Complexities of 'overfishing'

In a really interesting OpEd piece in todays NY Times, Ray and Ulrike Hilborn argue that once a fish stock is recovered, it only punishes the regulated fisherman to not eat their sustainably harvested fish.

May 23, 2012

Eat Your Hake and Have It, Too

By RAY HILBORN and ULRIKE HILBORN

Seattle

WHOLE FOODS recently stopped selling fish that are on the “red lists” of seafood to avoid, issued by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute. Other major food retailers are considering similar measures, under the assumption that because a species is overfished, it is not sustainable.

Those decisions are based on a misunderstanding of what constitutes a sustainable fishery. The fact is that we can harvest a certain fraction of a fish population that has been overfished, if we allow for the natural processes of birth and growth to replace what we take from the ocean and to rebuild the stock. Instead of calling on consumers to abstain from all overfished species, we should direct our attention at fisheries that consistently take more fish than can be naturally replaced.

Bluefin tuna is a classic example of a species that has been consistently harvested too hard and should be avoided by consumers. But at the same time, the United States has made remarkable progress in rebuilding overfished stocks. Wild populations of 27 species have been rebuilt to “healthy” levels in the last 11 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this month, the agency announced that six formerly overfished stocks had been rebuilt, including Bering Sea snow crab, Atlantic Coast summer flounder and Gulf of Maine haddock.

But even as those stocks were being rebuilt, there were no apparent conservation benefits from the refusal of consumers to buy those overfished species. The catch was limited by rules set by regional fisheries councils based on quotas determined by fisheries scientists and enforced by the oceanic agency and by the Coast Guard. Any boycott punished American fishermen, who got a lower price when the catch was sold abroad.

Elsewhere in the world, many fisheries have become unsustainable because of fishing pressures. Most of Asia and Africa do not have management systems that regulate those pressures. And while Europe does have a management system, the quotas are often based on politics rather than science. Many European stocks are fished too hard — some cod stock, for example — and should be avoided by consumers.

If we are to fully harvest the potential sustainable yield of fish from the ocean, we cannot follow the utopian dictum that no stocks may be overfished. After all, even in sustainably managed fisheries, some stocks will almost always be classified as overfished because of natural fluctuations in their populations.

At the same time, we should recognize that seafood-labeling systems hold seafood to much higher standards than other forms of agriculture. The same stores that won’t sell an overfished species are selling other foods whose production affects the environment far more.

During a recent visit to a Whole Foods store in Seattle, we saw no evaluation of the environmental impact of the meat being sold. Free-range chickens were labeled, but there were no labels telling us if pesticide and fertilizer runoff from growing the corn used to feed the beef caused dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, or if the soybeans came from land clear-cut out of the Brazilian rain forest.

Truly informative seafood labels must distinguish between the abundance of a fish stock and its sustainability. Some fish will be disappearing from supermarket shelves over the next few years even though they are being sustainably managed. Consumers should tell retailers and environmental groups not to “red list” fish stocks that may be overfished but are being replenished.

Ray Hilborn, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington, and Ulrike Hilborn, a retired organic farmer, are the authors of “Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

US imposes tarif on Chinese solar panels

I just read this morning that the US has imposed hefty tarifs on inexpensive Chinese solar panels and claim that China is dumping them at below-market prices in the US.  


What a stupid thing to do!  


First, it is the inexpensive solar technology that will be an essential part of getting Americans to install solar panels in the first place. 


Second, it punishes the installers in the US who have been installing these panels.  


Third, it encourages wasteful production of something in the US that could be better produced elsewhere.  


In my opinion, this sends absolutely the wrong message about creating a sustainable future.  Solar MUST be part of our future and we can't wait around while US companies (or German companies, or Chinese companies) make more efficient panels--we have to just get them out there now!


Discussion topic:
When are tarifs OK?  Why?  If we had a natural stewardship amendment, would putting tarifs on a 'green' energy supply be illegal?  Should it?

