Blue-eyed Shag. Photo: Carl Safina

Blue-eyed Shag with bonnet up. Photo: Carl Safina

Blue-eyed Shags. Photo: Carl Safina

fishing boat and birds. Photo: Carl Safina

Originally posted in Huffington post on 1/23/2012:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/seabirds-the-other-seafoo_b_1223780.html

I recently got a letter from the United States Federal Bird Banding Laboratory. (Yes there is such a thing.) I was pretty surprised. In the 1980s I studied seabirds and hawks, and I banded many thousands of birds. But that was a long while back. I no longer have a banding license—though I miss those days—and I haven’t put a band on a bird’s leg in 20 years. So I wasn’t expecting bird-banding mail. I opened it and became informed that a Common Tern I’d banded 25 years ago as a chick was breeding this past summer, on an island about 80 miles northeast of where it hatched. Wow. A few years ago, this would have been the species’ longevity record, which, I learned, now stands at 27 years.

When I was studying seabirds in grad school, there came a flurry of published studies on the relationship of birds to fisheries. There are 4 general dynamics: 1) birds catch fish, thereby competing with fisheries; 2) fisheries compete with seabirds, catching fish that seabirds need, thus lowering their ability to survive or raise chicks; 3) birds directly benefit from fisheries because they eat fishery discards in such volume that they survive at higher-than-natural densities, expanding to larger-than-natural ranges; 4) fishing gear drowns seabirds at high enough rates to drive population declines in some species, notably albatrosses.

Seemingly conflicting conclusions—fishing both helps and hurt seabirds—occur because different kinds of birds do different things. Gulls, which by nature are scavengers and opportunists, can benefit from discards. Gannets and terns eat almost exclusively live fish that they catch by plunging; depleting schools of fishes like herring or sand-lance can crucially diminish their food supply.

Now we have a new paper. Philipe M. Cury and a baker’s dozen of colleagues have published, Global Seabird Response to Forage Fish Depletion—One-third for the Birds (Science, December 23, 2011). Under examination: How much food to seabirds need? (Their definition of forage fish includes fishes, squids, and the shrimp-like crustaceans called krill that swarm in cold waters where they feed everything from seabirds to whales.)

The ocean is no untrammeled wilderness. As the authors note, many large fishes and marine mammals have been severely diminished by fishing and other human activities. Meanwhile, there’s an intensifying collision between the decline of larger fishes and the increase of human appetites, now seven billion people and still climbing. Fishing for smaller species such as sardines and anchovies—the food for big fish, many mammals, and birds—is increasing.

The scientists looked at 14 seabird species across 7 ecosystems. They set out “to test the hypothesis that the form of the numerical response between seabird breeding success and forage fish abundance is consistent across species and ecosystems.” Bear in mind that the world contains hundreds of seabird species, and for most of them there is no data on the relationship between the birds and their food. So, this paper’s generalization may not hold across all species or in all situations. For example, in deep open-ocean waters, some tropical boobies rely heavily on actively feeding tunas to make forage fish accessible by driving them to the surface. What happens to birds when fishing depletes tunas, even if prey such as flying fish are not targeted by fisheries, and remain abundant?

The scientists found that seabird breeding success was fairly high and stable when prey densities were average or above. That’s not surprising; it means seabirds are best adapted to average conditions. Below average prey densities, though, there’s trouble. The authors refer to just-below-average prey densities as “the threshold at which breeding success began to decline.” The “threshold” also happens to be prey densities that are about one-third of the maximum prey abundance observed in the most prey-dense years. And another thing happens at the threshold; seabird breeding success becomes not just lower but more variable, a wider range of good and bad.

One more thing: although seabird breeding success declines strongly when food abundance goes below average, at above-average food densities breeding success reaches a plateau, and does not change, even as food abundance further increases. This appears to be a global pattern.

This implies that chronic food scarcity will compromise long-term seabird breeding success. It also implies that it would be difficult to undo harm done to bird populations after depressing their food abundance. Protecting prey so that they bounced back from depletion (which would be a management feat in itself ) would not allow seabirds to simply bounce back and compensate for population declines caused by food scarcity. Apparently, they can’t.  Even if there’s plenty of food, seabirds whose numbers are depressed by drowning in gill-nets or on longlines, can’t simply bounce back after people stop doing what’s killing them. (Albatrosses and their relatives, for instance, can only lay one egg per breeding season, no matter how much they’re eating.)

Long life spans and slow breeding rates are typical in seabirds. Evolution has forged a palette of sturdy, steady birds built to reflect the sea’s ups and downs and to survive and thrive through bouts of meager times. Their longevity is their bridge across troubled waters. But like any bridge, it only goes so far, and there’s a limit to how much it can bear.

The authors think their study’s main conclusion is, leave “one-third for the birds.” That’s catchy, but suggesting that we try to manage for one-third of the maximum is unrealistically complicated. I think their main finding is: seabirds need prey to remain around average levels of abundance.

Either way, our assumption is that it’s important to have seabirds, to conserve their populations, to help ensure that they can breed successfully—in short, that it’s important to share the world with seabirds. I’d like to think that every bird on the ocean has a shot at living its full life-span, like that 25-year-old Common Tern I met as a chick in its nest in the beach-sand so many summers ago.

And not just seabirds, but, as the authors say, “other predators in marine ecosystems,” such as big ocean super-fishes like tunas and billfishes, and marine mammals.

Of course, many assume that rebuilding or maintaining populations of predatory mammals, sharks, and birds is an important goal of fisheries and ocean management. But we have to face a fact that trumps this study’s findings, the on-paper goals of management regimes, and my own desires: It’s a world of 7 billion and counting, wherein many people couldn’t care less about seabirds or other predators—unless they’re tasty.

That is the real issue. And the real solution is education, empowerment, and human dignity. In a discussion of seabirds, human population is not off-topic. It’s the context for all these topics.

Global Seabird Response to Forage Fish Depletion—One-third for the Birds, is at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6063/1703.full

Fishermen off North Carolina struggling with a giant bluefin tuna that scientists will tag Photo: Carl Safina

Following National Geographic Channel’s announcement of its upcoming TV show, “Wicked Tuna,” and <a href=”http://huff.to/A7ecU1″ target=”_hplink”>my consequent slam</a>, I received a phone call inviting me to Nat Geo headquarters. Our discussion seemed a big improvement over their press release. Yes, really.

As announced, this show will feature commercial fishing for bluefin tuna. With or without the cameras, those boats kill fish. And these fish are spectacular. They’re half-ton warm-blooded animals capable of swimming at highway speeds and crossing oceans.

