Can you handle the truth about the Gulf oil spill?

The Gulf oil spill wasn't as bad as feared, according to Margaret Wente writing in the Globe and Mail. And if she's right, I think most people can't handle the truth.

She thinks we prefer the story of evil and so we can't accept the reality that the oil spill was bad but not that bad:

...it’s worth asking why we’re so determined to cling to the narrative of catastrophe. I think it’s because we saw the spill as a giant morality tale: evil versus good, rapacious oil interests versus the environment, greedy consumers (that’s us) versus oil-soaked pelicans and the unspoiled natural world. The visuals were devastating, and the coverage was relentless. The media took turns hyping the disaster. They had a lot invested in this storyline and, when it took an unexpected happy turn, they couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t even see it.

Luckily for us, they were wrong. “Nature’s resilience is truly magnificent,” writes Carl Safina. And that’s a good thing.

I don't know enough about the oil spill to say whether she's right. It's probably too soon to tell, and the real losses do matter even if some animals are thriving. Human systems will suffer for a long time, thanks to skepticism about the cleanliness of Gulf seafood. But I do think she's right that Armageddon didn't come for ocean ecosystems.

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Invasion of the spiny dogfish

Invasion of the spiny dogfish. It doesn't sound too bad, having a few dogfish around, but wait until you hear what's happening. It's worse than ocean zombies...

Or is it? Spiny dogfish are getting blamed for ruining fishing, when New England fishermen have been doing a good job of ruining fishing themselves. Catching too much of many fish...even catching too many dogfish. Now they're blaming the victim? Check here for the rest of the story.

Now, back to the dogfish zombie invader doomsday warning...

A plague of spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is interfering with fisheries in coastal states from Maine to North Carolina. Unprecedented numbers of these voracious predators are clogging nets, stealing bait and ruining the catch in fishery after fishery, needlessly penalizing the affected fishermen and coastal fishing communities. In addition to this direct interference with other fisheries, dogfish are eating vast quantities of much more valuable species, negating the effects of drastic management-mandated fishing effort reductions in those fisheries. Fishermen are sacrificing to conserve extremely important recreational and commercial species and their efforts are doing little more than providing more food for an ever-increasing population of dogfish.

How have we gotten to this sorry state? How have we let a low value species like the spiny dogfish become so plentiful that it is standing in the way of the successful rebuilding of other, far more valuable species and costing the coastal economies of a dozen states tens of millions of dollars? The simple answer is that’s what federal law requires.

OK, in case you haven't figured it out yet, blogfish thinks this is a bunch of hooey. But go ahead and decide for yourself, it's a free country.

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