A Natural Stewardship Amendment

A number of States’ Constitution’s explicitly gives legislators the responsibility for stewardship of natural resources for the benefit of future generations. 

For instance, Article I, section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution says:

“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

This is a forward-thinking idea that dates back to the Iroquois, who evaluated their decisions by thinking about what the consequences of an action would do seven generations in the future. This idea should be more widely adopted so that our grandchildren (and their grandchildren) have a future that doesn’t include ecological collapse. On this Earth Day, let’s make a pledge to work towards wider adoption of this simple idea.  Let’s work to create a National Natural Stewardship Amendment. 

Why?  In a line, because we systematically undervalue the future and this undervaluation has led to widespread environmental degradation that threatens the foundations of civilization. 

Sounds extreme?  Just ponder the fact that regardless of our political affiliations or our religious beliefs, we all suffer the costs of a deteriorating environment.  We all suffer from the toxification of our planet.  Rich or poor, we all suffer the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals and the toxic mix of chemicals now in our air, water, and food.  For instance, widespread production of estrogen mimicking chemicals puts us on a path for our daughters and granddaughters to become reproductively mature at earlier ages, while our sons and grandsons will have lower sperm counts and more feminized genitals and behavior. Cancers and metabolic disorders of all sorts will increase in response to the mix of chemicals that “support” our modern lifestyles.

Regardless of our political or religious beliefs, we all benefit from the ecosystem services that pollinators such as bees provide. Without them, commercial agriculture would stop.  We all benefit from the water filtration and flood and storm control that healthy wetlands, watersheds, and barrier islands provide.  We all benefit from the CO₂ reduction provided by an intact forest.  We all benefit from clean water and intact fisheries.

Yet we continue, as a society, to engage in activities that increase the production of CO₂ and toxic chemicals, decimate both pollinators and natural habitat, and poison water and destroy fisheries through the destruction of estuaries, the creation of dead zones, and overfishing.  Our focus is clear: maximize short-term profits. But, stewardship requires taking a longer view. 

It’s important to realize that a ‘rational’ economic decision is predicated on a number of assumptions. A key one is how long you want to stay in the game. While modern economists speak of ‘future discounting’ and setting a ‘discount rate’, they focus on decades. By contrast, the Iroquois focused on generations. 

If we value the future, we will take better care of the resources we are borrowing from our children and grandchildren.

If we don’t value the future, we do as we are doing and engage in short-term profit maximization with no regard for what we are leaving behind for future generations.

The time for this shortsighted behavior has ended.  The threats we face in the coming decades require action, and they require it quickly.

An Amendment that requires us to pause and evaluate our actions to consider the long-term impacts of those decisions would force us to discuss the consequences of our actions and be clear about our discount rate.  What is the moral justification for a short-term discount rate?  Shouldn’t we care about a future for our children, and their children? 

A National Natural Stewardship Amendment would cut across partisan lines and celebrate the values that we all share in living in a healthful environment that enhances our lives and protects us from sickness and disease. Ultimately, the Amendment would force legislators to consider the future and welfare for all citizens of the United States, current and future, rather than the welfare of industries that, through industrial lobbyists, already have too much legislative power.  An Amendment would provide a legal basis to ensure that future generation’s rights are protected. It’s the right thing to do now.

Tim O Reilly on Pascal's Wager

Tim O Reilly, founder and CEO of O Reilly Media, writing on The Edge says:

In 1661 or 1162, in his Pensees, philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal articulated what would come to be known as Pascal's Wager, the question of whether or not to believe in God, in the face of the failure of reason and science to provide a definitive answer.

"You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then?...You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."

While this proposition of Pascal's is clothed in obscure religious language and on a religious topic, it is a significant and early expression of decision theory. And, stripped of its particulars, it provides a simple and effective way to reason about contemporary problems like climate change.

