Airwatch and the right to breathe

Here's a nice story about a guy in California who started taking pictures of problems that he had noticed, and now he's making a difference in helping clean up California's dirty air.

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Real ocean sustainability action from Safeway

Safeway, the supermarket chain, has made an impressive seafood sustainability pledge. They are working with NGO FishWise to make their pledge real and credible.

They are reforming their seafood purchasing, but that's not all. To me, the most impressive part is their work outside of what they buy and sell. Safeway has sailed into some rough waters around Marine Protected Areas in California, including no fishing zones in California and around Antarctica. And the California action is not risk-free.

California's Marine Life Protection Act has supporters and detractors. Some activist recreational fishermen are aggressively fighting closure of fishing spots, even though most of the coast remains open for fishing. But Safeway is willing to stick their necks out and support the rational, transparent, inclusive, science-based process of creating marine protected areas that allow fish some refuge areas.

This is real green, when entities with political clout use their influence for the public good. Safeway can help achieve ocean protection that will make their sustainable purchasing goals easier to achieve. Go Safeway!

You can see for yourself, read about Safeway's sustainable seafood pledge:

"As one of the nation’s largest food retailers, Safeway recognizes its responsibility to be a steward of our natural resources. We aim to develop an unrivaled reputation for pursuing growth through leadership in environmental, socially responsible and ethical business practices.

As part of this important “sustainability” journey for seafood, we are fully engaging with our vendors to balance our ongoing business requirements for meeting growing consumer demand for seafood while making a measurable difference to our rivers, lakes, and oceans. To achieve our goal, we have joined forces with FishWise, a non-profit organization focused on improving the sustainability of seafood retailers, distributors, and producers, and have implemented a comprehensive sustainable seafood policy centered on four key areas: formation of a sustainable seafood task force, supplier outreach, staff training and customer outreach. In fact, information about our seafood sustainability policy can now be found at most Safeway seafood departments.

An important part of being a responsible seafood business is to not only limit the impacts of where we are fishing, but to set aside areas where we are not. Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) are important to ensure the biodiversity and productivity of our oceans. In California, Safeway is a proponent of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPA), which balances the use and conservation of living marine resources through a statewide network of MPA's. Additionally, we are helping to preserve one the last pristine marine areas on earth; Antarctica’s Ross Sea. Safeway has pledged to not buy or sell toothfish (Chilean Sea Bass) harvested from the Ross Sea and encourages Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) member countries to designate the entire Ross Sea as an MPA.


We are also taking the following actions:

Supporting groups that make a difference, such as the Food Marketing Institute’s Sustainable Seafood Working Group, the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions and the World Wildlife Fund’s Aquaculture Dialogues

Not selling “Red List” species, for example, bluefin tuna and shark

Supporting fishery and aquaculture improvements by encouraging unsustainable fisheries and farms to establish credible improvement projects designed to both meet our purchasing policy and result in measurable conservation gains

Seeking sustainable alternatives from sources that are working towards eliminating the environmental impacts of traditional harvesting and production methods, like coho salmon and shrimp from contained aquaculture production and handline caught tuna from Indonesia"

Thanks: Casson Trenor

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Fish spawning earlier in California's ocean

Warmer water thanks to climate change is coaxing fish to spawn earlier in the ocean off California.  Changes like this can sound like no big deal, but timing is everything when you make microscopic babies that will die if they don't eat in a few days.  What if their preferred food supply isn't growing earlier?  OOops.

Evolve or die, and do so quickly.

hat tip:  oystersgarter

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Jellyfish

An amazing video, shot in Monterey Bay. Wow.

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Channel Islands MPAs after 5 years

Results Show Positive Ecological Effects of Reserves. That's the headline of a new study released by the California Dept. of Fish and Game.

Wow, who's surprised? If you stop fishing in an area, then you get more fish and bigger fish. And that makes ocean ecosystems more healthy.

Quoting the report:

Many species of fish and invertebrates targeted by fishing outside reserves are bigger and more abundant inside no-take reserves, while non-targeted species’ abundances are essentially equal. Marine reserves have greater biodiversity and greater fish biomass than fished areas nearby. Studies of fish movement suggest that even wide-ranging species can benefit from the Channel Islands reserves and that some individuals move from reserves to fished areas. These results show that the Channel Islands reserves and other protected areas may contribute to the goals of protecting and promoting healthy ecosystems.

