World Oceans Day: Imagine a World Without Fish

On World Ocean's Day, it's important to remember just what an important resource our oceans are. The Guardian (UK) has a story about the state of the earth's fisheries:

Eating fish is good for us, but catching it in the way we do devastates the sea. Nearly nine tenths of European stocks are over-fished, and around a third are beyond safe biological limits: that is, the adult population is too depleted to provide replacement stock. Almost all cod caught in the North Sea have not had a chance to breed. Bottom dredging trawlers rip up everything in their path.

The south Pacific and American coastal waters have almost been fished out. West African fishing communities are being forced from the water by the industrial fishing fleets of Europe. Russian and Asian fishing fleets greedily scoop the fish from the Pacific. On the latest estimates, around a third of the world's oceans need to be closed to fishing, perhaps forever, to regenerate stocks.

According to Charles Clover, whose film "The End of the Line" is released today with the ambition of creating the momentum for reform, it is a moment that compares with the launch of the organic movement 50 years ago to fight the threat of the "silent spring".

Read the full article here: Over-fishing.

Here is the trailer for "The End of the Line"; looks like a powerful film:



And if you need a reminder of the beauty of our ocean planet, here is a slide show of one of my favorite places on earth, Raja Ampat, Indonesia. I was diving there four years ago. How I long to get back there: Raja Ampat.

And here is a link to the official World Oceans Day 2009 web site: A Sea Change.

Imagine a world without fish? I'd rather not, thank you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sea change: deal saves California fishing industry (telegraph.co.uk)
• George Monbiot on the senseless destruction of oceans and fisheries in Europe (isiria.wordpress.com)
• Consumer ignorance over endangered fish (telegraph.co.uk)
• An Inconvenient Truth for Fish (telegraph.co.uk)
• Iceland is the Success Story of Sustainable Fishing (treehugger.com)
• EU begins fisheries policy review (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Call for 20-year fishing ban in a third of oceans (guardian.co.uk)

Global Climate Change: Some Good News for a Change

So much of the news around climate change just seems dire. I know, I see it roll across my Google News Reader every day. And it can get kind of depressing.

But today, two news bits caught my eye because, well, because they were hopeful:

G7 Plans to Consider a Climate Change Fund

and

Coral Reefs May Be Protected By Natural Ocean Thermostat

As an investor and supporter of alternative energy, I am thrilled by the first bit of news. As a diver and lover of marine environments, I am delighted by the potential of the latter.

First, when the top finance officials from the Group of Seven industrialized nations (G7) meet in Tokyo this Saturday, it appears that Japan, Britain, and the United States will propose a new fund promoting clean technologies to combat climate change.

"The three countries will explain the content of their current discussions on the fund, and we'll see how the rest of the Group of Seven members react to it," a finance ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity.

In addition to climate change, the G7 is expected to discuss the worsening global economic outlook and recent market turmoil, ahem, correction.

Then Science Daily reported that "Natural processes may prevent oceans from warming beyond a certain point, helping protect some coral reefs from the impacts of climate change, new research finds.

"The study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), finds evidence that an ocean 'thermostat' appears to be helping to regulate sea-surface temperatures in a biologically diverse region of the western Pacific."

"Global warming is damaging many corals, but it appears to be bypassing certain reefs that support some of the greatest diversity of life on the planet," NCAR scientist Joan Kleypas says. "In essence, reefs that are already in hot water may be more protected from warming than reefs that are not. This is some rare hopeful news for these important ecosystems."

Encouraging news in the International Year of the Reef 2008. Let's suit up and get wet until the market improves.

Three years ago today I was diving here: Raja Ampat; some of the most amazing reefs I have ever seen. I'm dying to get back there.