Over the past several weeks, thousands upon thousands of starfish have washed up dead on Britain’s beaches. The cause, as usual, appears to be humans: investigators say the most likely cause is fishing boats that dredge the sea bottom for mussels, either ripping starfish loose and casting them adrift, or suffocating them under mud and sand.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user M. Buschmann.
Last week, I posted about my love for wild salmon, which is as pure and whole as love gets. The day after I posted — the very next day! — there was some sobering news from the West Coast: wild chinook salmon that run upstream in the Sacramento River are vanishing without a trace. Vanishing. Woosh. They’re gone. We’re talking about the most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska.
Not surprisingly, this is gloomy news for fishing communities. It’s likely that California and Oregon salmon fishing will be halted altogether. Washington fisheries are under threat. Alaska — the source of the majority of wild salmon — is okay for now, but Blogfish reminds Alaska not to get too giddy. Overfishing has threatened Alaskan salmon in the past, too.
But why? Why is this happening? No one knows for sure.
Most of Earth might be covered with water, but the large population of bipedal animals that crowd the planet’s land masses is doing its best to leave its imprint on the oceans as well.
A new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finds that humans have had a heavy impact on more than 40 percent of the world’s oceans. That’s an [...]
What do you do when fisheries collapse? With a quarter of the world’s fish stocks depleted, there’s concern that by 2050 we’ll have no other fish to fry. This may be the biggest fish crunch in history. Still, it’s not the first.
When fishermen in Sinnam, South Korea started pulling up empty nets, they did the only logical thing. Finding themselves in a hard place, they erected huge penis statues.
It turns out that not long before the fishing scare, a young woman–still a virgin–had drowned near the village within sight of her lover. Locals feared that her frustrated spirit was spooking the fish away.
Economic development in the world’s richest countries has exacted a high ecological cost that’s disproportionately borne by poor nations, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley.
Graphic by Thara Srinivasan, courtesy of [...]
Fish is a source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but unfortunately because of the pollution in our waters, fish and other seafoods also contain toxins such as mercury and PCBs. Then there’s also the issue of overfishing, and the debate between wild-caught and farm-raised fish to consider. So how do you know what fish choose?
To help you sort out the "good" fish from the "bad" fish, Environmental
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By Timothy Fitzgerald, Environmental Defense fisheries scientist
Long the provender of imperial banquets and champagne tastes, beluga sturgeon caviar from the Caspian Sea has been called the Rolls Royce of caviar. But therein lies the problem. Likened to black gold and magic pearls, the eggs of the beluga sturgeon are so prized that this bony ancient fish, going back 200 million years to the age of dinosaurs, has been
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Editor's Note: We're happy to introduce another blog feature today, a bi-weekly column by Environmental Defense. Every two weeks, Online Activism & Outreach Coordinator Jessica Bosanko will bring you news, information and action items about ED's efforts to "find innovative, practical ways to solve the most urgent environmental problems."
By Timothy Fitzgerald, Environmental Defense scientist
Seafood lovers who want safe and eco-friendly fish might need help sorting
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