How about the warnings of doom from fishermen, about their expectations of devastating socioeconomic effects? Especially from recreational fishermen?

The number of boats seen at the Channel Islands has stayed approximately the same, but the boats go to different places. Fishing boats no longer go to the now-protected areas, while more sailboats are observed in those areas. Since MPAs were established, some commercial fisheries (rock crab, spiny lobster, market squid, and red urchin) have grown in value at the Channel Islands, while others (sea cucumber, California sheephead, and rockfish) have declined. Many of these changes also occurred throughout southern California, suggesting that the causes are due to factors other than MPAs. Detailed studies of the lobster fishery suggest some changes in number of fishermen and catch may be linked to the MPAs. The number of party boat trips for recreational fishing has remained fairly constant since MPAs were established.

Note that final line...The number of party boat trips for recreational fishing has remained fairly constant since MPAs were established. All that fuss for nothing. What a shame.

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Fat bellies for salmon

I'm in Boise this week for the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting and the northern party boats are talking about whales. With salmon fishing closed and pacific rockfish limits low, whale-watching trips are the fleet's new bread and butter. And this year, word is the whales are plentiful -- humpbacks and blues close to shore, moms and babies. One captain told me he sees krill washed up on the beaches of Half Moon Bay.

I was a little suprised by all the cold water talk, since Southern California fishermen are having a banner tuna year, which means warm currents within a few miles of the coast. But, NOAA Fisheries's scientists are reporting strong cold-water currents off the Oregon coast, full of tasty copepods. That's good news for the millions of young salmon out foraging the sea right now. If there's water in the rivers in 2010, we should see a strong salmon return.

This August 31st sea surface temperature image shows the nice cooler water (green) pushing down the coast, with a little warm yellow wedge sneaking back up to shore around San Diego. Looks like the yellowfin tuna guys might have a few more good weeks as well.

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Do you want plastic in your drinking water?

Who wants to mix plastic balls in your drinking water and then let the whole mess sit and percolate in the hot sun for weeks or months?

You do? Really? Well you can have this to drink every day if you move to LA. And...this plastic cocktail is touted as a solution to a chemical problem, sunlight reacting with water treatment chemicals to form bromate.

Is there a toxic contamination concern from this plastic soaking in drinking water and in the sunlight. There's a fascinating exchange at an LA Times blog on this, and the answers range from "yes" to "no." Read the comments to get the exchange.

Some commenters favor faith in government and others mention the high-density polyethylene and possible chemical problems from trace contaminants and sunlight-caused breakdown. Since HDPE seems to be a fairly safe plastic, my biggest question is what makes those balls black? That, and were they made in China?

Strange brew indeed. I'd prefer not to have plastic in my drinking water. Just for fun, check out the surreal video of 400,000 shade balls being dumped into the drinking water reservoir, thank goodness the workers are wearing hard hats, those balls look dangerous!

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We can't drill through China

Today the Bush Administration announced it wants to lift the offshore drilling moratorium. Governor Charlie Crist's response is telling; he says "go ahead and lift it but not in my state." Which is pretty much what you can expect to hear from other coastal states where the value of tourism is high and oil rigs, with their commensurate risks and unsightliness, bite into that revenue. On the other side you have Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, where oil refineries are big money, just upriver from the rigs of the Gulf of Mexico. By her calculations, new drilling was needed long ago so those deep water wells could be in production today.

The economic smoke here is thick, with groups like the Institute for Energy Research chiding Bush for not doing enough for "free markets." Yet those same international free markets for crude are the reason for high prices. China & India want more oil and they've got the money to pay for it. The potential production in the U.S.--even if it could be accessed immediately, all at once--would barely be a blip in global supply, meaning that its impact on demand would also be small. By the time that trickles down to the pump, consumers are likely to see little or no relief. Short of a requirement that companies donate new oil to the U.S., increased domestic production is unlikely to lead to lower prices for us.