We don't need to be 100% sure that the worst fears of climate scientists are correct in order to act. All we need to think about are the consequences of being wrong.

Let's assume for a moment that there is no human-caused climate change, or that the consequences are not dire, and we've made big investments to avert it. What's the worst that happens? In order to deal with climate change:

1. We've made major investments in renewable energy. This is an urgent issue even in the absence of global warming, as the IEA has now revised the date of "peak oil" to 2020, only 11 years from now.

2. We've invested in a potent new source of jobs.

3. We've improved our national security by reducing our dependence on oil from hostile or unstable regions.

4. We've mitigated the enormous "off the books" economic losses from pollution. (China recently estimated these losses as 10% of GDP.) We currently subsidize fossil fuels in dozens of ways, by allowing power companies, auto companies, and others to keep environmental costs "off the books," by funding the infrastructure for autos at public expense while demanding that railroads build their own infrastructure, and so on.

5. We've renewed our industrial base, investing in new industries rather than propping up old ones. Climate critics like Bjorn Lomborg like to cite the cost of dealing with global warming. But the costs are similar to the "costs" incurred by record companies in the switch to digital music distribution, or the costs to newspapers implicit in the rise of the web. That is, they are costs to existing industries, but ignore the opportunities for new industries that exploit the new technology. I have yet to see a convincing case made that the costs of dealing with climate change aren't principally the costs of protecting old industries.

By contrast, let's assume that the climate skeptics are wrong. We face the displacement of millions of people, droughts, floods and other extreme weather, species loss, and economic harm that will make us long for the good old days of the current financial industry meltdown.

Climate change really is a modern version of Pascal's wager. On one side, the worst outcome is that we've built a more robust economy. On the other side, the worst outcome really is hell. In short, we do better if we believe in climate change and act on that belief, even if we turned out to be wrong.

But I digress. The illustration has become the entire argument. Pascal's wager is not just for mathematicians, nor for the religiously inclined. It is a useful tool for any thinking person.

Sustainability in dining halls

I've read about and seen a number of UCLA sustainability initiatives and heard about what the dining halls had been doing but it took me going there to see what a GREAT JOB they're doing.  


I had the pleasure of dining with a number of our undergraduate majors this evening.  While waiting to get in, there were signs talking about meatless Thursdays and WHY they were having meatless Thursdays (now to get them to eliminate cheese on Thursdays!). There were signs all over the place about not using a tray and by doing so saving water and energy required to clean them.  And, the portions were 'reasonable' and food choices healthy.  I had a grilled Tilapia served with polenta, tomato sauce, and spinach (it was really nice) and two helpings of a really nice fresh salad.


I have to say that the campus dining halls are doing such a better job than the campus faculty club!  There are no meatless days there, unsustainable fish are regularly served, and there's apparently no thought about educating faculty about sustainability issues.  Of course by identifying problems this opens the door to solve them.  I guess I have a conversation lined up in my near future.


Is your school, campus, work place engaging in sustainable food practices?  What would it take to get them to do so?

Pirsig and the rigidity of our values

In a very interesting passage of “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance”, Robert Pirsig uses a metaphor to describe how the rigidity of our values sometimes can put us in danger:

“All kinds of examples from motorcycle maintenance could be given, but the most striking example of value rigidity I can think of is the old South Indian Monkey Trap, which depends on value rigidity for its effectiveness. The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped – by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it. The villagers are coming to get him and take him away. They’re coming closer… closer!... now! What general advice – not specific advice – but what general advice would you give the poor monkey in circumstances like this?”

Pirsig would tell the monkey to reconsider his values (in this case, as fast as possible), removing the value rigidity that rates rice above freedom. Perhaps the monkey could get released from the trap with a small amount of rice among his fingers, if he weren’t too greedy and tried to get all the food inside the coconut.

