ABOUT YOUR CHLDRENS' OCEANS...

There are folks that say global warming is a hoax, no danger of overfishing, plenty of whales, same for the dodo, passenger pigeon, buffalo, polar bear who really gives a shit, but here you can see just a single day's worth of what is being done to YOUR oceans, to say nothing of the oceans of your children and theirs... and theirs...

These are just the shallow scourings, the ones you can see, the ones visible from space... The sight you have is nowhere near the netting, the trawling, the pollution and other aspects of blindness. Imagine a year's worth of everything invisible that's done to the oceans.

Enjoy that tuna sandwich.

source: Treehugger, via neatorama

"Arguably the single most destructive human action for the world's oceans, bottom trawling, a practice commonly used to dredge up deep water fish, leaves behind a trail of destruction that can clearly be seen from space. The above image of the Gulf of Mexico, captured by the Landsat satellite in late 1999, shows the sediment trails left behind by individual ships (the bright spots) - a testament to the utter devastation the practice exerts on vast seafloor ecosystems.

Les Watling, a zoologist at the University of Hawaii who was interviewed by LiveScience's Andrea Thompson, said that bottom trawling drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year. The sediment plumes arise as ships drag their nets across the ocean floor, moving rocks, crushing reefs and stirring up various marine organisms.

Watling described these plumes as just the "tip of the iceberg," explaining that most trawling takes place in waters deep enough to mask the plumes from sight. He presented the results of his work at the AAAS meeting in Boston alongside John Amos of SkyTruth, the West Virginia-based remote sensing and digital mapping non-profit group that tracked the plumes."

SUSHI SUNSET

Imagine America running out of beef, France running out of snails, or Mexico running out of tortillas-- well here in the Orient there's a cuisinal change under way that's perhaps even more disturbing: Japan is running out of maguro (bluefin tuna). Not only because of competition and overfishing, but also because sushi and sashimi are now world foods and the premium ingredients command big bucks.

When I first came to Japan, the early morning Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo was wall-to-wall fresh-frozen tuna carcasses. You could get fresh magurozushi in any streetcorner sushiya without shelling out too many yen. Then a few years ago, when I heard that a single bluefin tuna had sold for something like 260,000 dollars, I thought: that's the end of sushi as I know it. The situation hasn't gotten any better since then.

And isn't it always the way— just after Japan formed the Sushi Police to ensure round-the-world conformity with the homeland's founding standards, here in the Land Where Sushi Began the sushi chefs are scrambling for - shudder - maguro substitutes, and are turning to ingredients they once mocked, like avocado, deer and even... horse.

Yes, raw horsemeat sushi is galloping your way; can GM sushi be far behind?

BTW, don't eat cheap sushi...

Excellent recent history of sushi...

Plus a neat link from Michael...

BRIEF TRIPS TO HEAVEN

Within splendid lakeside breezes among famed black pines I watch hawks catch fish too big for them, then watch them react much the way humans often do with big ideas-- can't regain the elevation, the effort is too much and they have to drop the fish.

One such hawk flew close overhead and I could see that the fish looked amazed: it hung there stock still in the awe that comes with extreme experience; then the fish was dropped back into his world and said to his schoolmates: You're not gonna believe this, but there's another world above this one! They took him at his word, or so it appeared, because after that it seemed like a lot more fish were caught and dropped.

Before I let go of this idea, by a rough count I'd surmise that the hawks and fish have a deal going: one meal for every ten rides into heaven.