The global bluefin tuna enterprise is perhaps the most bizarre — certainly the most controversial — fishery in the world. They are <a href=”http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/21860/0″ target=”_hplink”>classified “endangered”</a> by the global union of conservation scientists; their problem arises with sushi dealers in Japan who pay <a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/bluefin-tuna-cost-_b_1190907.html” target=”_hplink”>hundreds of thousands of dollars</a> for one fish. The insane prices stimulate intense overfishing; and — like Mitt Romney’s tax rate — it’s all perfectly legal.

Well, not perfectly. Much of the fishing is done with enormous nets and twenty-five mile “long-lines” dangling hundreds of baited hooks (they also hook endangered turtles and endangered albatrosses). A lot of bluefin tuna fishing is illegal. Bluefin catches greatly exceed the legal limit in the eastern Atlantic, Mediterranean, and southwest Pacific, and even the legal limit is <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html” target=”_hplink”>far above what scientists recommend</a>, all because of the corrupting influence of those insane prices.

In the U.S. and Canada, boats fish under probably the tightest and best-policed limits in the world. In one sector of the fishery, people use rods-and-reels (big ones), and it’s possible for those smaller-scale rod-and-reelers to turn a profit while killing relatively few fish per boat (there are a lot of those boats, and it adds up, but let’s move on).

The Nat Geo show will focus on several of those boats from Gloucester, Massachusetts. In Gloucester, everything about fishing is tense with the brutalizing baggage of centuries of deadly weather, generations of fish depletion, and recently, heavy regulations. For many who fish for a living, the high-stakes tension that wires their lives is the grind between the risk of putting themselves out of business through overfishing (there’s been a lot of that), or getting put out of business by government regulations designed to let the fish populations breathe long enough to recover. Those regulations are probably the best hope for the next generation, a fact that does not interest people expecting mortgage payments this month.

Back to our meeting. I particularly appreciated being able to directly address Nat Geo’s CEO for TV, David Lyle, because, as he said by way of introduction, “When it comes to National Geographic Television, I’m the guy.” Also present: Sr. VP of communications Chris Albert, Nat Geo Ocean Initiative director Miguel Jorge; research and conservation VP John Francis; and Executive VP for missions, Terry Garcia, who’d extended the invitation. (A few years back, Francis, Garcia and I memorably traveled to the Arctic to better understand climate warming, melting ice, and polar bears.)

I’d been asked to “come with an open mind,” and I did. Not empty; my mind is filled with memories of catching bluefin tuna off Long Island when I was younger, tagging the giant fish that swarmed Cape Hatteras in the late 1990s, and the bruising international conservation battles I lived through and described in <a href=”http://nyti.ms/xR1Dfo” target=”_hplink”>Song for the Blue Ocean</a> and other writing.

Mr. Lyle made an early point of insisting the show will portray, not glorify, the men and women in the fishery. OK; it’s semantic difference that didn’t seem worth arguing so we moved along to the narrative difficulties: lingering on conservation issues (you lose much of your potential audience), and conveying the intricate policy details governing international fishing bureaucracy (you lose your mind). Because I’m hosting an upcoming series called <em>Saving the Ocean</em>, I know that those constraints are real, especially in the profit-or-perish world of cable (that’s why we’re <a href=”[http://to.pbs.org/kHpVLM” target=”_hplink”>on PBS</a>.)

We talked about things fishermen think they know, things scientists know they think, and the difficulties of discerning (not to mention filming) a reality swimming somewhere in the murky middle. A lot of boat captains complain about having to travel farther, the competition for a limited pool of allotted fish, and other boats taking too much of the food (such as herring) needed by creatures like whales. And tuna. The issues are real.

I think we all did a pretty good job of listening. That might not be as exciting as people yelling, but there are enough yelling people. So talking and listening was good.

What I heard was: National Geographic is committed to the big picture. Conservation concerns will be part of the project. That’s their promise so let’s take them at their word. But can they weave it all it into a compelling show that will make viewers take their fingers off their remotes? That’s a taller order. The website they’re building for the series may turn out to be the better vehicle for the deeper story, and a wide range of opinion — which there will be.

So we’ll see. But after getting such a bad sense from their initial announcement, it was good to have my expectations raised.

First, for the record, it was great to see McKibben’s group, 350.org, organize protests and energize people. For too long, the country has sleepwalked through many events that should have provoked rage enough to bring massive demonstrations to D.C. and elsewhere. So, though I was frustrated by a schedule that precluded my traveling to D.C. and joining in, I reveled in the renewed awakening. And I agreed with the “rightness” of the protest: Canada is making a mess of the region containing the tar sands from which this dirty oil gets made. We need clean energy, not dirtier energy. So we should say no to it.

And of course, Congressional Republicans cynicallystuckthe wholly unrelated rider about the oil pipeline on a bill extending benefits to people who can’t find jobs, rushing the President’s decision. Obama had told them that if they did that, he’d reject the pipeline. They did; he did. The pipeline warranted full review, so bravo to the President for saying, in effect, “If you won’t let me do it right, the answer will be no.”

But for me, an uncomfortable feeling lingered.

Even if the Keystone pipeline never gets built, it’s pretty certain that Canada will still cut down those forests above the tar sands, dig the place up, pollute the rivers, and sell dirty oil—to someone. Maybe to the U.S., maybe to China. Who knows? Either way, assuming the Canadians proceed, the environmental damage will get done. So, because I’m not sure what really got accomplished, the victory felt hollow.

But here’s what’s more troubling: environmentalists always seem to be saying no. As a professionalenvironmentalist, that’s a bit painful. Saying no is one reason we’re frustrated withCongress. You don’t lead by saying no. I don’t want us to be mainly a brake on things. I remember when the environmental movement was more often an accelerator.

To lead, you need something to say yes about. You need vision. And a strategy to see the vision through. Too frequently, we in the environmental community come off as having objections, but no vision. We slow things down more than we speed things up. We need a vision that provides direction.

To be fair, I think the environmental groups have had the needed vision and the solutions—but not the needed spiritual leadership, media skills, public stature, organizing skills, and the ability to mobilize.The environmental movement needs both things: strategic sophistication and visible, positive energy. The pubic energy that will come out and get visible had been lacking for years before the Keystone protests (and coincidentally, Occupy Wall Street). Strategy and sophistication have been there, in offices and board rooms—but they’ve been invisible.

