.  But I digress.

In our most recent class, we unfortunately did not discuss whether the repopulation of our country with dinosaurs would constitute a species invasion.  We did, however, talk about many of the vectors that transport invasive species through the marine environment.  One such vector is the ballast water of ships:  a freighter will fill its ballast tank in one part of the globe with water and various organisms, traverse an ocean to deliver its cargo, and empty the water and non-native organisms into a new, unsuspecting region.  The result is an invasion of crustaceans, mollusks, and algae that might out-compete native species in new habitats.  The most famous ballast tank stowaway is probably the zebra mussel, native to the Black and Caspian Sea, which has invaded North American lakes.

(more…)

This is the third in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

Last week, I wrote about raising fish in our own backyards using aquaculture.  Today, I’ll discuss fish that don’t come from farms, but instead make their way to our dinner plates from very far away:  the high seas.  The high seas, or international waters, are areas more than 200 miles offshore from any country and thus not regulated by any individual nation.  The huge factory fishing fleets of rival nations compete on the high seas to out-fish the other boats, reenacting Garret Hardin’s famous “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the middle of the ocean.

This week, it was my turn, along with three other classmates, to present to the rest of the class about high seas fishing.  We highlighted two different fishing methods:  drift netting and bottom trawling.  Drift nets pluck fish like tuna and swordfish from the top of the water column, while bottom trawls drag the seafloor for valuable halibut and orange roughy.  Both methods are indiscriminate:  you’re almost as likely to catch a common dolphin in a drift net as an albacore tuna, and bottom trawling is akin to plowing a whole forest just to harvest a few edible mushrooms.  Both sound pretty bad, right?  Consider this:  high seas drift netting was banned in 1991 by a UN resolution, but several countries still bottom trawl within international waters to this day. (more…)

The latest edition of Ocean and Coastal Management has an article on the world’s most charismatic invertebrate and I am sad to report–as expected–the news is not good:

Socio-Economic Features Of Sea Cucumber Fisheries
In Southern Coast Of Kenya

Jacob Ochiewoa, Maricela de la Torre-Castrob, Charles Muthamaa, Fridah Munyia and J.M. Nthutaa

A socio-economic assessment was conducted at Vanga, Shimoni, Majoreni and Gazi villages in the Kenyan south coast with focus on the sea cucumber fishing patterns, the social and economic characteristics of the fisher communities, the contribution of sea cucumbers to the local livelihoods, and analysis of the management systems. The results indicate that sea cucumber fishers are mainly men. Fishing is done in sub-tidal areas (3-10 metres deep) and inter-tidal areas depending on the species being targeted. Those who fish in the sub-tidal areas do skin-diving without using SCUBA diving gear. Sea cucumber fishing is heavily done during the north east monsoon season when the sea is calm and water is clear. About 32% of the sea cucumber fishers also collect other marine products such as octopus. The sea cucumbers are sold fresh from the sea to local first level middlemen who process and sell them to the second level middlemen and exporters in Mombasa. The fishers occasionally borrow money from first level middlemen especially when they fail to catch sea cucumbers but this in turn creates conditions of dependence and possible exploitation. Almost all sea cucumber fishers have stated that they are not willing to make sea cucumbers part of their daily diet. The economic value of the product was substantial; the average monthly revenue for dry sea cucumbers in the area was estimated to US$ 8,000. The relative highest profits are derived from juvenile species, thus there is an economic incentive hindering local stocks to reach sexual maturity, which in turn may create a situation in which recruitment success is highly dependent on faraway populations. The present management system falls into general fisheries regulations and was found weak. No specific management plan for sea cucumbers was found.

In other words, cukes are being collected before they reach sexual maturity and, at present, it appears that fishers have no incentives to harvest local populations sustainably.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, our oceans are going to hell in a handbasket. The signs of dramatic decline across scales are crystal clear, but we have a habit of ignoring what happens below the surface. So when there’s nothing but jellyfish and algae left, our children may wonder why we knew, yet did nothing. Oh, for the love of sea cucumbers… Surely we can do better!

This is the second in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

Here in Southern California, we’re enduring an extended period of heavy rains and high winds, or as Floridians would call it, “July.”  People from harsher climates may laugh at our predicament, but the truth is that San Diego and its residents are ill-equipped to deal with rain.  Streets flood almost immediately because drainage is almost non-existent.  Traffic slows to the kind of crawl I experienced during white-out blizzards while growing up in Maine.

Most San Diegans know not to swim in the ocean during and after a storm.  The rain washes an assortment of chemicals, fertilizers, oil, and garbage straight down the hills and into the sea.  How would you feel knowing the fish you ate for dinner came from a farm that similarly inundated the surrounding waters with bacteria?  The discharge of waste is just one of many controversial issues concerning aquaculture, our most recent class topic here at Scripps.

Globally, aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production system, increasing by 8.8% per year since 1985, according to a 2007 report by the FAO.  Aquaculture already accounts for around one-third of global fish production and may soon rival wild-caught fisheries as our primary source for fish.  A shift to reliance on farmed fish could also lessen the burden on over-exploited wild stocks.  It’s difficult to talk about aquaculture without mentioning the growing human population:  simply put, we’re going to need more protein to feed an estimated 9.2 billion people by 2050.  Proponents of aquaculture call it a possible solution to our potential food crisis.

