ocean's decline

Image Source: Nature article

When a friend recently told me about a new report out showing that phytoplankton, the source of much of the world's oxygen and which stands at the very base of much of the planet's food chain, has declined by forty percent since 1950, I was shocked.  Jaw droppingly shocked.  Oh my.  This is big news.  Phytoplankton makes the world go around. The reason for the decline, scientists say, is global warming.  You can read about the research in this Nature news piece,  "Ocean greenery under warming stress, A century of phytoplankton decline suggests that ocean ecosystems are in peril."

(Closer to home we've seen what happens when plankton is depleted.  When invasive zebra mussels depleted Lake Michigan's plankton supply, native perch, much beloved for its starring role in Friday fish fries, drastically declined.  Local outdoors writer, Paul Smith, wrote about the 90% reduction in Lake Michigan perch in less than twenty years in this Journal Sentinel article.)

This phytoplankton research adds to what we already know about the precarious state of sea life. Earlier this summer, we learned about the massive worldwide decline of the much beloved, warm blooded, blue fin tuna population in an epic New York Times Magazine piece by Paul Greenberg titled "Tuna's End."   Blue fin tuna is one among many species that are over-fished world wide.  Pair that with suboptimal ocean habitat, due to ocean acidification and ruination of breeding grounds due to industrial fishing practices and pollution, and we can expect to soon see the end of the "Age of Tuna."  Many groups are calling for a complete moratorium on blue fin tuna fishing.

What's an eater to do?  Of course we know the health benefits of seafood, especially those with flesh rich in omega 3 fatty acids, such as wild salmon and tuna.  (It's interesting to me to note that within the sea-food-chain, the omega 3's in fish originate in phytoplankton.)  I explored this issue back in 2008 in the blogpost "Finding Sustainable Seafood."  That post identifies some options for non-marine sources of dietary omega-3s and includes a link to a sustainable seafood selector tool.  Here's another great resource:

Quick Tips from the Sustainable Seafood Guide on the NRDC website.

Eat lower on the food chain

Buy American

Buy wild

Eat local

Buy from trusted retailers

Ask where your fish came from

Look for the blue, Marine Stewardship Council sticker

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  Obviously, global warming must be halted if we hope to allay the very worst effects of ocean acidification and species decline.  As eaters, we can choose to follow a low-carbon diet and to think carefully about our seafood choices.  We do have power in the food choices we make everyday.  Our appetites shape the world.

Gulf Grief

Image from Huffington Post slideshow of oil spill photos.

The BP oil spill warrants the growing outrage with its monstrous impact.  While most people I speak with are worried about how this will impact the price of gas, I’m worried about the price of fish.  Not about how it will affect my wallet, but what it means for ocean ecology as  hundreds of species are at risk.  Add this insult to the already injured—the Gulf of Mexico, an important biological, economic and gastronomic region, has not been thriving for quite some time.  The notorious dead zone, a hypoxic area the size of New Jersey created by Midwestern industrial ag fertilizer runoff carried to the Gulf via the mighty Mississippi, has already taken a toll on aquatic life and industry. Now, post oil spill, thousands of miles of Gulf waters are closed.

Who knows how this will affect seafood prices at your local grocery store.  Sources disagree as to how much of our nation’s fish intake comes from the Gulf catch; I’ve read as little as 1% and as high as one-third.  But certainly, we get most of our seafood from places far, far away.  Gulf shrimp is one of the many edible sea creatures that will certainly be affected by the spill, and unfortunately, Gulf shrimp is one of the few sustainable shrimp options.  Most of the shrimp eaten in the states come from places like the shrimp farms of Malaysia: where the factory like methods of raising shrimp degrade coastal habitats and communities.  (See the Environmental Justice foundations article: Farming the Sea - unregulated shrimp farming, the environment and people.)  Can we continue to export these ugly practices just so we can buy our seafood cheap?  

Even if the cost of shrimp doesn’t go up, this has cost us.  At the rate we are spoiling ecosystems and waterways it is becoming increasingly hard to support a growing population on this small planet.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line: Finding sustainable seafood appears to be getting harder, but the nutrition benefits make it worth researching.  SlowFood USA recently stated in their monthly Food Chain, “We can also support the ongoing rebuilding of the Gulf and other regional seafood industries by making sure the seafood we buy is domestic and sustainably harvested.”  See past post: Finding Sustainable Seafood to learn more.  And if you’d like to get involved with relief efforts, consider supporting organizations like the Gulf Restoration Network.

Earth Day 2010

Earlier today, someone asked me what they could do to celebrate Earth Day. I responded, "Planting a tree or giving up factory farmed meat for a day (or forever) would be a good place to start."  Then I found this brilliantly begun message in my inbox and felt I had to pass it on....

Dear Jennifer,

You are destroying the ocean. We all are. We're polluting oceans with plastic waste and chemicals, we're overfishing, and we're causing climate change to warm and acidify our ocean waters.

But this Earth Day, you can do something about it. Since we are the problem, we can also be the solution. We can change our habits and protect our oceans forever.

We've partnered with our friends at Participant Media, the entertainment company behind such films as An Inconvenient Truth and Oceans, to help start a movement of people dedicated to taking simple steps to reduce three of the main threats to oceans: plastic waste, overfishing and climate change.

This Earth Day, you can make a difference by signing a public pledge to take at least one action to help save our oceans »

Here are the three most important steps you can take to help protect our oceans:

1. Choose reusable bottles and bags instead of plastic ones. Americans together use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and each use 500 plastic bags annually. These can take anywhere from 1,000 to 1 million years to degrade, and are why plastic constitutes 90% of all trash floating on the ocean's surface.

2. Eat non-endangered seafood. Due to our over-consumption of seafood, 90% of the world's large fish, such as tuna, swordfish, flounder and sharks have been killed in the past 50 years. If we continue at our current rates, all salt-water fish could be extinct by 2048.

3. Reduce your carbon footprint. Carbon intensive activities such as driving, flying, and inefficient home heating are warming ocean waters, which could be catastrophic for millions of ocean species unable to adapt to higher temperatures. The extinction of any number of these species could in turn cause a collapse of the marine food chain, affecting everything from plankton to polar bears.

We can change all this by together changing our own individual behavior. Together we can ensure healthy, clean oceans for future generations. It all starts with people like us deciding to make small changes that can have a big impact.

Sign the pledge today and commit to help save the world's oceans »

Thank you for taking a stand,

– The Change.org Team in partnership with Participant Media

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day with good food.  If you need more ideas, check out last year's post Eating Green for Earth Day.