The metaphor of the monkey trap can teach us interesting aspects of many things, including about the exploration of resources in our planet. Instead of a coconut, a monkey and some rice, the real situation is composed by seven billion people “trapped” in the same planet, sharing common resources and having lives that are linked in a certain way. All of us are trying to take some rice, but the amount of food is limited, and we must be intelligent in using it. If we get stuck, worried about taking the biggest quantity of rice we can, we run the risk of dying in the trap.

If we know that the things we do and the way we consume things can be harmful to other people and to the environment, the question is: are we able to reconsider some of our values? If not, why?

Paddy Ashdown: The Global Power Shift

This is an important TED talk that can stimulate a lot of conversation.  While I hate to suggest you watch it with your friends, perhaps you can suggest they watch it and then have dinner together and talk about it.

Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk at TEDxBrussels he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming.

Throughout his career, Paddy Ashdown has moved across the international stage. He served as a Royal Marine and an intelligence officer in MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, before becoming a member of Parlaiment. In 1988 he became the first leader of the newly formed Liberal Democrat party. After leaving Parlaiment he served as the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And where are our duties?

Two weeks ago Daniel wrote about a costumer who sprayed pepper on the face of other people to be the first to get the products she wanted at a Black Friday sale. As he pointed out, it seems we are losing our civility.

My guess is that many people are giving too much value for their rights at a point in which the rights of others value nothing. “My”, “me”, or “I”, are the favorite words for many of us: “I have to be the first”, “the government needs to work for me”, “I can do what I want”, and so on. I don’t know how American society is structured, but here in Brazil I feel we are experiencing an epidemic of “my things first”. It is deeply sad to see even children behaving this way.

Frans de Waal wrote that if he could be God for a moment, he would give people the gift of empathy, the ability to see the lives of others from the same perspective we see our own. There cannot be cooperation without empathy. We need to understand that our interests are similar to those of our friends, neighbors, relatives, and even enemies.

We are used to having our lives according to the legal system, but certain moral decisions we must take in our daily lives are not regulated by law. So, we should realize that our responsibilities to other people (and to the environment, too) go far beyond law.

Giving thanks for our environment

This Thanksgiving, pause and give thanks for our environment.  Our environment that provides the oxygen that we breathe and the clean water that we drink and use for irrigation.  Our environment that provides the soil in which we grow crops.  Our environment that provides the pollinators that pollinate our produce and the flowers that we enjoy in our gardens.  Our environment that provides the wood that we build with and the trees that give us shelter.  Our environment in which we recreate.  Our environment that is filled with unknown diversity and which, when you pause and really see what is going on around you, is simply magical.

Give thanks for our environment because it is threatened.  It is threatened by our use of carbon.  It is threatened by our own ingenuity—the chemicals that we have created pollute it in unknown and perhaps (given the diversity of chemicals) unknowable ways. It is threatened by our use of fertilizers and insecticides. It is threatened by over-harvesting—both in the sea and on land. 

Give thanks to those teachers and environmental educators without whom we wouldn’t know what is at stake if we continue to burn carbon, pollute, over-fertilize, and create toxins.  For these teachers are a key link in understanding and are those that must teach us not only what is at stake, but also to help facilitate our search for solutions.

Give thanks to those teachers and support them in wise curriculum development.  Curriculum that inspires our students to solve problems rather than simply parrot answers on government-mandated standardized tests.  Curriculum that teaches our students to be citizens, with all of the knowledge about civics and politics, history and social studies, art and literature, and science that this entails.  Curriculum that empowers rather than bores.  Curriculum that can effect a change.

And give thanks to those around you, with whom you must work to create this change.  We’re at an important crossroads in history where inaction can lead to unknowable destruction.  As John F. Kennedy, extending the thoughts of the Babylonian Jewish leader Hillel the Elder, said:  “If not us, who?  And if not now, when?”

