First posted on Huffington Post on April 2, 2012. Nat Geo’s new TV Show, Wicked Tuna, aired its first episode last night. The show had come under a lot of pre-airing criticism, including by me on this site. The main criticism: Why would Nat Geo choose to glamorize people who kill a magnificent endangered species [...]
Originally posted on Huffington Post on April 1, 2012. A couple of years ago, Whole Foods Market invited my not-for-profit outfit, Blue Ocean Institute, to help them inform their customers’ selections of wild-caught seafood. Whole Foods wanted to display our seafood rankings in their stores, to show customers which seafood we’d rated green (abundant and [...]
Today was the first day of abalone season. These mitt-sized snails cling to rocks in water from the high-tide zone down to about 60 feet deep. We accompanied several fishermen who dive among the sea lions and kelp to find them. They contend with water in the 50s, Fahrenheit, and strong surges from open-ocean rollers. [...]
This blog originally appeared in Huffington Post on 2/21/12: A recent announcement about a giant new fishing boat boasted that its automation would be capable of baiting and setting 17,000 hooks per day http://bit.ly/zm2l7B. I put the announcement on my Facebook page, adding a disparaging, “We need this?” [http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=597114862&ref=name] Although dozens of people agreed with [...]
original blog posted in Huffington Post on 1/17/12: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/oil-and-herring-dont-mix_b_1211077.html When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, it unleashed a regional catastrophe whose effects continue to play out these two decades later. One such apparent effect was the subsequent collapse of the region’s herring. Now we have a new study of herring, [...]
A federal law, as amended in 2007, required all U.S. fisheries to have management plans, and catch limits that would end overfishing by 2012. And look what year it is! Way back in 1991, I was federally appointed to one of the eight federal “Fisheries Management Councils.” These councils’ main job is to write federal [...]
Part 2: Finding Hope? To continue making money, fisheries should be careful not to deplete the fish. But they tend to do the opposite, pursuing short-term gain in a race to the fish, driving many fish populations to all-time lows. Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Duke University, Stanford University, University of British Columbia, [...]
Part I: Fishing Down In 1631 England’s King Charles I may have been the first person to ban a new fishing gear, writing: “The former abundance of fish is turned into such scarcitie and deareness, that… our citie of London, and even our owne Court, are many times unprovided for their necessary dyet…therefore…the nets heretofore [...]
Monday, I had the pleasure of taking Peter Matthiessen (not only an iconic writer but also a personal hero of mine) out fishing off Montauk, New York, to witness the truly incredible spectacle of the autumn striped bass migration. My sister Lydia also joined us and is in one of the photos. The striped bass [...]
Are cod beginning a recovery in New England? That’s a question we’re looking at for an episode of our PBS series Saving The Ocean. For centuries, cod were a major economic driver in New England and Atlantic Canada. They spurred settling of the New World and sent food everywhere from Europe to the Caribbean. They [...]
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