We need not just a vision, but also the energy and willingness to make that visionvisible. We need to share it, to generate excitement, toget behind positive directions, and once again build a swelling movement that is not just against bad stuff, but overwhelmingly in favor of positive change.

We need to support positive solutions and alternatives. We need people circling the White House for policies friendly to alternative energies. If we don’t want dirty energy, for instance, we need carbon pricing to reflect the damage coal, oil, and gas do. As it is now, it’s financially attractive to risk the whole planet. Visible support for alternatives would make it easier to press positively for carbon pricing strategies, such as cap-and-trade, or a carbon tax, that reflect the true costs of fossil fuels and thereby strike at the root of the problem. If that happened, proposals like tar sands development would just look bad; they’d be unattractive.

As any movement matures it becomes less spiritual, less revolutionary. As the spiritual leaders pass, the effort to implement their vision goes totechnocrats who understand how to work the nuts and bolts of policy. And we need them. But I’d like to see the big environmental groups also organize their millions of paying members to get out, get counted, and make a little noise. But we need to generate visible public excitement not just about what could be stopped, but about what we need to create, and what can positively be accomplished.

It’s easier to say, “No.” But do you remember, “Yes We Can”? It’s an attractive approach, isn’t it?

Herring Photo: Carl Safina

Oil Along the Louisiana Coast, Summer 2010. Photo Carl Safina

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, but after a different spill in a different place. Four years ago, in November, 2007, a container ship called Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge, and spilled over 50,000 gallons of bunker fuel-oil into San Francisco Bay. Twenty researchers teamed up to tell us what happened in the next four years to one important species of fish: herring. The result is a study titled, “Unexpectedly high mortality in Pacific herring embryos exposed to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay,” published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (December 27, 2011, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1108884109).

The 2007 Cosco Busan spill oiled shorelines near the shallow-water breeding habitat of the West Coast’s largest population of Pacific herring—which supports the last remaining commercial finfish fishery in San Francisco Bay. (Pacific herring lay sticky eggs on near-shore seaweed and rocks.) The scientists compared the health of herring embryos from oiled and un-oiled parts of the Bay. They looked at embryos from natural spawning and embryos held in special underwater cages.

The spill happened right around the start of herring spawning. Three months after the spill, wild embryos from shallows along the oiled shorelines showed “unexpectedly high rates” of dying tissue; most of them died. Those a bit deeper in cages near the oiled sites didn’t die as much, but they had heart problems including, “arrhythmia, silent ventricle, severe bradycardia, minimal overall contractility, and loss of heart beat.” Loss of heart beat is a problem. At the un-oiled sites, the baby herring, wild and caged, showed no such problems.

In studies following the Exxon Valdez disaster, and in laboratory studies, scientists have found that fish embryos exposed to oil develop abnormalities of their jaws and body axis, and swelling (edema) involving their heart and their yolk sacs. Even very small amounts of petroleum’s most abundant polycyclic aromatic compounds interfere with embryonic heartbeat. Embryos with edema tend to die, but scientists found that fish embryos surviving exposure to Alaska North Slope crude oil grew into adults with subtle abnormalities in heart shape and swimming abilities.

Under the microscope, embryos from San Francisco Bay show stark differences between oiled and un-oiled sites. Eggs from un-oiled sites are transparent and plump as grapes, their inner embryos curled around bright, transparent yolks. The oiled ones are a mess; the egg-clusters look dim and deteriorated, the individual eggs ruptured, mainly dead. Oil-exposed embryos examined in more detail show skin problems.

In 2008, the year after the San Francisco spill, “essentially no live larvae hatched” from oiled sites. By 2010, herring embryos from oiled sites still had some heart problems, but the scientists didn’t find any oil-related death; hatch rates at oiled sites matched those at un-oiled sites. (Un-oiled is a relative term, since—unlike Prince William Sound, Alaska—San Francisco Bay is an urbanized place; the water always contains chemicals from petroleum and industry. But the difference in herring embryo survival from oiled and unoiled sites, and the recovery in the years following the spill, shows that San Francisco Bay’s everyday pollution levels weren’t killing the herring—the oil spill was.)

The scientists were not surprised at the levels of oil-related chemicals (called polycyclic aromatic compounds) in the water at oiled sites. But they were surprised that herring embryos died at the low concentrations of those chemicals that they found in the herring’s flesh the next year. In their words, they found, “an unexpectedly severe (i.e., lethal) form of developmental toxicity.” They initially thought those levels were too low to kill the fish.

So, why did embryos die at relatively low chemical levels in 2008? It appears that bunker fuels and other petroleum products contain chemicals that become more toxic when exposed to sunlight. Chemical levels that would not kill fish in the absence of ultra-violet light, do kill fish after exposure to sunlight. (Apparently, exposing the chemicals to ultraviolet light causes reactions that produce forms of oxygen that damage living membranes. Chemistry is complicated.) That seems to be why the embryos in the cages, deeper and more distanced from sunlight, did not die at the same rate as the embryos in the shoreline shallows.

Among the things the authors want emphasize is this: “the exceptional vulnerability of fish early life stages to spilled oil.”

What might this mean, then, for the Gulf of Mexico and every other place where oil gets spilled? The Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico did not seem to cause mass fish-kills. But my next concern was, “What will happen in the next few years to the fish and shrimp eggs and larvae?” The mass die-off of newborn dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico in the winter of 2011 seemed an ominous reminder that adult survival does not guarantee good reproduction. (For my journal article on the Gulf blowout, see: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001049. For my book on the Gulf blowout: http://carlsafina.org/publications/books/a-sea-in-flames-the-deepwater-horizon-oil-blowout/.) In the first four months of the blowout, a team of researchers found various sub-lethal effects in killifish from the Gulf (http://bit.ly/vh7AUl; full citation at end of this article). “Though the fish may be ‘safe to eat’ based on low chemical burdens in their tissues, that doesn’t mean that the fish are healthy or that the fish are capable of reproducing normally,” lead researcher Andrew Whitehead told Mother Jones (http://bit.ly/nYPln1).

There’s also some informed guesswork on plankton in the Gulf in a recent article in Oceanography; http://bit.ly/uooQJQ. And there’s a bit of relevant Gulf of Mexico data in another study that suggests Gulf fishes may have dodged a bullet in year one: http://bit.ly/pek3Hp. But to really know the longer-term effects will require a few years and a little hindsight.

