Plastic, plastic everywhere

I'm writing to share with you all one of my biggest pet peeves. No, it isn't global warming deniers, people who talk loudly on cell phones in public, or even car alarms (though those are certainly all in the running). It's something more seemingly benign, but ultimately more horrible.

PLASTIC!

I don't have a horrible-enough font at my disposal to describe it (Eds. note:  Showcard Gothic is pretty terrifying). Now I know what you're thinking: are car alarms really as annoying as global warming deniers? Perhaps a question  more relevant to this discussion would be: how can something so useful and seemingly beneficial to society be so ultimately terrible? The answer:

(Credit: State of Hawaii)

So long 2010: A year in review

Well, happy 2011! We’ve survived another trip around the sun aboard our shiny, water-coated vessel, and ended up back where we started (in solar terms anyway). Another summer has come and gone, blessing fishermen, bears, and natal streams across BC with record numbers of sockeye salmon. Over twenty-thousand grey whales have migrated from their calving grounds near the Baja Peninsula to the rich marine-buffet of the Bering Strait and back, while millions of shorebirds have completed even longer return migrations.

Nothing new under the sun

"For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. 

The Cro-Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks. 

The sportsman who shot the last [Passenger] pigeon thought only of his prowess. 

The sailor who clubbed the last auk thought of nothing at all."

- Aldo Leopold

Maybe Aldo spoke too soon. Maybe, when there's money to be made, there's nothing new under the sun.

 (This image is from this article in the Huffington Post)

Merry Christmas, and Happy Birding

Well, it's that time of year again. It's a time of orchestrated chaos for those living in the city, when you begin to feel like everyone around you has lost their wits (and that you may soon join them). For those living in small coastal communities, it's a time when the weather is slightly worse, the days are slightly shorter, and some people simply decide to hibernate until conditions improve. At Living Oceans, it's a time when we wind down for a couple of weeks, so this will be the final blog post for the year.

How we go to meetings

Living Oceans Society's head office is in the small island community of Sointula, B.C. (we also have a satellite office outpost in the wilds of Vancouver). Life in Sointula is pretty easy. Your morning commute, for example, is only a few minutes long and of the few interruptions that do occur, many are due to various hoofed mammals who are intent on doing their commute first.

C'mon buddy, keep it mooooooving

Victories in the context of centuries

Last week was a good week for groups working on oceans issues in B.C. The House of Commons voted in support of a legislative ban on tankers on B.C.'s North Coast, Justice Bruce Cohen ordered the release of 10 years' worth of salmon health records for 120 salmon farms, and a Federal Court judge ruled that DFO has failed to meet its responsibility, under the Species At Risk Act, to protect the critical habitat of B.C.'s resident killer whales.

So, good news, right? High-fives all around! 

Victory on Tanker Ban Motion, Victory for the Coast

In case you haven't been following Water Blogged over the past few days, you may have missed our urgent appeals to phone/write your MP and urge him/her to vote in favour of a motion in support of a legislated tanker ban on Canada’s Pacific North Coast. Well, those phone calls and emails paid off: the motion was carried tonight in the House of Commons!

One more reason to tell your MP to vote for the tanker ban tonight

The CBC reports that Canada is not prepared to deal with a major oil spill.

In entirely related news, your MP has the chance to vote for a ban on tanker traffic on B.C.'s North Coast. The vote is this evening, at approximately 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

So, if you haven't already, get in touch with your MP and remind them to vote for the ban. The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois have indicated that they support the ban. The key thing is getting them to show up.

Remember, the vote is at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time tonight. In the words of Johnny Cash: you've got 25 minutes to go. (Figuratively, at least).

Ask your MP to vote for a legislated tanker ban on B.C.’s North Coast

URGENT: Ask your MP to vote for a legislated tanker ban on Canada’s Pacific North Coast!  

Dear friend,
We need your help TODAY. We’ve reached a decisive point in the battle to keep B.C.’s coast oil free. On Tuesday evening, December 7, your Member of Parliament will vote on a motion to ban oil tankers on the North Coast. Please take a moment to send the action alert below because it’s CRITICAL that MPs vote to approve the motion.