Daniel T. Blumstein & Charles Saylan

Small versus big business

Back from Belize, I’m still catching up with a stack of journals and magazines (yes, I still do read things on paper…).  One really interesting essay was written by James Surowiecki in the 31 October issue of The New Yorker and noted that one key characteristic of successful national economies was that there were a lot of large employers.  He noted that this is in stark contrast to a widely held political view that by helping small businesses we’ll help our country’s economy.  He pointed out that small businesses are inefficient and are likely to fail whereas big business have buying power and can help more people in both the short and long run.

This got me thinking about  the role of small versus big businesses for driving innovation. What is the role of small business?  At a party the other week I met two entrepreneurs with two very different and very promising businesses that they were trying to get off the ground. I asked one, who did they want to sell their internet-based business too in the best of circumstances.  Thus, when I later read the Surowiecki piece, I resonated to the power of big business. 

Small business are necessary, in a Darwinian sense, to drive innovation.  But the real money is made by the big businesses who have the power to take successful ideas and package them into something bigger. 

How does this help us solve our environmental problems?  I think we need to support research and innovation, but we also have to ensure that we have an infrastructure that can take these great ideas and scale them up.

Creating memories in nature

A friend of mine spent a couple of years in the state of Bahia, northeastern Brazil, to map the distribution of monkeys of the genus Callicebus in that state. He had to talk to a lot of people to get information about the localization of the monkeys, and then check if they were still living in that area. Some people indicated an old man as a source of great knowledge about the fauna and flora of the region, and my friend went to a small community to interview him. By the end of the talk, my friend played the sound of a monkey vocalization and asked the man if he could recognize what sound was that. When the old man heard it, he stood up and started crying: “this was the sound of the forest! The sound of the forest! This does not exist anymore, people destroyed it! But it was not me!” His daughter, who was hearing the talk, asked my friend to stop the interview because his father needed to go home and rest. He was very excited and his body was shaking.

The old man didn’t know that sound was the vocalization of a monkey. For him, it was the forest. And the forest must have played an important role in his life. I wonder what he remembered when he heard “the forest”. Perhaps his youth, his family, friends, the social life in his community, good and bad things, all of them happened in that place, surrounded by the forest. The forest had been the background for life in that place. And the forest was not there anymore.

This kind of situation is an example that indicates we have to defend nature not only for the material things it supplies us. We need to conserve nature for the sake of our peace of mind. Forests, animals, and every other aspect of nature are inside us, are part of what we are. In a world where financial values are the central part of many discussions, even those related to environmental questions, cultural, ethical and spiritual values must not be forgotten, and we can incorporate some of these values living close to natural things.

Discussion topics: Does nature evoke good memories in you? Is there a special landscape that reminds you of good things that happened in you life?

Two catalytic moments

I think it's reasonable to say that because of global warming, I was able to hang with David Orr.  Turns out that I should have still be in Belize but had to evacuate my class ("cut and run", in my vocab!) to avoid a hurricane that was building and bearing down on our remote caye in the Caribbean.  

But stepping back a moment, more and stronger hurricanes are expected because of global warming.  Why?  Because hurricanes form and strengthen over hot water and the Caribbean has been exceptionally hot recently.  Hurricanes are not to be messed with.  While NOAA does a wonderful job trying to predict their tracks, they're somewhat unpredictable and can be devastating (remember Katrina?).  A year before our class, the island we were on had a direct hit from a category 1 and this caused a lot of damage (in addition to washing plastic junk all over the island).  I was told that in 1961 a hurricane hit the island, cut it up and killed people.  Shape of things to come?  You betcha. 

I've already written about the second catalytic event: watching the reef bleach.  I still can't shake the image of swimming over a reasonably healthy coral reef one day and the next swimming through slimy water filled with zozanthellae.  Turns out that we didn't lose the whole reef but two weeks after the bleaching event, the corals that lost their zozanthellae, had not recovered.  Such damage may be cumulative.  Lose a bit this year.  A bit more next year.  Before you know it, no reef.  And this ratcheting down of the reef condition illustrates something called 'shifting baselines'.  