For more than two decades of hindsight, we can turn, again, to Exxon Valdez. During the months following the Exxon Valdez spill, herring eggs and larvae in oiled areas of Prince William Sound died at twice the rate they did in unoiled areas. Larval growth rates were half those measured in other North Pacific populations. Herring larvae also suffered malformations, genetic damage, and grew slower than ever recorded anywhere else.

Those problems were gone by the following year.

But it’s not that simple. Different things get hurt at different rates for differing periods of time. Oil that works its way into sediments and under boulders remains toxic and available to living things. In Prince William Sound after Exxon Valdez, oil hiding beneath mussel beds continued to find its way into the region’s animals and their food web. For years, ducks and otter suffered chronic exposure to oil. For at least four years, eggs of pink salmon, which spawn in lower reaches of streams near seawater, died at abnormally high rates. Young sea otters born for several years after the spill survived at unusually low rates. After sea otters had received protection from hunting for their fur, their population increased 10 percent annually, but after the oil spill, in heavily oiled areas their numbers did not increase for at least a dozen years. Shellfish—which sea otters (and people) eat—concentrate oil hydrocarbons quickly and metabolize them slowly. For at least several years, birds called black oystercatchers fed their chicks more mussels but achieved less growth than normal. For many years, harlequin ducks (perhaps the world’s most exquisitely beautiful sea duck, which is saying something) suffered low weight as their bodies tried to fight the toxic effects of petroleum hydrocarbons they were getting in their food. In parts of Prince William Sound, they were dying at rates of 20 percent annually for over a decade. A study published in the April, 2010 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry found that Harlequin Ducks are still ingesting Exxon Valdez oil. Biopsy samples showed their livers containing the enzymes they produce when their body is wrestling with oil. The authors of that study concluded, “This adds to a growing body of literature suggesting that oil spills have the potential to affect wildlife for much longer time frames than previously assumed.” (See end of this piece for references to above facts.)

Meanwhile, in just the month I’m writing: Shell has spilled at least 1.7 million gallons of oil off Nigeria (http://bit.ly/vPqCYO. (And according to the U.N., “Nigeria could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health;” http://bit.ly/mUtIXw. That’s a big “if.”). Meanwhile, Shell had to shut down a leaking rig in the Gulf of Mexico (http://bit.ly/v47L9s). Meanwhile, in a situation with disturbing parallels to BP’s 2010 Gulf blowout, Brazilian government prosecutors are seeking $11 billion in damages from Chevron for a still-leaking well drilled by Transocean, the same company that was drilling BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico before the blowout destroyed its Deepwater Horizon rig (http://apne.ws/sVW46i). Meanwhile, oil is leaking from a tanker in France (http://bit.ly/vYzNY0). Meanwhile—that is just a little of this month’s current events.

And also meanwhile, amidst all this spilled and leaking oil, India is exploiting the dropping prices and increasing efficiencies of solar panels to fulfill it very ambitious energy plans. Solar generated electricity now costs Indian consumers about the same amount they pay for oil-generated electricity. And the price gap between solar and coal is narrowing (nytimes.com/2011/12/29/bus). These comparisons, says Cédric Philibert, a senior analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, are “becoming better and better every month.” That’s the future. It has to be.

Selected Additional References:

Sublethal effect in Killifish from the Gulf: Whitehead, A., et al., “Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26 December 2011. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1109545108.

Effects of oil on fish eggs and larvae: Joanna Burger, Oil Spills. New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

Herring egg and larval mortality following Exxon Valdez: M. D. McGurk and Evelyn

D. Brown, “Egg–Larval Mortality of Pacific Herring in Prince William Sound,

Alaska, After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic

Science 53, no. 10 (1996): 2343–54.

See also B. L. Norcross et al., “Distribution, Abundance, Morphological Condition, and Cytogenetic Abnormalities of Larval Herring in Prince William Sound, Alaska, Following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science 53, no.10 (1996): 2376 –87.

See also J. E. Hose et al., “Sublethal Eff ects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill on Herring Embryos and Larvae: Morphological, Cytogenetic, and Histopathological Assessments, 1989–1991,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science 53, no. 10 (1996): 2355–65.

Different things get hurt at different rates: C. H. Peterson et al., “Long-Term

Ecosystem Response to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” Science 302, no. 5653, December

19, 2003: 2082–86.

Harlequin Ducks still ingesting Exxon Valdez oil: Esler D., et al., “Cytochrome P4501a Biomarker Indication Of Oil Exposure In Harlequin Ducks Up To 20 Years After The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” Environmental Toxicology And Chemistry 29, no. 5 (2010): 1138-1145, DOI: 10.1002/etc.129.

See also: S. Dhillon, “Exxon Oil Showing Up in Alaskan Wildlife 20 years After Spill, Research Shows,” Canadian Press, April 14, 2010.

Long-tailed duck alive shot photo: Carl Safina

Long-tailed duck alive but dying after being shot in the eye. Photo: Carl Safina

Videos:

Long-taileds diving

injured duck

original blog posted in Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/enough-duck-shooting_b_1181848.html

This morning, I went for a walk on the beach. And from the bay, mere moments later, the muffled crack of guns. Three months of the twelve-month year, the shooting is a near-constant feature of being near the shore. The noise, which reaches into each room of my home, starts at dawn. Especially on weekends, in the predawn darkness I lie in bed hoping for the sound of heavy rain or wind enough to keep duck hunters home.

Unlike duck shooters, deer hunters perform a service. Absent wolves, the white-tailed deer that were once shot almost to extermination in our region have in the last few decades come back in such force that they create intense pressure on seedling trees and native shrubs, hazards to drivers, frustration for gardeners, sharply increased rates of Lyme disease, and such severe competition with each other for food that winter starvation likely causes them more suffering than a lethal gunshot. In short, deer hunting does some good. Plus, I’ve never heard of deer hunters intentionally leaving the deer they’ve shot. As far as I know, they’re all after meat.

Contrast duck hunters. I have seen duck hunters make no attempt to retrieve ducks they’ve killed or crippled. I have seen them throw ducks they’ve shot—but do not want—into the bushes and brush. Or just leave them on the beach among their spent shells. I have also found half a dozen hunter-killed wild geese tossed into the woods beside the road. I have found dying long-tailed ducks struggling after being shot (including one whose eye had just been shot out), while the “hunters” were standing in plain sight just a few hundred yards down the same beach, shooting at birds flying by, utterly disinterested in retrieving the dying birds or ending the suffering they’d inflicted. That time, they were shooting only about a hundred yards from the nearest houses, which is legal, but a clear public nuisance. Everything else I’ve just described is illegal, but where I live, it’s common.