Tanker Bans and Tasty Tar Sands

As discussions on the fate of the climate stutter into their second day in Cancún, an unconventional delegation met in Ottawa today to demand stronger protection of the marine environment. The group of First Nations, fishermen, tourism operators, and environmental advocates called on the federal government to ban oil tankers from Canada's Pacific North Coast. The delegation was brought together by shared concerns over Enbridge Inc's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would see 500,000 barrels per day of toxic bitumen flowing from Alberta's Tar Sands through Kitimat and onto Asia-bound oil tankers (click here for a map of the proposed tanker route).

Edmonton to Cancún: No matter how you look at it, things are getting warmer

Today is a sobering day!

It's Monday, nearly the end of November, and 26 days until Christmas. It is also the day when die-hard Saskatchewan Roughrider fans (who are the true winners of the Grey Cup, regardless of which team triumphed on the field in yesterday's game) return to their burrows to hibernate for the winter after their final frenzied gathering of the season.

Good Vibes Friday

Before you sail into the weekend, here are a few things to see you on your way in style:

- A cautionary tale for anyone considering a career in marine biology
 
- Water Blogged has learned that this Thursday was America's version of Canadian Thanksgiving, and good on ya for that. We're still a bit mystified by the traditions, though - turkeys we can understand, but why do you ritualistically slaughter Lions every year? Anyway, to honor our southern friends, we present you Pilgrims with evidence that a historically accurate Thanksgiving meal would likely include loads o' eels.

Marine Not-So-Protected Areas

This past week saw the long-awaited release of a peer-reviewed paper by several members of our staff, Commercial fisheries closures in marine protected areas on Canada’s Pacific coast: The exception, not the rule. As the title suggests, this paper examines fisheries closures (or lack thereof) in 161 marine protected areas (MPAs) in Canada's Pacific waters. Alarmingly, 160 of these areas are open to some amount of commercial harvesting. This begs the question: what are these areas protected from?

Study finds people are confused about climate change, but want to learn

Yesterday`s post was a wallow in the dank recesses of tar sands politics. To make up for how depressing it was, I promised some cautiously optimistic news on the climate change front, in the form of hopeful news from the U.S. Since I am nothing if not a man of my word when it is convenient and when it suits my purposes, here`s that cautiously optimistic news:

The Confederacy of Dunces: the influence of Canadian oil interests on U.S. politics

The next few posts are going to focus on greenhouse gas emissions, because their effects - climate change and ocean acidification - are projected to have substantial consequences for marine ecosystems. And because the fixes required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are largely political, these next few posts are going to delve into politics. Today, we'll briefly touch on the relationship between the Alberta tar sands and U.S. politics.

There will be no cute images to distract us.

Friday Afternoon Rant: Bill C-311

Well, it's just over one week until the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun. So what has Canada's ruling party done to prepare for this high profile international discussion on greenhouse gas emissions?

Linkday Thursday: Bluefin tuna and brawling academics

Good evening everyone. The blog has been neglected for over a week, and I apologize for that. I feel bad. I imagine you all, sitting at home, in the dark, waiting for a new post, desperately straining wobbly necks to hold translucent faces towards the light of the screen like so many baby grackles.

Hang in there, readership.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Well, your wait has not been in vain, because I rassled some links from the internet. Some of these are a few days old, reflecting the length of my negligence. 

Sea lice treatment kills adult lobsters on east coast

High-profile drama seems to always surround B.C. open net-pen salmon aquaculture, so it's easy for West Coasters to sometimes forget that there are open net-pen salmon aquaculture operations in Atlantic Canada as well. We should definitely be paying attention to what's been going on out there in the past few days, though, where an outbreak of sea lice has precipitated a flurry of activity.

Startling coral discovery, Newfoundland beats B.C., and more

Hola amigos. It's been a few days. You've likely been wondering "What's happened to John? Has the law finally caught up with him?" And the answer to that is no, it hasn't: thanks to convenient loopholes in Canada's extradition agreements, the government of Guatemala can't touch me.

Actually, I've been traveling a bit for work lately and I feel a bit out of the loop when it comes to the latest oceans-related developments. So grab an oil-black coffee - it should almost have a slick on top, but not quite - put some tunes on, and let's take a spin.

