posted November 03, 2006 01:46 AM              

Overfishing May Harm Seafood Population

Nov 2, 8:13 PM (ET)

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

(

WASHINGTON (AP) - Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are - beyond anything we suspected," Worm said.

While the study focused on the oceans, concerns have been expressed by ecologists about threats to fish in the Great Lakes and other lakes, rivers and freshwaters, too.

Worm and an international team spent four years analyzing 32 controlled experiments, other studies from 48 marine protected areas and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003.

The scientists also looked at a 1,000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data.

"At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed - that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," Worm said. "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime - by 2048."

"It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer," he said. "But it's not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it."

The researchers called for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing and tighter controls on pollution.

In the 48 areas worldwide that have been protected to improve marine biodiversity, they found, "diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem's productivity and stability."

While seafood forms a crucial concern in their study, the researchers were analyzing overall biodiversity of the oceans. The more species in the oceans, the better each can handle exploitation.

"Even bugs and weeds make clear, measurable contributions to ecosystems," said co-author J. Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.

The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, does not share the researchers alarm.

"Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population," the institute said in a statement. "By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species.

Seafood has become a growing part of Americans' diet in recent years. Consumption totaled 16.6 pounds per person in 2004, the most recent data available, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That compares with 15.2 pounds in 2000.

Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment program, pointed out that worldwide fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion people, many of whom are poor, fish is their main source of protein, he said.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation's National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061103/D8L59FQ00.html

posted November 26, 2006 09:15 AM              

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent Sun Nov 5, 11:56 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Old toothbrushes, beach toys and used condoms are part of a vast vortex of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, threatening sea creatures that get tangled in it, eat it or ride on it, a new report says.

Because plastic doesn't break down the way organic material does, ocean currents and tides have carried it thousands of miles (kms) to an area between Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast, according to the study by the international environmental group Greenpeace.

This swirling vortex, which can grow to be about the size of Texas, is not far from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, designated as a protected U.S. national monument in June by
President George W. Bush.

The Greenpeace report, "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans" said at least 267 species -- including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish -- are known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.

Some 80 percent of this debris comes from land and 20 percent from the oceans, the report said, with four main sources: tourism, sewage, fishing and waste from ships and boats.

The new report comes days after the journal Science projected that Earth's stocks of fish and seafood would collapse by 2048 if trends in overfishing and pollution continue.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Institute of Medicine said the benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks of toxins detected in the animals.

STOMACHS FILLED WITH PLASTIC

Plastic pollution is a problem in all the world's oceans, the Greenpeace report said, but underlined the issue in the Pacific by sailing through the floating garbage dump and capturing images of wildlife interacting with plastic.

"It's not necessarily an area that's clearly defined; it's sort of a natural phenomenon ... wind and salt water break down the plastic," said Steve Smith, aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

The plastic trash, some in large pieces and others broken down to small but recognizable particles, is visible from the ship's deck, about 50 feet above the ocean surface, Smith said by telephone on Friday. Inflatable boats are dispatched from the ship to collect samples.

"We've been unfortunately finding a lot of stuff out here, floating by, which doesn't paint a very good picture, because some of it is from faraway places, has marine life like barnacles and other little creatures living on the plastic," Smith said.

By hitching rides on plastic debris, invasive species can be carried thousands of miles (kms) to interact with native creatures, Smith said. Plastic also poses a hazard to animals that mistake it for prey and eat it, he said.

"Plastics in the oceans act as a toxic sponge, soaking up a lot of the persistent pollutants out here," Smith said. "We've seen photos of albatrosses who eat this plastic ... Even though their stomachs are filled, they end up starving because there's no nutrients in there."

Discarded or lost fishing nets and traps can continue to catch fish when they are no longer in use, the report said.

The report said an international agreement known as MARPOL is aimed at ending the dumping of plastic debris at sea, but noted that since most debris originates on land, even total enforcement of this agreement would not eliminate the problem.

Greenpeace called for a global network of marine reserves, covering 40 percent of the world's oceans, and responsibility by coastal countries to cut down on "excessive consumption" and boost recycling.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061105/sc_nm/environment_plastic_dc

posted February 13, 2007 09:12 PM              

Feb 13, 2007 04:30 AM
While Environment Minister John Baird and the members of a special parliamentary committee on the environment snarl at each other over the wisdom of carbon taxes and Kyoto targets, Costco is busily trying to introduce a product we definitely don't need – 15-litre, non-returnable water bottles. Or maybe we should call them water tanks.

Surely the bottled-water industry has already buried us under enough non-returnable plastic. Half-litre- and litre-sized bottles are everywhere, littering our parks, our streets and our hiking trails. Executives sip them in business meetings, parents pack them in their kids' school lunches, college students slurp them in class and shoppers tote them around the stores. The last thing we need are giant versions of the same thing.

Sure, they're recyclable, but they're not reusable like the 18-litre drums you can pick up at supermarkets by paying a $10 deposit. Those things can be refilled up to 70 times before they have to be recycled.

If Quebec's environment minister, Claude Bechard, is preparing a regulatory measure to ban containers larger than eight litres, as La Presse reported last week, that's certainly a government initiative we could support.

Really thirsty consumers already have access to returnable tanks, and the rest of us shouldn't have to be burdened with yet another piece of litter.

There is, of course, a far more environmentally friendly way to get drinking water, a method that doesn't require big trucks or plastic bottles or deposit-return networks, a system that has the approval of even such severe evaluators as David Suzuki. It's called turning on the tap.

Bottled water is, in fact, one of the great marketing coups of the 20th and 21st centuries. That business people have managed to persuade us to pay for drinking water – often more than we pay for gasoline – staggers belief, especially when you consider that we already pay plenty every year in municipal taxes to have potable water piped right into our homes and offices. It's difficult to know whether to applaud the brilliance of corporate salesmen, or lament the gullibility of consumers.

The plastic water bottle is an icon of the age, though we're not quite sure what it symbolizes.

Maybe it's an icon we should just give up. Suzuki already has, he says, and it doesn't seem to have harmed his lifestyle. Next time you're thirsty, try turning on the tap.

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This is an edited version of an editorial in The Gazette, Montreal, yesterday.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/180930