Shifting baselines are seen when we look at something now and use that as our reference for 'natural', 'healthy', or 'quality'. The trouble is if you go back far enough, what we see now is anything but natural, healthy or quality.

What can be done?  Help create that sustainable future I've been writing and blogging about.  Talk about catalytic events you've had.  And, consider sharing them here!

Insights from David Orr

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Oberlin Professor and Environmental leader David Orr last night.  He's a personal hero, a master of great prose, and always fun to hang with.  Coupla words that will be immediately incorporated into my vocabulary.

Promiscuous chemistry:  We were talking about the problems from what really only can be called a chemical revolution over the past 50 or so years.  Trouble is that this revolution is probably going to kill us.  We have no idea how many of these petro-chemical derived chemicals function alone or together.  We do know that since the rise of plastics and other industrial and consumer chemicals, male sperm counts have declined throughout the 'developed' world combined with a concomitant drop in testes size.  And, there have been major reductions in the age of puberty for girls, and reproductive cancers are more common.

Hope is a verb, with its sleeves rolled up:  David was talking about the ways one can address the current major threats to our environment and civilization.  He said one be optimistic and can ignore the truth and think that others will work it out (which won't happen), or once can be pessimistic which he views as morally repugnant because it involves no personal action.  Rather, he says we all have to work hard and have hope.

Some thoughts for tonight's dinner?

We are all the 100%

Regardless of where you fall on the current 'occupy' movement, the environmental problems we face will require ALL of us working together to solve.  Sure businesses produce products and the production of these products uses energy and creates waste, but we, the consumers are those that demand these products. And, even if we're not demanding them (do we really need the diversity of products currently created?) we permit ourselves to be duped into thinking we need them.  Thus, all 100% of us are, to some extent, culpable, for the current environmental problems.

Consumption control is the easiest way for us to address this.  Indeed, if you're opposed to a particular business, just don't use their products.  Don't like wall street banks--join a credit union or a bank at a community bank.  Better yet, try to use less.  

Food decisions are a great place to start.  Try to buy less processed food because processed food = additional energy.  Cook your own meals from fresh ingredients.  Your body and your soul will be rewarded.

Fast for 7 billion?

On Monday, 31 October 2011, I suggest we consider having a foodless dinner party.  Foodless?  Why?  

Because it is on this day that the UN will 'celebrate' the birth of the 7 billionth living person on Earth.  7 billion is a lot of people on this crowded planet and rather than celebrating, we should probably mourn and prepare for a future with less.  

7 billion people who hope to have a life that depends on resources (a synonym for 'development' or 'an advanced lifestyle') will further deplete our natural resources, increase the amount of toxic wastes, greenhouse gases, and ultimately, many of these people will suffer.  Of course, as Charlie and I (and many others) have written, a person isn't a person isn't a person.  It's their ecological footprint that matters.  A single person in a developed country has a much greater ecological and carbon footprint than someone living in a very poor country.  Thus, the intention (dare I say 'right') to develop is a double-edged sword; particularly when you have 7 billion people whose lives you're hoping to improve.

And, while in many places energy is much more efficiently created and used, and while there is a bright future for those who can figure out how to develop more sustainable sources of energy, 7 billion creates a huge barrier to equitable sharing of those energy resources and 7 billion creates a lot of waste and stresses on natural ecosystems.

A few years ago the UN predicted that the population would level off in the next few decades.  But now, some current predictions toy with the idea that the world will soon have 10 billion people.  Pause and imagine this for a moment.  10 billion mouths to feed.  10 billion people to warm and cool and clothe and support.  That's even more pollution, greenhouse gas production, and, ultimately, suffering.

So, this weekend over dinner, talk about a world with 7 billion.  And then think about what a world with 10 billion would look like.  Is it a world that you would want to live in?  Is that amount of global suffering acceptable to you?  What can you do to help prevent that?  What can we all do to better help share the resources with others?  Should we really skip a meal on Monday?