Carbon Dioxide – 3, Water – 0

It has been a pretty exciting couple of weeks for carbon dioxide. The infamous gas celebrated a stunning victory last week against its long time rival, water vapor, for control of the Earth's climate. According to a study published at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which examined the role that various gases play in the greenhouse effect, the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Better luck next time, water! Water vapor and clouds still play a major role in global warming, but without non-condensing gases like CO₂ and methane, they cannot uphold the Earth's greenhouse effect. This leaves water in distant second place, a loss as crushing as that suffered by Carolina in Sunday's 5-1 Vancouver game.

How I became an Environmentalist

Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Jake, I have been working for Living Oceans Society for about a month, and I am an environmentalist. This last point might not be such a surprise, considering the context in which you're reading it, but it isn't a word with which I have always been that comfortable. For many, environmentalism conjures up images of people who have long hair, live in trees, and listen to whale music. And while I admit that these may all have been accurate descriptions at various times in my life (especially during university), they are not the basis I use for applying the term to myself.

Let me back up a bit. To start with, my parents are lighthouse keepers, and I spent most of my childhood here:

Okay, so perhaps I was doomed to be an environmentalist from the start. But let me explain...

Coho, sea lice, and massive pieces of styrofoam litter

I don't know how to preface what you're about to see. My knowledge of the English language, or any of the other 12 languages I can speak fluently, doesn't allow me to express the vastness of the piece of styrofoam that my colleagues and I cleaned up from a local beach the other day. The only unit of measurement I can think of is based on this photo: it is approximately 1.9 Marias x 0.8 Marias x 0.3 Marias. That's...what, 0.456 cubic Marias. That's a HUGE piece of styrofoam.

Styrofoam and reference Maria

On to the seriousness.

Wednesday links: threats of hatchery salmon edition

Today, Water Blogged is kicking back at LOS World Headquarters, sippin' coffee and takin' a spin around the world wide net for oceans-related links.

LOS World Headquarters is somewhere in there. Pretty cool, eh?

Demon pigs and ocean acidification

I had a terrifying experience last week! It involved a pig.

See, I was traveling for work, and I stayed in a hostel to save some money. By the time I got to bed I'd been awake for more than 36 hours, so the second I hit the pillow I dropped into one of those abyss-like slumbers. At some point in the night something woke me up - some kind of commotion. I woke up, but I was severely confused - I had no idea where I was or what was going on. I couldn't see much in the darkness - just a mass moving around across the room. The whole thing quickly took on a nightmarish feel. I thought that I was in a cabin, looking through a window into a misty night, watching a large pig trying to break in. At this point my survival instinct kicked in. Obviously I needed to scare the pig away! I tried yelling, but found I couldn't make a noise (thank goodness, in retrospect). So I did the next best thing: I started wildly flapping my arms at the demon pig, beating them against the mattress as loud as I could. Then I fell back asleep. The whole thing took maybe 15 seconds.

Anyway, turns out that what I thought/dreamed was a pig - it was just somebody tossing in their sleep in another bunk. So long story short: if you would have walked into that hostel room at that particular time, you would have seen one guy tossing and turning in his sleep, and another guy staring at him wild-eyed, madly flapping his arms.

Finding honest signals in the midst of the noise

Apologies to professional biologists if I muck this up, but there are things known to biologists as 'honest signals' - cues that the receiver understands to reliably correlate with some aspect of the sender. Large male elephant seals can bellow louder than small ones, for example, so in their competitions for females, the bellow is an honest signal of the size and therefore fighting ability of the male. In this way, potential disputes between males can be avoided if one recognizes that the other is the superior fighter through its bellowing. (And then the larger one gets all the females, even though he's probably a jerk and the smaller one is probably a really nice guy with a good sense of humor).

Dudes...talk it out first.

So I set out this morning to think of some honest signals - not from huge males, which as a 5'9" guy myself I am inclined to think are overrated. No, I set out to try to think of information that just might be sending a direct, unmistakable message about the status of our current social and environmental conditions. And so, without having exerted myself too much because I'm kind of jet-lagged, here are some that struck me (note - the term 'signal' may technically not be the correct word to use here, but I'm using the term anyway).