Contributed by Hoss Zaré
Beer Light-bodied kölsch: Gaffel.
Wine Salty, spritzy Muscadet.
Get the full recipe here.
Lance Iversen / The Chronicle
Brett Baker
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Here’s something that would surprise anyone tracking the heavily politicized debate over California’s water, fish and farms: Many of the state’s farming and fishing communities generally agree on a sustainable plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
These united farming and fishing communities have mutual interests and goals. They know that the delta’s agricultural economy and California’s king salmon runs all depend on a healthy delta; and a healthy delta, in turn, requires adequate freshwater flows.
You probably wouldn’t know about this alliance from reading the newspaper, however. But the 250 people attending the Farms & Salmon Summit in Antioch on April 27 served as a testament to our common views – and to common sense. And there are thousands of others like us across the state and the West.
Read the rest from The San Francisco Chronicle.
The world of fast food fish is often murky. Exactly which species lurks beneath the breading and between those sesame-seeded buns? How was it caught? Where did it come from?
These questions don’t typically arise when it comes to conversations about other fast food products. Beef is pretty much just beef. Chicken is just chicken. We don’t ask if our hens are bantams, leghorns, or Rhode Island Reds. Or whether the cow was raised in Oklahoma or Brazil. (Perhaps we should, but that’s an issue for another day and another columnist to investigate.) And while we might look for “free range” or “organic” labels at the grocery store, if we’re eating under the Golden Arches, we’ve pretty much decided to skip that particular green step.
In this week’s column we look into the fishy offerings from the top fast food chains—four breaded and fried, one popped out of a can and mixed with mayo—to find out what’s in your sandwich. We present them below with just a soupçon of sustainability criteria so that even when you’re making the decision to fund fast food nation you can at least be fully informed about how to minimize your environmental impact.
Navigating the waters of sustainable seafood seems daunting at first glance. But several organizations have worked to overcome that with easy-to-use resources for businesses and consumers. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program has convenient pocket guides and a downloadable app for your mobile device. And if you don’t have an iPhone you can send Blue Ocean institute a text message containing the species of fish you’re considering and they’ll send you a quick sustainability profile.
Many corporations look to the Marine Stewardship Council, an organization that certifies fisheries around the world that meet certain sustainability standards. Where chains use MSC-certified products we’ll note that here.
So without further ado let’s peel back the breading and find out what you’re biting into when you unwrap that Filet o’… well, of what, exactly?
Read the rest of the article here.
Science 1 June 2007:
Vol. 316 no. 5829 pp. 1281-1284
DOI: 10.1126/science.316.5829.1281b
The Research Article Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services By B. Worm et al. (3 Nov. 2006, p. 787) projects that 100 of seafood-producing species stocks will collapse by 2048.
The projection is inaccurate and overly pessimistic.
Worm et al. define collapse as occurring when the current year’s catch is <10 of the highest observed in a stock’s time series. However, fish catch is rarely an adequate proxy for fish abundance, particularly for rebuilding stocks under management. A variety of biological, economic, and social factors and management decisions determine catches; low catches may occur even when stocks are high (e.g., due to low fish prices or the effects of restrictive management practices), and vice versa.
The inadequacy of Worm et al.‘s abundance proxy is illustrated by the time series of data for Georges Bank haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). The highest catch for haddock occurred in 1965 at 150,362 tons (1). This catch occurred during a period of intense domestic and international fishing (1).
In 2003, haddock catch was 12,576 tons, or 8 of the time series maximum. Under the Wormet al. definition, the stock would be categorized as collapsed in 2003. However, stock assessment data (1) estimate the total magnitude of the spawning biomass in 2003 to be 91 of that in 1965. Comparing the estimate of spawning stock biomass in 2003 to the level producing maximum sustainable yield (MSY), the stock was not even being overfished in 2003 (2).
Get the whole report here.
Two University of Washington scientists have just published a study in the journal Conservation Biology in collaboration with colleagues from Rutgers University and Dalhousie University arguing that the gloomiest predictions about the world’s fisheries are significantly exaggerated.
