The fish could be causing major problems for Louisiana’s coastal fisheries in eight to 10 years if nothing is done.

Asian carp, including species such as bighead and silver carp, were introduced in the Midwest in the 1970s to clean murky fish farm ponds. The fish are filter feeders, munching microscopic plant and animal plankton from the water. Flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers caused ponds to overflow, allowing Asian carp to escape into other rivers and reproduce in the wild.

These fish eat voraciously and reproduce rapidly. One fish reproduces three to four times a year, releasing between 100,000 to 3 million eggs each spawning, Parola said. They have no major predators and can eat more than 20 percent of their body weight in algae and plankton a day. Asian carp can weigh up to 100 pounds. With their large size and hunger for plankton, they could pose a threat to native species.

sustainable-sam:

“It’s totally maddening,” Mr. Sanfilippo said. “They’re just doing it to make all the green people happy.”

Whole Foods says that, in fact, it is doing its part to address the very real problem of overfishing and help badly depleted fish stocks recover. It is using ratings set by the Blue Ocean Institute, a conservation group, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. They are based on factors including how abundant a species is, how quickly it reproduces and whether the catch method damages its habitat.

How dare us green people. 

Wrong answer, Susty Sam. Enviros will not make inroads by alienating people who just lost their jobs. Hostility to opposing points of view, spouting egotistical responses, or publicly blathering about the poor environment are failed strategies. Such responses negatively impact the domain of viable solutions to ongoing environmental problems. They certainly do not foster public support nor does it build trust.

Public trust is a valuable and rare commodity among environmentalists. And trust is needed in order for environmentalists to get a seat at the table.

The NYTimes article shows that environmental wins sometimes cost good people’s jobs. When jobs are lost due to a new restriction - especially blue collar jobs - the impacts negatively affect public opinion. It’s not cool to spit in the faces of someone who lost their job to environmental successes. In this context, job losses become stained by environmental regulation.

Environmental success should exemplify excellence. They should not chip away at any potential support from the public for new or altered environmental regulations.

When the next round of regulations are proposed, imagine the opposition pointing to sarcastic responses, such as Susty Sams. This stuff infuriates the public, who are needed to vote for restrictive measures.

Enviros need to increase their influence by being respectful, acknowledge social impacts from increased regulations, and attempt to offer sets of alternatives once changes occur such as the above.

plantedcity:

From The Times Colonist:

A Canadian researcher is at the centre of a provocative new international study that puts an eye-popping price tag on the damage being done to the world’s oceans and fisheries - a cost that could reach $2 trillion a year by 2100 - from carbon emissions, over-fertilization, over-fishing and other human impacts.

University of British Columbia fisheries economist Rashid Sumaila, a leading critic of international fishing policies, is co-editor of the 300-page Valuing The Ocean report released last week at the high-profile Planet Under Pressure environmental conference in Britain.

The study, touted as a “unique,” monetary assessment of global ocean health and threats, is the latest attempt by ecosystem-conscious scientists to affix financial value to planetary resources taken for granted in traditional models of economic activity.

…

The project was coordinated by the Swedish-based Stockholm Environment Institute, which said in a statement that “the ocean is the victim of a massive market failure,” and that “the true worth of its ecosystems, services, and functions is persistently ignored by policy-makers and largely excluded from wider economic and development strategies.”

Sumaila said that “the combined global and local threats to the ocean are unprecedented in human history. Incremental change and business-as-usual will not suffice.”

But the global ocean crisis “can be rectified,” the UBC researcher added, “if the ocean and the services it provides are placed at the heart of global efforts to build a green economy for the future.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Hani Amir via David Suzuki)

“Fishermen generally understand the risks of overfishing. Yet still they flout quotas, where they exist. That is often because they take a short-term view of the asset—they would rather cash in now and invest the money in something else. And it is invariably compounded by a commons-despoiling feeling that if they don’t plunder, others will.

In most fisheries, the fishermen would make more money by husbanding their resource, and it should be possible to incentivise them to do so. The best way is to give them a defined, long-term right to a share of the fish. In regulated industrial fisheries, as in Iceland, New Zealand and America, this has taken the form of a tradable, individual share of a fishing quota. Developing countries, where law enforcement is weak, seem to do better when a group right over an expanse of water is given to a co-operative or village fleet. The principle is the same: fishermen who feel like owners are more likely to behave as responsible stewards. The new statistical study confirms that rights-based fisheries are generally healthier.”

Read more about rights-based fishing at The Economist

Dec 12: Mapping the Deep: A European Perspective

Dec 12: 0-6 Hour Precipitation Forecasts from Extrapolation of Remote-Sensor Fields and a Physical-Dynamical Prediction Model

Dec 13: A NOAA Top Ten List from Mary Glackin’s Perspective

Dec 14: A Sustainable Idea: Virginia Sea Grant’s Seafood Education for the Culinary Community

Dec 14: The GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI)

Dec 15: An Ecologist’s Perspective on the Progress of Ecosystem-Based Management by the Fishery Management Councils

Dec 15: Patterns Associated with Hurricanes Making Landfall in the United States

Dec 15: Life Line for the Dead Zone: Nutrient Reduction in the Atchafalaya Basin, LA

Dec 16: Tropical Cyclones Induced Ocean Mixing and Air-Sea Heat Fluxes Based on Argo Observations

“Fears that last year’s BP PLC oil spill would decimate the bluefin tuna that spawn in the Gulf of Mexico haven’t played out, with the population of the prized fish likely to be cut by less than 4%, a federal study has concluded.

The oil from the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history covered about one-fifth of the habitat of the Gulf’s recently hatched tuna, and scientists feared that could hammer the future population of the fish.”

Source: WSJ