This is also true because the new "drilling methods" being bandied about, like deeper water techniques and slant drilling, are only economical because the price of crude is so high. Oil rigs have been moving out of the Gulf of Mexico to places where the oil is cheaper and easier to reach. That's not a regulatory response, its an economic one. Similarly, existing oil rigs off California were going cheaply in the early 2000s, sold off by Chevron and others because the operating costs were too high. With oil prices now over 100$ a barrel it's worth it for companies to chase that last drop. It's disingenuous to paint oil drilling as a solution for gas consumers when it's plain and simple capitalism.

Oil drilling arguments play right into our economic irrationality; today's pain feels real, the potential costs down the road are abstract, diffuse. Maybe we'll never have to pay at all. Of course, this kind of thinking can get you into trouble like, say, mounting credit card debt, a foreclosure crisis based on NINA loans, or breaking into your brother's piggy bank for a dimebag. It's when we're in trouble that we're most vulnerable to the lure of the magic bullet, the quick fix, the miracle cure and yet that's what we have to resist.

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Corrosive oceans are now real

Seawater that dissolves skeletons? Sounds like a horror movie, but it's now reality. Scientists found CO2-spiked seawater closer to land than expected.

It's an excess CO2 scenario that the climate change deniers can't deny, because it doesn't rely on climate. It's simple chemistry, more CO2 in the ocean means higher acid, and eventually it'll corrode shells and skeletons of marine animals.

Only now it's not "eventually," it's NOW. Today, hot off the elctronic presses, an article in Science Express describes what's up with the scary CO2-spiked ocean water that we've all been worried about. OK, some of us have been worried about it, and now you will worry too.

CO2-ocean is real off the US west coast, and the water has reaced the surface off Northern California. It's happening faster than the models predict, and it could change our oceans in a bad way. Your favorite animals may be affected.

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Shark bite hits close to home

Swimmer killed by great white shark. A very rare event, but this one hits close to home. I used to swim on this beach in Southern California.

Worrying about shark attacks is silly, the risk is very, very low. But it's hard to avoid picturing the horrendous image of being held in the mouth of an 18-foot long, 2,000 pound shark. Especially after watching this shark attack video. I do NOT want a piece of that action.

When I was in graduate school in the 1980s, I used to swim on the beaches of San Diego County, including Solana Beach where the recent fatal shark attack occurred. It was great fun to swim out around local buoys or across coves, sometimes up to a mile across some deeper water. Occasionally, I would get a creepy feeling, and ignore it and keep on swimming. This time, it was real for one swimmer.

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Less fishing means more fish

After 5 years of fishing closures, there are more fish in the ocean around Southern California's Channel Islands. Not only that, but fishing has not suffered. Recreational fishing trips have increased, and commercial catches of most large species increased. Whattya know, marine reserves work!

OK, it's time for an experiment. Who was right? The people who said fish and fishermen would benefit from ending fishing in selected areas? Or the people who said that closed areas would hurt fishermen without producing benefits?

Answer: conservationists were right when we said some areas should be closed to fishing, that the closures would benefit fish and people.

Will the opponents of fishing closures admit that research shows the benefits of fishing closures? Apparently not, according to this article in the Ventura County Star:

Joel Greenberg, the Southern California chairman of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, said he's not sold on the idea that the reserves are working.

I wonder what it'll take to convince the proponents of the so-called "freedom to fish" campaign that opposes fishing closures and sees a conspiracy behind protection proposals.

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Diverse interests agree on removing Klamath River dams for salmon

Almost everyone concerned with the Klamath River mess now agrees that removing the four fish-killing dams is in everyone's best interests.

The only holdout is PacifiCorp, the dams owner. And the only thing they're want is money. Strange position, since the company has to build fish ladders if they keep the dams, and the fish ladders and related costs are more than tearing out the dams.

This sounds like a negotiating tactic to get a big fat check from the federal governments, and maybe that's what's needed since the federal government helped get everyone into this mess. Even in the last few years, federal meddling and muddling has created and worsened the problems.

It's going to be hard to fix the Klamath River, and costly, but it's time to get moving. Bring down the dams!

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Oily mess in San Francisco Bay could have been prevented

What do you do when you make a mess? Ignore it and hope for the best? That doesn't work when your mess is 58,000 gallons of highly toxic fuel oil spilled from a cargo ship, all within spitting distance of more than 7 million people. Even worse, some of the oil washed up on the Berkeley shore, where people make pollution outrage into a lifestyle.