Unfortunately, aquaculture is not the silver bullet that will magically save us from overfishing and global food shortages.  Unless the farms are a closed system, effluent from fish pens will pollute the surrounding waters.  Escapees can transmit diseases to wild stocks—they become parasite-bearing fish on the lamb, terrorizing the innocent locals.  Plus, we need to catch millions of tons of wild fish, like the Peruvian anchoveta, to grind into fish meal to feed the farmed fish.  It’s like hunting seagulls off the coast of Africa and using the gull meat to feed chickens on a farm in Arkansas.  Despite these problems, we’re going to have to find ways to lessen the environmental impact of aquaculture as the industry continues to grow.

It was pointed out in class that a variety of U.S. government agencies regulate aquaculture, depending on where you are and why you’re doing it.  A good start to better management of aquaculture in our country would be to streamline the regulatory power to a single agency.  Then we can shift our focus to the rest of the world:  to China, to India, to Chile, and every other country hoping to feed its people with farmed fish.

This is the first in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

Guilt. Shame. These aren’t emotions commonly associated with fish. According to Jennifer Jacquet, however, they may actually be effective tools to prevent destructive overfishing. Jennifer knows a thing or two about guilt—she writes the Guilty Planet blog for scienceblogs.com. Her lecture today covered creative ways to convince corporations to buy and sell fish caught in a sustainable manner. A supermarket that sells orange roughy, for instance, might change its practices if made to feel shame for peddling this exploited fish. Greenpeace, which graded the major seafood markets for sustainability, has made headway by calling out less ocean-friendly chains like Trader Joe’s. Can we go further, though, and attach a real public stigma to the trade of unsustainably caught fish?

Jennifer talked about the importance of corporate transparency to bring about policy changes, using examples from other industries. She mentioned the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), which forces polluters to publicize their emission levels. On the day after the first TRI figures were released in 1989, the polluting firms saw their stocks fall a combined $4.1 million. These corporations—feeling guilty and seeking to deflect public scorn—soon announced plans to reduce emissions. Jennifer also referenced restaurant hygiene report cards, which grade the cleanliness of restaurants: you get an A if diners can eat your risotto off the floor, a C if the vermin outnumber your patrons. No restaurant wants the scarlet letter “C” tacked to its window—it would be hard to recover from the public shame of such a poor grade.

Our class discussion, as it has a tendency to do here at Scripps, delved into a number of tangents, all of them thought-provoking. One student, who moved to San Diego from China in June for graduate school, cautioned that with shame can come unfair humiliation. He spoke of China’s Cultural Revolution, when citizens who were suspected of supporting capitalism were forced to walk through the streets wearing hats bearing the sign “Capitalist Dog.” Now, he asserts, China feels regret for putting its people through such a public disgrace because it realizes its original convictions were misguided. I brought up the success of anti-smoking campaigns and the shame placed on cigarette companies for being deceitful about the health effects of smoking and its youth-targeted advertising. Prof. Jeremy Jackson countered by pointing out that a backlash against anti-smoking campaigns actually makes smoking appealing to some young people.

But back to fish—after all, this is a marine policy course. Can seafood retailers like Walmart and Red Lobster be guilted into changing their practices? I think we have a long way to go: it’s still a social norm to buy and eat trawl-caught shrimp, which includes 12 pounds of unintended, wasted bycatch for every pound of shrimp caught. The public looks down upon corporate misdeeds like embezzlement and pollution. It’s time to add trade in unsustainable fisheries to that list of offense.

Pier 39, famous for these charismatic critters, sits eerily silent:

A favorite friend of mine at Duke is Dr. Andre Boustany; a marine biologist who is part of the intrepid Tag-A-Giant team and Project GLoBAL. Tag-A-Giant is an initiative made up of an incredible group of ocean scientists from across the U.S. who work with policymakers, fishermen, and the public to maintain and rebuild sustainable bluefin tuna populations–a species facing commercial extinction due to demand for sushi.

But this is a tragic story: Western Atlantic bluefin have declined by 82% since 1970 and it’s estimated there are only remaining 41,000 remaining reproductively mature individuals:

YOU can do something that matters to protect these magnificent giants.

Next March, an upcoming vote on a proposal will take place to stop the international commercial trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Unfortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has also proposed a measure to increase the number of bluefin tuna that can be harvested from U.S. waters. (Proposed Rule, RIN 0648-AX85, Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Season and Retention Limit Adjustments). At a time when the world is paying attention to a species in crisis, our country is not exactly setting a good example. Of course, this a complicated issue: Catch limits are presently not being met, but the discrepancy is due to regional changes, an altered population structure, and overall stock depletion. Regardless, the solution is assuredly not to increase pressure on a dwindling stock.

The Pew Environmental Group has issued a letter asking NMFS to extend the comment period on their proposal, consider additional scientific research, and allow the international community to make important decisions regarding the future of management. I hope readers and bloggers alike will join me in signing Pew’s important letter and telling NMFS to slow down this misguided proposal.