Archive for the Environment Category
EU seems to have somewhat come to it’s senses and are finally banning fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Ocean. The EU fishing regulators believe that the stock would collapse if the fishing was to be continued and will stop it June 16th, 2 weeks prior to the official ending. This ban will affect boats from Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain, but for some reasons boats from Spain can fish for another week.
Last year the EU fishing float caught 25% more tuna than their quota and researches believe that the population of bluefin tuna would go extinct if nothing was done.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) welcomes the ban, but is concerned that Spain get an extended week of fishing. In the future WWF want more extensive protection like a total ban on fishing in June which is the key spawning month for the bluefin tuna. They are also proposing a drastic reduction on the fishing capacity and a drastic reduction in the quotas or even a total ban for some years so the population is able to recover. The extensive illegal fishing need to be stopped immediately!
Sounds like it is time to cut out tuna, caught in this area, from our diet.
A friend of mine that runs afishblog.com has written several times about the bluefin tuna that is facing extinction. Check out his bluefin tuna section on the blog for more information about the issues. You can also find some amazing pictures of fishing of bluefin tuna at the Norwegian coast. Here is one example:
According to this article on news.bbc.co.uk a new study where the researchers used notes and archives from fishermen shows us that the population of sharks living in the Mediterranean Sea has declined at a rapid rate. Some shark species has declined by astonishing 99%!
The reason for this is the extensive fishing in this area hitting sharks and rays very hard since they grow slowly and are not fast reproducers.
One species that has been hit very hard is the hammerhead which has dropped by an estimated 99.99% over the last 200 years.
The sharp decline of top predators has given us some unforeseen results like the rise of jellyfish that has been seen in several oceans. It is believed that the lack of tuna and turtles are the reason for this. Who knows what will happen to ecosystems when we remove more species.
Conservationists are hoping to ban the cruel finning to help stop the extinction of the top predators in the ocean. I can’t believe this is still not in place. The politicians need to get off their fat a**es and do something now!
According to an article from newscientist.com it can take up to 4000 years for rainforests to fully regenerate.
The Federal University of ParanĂ¡ studied different parts of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Sadly this rainforest used to cover 1.2 million square kilometers, but only a measly 100,000 square kilometers of forest remain today. Researchers at the university looked at different parts of the rainforests to see how is was able to cope with human activity.
The good news is that certain aspects of this forest could recover in just 65 years, but it will probably take up to 4000 years for it to fully regenerate.
The rainforests need protection now!
Related to this news is this series of images on boston.com of Amazon Indians protesting plans to build a hydroelectric dam that will destroy their living grounds. These images are truly remarkable and we should really support these natives in their fight against the big corporations/government.
The British organization Marine Conservation Society want to ban balloon launches because balloons can entangle wildlife and the balloons are also being consumed which can result in death. Dead birds have been found with balloon remnants around their legs and the same thing happen to turtles eating the plastics. The problem is increasing as research shows that the number of balloons found at the shore has tripled since 1996.
To change this the organization has launched a campaign called “Don’t Let Go” where they want to spread awareness about the problem. Some places in UK has already banned releasing of balloons.
It should be pretty easy to avoid releasing balloons into the wild, but I guess many people don’t think about the harm that they can cause. Kudos to this organization for creating hype about the problem. Those of us that live close to the shore should take some time now and then, and pick up plastics that litter the seaside.
Seems like this blog is turning into a “Save the oceans” blog, but since it’s called “Musings from a male knitter” I’m gonna write about things that concern me and the oceans are very important to me.
Haven’t knitted in quite some time either..
I wrote earlier today about how a part of the Pacific Ocean is filled with plastic crap. It didn’t come as a big surprise that I found some other bad news about the ocean. According to an article at livescience.com a study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have found chemicals made by humans in creatures living deep below the ocean surface. The chemicals were found in different species of cephalopods (among the species were octopods, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses) which are food for larger animals in the sea.
Among the chemicals that were found were DDT, PCBs and BDEs, all dangerous chemicals that don’t degrade and will get accumulated in bigger animals like different types of whales. The researches were quite surprised to find such chemicals and even high levels of them in an ecosystem so remote from us humans.
I have to say it again: Stop polluting our oceans please!
In the middle of the northern parts Pacific Ocean the currents create a big vortex where a lot of the trash the we dump into the ocean get trapped. This place has been dubbed as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and there is even a Wikipedia page about it. This would not be a very big problem if all we did was dumping organic waste, but every single day we throw tons of plastic and other toxic materials into the ocean.
A site called vbs.tv decided to sail into this remote part of the ocean and see for themselves what the garbage patch looked like. They also had some scientists with them to test the contents of the ocean.
They have created a 12 part video series about the trip that you can see here.
I have embed part 1 of the video into this blog post, but check out the rest of the parts too. Be warned, there is some cussing in the videos.
We need to put heavy pressure on our governments so they will clean up this patch and the rest of the oceans for that matter. We also need to figure out how to change the common view of the ocean being a big waste dump. One thing that we can do ourselves is start picking up all the trash that litter our coastline. Every little thing helps đŸ™‚
China is not known to have the best track record when it comes to environment issues, but this time they are doing something good. The Chinese government has announced that they will (or has?) ban thin plastic bags and that customers will have to pay for regular plastic bags. This is pretty big news since about 1 billion bags are being handed out every single day in China! Stores that do not follow this ban will be fined so hopefully everyone in China will do as the government tells them
It is estimated that China wastes 37 million barrels of crude oil on producing plastic bags each year. In this day and age of skyrocketing oil prices it is kinda stupid to use this resource on plastic bags.
Other nations such as Ireland, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Uganda has already banned plastic bags. I hope the rest of world will follow this soon. It will be cool to see some cotton or hemp bags (organic of course) at the grocery stores again.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration declared that the Caribbean Monk Seal (Monachus tropicalis) has gone extinct after not being observed since 1952.
For the last 5 years there has been futile attempts by the U.S. government at finding the seal species so now it is officially declared extinct. The last confirmed observation of the seals was of small colony at Serranilla Bank, in 1952. The reason for their extinction is, of course, us humans due to hunting for their meat and blubber.
Will we ever learn and take care of the environment? Think about how sad it would be if most of the species around us would become extinct. We are heading in that direction..