This YouTube video shows the San Francisco Bay oil spill from above, and shows how we missed the boat on containing it. The mess could have been contained if proper procedures were followed, and floating containment booms were in place in 2 hours.

Oil spills happen, and a quick move to contain the mess can prevent most of the harm. This point was made years ago, but nobody paid attention. Argh, why do we wait until after the mess to learn our lessons?

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Oil spills in San Francisco Bay, Black Sea

It's no surprise that oil is now fouling San Francisco Bay. We were warned years ago that California was unprepared for oil spills, check out this warning from Ocean Conservancy's Warner Chabot in 2000.

Last week, a ship scraped the SF to Oakland Bay Bridge, and began leaking fuel. The crew failed to report the serious leak, and oil spill response was so ineffective that the oil spread all over the bay.

How bad are the problems? You can let the people speak and go to YouTube to watch videos made by concerned locals. Or, try the San Jose Mercury News for their coverage of what's happening

If you prefer, you can go to google maps and see how far the messy goo has spread.

Note that crab fishermen want to dealy their fishing season because of fears that the oil will contaminate crabs and spoil their reputation.

Meanwhile, criminal charges are possible for those responsible for the spill.

What can we learn from this mess? Let's hear from the experts at Ocean Conservancy. Spill prevention, rapid containment, ecosystem protection, and restoration all need our immediate attention at this time.

More oily news, a massive Russian oil spill caused by ships sinking in a huge storm is now threatening to create an environmental disaster in the aptly named Black Sea, along with the human disaster. At least 11 ships, including a small oil tanker, broke apart in a fierce storm. And this is a fairly big spill,

It's been a bad week for oil spills in the ocean.

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Big spending fails to save fish in California

Billions spent to save fish, with no progress? That's Cal-Fed, the partnership between California and the US Government, designed to save fish and restore the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta. Reports say it ain't working.

Wow, it's the Columbia River failures all over again. What's wrong? We're ducking the hard decisions, trying to have everything. Spend money but not on fixing natural river processes that fish need. Buy projects that mitigate harm, but don't really solve anything. It's a recipe for wasting money and not bringing back fish.

How can we build these megaprojects that deal with big impacts, and make them real? I don't know, but we're trying again with Puget Sound restoration in the Seattle area. Will we find a newer, better model for success? Or pour money down the drain like most of these big projects? Stay tuned.

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Rivers are a waste of water?

"The idea that we let millions of acre feet of water every year run to the ocean totally wasted is insanity," said GOP California State Assembly leader Mike Villines of Fresno.

California Republicans want to put a stop to the waste by building more dams so the water can be put to use by people. Democrats say the state should emphasize water conservation and underground storage instead of dams. Republicans are blocking progress on a water supply package unless it includes new dams, presumably to stop the insane waste of water by rivers.

I hate to be a partisan, but there's one side that really stuck foot in mouth on this issue.

Rivers have value, and water is good for more than sprinkling on crops. Are we so poor in spirit that we can't leave any water in rivers?

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Speaking sustainability, day 3

What's green and stupid and unfair? An environmental nonprofit? Maybe. At least some of my fellow students raise such questions.

Today, we reviewed the role of activist organizations in advancing sustainability, and some of my fellow students don't exactly have a warm spot in their hearts for activist groups that pursue radical or semi-radical actions to "speak truth to power."

Now, I don't want to be too defensive, critics of protests raise legitimate points about the ethical obligations of ENGOs. But ENGOs face tremendous power imbalances and resource limitations and so it seems OK to me that ENGOs use the tools available. Maybe not purely "fair" but so be it. I may be in the minority here on this point.

From my perspective, after 15 years as an activist/advocate, this class is tremendously informative. I have lots of facts and knowledge, but lack a conceptual framework for understanding the general principles invovled in some of this activity. It comes as a welcome surprise to me to find out that smart people have been studying and thinking about the dynamics of business/ENGO relations for some time.