The new study takes issue with a recent estimate that 70 percent of all stocks have been harvested to the point where their numbers have peaked and are now declining, and that 30 percent of all stocks have collapsed to less than one-tenth of their former numbers. Instead, it finds that at most 33 percent of all stocks are over-exploited and up to 13 percent of all stocks have collapsed.
It’s not that fisheries are in great shape, said Trevor Branch, the lead author of the new study; it’s just that they are not as badly off as has been widely believed. In 2006, a study in the journal Science predicted a general collapse in global fisheries by 2048 if nothing were done to stem the decline.
The work led by Dr. Branch is another salvo in a scientific dispute — feud might be a better word — that pits Dr. Branch and his co-author Ray Hilborn at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences and their allies against scientists at the University of British Columbia and their partisans.
Read the rest of the story on the New York Times blog.
By Boris Worm, Ray Hilborn et al.
After a long history of overexploitation, increasing efforts to restore marine ecosystems and rebuild fisheries are under way. Here, we analyze current trends from a fisheries and conservation perspective.
In 5 of 10 well-studied ecosystems, the average exploitation rate has recently declined and is now at or below the rate predicted to achieve maximum sustainable yield for seven systems.
Yet 63% of assessed fish stocks worldwide still require rebuilding, and even lower exploitation rates are needed to reverse the collapse of vulnerable species. Combined fisheries and conservation objectives can be achieved by merging diverse management actions, including catch restrictions, gear modification, and closed areas, depending on local context.
Impacts of international fleets and the lack of alternatives to fishing complicate prospects for rebuilding fisheries in many poorer regions, highlighting the need for a global perspective on rebuilding marine resources.
Read the whole study here.
Fish and marine species are among the most threatened wildlife on earth, due partly to over exploitation by fishing fleets. Yet there are differences in assessing trends in worldwide fishing stocks which, researchers writing in Conservation Biology argue, stem from inappropriate use of time trends in catches.
 Trevor Branch “Estimates of fishery status based on catches suggest that around 30% of fisheries are collapsed and 70% are overexploited or collapsed,” said lead author Dr Trevor Branch from the University of Washington in Seattle. “Our assessment shows that these data are seriously biased, and that instead we should be looking at biomass data.Biomass data from scientific stock assessments indicated a much smaller proportion in these categories (12% collapsed, 26% overexploited or collapsed), and that status trends are stable. Our analysis suggests that in most regions fisheries management has led to stabilization, and even recovery, of fished populations.” “Species which are targeted by fishing fleets are divided into stocks, a division of species into units based on political boundaries, genetic divergence, and biological characteristics,” said Branch. “The depletion of these stocks has important implications for ecosystem biodiversity; however methods of measuring depletion vary greatly.” Dr Branch’s team considered stocks being “collapsed” or “overexploited” on the basis of catch and biomass data. Collapse is defined as biomass of less than 10% of unfished levels while over exploitation is defined by the governments of the United States and Australia as biomass below 50% of biomass that would produce maximum sustained catches. These reference points are widely used in fisheries management, either as management targets or as limits not to be exceeded. Previous methods for assessing status were on the basis of catch trends, however, methods based on biomass data find much lower percentages that are collapsed or over exploited, and relatively stable future trends. “Our study found the status of stocks worldwide based on catch trends to be almost identical to what would be expected if catches were randomly generated with no trend at all,” said Branch, “and that most classifications of collapse on the basis of catch data are not true collapses but are due to taxonomic reclassification, regulatory changes in fisheries, and market changes.” Where biomass data are available, this can be used to ground truth the catch trends; this shows that catch data greatly overestimates the percentage of stocks collapsed and overexploited. Although the team’s biomass data was primarily from industrial fisheries in developed countries, the status of these stocks estimated from catch data is similar to the status of stocks in the rest of the world estimated from catch data. “Instead of focusing on what we take out of the oceans (catches), we should be examining the actual state of the ecosystem (biomass data),” concludes Branch. “Catch data produce seriously biased estimates of what is going on in ocean ecosystems, and we need more effort expended on scientific surveys and stock assessments, especially in areas that are currently poorly assessed.” This paper is published in Conservation Biology. Fore more information contact Lifesciencenews@wiley.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it +44 (0) 1243 770 375 |