Lessons Learned from Pitching Ocean Conservation Solutions

Will Soltau is Sustainable Fisheries and Salmon Farming Campaign Manager for Living Oceans Society.

'Healthy Oceans, Healthy Communities'. That’s our tag line. Living Oceans Society uses it in our logo and in all our correspondence. Our vision has been that Canada's oceans are sustainably managed and thriving with abundance that supports coastal communities. Some of our work focuses on policy change. Other work we do is with those who are actually out on the ocean. We are not afraid to engage with government and industry to pitch solutions we think are based on sound science and we continuously evaluate the results of our engagement with an eye towards being more effective in the future.

Photo: Google Images

Two efforts that we have been involved in recently had very different outcomes. The first resulted in a precedent setting measures, developed between conservation groups and the B.C. groundfish trawl industry and aimed at protecting deep sea coral and sponge habitat while improving the fishery. The details are in the link above but I will say here that it took three years of collaboration to achieve those shared objectives.

B.C.'s corals need more protection, not more words

Not many people know about deep-sea corals. This is partly because they are in the deep sea, which is hard to visit while still remaining alive, and it's also partly because corals don't participate in televised dancing or weight-loss competitions, which if we're honest with ourselves is what you have to do to get noticed these days.

If you want that kind of information, you have to invade their privacy and film them yourself.

So, call deep-sea corals old-fashioned. They won't care. After all, it's pretty common for deep-sea coral colonies to be hundreds of years old, and the real old-timers - the black corals - can have birthday cakes with over two thousand candles on them.

Trolling vs. trawling

Trolling. Trawling. Two very different ways of fishing, and yet they sound so, so similar.

I am hopped up on allergy meds and this post is about a bottom trawler destroying expensive science equipment in British Columbia

What the title says is what this post is about.

I am overly fuzzy in the mental sense due to allergy meds. They are a cruel mistress. One minute you are certain that you are, indeed, the Lizard King. Then you go catatonic for long stretches, drool slowly advancing from the corner of your mouth like the adventurous appendage of some tube-dwelling deep-sea invertebrate new to science.

Now that I look at it, I may or may not have totally plagiarized that last line from Bill Bryson. Seriously, it's a possibility. I'm too tired to do anything about it. Google it yourself if you want to get me in legal trouble. 

So yes, I am probably not entirely "here" in the strictest legal interpretation of the word, but by golly when a bottom trawler destroys something I gots to report on it. So here goes.

Pity the idiotfish. Someone has to.

There's a fish out there that's not doing too well. I'mma let you get some tissues, because you're going to be using them. Take a good look at this guy, and then commence sobbing.

My life is so hard.
Image: NOAA via Wikimedia Commons

King Rat: the spotted ratfish will outlive us all

Behold the glory of Puget Sound: the spotted ratfish. 

"I'm the glory of the what now?"
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I've been planning on doing a blog post on these guys, but the Seattle Times beat me to it with an article that puts the little-known spotted ratfish into the limelight. And rightfully so: ratfish are the dominant vertebrate life form in Puget Sound, and one of the most dominant in the state of Washington: the article mentions that Puget Sound holds an estimated 30 ratfish for every single human in the state!