oceans
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A notorious illegal fishing ship meets its end
Here's one for the dustbin of history: This week, Australian authorities confirmed that one of the world's most infamous pirate fishing vessels was scrapped in a shipyard in India in December.
The Viarsa 1 was first spied illegally catching Patagonian toothfish (better known in restaurants as Chilean sea bass) in Australian waters in 2003. The resulting pursuit (scroll down for daily updates) by patrol vessels lasted 21 days and crossed 3900 nautical miles, inspiring Wall Street Journal reporter G. Bruce Knecht's acclaimed book, "Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish."
Many ships that participate in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Southern Ocean are owned by Spanish companies, including Viarsa 1, and fly under flags of convenience. The owner of Viarsa 1, Vidal Armadores S.A., still owns several pirate ships. Just last summer, a ship associated with the company, Magnus, was apprehended while using illegal fishing gear in South Africa. The ship was sailing under the name Ina Maka with a North Korean flag.
It may go without saying that Vidal Armadores S.A. has received support in the form of subsidies from the Spanish government.
There is at least one way to clamp down on IUU fishing: stop allowing ships to fly flags of convenience. In addition, ships that have been caught pirating should not be allowed to obtain special fishing permits. Currently, the European Union is considering such a measure.
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Bar codes for salmon and shark-free moisturizer
Scientists found that up to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen washes off swimmers annually, and that the sunscreen contains chemicals that lead to bleaching corals. They estimated that up to 10 percent of corals were threatened by sunscreen-related bleaching ...
... the Central Valley, Calif., chinook salmon run, which had historically been one of the West Coast's strongest, fell to record lows this year, prompting concerns about collapse ...
... researchers in North Carolina studied how to raise fish for consumption in tanks ...
... a seafood consumer center in Oregon prepped for a program that would attach bar codes to salmon, allowing consumers to learn who caught the fish, where it was caught, and how it traveled to market ...
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Heroes star opens heart, closet to save whales
Hayden Panettiere. Photo: Paul Morigi/WireImage Heroes star Hayden Panettiere may not be a real cheerleader (she just plays one on TV), but she sure knows how to rile up a crowd. As campaign spokeswoman for Save the Whales Again!, Panettiere has had quite a busy week. Yesterday, she appeared at a news conference with Sen. […]
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Notable quotable
“… perhaps the worst example of inter-specific aggression any of us had ever seen. This young female had literally had the life beaten out of her.” — members of the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit, commenting on the recent discovery that packs of dolphins are attacking, pursuing, and bludgeoning to death not only porpoises but […]
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NYT satire gives candidates’ alleged responses to the fish ‘n’ mercury issue
The New York Times has a pretty funny satirical article up about candidates’ alleged responses to reports of high mercury content in New Yawk tuna sushi. Obama: “Unlike other candidates, I have been saying since 2002 that we were headed down a disastrous road with our sushi policy. But what we need now is a […]
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Scared-straight birds and kite-powered cargo ships
New protections that required longline tuna fishing fleets to use bird-scaring lines, or tori lines, went into effect. In addition, international measures asked longliners to fish at night, when few birds are active, and to sink baited hooks out of reach ...
... an open fish farm that cultivates kahala, also known as Hawaiian yellowtail or amberjack, planned to double its capacity ...
... a 14-man British and Irish rowing crew crossed the Atlantic in 33 days, seven hours and 30 minutes, a full two days faster than the previous record ...
... a female leatherback turtle crossed the Pacific while tagged, resulting in the longest recorded migration journey in the ocean. She covered 12,744 miles before the signal was lost after 647 days ...
... scientists recorded, for the first time, a giant internal ocean wave breaking underwater near Hawaii. The researchers used instruments strung along 900 miles to capture the data ...
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Scientists will study coral in this International Year of the Reef
If you were wondering what that odd smell is in the air, it’s because 2008 is the International Year of the Reefer. Oh, wait, we read that wrong. The reef — it’s the International Year of the Reef. Ahem. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) says that warming seas and increased hurricanes affected more than half […]
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Sonar gets presidential pardon, seas more violent
Citing national security, President Bush exempted the U.S. Navy from a judge's order to cease sonar use in areas frequented by marine mammals ...
... the National Marine Fisheries Service said that the Atlantic white marlin did not meet requirements to be included on the Endangered Species List ...
... a report by the U.K. Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership found that seas around the U.K. were becoming more violent, thanks to rising water levels and increased carbon dioxide ...
... a Japanese whaling ship detained two activists that were accused of throwing acid and illegally boarding their vessel ...
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There’s a large human cost to subsidizing European fishing fleets in West Africa
Today's front page New York Times story -- "Europe Takes Africa's Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow" -- chronicles the human cost of overfishing. Fueled by billions in government subsidies, European fleets empty out West African waters, leaving nothing for subsistence fishermen. I wrote about this in an earlier post, but it's an important enough issue to warrant reiteration.
