Tornado carries tuna 1 km inland

Here's a new kind of flying fish.  It's a 2 meter long flying yellowfin tuna.  Is this quick evolution?  No, it's what happens when a tuna meets a tornado in Australia.

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Edgy cartoon video about harm from bottom trawling

Hi all,

Blogfish has been busy with other things lately, but this new video has aroused my blogging spirit (embedded below, unless it's been removed from the hosting site) . It was produced by WWF Canada, and it equates bottom trawl fishing with a farmer towing a destructive net across a farm field to "harvest" wildlife and livestock (destroying the farm in the process). It has a catchy and irreverent song, and an edgy message: "we don't farm like this.....why do we fish like this?"

Watch it quickly, before it's taken down from this site. It's already gone from YouTube.

Predictably, this video has aroused the ire of may people connected with the fishing industry. It's a cartoon, its message is sharp, and the content is not technically accurate. The video is intentionally provocative, and I don't think anybody should be surprised that it provoked people connected with fishing.

The people who are complaining about the video have a valid point, it's not a very accurate critique of bottom trawl fishing. And worst of all, it's got an edgy teasing tone, implying that fishermen don't care about the ocean. It's not a good way to reach across the aisle and find solutions to ocean problems.

This is more like a Greenpeace video than something from WWF. I'm glad I'm not a WWF staff person trying explain why WWF produced this video.

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The next fish war?

Cod? Mackerel? Tuna?

Will we start shooting over fish again?

You catch my bluefin and you'll be sorry. Or will we find new sorts of troubles?

Our next fish war will be over ...(hold your breath)... plankton. Those tiny ocean plants that turn sunlight into food.

There's barely enough plankton for the fish we catch today...and we want more.

More salmon and shrimp, more sushi, more fish fingers...and that means more plankton fished out of the sea.

Who cares? You do if you eat seafood or make a living from seafood. You care about plankton even if you don't know it.

Because your fish need plankton.

If somebody else steals your plankton...then they're stealing your fish.

It's a funny sort of fish war coming.

We'll fight to keep our plankton in the sea so that later we can catch our fish.

Fighting over fish is a straight up struggle, "these fish are mine."

The plankton war will be much trickier. If you want tuna you have to keep your plankton in the sea long enough to feed sardines or shrimp which feed mackerel and squid, which feed your tuna.

But watch out, I may get your plankton by catching my fish first.

So now you've got a new thing to worry about. Are you ready?

Next: who's vulnerable?

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