Another time, I saw a boat motoring rapidly across the surface of the bay, charging groups of sitting waterfowl, with a shooter in the bow blasting at all the ducks trying to get airborne ahead of the fast-approaching hull (also illegal).

Apparently, they think all this is fun. I hate it.

Who does this? Not your average person. Average people who have indoor things to do, or who need to go shopping, people who like to be warm in winter, who don’t like to be wet when it’s cold out, who don’t like to keep still while their feet and fingers are uncomfortably numb; such people register low among the ranks of duck-hunters.

The edges of civilization, be it remote locales or mere shorelines, attract people who are not average. In winter, outside, it’s really only nature lovers and nature hunters. There’s some overlap in motivations: getting away from average people is one. Getting nearer to the seasons, and to the wildlife, are others. I share them all.

I am, by predisposition, a hunter. I used to train hawks and hunt with them, mainly for rabbits which I—and the hawks—ate. As a pre-teen I was fascinated by the possibility of hunting deer or birds. When I was 12, I shot a grackle with a pellet-gun. It never occurred to me that I might hit a bird and fail to kill it. Astonished, I saw the bird attempt to rise, and, disabled, drag itself into the undergrowth. Thus ended my personal interest in guns. I’m an avid fisherman, and I consider fishing to be merely hunting for animals with gills.

But fishing disturbs neither the neighbors nor all the fish in the area. It depends on the fish being able to feed undisturbed by the very boats that seek them. Duck hunting, though, frightens ducks from their best feeding locations and forces them to use up more of the precious energy they need to survive the cold.

On admittedly thin evidence, I believe the capacity for pain is higher in warm-blooded animals like ducks and people than it is in fish. Hooked fish act agitated. But crippled birds seem to really suffer, to show true misery.

Duck hunters I have known personally are likeable, admirable people. Some even devote their life’s work to wildlife conservation. Some hunting groups’conservation dollars are based on the idea that more ducks overall will mean more ducks to shoot, and that both are beautiful things.

But other duck hunters—the ones I most often see—strike me as slobs. In my region, they’re most shooting bay- and sea-ducks for fun, not for meat. They like to kill them but don’t want them. It’s target practice using living targets. Their mess and the wasted birds; there’s no excuse for it. And unlike deer hunting, which benefits people, the land, and the surviving deer, no justification for duck hunting rings true.

Yes, duck hunters pay for a lot of conservation. So do conservationists who don’t kill ducks. I invite the former to join the latter. There is too commonly in waterfowl hunters a blind spot for the suffering inflicted. And the waste.

What is the answer? As a lifelong advocate of fresh air and taking kids outdoors, my recommendation to those interested in this form of recreation is: stay inside. On the couch. Eating sugar and watching sit-coms and reality shows and playing video games. Safely indoors, out or harm’s way, develop your capacity for humane treatment of animals. If you must interact with animals, play with a puppy or get a parakeet. If you must go out, I suggest you challenge yourself to take up birding, which requires vastly more skill and knowledge, but still gives you an excuse to buy nice, warm boots and a cool camo jacket, and to get wet and cold anyway.

But if that just isn’t you, put yourself under house arrest where you’re less a menace. Or—go deer hunting.

original blog posted in Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/national-geographic-channel-wicked-tuna_b_1207859.html

Well, people, what an incredibly long drop it’s been since the electrifying National Geographic TV specials of my youth, whose mere opening theme notes would raise the hair on my neck.

It seems almost like the scenario of a post-apocalyptic surrealist satire, unimaginable just a few years back: National Geographic Channel has been bought out by Fox, is “joint-venturing” with the disgraceful and disgraced Ruppert Murdock, and creating programming to push Bill O’Reilly’s books. And, well—National Geographic Channel will be killing endangered species for entertainment.

They’ve just announced the new unscripted show: “Wicked Tuna.”

Awesome, eh? Already, we have: a smiling face and a dead, rather small, bluefin tuna. http://lat.ms/wddjxo.

Here, in 2012, I find the premise revolting. Despicable.

And therefore, it’s bound to be a crowd pleaser as National Geographic Channel aims to lead in Cable’s race to the bottom.

The thrilling tagging of giant fish as scientists track their migrations across oceans might have provided the show’s rationale, but that’s clearly too intellectual (though all the other elements of Cable success are there: adventure, personal drama (the tagging involves grad students), seasickness, profanity—).

Things the National Geographic Channel had to ignore: Atlantic bluefin, a focus of bitter international conservation fights for over 2 decades now, have been described as “collapsed” in the titles of two peer-reviewed science journal publications (here http://bit.ly/zc6LCn and here http://bit.ly/AgcGxM); a bluefin tuna population that once lived in the South Atlantic was wiped out in the 1960s (http://bit.ly/6PTvj); and Atlantic bluefin tuna are listed “endangered” by IUCN (http://bit.ly/94sXZK).

Maybe the thinking is, “This show will support the endangered listing by helping maintain and expand the this tuna’s international endangered status.”

(Also, gotta love that the only way the Nat Geo channel could do 2 hours on Abraham Lincoln is to base it on the book that lists Bill O’Reilly as its author. No other source matter on Lincoln exists, apparently.)

What a load of shame.

I can envision next season’s press release: On “National Geographic’s Surf and Turf,” Bill O’Reilly goes shark-finning with Rosie O’Donnell (http://huff.to/yYVYUd); and the political banter is to kill for! Then, on the all-new “Gorillas in the Mint”—a thrilling “high-stakes” hunt for great apes with celebrity chefs. “They taste great to some people, and we’ve got to respect that,” the venerated network says, “and with their growing scarcity, the price is real good now.” “Supply and demand,” quipped O’Reilly, adding, “Free enterprise isn’t free. It comes at a cost.”

Gyr flying 1-14-12 photo: Carl Safina

Gyr takeoff 1-14-12 Photo: Carl Safina

Gyrfalcon Wantagh Pkwy 1-14-12 Photo: Carl Safina

Peregrine adult Photo: Patricia Paladines

On Saturday (Jan 14, 2012), Pat and I went to look for a Snowy Owl that’s been seen in the dunes at Jones Beach, Long Island, New York. It’s been there for a few weeks and it was seen the day before we went. (It was also seen the day after.)

But for us, and the dozen or so hopeful birders braving a bitter Saturday morning, no dice. Lots of stinging wind, but no dice. After surprising ourselves by enduring for a few hours of searching, we headed back to our car.