Creating competition to stimulate environmental legislation

Here’s a really interesting claim by E. Donald Elliot (www.eli.org).  Writing in the September/October 2011 issue of “The Environmental Forum” he claims that

“Environmentalists have made three tactical mistakes of historic proportions since 1990.  First, they have consistently supported Democrats, thereby undermining the competition between the two parties on environmental issues that characterized the more productive 1970 to 1992 period.  Second, they have focused almost exclusively on climate change, thereby sucking the oxygen out of other issues (such as updating our chemical management system) on which bipartisan progress would have been possible.  And third, they made a tactical blunder of historic proportions by taking the position that climate science was beyond debate, thereby abandoning public discourse in the United States on climate science to the antis.”

Discussion topics:

How can we nudge our politicians to focus on issues common to both ‘sides of the aisle’ and important to all of us?  Elliot suggests that we repeal the 17^th Amendment (direct election of Senators) to break the cycle of electioneering.

Eating quandries

Belize is one of the few places that still has viable populations of queen conch.  I've been swimming by them every day in the seagrass on my commute to the reef.  Today, I swam down and looked one in the eyes (which are found at the tip of eye-stalks that extend out of the bottom of the shell) before putting out my hand and scaring it back into its creamy brown shell.

Trouble is that conch taste good.  Really good. (Google some recipes for conch ceviche for starters!)

Populations throughout the Caribbean have been hunted to local extinction and they are threatened or endangered all over.  Conch poachers are prosecuted.  Conch conservation is touted. 

So what's the problem.  The problem is I wonder if it's ethical to eat them here.

Conservation is often a very local issue.  What's threatened in one location may be abundant in another.  Consider wolves, or grizzly bears:  less common in the lower 48 US States than Canada or Alaska.  It's legal to hunt these magnificent carnivores in Canada and Alaska, but there's much controversy over hunting them in the lower 48.

So, if you know that a fish (or conch, in this case) is mostly endangered, should you eat it from a place where it is not?  Even this is a more complex problem that it may first seem.  

Consider salmon.  You can't make a general statement saying that eating wild salmon is sustainable because many salmon fisheries are not sustainable.  So, it is a bit of a dilemma about making general statements.

And even here, we're clearly not on a marine reserve where they are protected and consequently  I'm not seeing the small conch in sufficient numbers to tell me that this bays population is sustainable. 

So, will I eat them if our captain gets us some (he's a fisherman in addition to the captain of the boat that takes us here and back)?  Yes, I think I will...but only here.

Power Outage: Using less electricity...

If you've been following my Belize saga, let me report that the train stopped, this time, and fortunately.  The wind came up and blew in colder water which drove down the water temperature to the high 80°'s.  Then it started raining (we're in the middle of a large low pressure system that is leading to periodic downpours and squalls).  This has further cooled the water and the coral bleaching has stopped--for now.

But then again, so has the electricity made by our solar panels!  This morning the power went out.  

The marine lab has both a wind turbine and a number of large solar panels to generate electricity.  As we were introduced to the place by the station manager he told us about their conservation ethic.  There are few lights (all compact florescent or florescent) and no hot water (it's not needed).  Fans are used sparingly.  

We did however bring a lot of iPods, speakers, and computers (all required for research--several of my student groups are doing playback experiments to lizards and birds to study communication and predation risk assessment) and some more fans (to keep us cool) and somehow, for the first time in recent history, used up all the power!

Ironically, we're really doing a good job conserving power (using fans sparingly--OK not that sparingly when it felt like 100°F, but generally sparingly, using few lights) so this is a real wake-up to me and is a wake-up call to the power that computers and fans can use!

Discussion Topic

What, if anything, are you doing to conserve power?  What can you easily do to use even less?  Have you thought about solar panels?  How would they work to help you generate power?  How would you use power if you were generating it all yourself.