Biodiversity is good vs. minks can go straight to hell

Biodiversity is priceless and must be conserved. After all, it is diversity within and between living things that supports ecosystems, buffering them against variations in climate and other environmental factors. For this reason, biodiversity is generally thought to make ecosystems stable and resilient to change. In turn, we humans base our societies and economies on the stable and relatively predictable provision of ecosystem products and services. In short: humans need biodiversity, because we need sound and stable ecosystems.

But does that mean that we have to like every animal out there?

Yeah right. Let me introduce you to minks. Minks, for those of you who don't know, are murderous beady-eyed devils. They make seriously foul messes wherever they go. Their stench could deactivate the magnetic strip on a credit card. And they kill chickens.

And yesterday, they killed my chickens. In characteristically brutal fashion.

Overlooked Species Theatre Presents: Sculpins

Editor's Note: Overlooked Species Theatre is a feature in which we highlight species or species groups that seem to be, well, overlooked. A key feature of OST is blatant anthropomorphizing of the subjects, and for this we make no apologies because this is a blog and not a thesis. In this edition, we attribute extreme surliness to sculpins.  

Question, hotshot: Why is Chuck Norris afraid to fish?

Answer: Because he might catch a sculpin.

Taxpayer pockets at risk for cleaning up oil spills

The ongoing environmental disaster from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might have you asking yourself the following question: “What would happen if a similar spill were to occur here at home?” As BC currently has in place a moratorium on offshore drilling, we will hopefully never find out. However, we do not have a ban on oil tankers, and they’re currently a serious threat. For the sake of argument, let us say that a slightly smaller spill than the Deepwater Horizon occurs, somewhere in magnitude around the Exxon Valdez. Aside from the obvious devastation of marine life and local economies (see our oil-spill model), there would be a substantial cost to clean up the oil itself.

The glass ball: A beachcomber's lament

This time of year is often a bit deflating. Winter has barely begun and the next couple of months promise only darkness and cold. Yet when I was growing up on the shores of the Pacific, this time of year was rivaled only by Christmas in terms of sheer excitement. The holidays might be over, but it was mere weeks until glass ball season.

In the first few months of the year, I would eagerly await the raging south-west winds, which often heralded exotic treasures from the open sea. If these storms sustained themselves for long enough, they would begin to transport objects from the North Pacific current straight to our doorstep on the BC coast.

The North Pacific Current runs from the open ocean east of Japan to the open ocean west of California and forms the northern portion of the North Pacific Gyre. At its eastern terminus, the warm Kuroshio current from the south collides with the arctic Oyashio Current to feed the North Pacific Current. This brings all sorts of unusual items from the coast of Japan into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Most of this debris ends floating around in the Pacific or washes up on the shores of Hawaii, but given the right conditions, some would make it to North America.

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...