We had a choice of which route to take; our normal route Ocean Parkway, or Wantagh Parkway. Pat had lost her lens cap in the brush so the decision boiled down to which branch of the same camera store (Berger Brothers) we were headed to, the one in Amityville (we’d leave the park via Ocean Parkway) or the one in Syosset (we’d leave via Wantagh Parkway). We opted to check out the branch we hadn’t been to, which also would facilitate us bringing some matzo ball soup to my mother’s house on the way home. So we headed for the Wantagh Parkway, which, as I said, is not the way we’d normally go. Pat losing her lens cap set all these little plans in motion.

Just before leaving the park, we saw hundreds of Brant geese get up from Zach’s Bay in a big tight mass and fly around in circles. We pulled over and scanned for a bird of prey that might have roused them all. No dice. They settled, and we continued on and got on the Parkway. Less than a minute later we saw a large raptor headed directly away from us, just over the bridge. From its size and the fact that Red-tailed Hawks almost never come out to the beach, I guessed it might turn into a Rough-legged Hawk. But as we caught up with it, it turned into a falcon.

“If that’s really a falcon,” I said in an excited hush, “that’s a Gyrfalcon. Look how big it is!”

Just then, giving us an unmistakable size comparison, an adult Peregrine Falcon came streaking in; the Gyr dwarfed the Peregrine. Pat yelled, “They’re fighting!,” the Peregrine started repeatedly strafing the Gyr, and I kept driving like hell. The birds were headed rapidly away from us, but staying along the water alongside the roadway; I was trying to get alongside. Pat was scrambling to ready her camera and we were both uttering a lot of excited exclamations. What fun!

It was so interesting to compare the aerial, acrobatic Peregrine, who seemed to be all over the sky at once, with the Gyrfalcon, who stayed at tree level and often shot through spaces in the trees like a huge, dark Merlin, as if hoping to scare up some waterfowl along the shore.

Though we failed to get the prize-winning photo of the stooping Peregrine and the Gyr in the same frame—because I was driving 50 mph just to keep up with them and they were on my side of the car—Pat started shooting and scored a nice frame of the Peregrine in the air. And then we really lucked out because the Gyr landed in a tree in excellent light; and we both had our cameras ready to shoot.

The Gyrfalcon is the world’s largest falcon. It nests across the Arctic, and this one had likely come from Arctic Canada or Greenland. I’ve seen nesting Gyrs, including the stunning white morph, using an appropriated Raven’s nest on a cliff on the Arctic Circle in Greenland.

As for the name, my college roomate, Hollywood-based violinist Marc Sazer, found this:

Gyrfalcon \Gyr”fal`con\, noun. [from Old English expression gerfaucon, Old French gerfaucon, Late Latin expression gyrofalco, perhaps from Latin gyrus circle falco falcon, and named from its circling flight; or compare to English gier-eagle.

This is a very rare bird in our region. I haven’t seen one on Long Island in 30 years (I missed a couple that came and went), and those nesting birds in Greenland I saw way back in 1986.

Priddy Egciting!

Carl Safina prepares to release a mako shark he has just tagged. Photo: D. Nemerson

A bit of a splash erupted on the Web yesterday in the form of photos showing a boat displaying two hammerheads. One was a shark. The other was the celebrity, Rosie O’Donnell.

The Web quickly lit up with attacks on Rosie, saying among other things that because she brought her kids fishing for sharks, she was “a bad mom.”

Well, maybe. But let’s dissect just a little. I’m willing to cut her some slack.

First, although I’m a lifelong ocean conservationist, I am going to resist quite piling onto the attack. And I’ll tell you why; I’ve done something rather similar, as I’ll explain. Then, for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you the two things I found distasteful. But before we get to that, I’ll tell you what I thought was positive about the story and what it says about us all—in a good way.

It was good was that people attacked Rosie for killing a shark. They didn’t attack her for being liberal, an adoptive gay parent, or a lady fisherman. I’m just a few years older than Rosie, and I can remember when a woman on a boat was a rarity. Any woman on a boat unaccompanied by a man was so unheard of that I rather vividly remember the first time I saw such a thing (I was 18, and she, early 20s, was wearing a rather nice halter top). Further, Rosie let her daughter fight the shark—a near-unthinkable incursion into what only a few years ago was a nearly unbreachable boys’ bastion of angling. So good for us—we focused on the part of the person and the story that mattered: her and the shark.

Now, about that, I’ll cut her just a little slack. For about 20 years, I did a lot of shark fishing. And on more occasions than I can recall, I took kids with me. There are few things as exciting for a kid as throwing chunks of fish to a large shark swimming around a boat, or feeling its incredible power on the end of a line. I still get a kick out of it. One major difference is that we released almost all the sharks we ever caught. (And we didn’t just cut the wire leader; I had a hook remover.) And the several sharks we killed, we ate (I understood less about mercury then; sharks have a lot of it). I killed my last shark, a mako, in 1997, and no sooner had I tied it to the boat’s cleat than I knew it would be my last. (In my book, The View From Lazy Point, that capture and my change of heart is chronicled.) I am not ashamed of what I did then, but I wouldn’t do it now. The sharks, and the world, have changed.

Ms. O’Donnell, by contrast, was unrepentant, defiant, and profane in response to her shark-hugging critics. I would have preferred her to seem a little more evolved on things ocean, explaining that it was years ago and she now understands things differently. Instead, in her Twitter tweets she defended the killing by saying that hammerhead shark meat can be used to bait crab traps. Well, so can human corpses. And that reminds me of a good joke from Maine, but that’s for another time.*

Probably most distasteful about the incident is that the boat captain put these photos on his Website after the state banned killing of all three species of hammerheads. That ban just went into effect, January 1. It’s probably no coincidence that he posted years-old photos right after a ban for the species. It shows: distain for the sharks he’s made a living from (where I live, a lot of boats carry paying customers for catch-and-release shark fishing), disrespect for the new law, and a certain macho desperation in trying to defy changing public attitudes towards ocean wildlife. His Website also displays a rather remarkable congenital boastfulness and an penchant for unusual capitalization (“We are a better Charter Fishing Boat than the Saltwater Sport Fishing Charter Boats on the East Coast and in the Florida Keys, including the fleet of Deep Sea Fishing Boats in Key West”). All of which add up to making him yet another hammerhead in his own story.