Leaving aside the feeling that I'm serving as a laboratory rat in a maze, I can welcome the insight delivered by people who've studied what I've been doing for the last 15 years. Oh, so is that how it works? OK, let me think about that for a while, thanks for the insight. Truly, I know how to run environmental campaigns, but that isn't a complete solution to advancing sustainability. The discussion leaders are helping me understand how the pieces fit together and helping to decipher general trends. This is good stuff, and I'm thinking this may take weeks to months to really assimilate and understand.

Another interesting insight, Stanford was planning a blog to post deep insights about this BSES class, but blogfish has served that niche so well that there's no need for another one. Wow, we're doing more than just pissing into the wind, whattya know?

One particular issue, the role of "standards" for environmental performance seems destined to be a pivotal concept for me. Since sustainable seafood is a field ripe for standards, it seems like we outght to be able to predict how standards will influence the ongoing development of the field. Order out of chaos, and growth will likely follow standards. Hmmm..interesting, and I think that's a good thing.

Tomorrow, we get to delve into mission and strategies for organizations striving to advance sustainability. This should be interesting.

After 2 days plus, this feels like a full week already. It may help that internet connectivity is rough. Hope you all appreciate that blogfish is going to great lengths to blog the proceedings. I'm now standing on my head in 3 feet of snow while whistling dixie to keep the signal alive on my wireless link. OK, not really, but almost that bad. And the cell phone reception is so bad that even my heroic headstands don't find reception. How's a guy supposed to keep functioning without the umbilicus?

Hardship time now, do you know how difficult it is to sleep in absolute silence? Woe is me, huh? After today's brief run into the beautiful Desolation Wilderness area above Fallen Leaf Lake, I won't really try to play the hardship card again, no connectivity is true, but that just leaves more room to connect to the wildlands all around. Now lets see, how much does property cost around here?

Arreviderci, ciao, bye-bye, good night. See you again tomorrow.

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Speaking sustainability, day 1

OK, Stanford University is big, and blogfish is small, but Stanford wants to blog Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability, and blogfish is here, so let's work together. Who needs whom?

This Stanford connection is interesting. Riding in the limo to Sea-Tac airport today, a newly-met neighbor and I share an interest in Stanford's programs that reach beyond the University and offer solutions to real world problems.

First, off the bat, blogfish wonders who else in the crowd wants to blog the program? Several people say yes, but there are surprising concerns. Does blogging the program exert a chilling influence on dialogue? This is not good, what shall we do? I guess the only answer is that everyone has the rights to their own experience, but that doesn't extend into revealing anyone else's private information.

Is there a blogging ethics for such situations? I must study and find the Truth of Such Things.

We have study groups for the program, and my group spent a couple of hours talking about what is sustainability and other such. Good start to the week.

I offered my blogfish view, sustainability is a state of mind, and we sustainability advocates are seeking an increased "mind share" for concepts like sustainability. But, alas, there are problems with focusing too heavily on broad, general principles and it is important to develop some standards for judging sustainability. But what are the principles for? I think they're to "hook" people on sustainability and bring them along to higher and higher performance.

What is sustainability? Any answers from out there? You can post comments, or if you're terminally private you can email me personally and I'll promise to bring the answer live and in person to the grand workshop in the Sierras.

Oh, did I tell you already that the Stanford conference center is beyond magnificent? If there were ever a grander place to ponder great questions, who cares because this one is grand enough.

Now I must go because the yoga session begins tomorrow morning at 7 and who could bear to miss that?

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Dog surfing contest in California

Pooch surfing hits the bigtime with a contest in California. Check out Bandit as he gets radical in the surf.

This event drew 47 canine entrants, and over 1000 2-legged spectators. Ever the favorite of canids everywhere, Fox brings you the news.

We've had surfing rats here on blogfish, now surfing dogs. Time for the real contest, who can find the most improbably surfing animal photo? Send your entries to me (see profile above right). First prize is outstanding publicity on this and perhaps other fine web media.

Come on people, dont' be shy. Let's see your photos of surfing cockroaches and banana slugs.

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Open ocean surfing on BIG waves

Check out big wave surfing over a seamount 100 miles offshore, with the biggest wave measured at 66 feet.

The action takes place at Cortes Bank off Southern California, where the mythical 100 foot surfable wave might someday be found.

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