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.

Tweet

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?

Tweet

Cheated at the fish counter

Do you like to pay fish prices when you're buying ice? Some people are happy to sell you ice at $15 per pound. An investigation of people selling fish packed in ice, and charging you for the ice, found the deceptive practice is common. It's bad enough that you might want cod and get pollock instead. Adding insult to injury, you might get 10 ounces of pollock when you pay for 12 ounces of cod. Ouch.

Tweet

Tarp surfing at Burning Man

Tweet

Underwater sand circle mystery

Imagine you saw this sand design underwater, what would you think? Aliens? Mysterious underwater artist? How about puffer fish? Japanese diver Yoji Ookata found the sand circles and filmed puffer fish making the intricate designs. Here's the story from Colossal:

Using underwater cameras the team discovered the artist is a small puffer fish only a few inches in length that swims tirelessly through the day and night to create these vast organic sculptures using the gesture of a single fin. Through careful observation the team found the circles serve a variety of crucial ecological functions, the most important of which is to attract mates. Apparently the female fish are attracted to the hills and valleys within the sand and traverse them carefully to discover the male fish where the pair eventually lay eggs at the circle’s center, the grooves later acting as a natural buffer to ocean currents that protect the delicate offspring. Scientists also learned that the more ridges contained within the sculpture resulted in a much greater likelihood of the fish pairing.

Tweet