Though killing the shark a few years ago is different than catching a protected species just after a fishing ban has been instated, it’s not really a ton better. It’s been obvious for 20 years that hammerhead sharks were among the first to get scarce after the global shark fin trade got out of control in the 1980s. (Shark fin is used as a thickener in Chinese shark fin soup, where part of the appeal is the idea of imbibing the strength and ferocity of the shark through its pulverized fins, an idea on par with thinking you’d stay warm if you ate polar bear fur.) Since I started shark fishing, I never would have considered killing a hammerhead.

I did, however, see hammerheads—and various other large sharks—virtually disappear before my eyes. When I first started fishing for sharks off Long Island, NY, in the 1980s, hammerheads were common. One day I hailed a distant boat over the radio to ask how he was doing, and he replied, “Plenty of hammerheads.” Those days, long gone.

One boat, and one celebrity are nothing compared to the millions of sharks killed worldwide annually in commercial fisheries. But let’s face it; it looks bad. Ms. O’Donnell might want to consider: 1) Not killing more sharks, 2) taking her kids scuba diving, 3) fishing for dinner and going home when they’ve caught enough, 4) getting a nice camera and good binoculars and, when the urge to go shark fishing strikes, going birding instead. It would all seem well suited to her otherwise caring and compassionate public persona.

*Oh, yes, now about that joke—. Two lobstermen are hauling a line of traps when, strangely, up comes a big mass of lobsters that simply falls onto the deck; the mate suddenly realizes in horror that the lobsters were clinging to a human corpse that has somehow become tangled on their line. In panic he yells to the captain, “What should I do?” Surprised at the question, the captain replies, “Hell, set ‘im again.”

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 fisheries management plans. They were created back in 1976 by the law that also extended the U.S.’s claim to fishing territory out to 200 miles (the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act).

In my three years as the first professional conservationist on any of these federal fisheries councils, I realized that the councils were enabled to do all the right things but not required to do any of them. (And note—the law was created in 1976, and only this year are all fisheries required to have management plans!)

So in 1992, several leading conservation groups and I decided to try to overhaul the federal law. We wanted the law to require the councils to manage all the fishing, end overfishing, and allow fish populations to recover.

In a 1994 article in the National Academies’ journal Issues in Science and Technology, I wrote about the flaws in the existing Fisheries Conservation and Management Act:

“… Many fisheries remain without adequate recovery schemes or even management plans. Neither the law nor the guidelines expressly bind the Councils or the National Marine Fisheries Service to halt overfishing. Other critical omissions in the Act regarding the development of fishery management plans are that: 1) the guidelines fail to specify a time in which a council must address overfishing once identified; 2) the Act contains no provision for action if a Council does not respond to overfishing; 3) managers are not required to consider predator-prey or other important ecological relationships among fishery resources when determining allowable catches for any single species; 4) the guidelines fail to direct the councils to establish a specific rebuilding goal or rebuilding timetable for depleted but stable populations. The Act should require the Secretary to intervene when a council fails to develop an adequate recovery plan within a specified period for an overfished species.” [Read the article here: http://bit.ly/xFF4rN or here: http://bit.ly/wwr733]

That article convinced Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-DE) to sponsor a bill very similar to a model bill we’d drafted. (Based on my council observations and my article, I’d drafted the overfishing and recovery-mandate provisions.) After much work—and much to our astonishment—the things we were talking and writing about became federal law.

That law, the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, fundamentally overhauled fisheries policy in the U.S. For some details, see footnote.*

Almost immediately, the fishing industry attacked. It said that the new law’s requirement that fish populations recover in 10 years was arbitrary and “inflexible.”

Consequently, I and several colleagues published a study in Science that went a long way toward beating back weakening provisions by showing that the 10-yr rebuilding timetable was carefully considered, based in science, and not arbitrary—and that it works. (Read the paper: http://blueocean.org/files/SafinaScience2005.pdf.)

But take note—fishing industry groups (including some misguided recreational groups) are still constantly getting congressional reps to sponsor legislation that would remove the requirements to end overfishing and recover fish populations within specified timeframes. To see some of the nonsense and vitriol they spew, look—just for instance— at this article claiming all the scientists trying to end overfishing and recover fish abundance are in a big corrupt conspiracy: http://bit.ly/zF3Sap.

My answer to them is: first of all, don’t be so dumb. Removing the recovery requirements would take the law right back to where it was when almost everything was overfished and depleted. The current law’s recovery mandates and timetables are the only things that have let any fish begin to recover. Second, when you defend your fishing, fishing gets worse; when you defend your fish, fishing gets better. Just sayin’.

So far, the law has held up, and through several reauthorizations the recovery mandates have not just survived but been strengthened. As a result, we have some important fish population recoveries going on. And we have this year’s requirement to end overfishing in U.S. waters. So far, so good.

Anyway, condensed below is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) official press release, which called the end of overfishing a “historic milestone:”

January 9, 2012

Turning the Corner on Ending Overfishing 2012 – Annual Catch Limits Now in Place for Most Federal Fisheries

Five years ago this week the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act reauthorization was signed into law and required catch limits for all federally managed fisheries. … The reauthorized Act called for all federal fisheries to be managed under annual catch limits and enforced through accountability measures by the end of 2011…

Well, 2012 is here and we are almost fully over the goal line. Yes, there are a few stragglers, but I can report that all federal fisheries will have catch limits in place in time for the 2012 fishing season.

Catch limits and accountability measures to rebuild stocks and ensure sustainable fisheries represent a collective investment in the future of fishing. And while these benefits will accrue for generations to come, in many cases they do require short-term cost.

We know that ending overfishing is not something that is accomplished as a discrete end point. Rather, it is a step in an ongoing and evolutionary process. Current challenges include working to better meet the needs of fishermen and coastal communities, building on our world class science to better understand trends in fish populations and ecosystem considerations, and taking stronger steps to preserve endangered species and marine mammals. Other challenges on the horizon include habitat loss, pollution and environmental change, and global challenges like pirate fishing.

We have come a long way since 1976 when our nation’s fisheries were being decimated by uncontrolled overfishing by foreign fleets. Thirty-five years later, we now stand at a point in history when the U.S. model of fisheries management has evolved to become an international guidepost for sustainable fishery practices. Still, we have much work ahead.

—Eric C. Schwaab, Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, NOAA

*FOOTNOTE— A few of the technical features of the legal overhaul of U.S. federal fisheries law since 1996:

The first of several significant changes achieved with the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 was a change in the definition of Optimum Yield. It had been defined as the Maximum Sustainable Yield of the fishery, as modified by economic, social or ecological factors. The word “modified” was changed to “reduced,” and the passage now reads, “Optimum yield is maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor.” In principle, Maximum Sustainable Yield is now an upper bound for all fisheries, it is no longer the target. And, in the case of an overfished fishery, optimum yield is the amount of fish that allows rebuilding to a population level capable of producing the Maximum Sustainable Yield.

The other major improvement in the Sustainable Fisheries Act addressed depletion and rebuilding and, importantly, did so with quantified triggers. It defined “overfishing” as the “rate or level of fishing mortality that jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis.” Under the act, fishery managers are charged with ending overfishing, and they must implement plans designed to rebuild stocks within 10 years. In most cases, when a population falls below 50 percent of the estimated biomass needed to continually support the Maximum Sustainable Yield, the population is defined as “overfished,” and it is added to a list of overfished species. (The creation of such a list was a new requirement of the Sustainable Fisheries Act).

Once a species is defined as overfished or is projected to reach overfished status within two years, the regional fishery management council has one year to create a plan to recover the stock as quickly as possible but within 10 years. There are exceptions to the 10-year limit, for example, when the biology of the species or other environmental conditions dictate a longer rebuilding period, as for species such as sturgeon and rockfish that are slow-growing and late to mature (Safina et al. 2005; Rosenberg et al. 2006).

Species that are subject to an international management agreement but lack a 10-year recovery plan are also exempt from the 10-year limit. These overfishing prohibitions and recovery mandates were new under the Sustainable Fisheries Act. Despite the exceptions mentioned above, these provisions are the heart of the reforms.

Ten years was chosen as the rebuilding interval for several reasons. First, most overfished stocks could fully rebound within five years if all fishing ceased. Doubling this time frame ensured there was ample time to implement management plans. Ten years was also considered short enough to force managers to act, minimizing future economic, social and ecological costs (Safina et al. 2005). A longer time frame could also have been used to justify additional years of overfishing or other management failure or delay.

Ultimately, the 10-year interval was selected to balance the economic needs of fishing communities with the biology of the exploited species. If the fishery management council fails to provide a plan within one year of the stock being declared overfished, the secretary of commerce must develop a plan within nine months (Rosenberg et al. 2006). The rebuilding mandates require managers to create concrete plans to allow populations to recover in reasonable time to a biomass that can support catching the population’s maximum sustainable yield.

Rosenberg, A. A., J. H. Swasey et al. (2006). “Rebuilding US fisheries: progress and problems.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4(6):303–8, www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/1540-9295%282006%294%5B303%3ARUFPAP%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Safina, C., et al. (2005). “U.S. ocean fish recovery: Staying the course.” Science 309(5735):707–8, www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;309/5735/707?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&volume=309&firstpage=707&resourcetype=HWCIT.

But here’s the thing that surprised me more: It didn’t wow her. She didn’t think it was the least bit impressive. She thought it was awful. Way to go, mom; love ya.

On the other hand, the media gushed. So did all the people in the story. I thought it was pretty sick, and I’ll tell you why.

The main story was sent by Associated Press and as far as I could tell most of the other media picked up on that story.* It started off, “This tuna is worth savoring: It cost nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.”

Translation: The Associated Press and most people on Earth can know that the tuna is valuable only because of how much money someone paid for it. They don’t seem to understand that the price, cost, and value of something are three very different things.

A deep-pocketed self-promoting narcissistic owner of a chain of sushi restaurants paid an irrational price for a fish. That does not make the fish more valuable. It only makes it more expensive.

And in a very real way, this devalues the fish itself.

Consider: though once abundant, bluefin tuna are now quite overfished. (Two recent papers, including one by me, discuss the collapse of two different bluefin populations in the Atlantic: http://bit.ly/zc6LCn and http://bit.ly/AgcGxM. And if you go to http://bit.ly/6PTvj and scroll down, you see that a bluefin tuna population that once lived in the South Atlantic was wiped out in the 1960s.

Because of scarcity, bluefin tuna are hard to find and hard to catch most of the time in most places. Fishing is expensive, so scarcity should begin to protect the fish because people should stop pursuing them when they are too depleted to be profitable. This actually has a name: commercial extinction. But if someone is willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars?; that subsidizes a lot of fishless days. An eventual payoff so huge keeps people pursuing fish they cannot catch. And it brings enormous pressure not to reduce catch quotas, when scientific advice has long indicated that the fish continue declining and the quota is too high.

So what is the cost of a bluefin tuna? You will read that it was over $1200 per pound, and will retail for around $100 a bite. But that’s just the price. The cost is that we are losing them—because the price is too high.

Several of the news outlets that ran the story have photos of the grinning buyers. I would bet a whole tuna that none of these people on the buying side of the equation know anything about the animal they are dismembering. A giant bluefin tuna is one of the most awesome creatures on Earth, a warm blooded fish capable of swimming at highway speeds and crossing oceans; then finding its way home in a trackless ocean. Dismembering it for sushi is a kind of dis-remembering, because no one on the eating end of this strange deal will see the fish, only slivers of flesh which, as far as their size, could have come from any mackerel.

Before the knife sliced, the giant fish was already lost from view. If you look at different news stories about this particular fish on the Web, you see photos of the creature plastered with stickers and banners. The fish itself has long ceased to be a wild animal; it’s not even a carcass—it’s just a commodity, a product. It is so far from being honored or remembered as an animal that it might as well be Knipschildt chocolate ($2,600-a-pound; http://bit.ly/44od8Q) or DeLafée chocolate with real gold (http://bit.ly/h60POT), or a case of Dalmore 62 Single Highland Malt Scotch ($60-grand per bottle; http://bit.ly/xEpgqO). Any of those would be as decadent, but arguably much more fun. (That’s what I would argue, as long as someone else was paying.)

The winning bidder spoke thus to the Associated Press: “‘Japan has been through a lot the last year due to the disaster. Japan needs to hang in there. So I tried hard myself and ended up buying the most expensive one.” He said he wanted to give Japan a boost after last year’s devastating tsunami.

How very civic-minded of him. Or, maybe he really just wanted to give his restaurant chain a boost, because, let’s face it, he got an incredible amount of free advertising. But if you really are concerned about people devastated by a tsunami, would you a) give $763,000 to a stricken town or school system or hospital, or b) buy a tuna?

The Associated Press story opened with, “This tuna is worth savoring.” What’s really needed is for the story to have ended with, “This tuna is worth saving.” The difference is “or.” It’s always a choice.

#  #  #

* Swank Sushi: Tuna Fetches Record $736k in Tokyo, by Malcolm Foster, Associated Press, January 5, 2012.