Messing About In Sailboats

Save the Albatross

At a dinner a few weeks ago, I noticed an interesting pin on the lapel of one of the other dinner guests, Robert Moore. It looked like a seagull with a huge wingspan. It was of course an albatross. Robert told me that it was pin for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)'s campaign to save the Albatross. The Albatross, arguably the most symbolic of birds for any mariner, is in danger of extinction as a result of ingesting hooks set by deep sea fishing boats. Over 100,000 albatrosses are killed every year as a result of this.

The Save the Albatross Campaign is a global initiative to work with governments and fishing companies to take measures. I thought this except from their web site summed up the problem perfectly. Below you can also see a video that shows how the Albatrosses are caught on the hooks while diving for bait.

Picture the scene.

You're in a restaurant. You're enjoying good company. You're really enjoying your simple meal of succulent Pacific salmon - having first checked that it is Marine Stewardship Council certified.

You take another bite. Swallow. Something's not right.

You've a fish bone stuck in your throat. With a bit of back slapping you dislodge it and continue your meal, your slight discomfort soon forgotten.

Now imagine if that had been a barbed, 2-inch, steel hook caught in your throat. That wouldn't be something you'd forget.

Luckily, this isn't something you'll ever have to worry about. But for the world's albatrosses this is an ever-present danger.

Discarded fish waste and bait offer an easy meal for an albatross, that a fishing boat spotted out in the open ocean is a tough opportunity to pass by.

Unfortunately, swooping to pick up that tasty piece of squid might be the worst decision that an albatross makes, as it is often attached to a hook that pulls the bird under the water. Drowning it.

This happens to an albatross around once every five minutes. Put another way, 100,000 albatrosses die like this every year.

Horrid and needless deaths

Dying at a rate of around one every five minutes, the albatross family is becoming threatened faster than any other family of birds. Eighteen of the 22 species of albatross are globally threatened with extinction, an increase from just seven in 1994.

Albatrosses are being killed in such vast numbers that they can't breed fast enough to keep up, putting them in real danger of extinction.

Without help, losses could become so great that recovery may never be possible for these majestic ocean wanderers.

Whale beaches itself near Raritan Yacht Club

The kids in the summer sailing camp at Raritan Yacht Club must have had the shock of a lifetime when a black fin appeared in the moored fleet close to the club. As it turned out it was a whale that had sadly repeatedly tried to beach itself. The shots below on the beach are 100 yards from my boat. From what I can gather the folks on the beach were successful in getting the whale back into the water but it then swam up the Raritan River and away from the sea. The whale fatally beached itself again later that day one last time :(

Here is how this was reported on mycentralnewjersey.com

UPDATE: Whale spotted swimming near Perth Amboy beaches itself

PERTH AMBOY — A small whale has washed ashore in the city after spending hours Monday roaming the Raritan Bay and Raritan River, authorities and a witness said. The 15- to 20-foot pilot whale turned up around 7 p.m. Monday, beaching itself near Sadowsky Parkway and Catalpa Avenue and drawing crowds of onlookers, said Kim Vasquez, a city resident at the scene. She said firefighters were wetting the mammal as they waited for marine rescuers to arrive. Initially reported to be a dolphin, the whale was first spotted around 1:30 p.m. in the waters between Perth Amboy and Staten Island, Perth Amboy Fire Chief David Volk said. Four civilians from Staten Island saw it stranded on a sand bar off the island's Wards Point section, and came over to push it back into the water. That's when a crew on Perth Amboy's Marine 5 fire boat saw it swimming in the bay, Volk said.

 

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20090817/NEWS/90817051/1003/newsfront/UPDATE++Whale+spotted+swimming+near+Perth+Amboy+beaches+itself

World Oceans Day — Wear Blue and Tell Two

It's Ocean's day. Find out more here. I will be wearing blue, will you?

Thanks to Ann at the Boating Bible for passing this along.

Save the Shark

It's hard to imagine a species that is so feared and yet is under so much threat of extinction. An old friend of mine Michael Skoletsky is a long-time diver. Over the last few years he has become increasingly concerned and passionate about the threat faced by sharks. To that end with five other fellow divers, he founded sharksavers.org.

Their mission is to educate people about impact we are having on sharks and why it's so important to save them. In their own words.

We focus on education and awareness because most people still think sharks are out to kill them, or don't know that sharks are being fished towards extinction, or are unaware of the of disastrous impact that shark eradification has on the oceans and food supply, or don't know that mercury in shark fin soup is hazardous.

It's a worthwhile cause. Please check them out. It's a good site too!

Sylvia Earle on our Endangered Oceans

A dramatic and highly informative presentation by the awesome Sylvia Earle. She was a recent recipeint of the TED Prize for her dedication to marine preservation. The facts are frightening. Just one piece of data, 90% of the Big Fish are gone.

In her own words: "The next 10 years could be the most important in next 10,000". In essence, we have to act now or we are going to lose our seas.

Good article on the impact of pigs, chickens and cats on fish

Very interesting and troubling piece in today's NY Times on why how fish has become a core part of the raising of cattle and poultry, driving greater demand for fish, further depleting our oceans.

It raises an interesting solution, in using algae and other aquatic vegetation to replace fish in animal feed. This seems especially compelling as it could drive demand, thus economic value of aquatic vegetation. If managed properly, maybe  this would actually be beneficial for our seas.

Brain Snacks

If you have not tried it out, I strongly suggest you check-out TED, Ideas Worth Spreading. It's a bazillion short presentations on every theme under the sun from diving to dance, from chinese food to saving the planet. I watch them on my iphone on the train ride home. I almost (and I say almost) look forward to the train ride.

Here is  one of my favorites. Enjoy!

A new New Deal - The Two-fer

I thought this article in the Economist was very smart. How about this for an idea - fix the economy and global warming together. The premise is that the economy needs a massive stimulus. What if the there were a new deal that invested in environmental technology and other solutions, thus creating both ways to solve global warming and creating new jobs? Read on...

Green, easy and wrong

Nov 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Why a verdant New Deal would be a bad deal

TWO pressing problems face the world: economic meltdown and global warming. Conveniently, a solution presents itself that apparently solves both: governments should invest heavily in green technology, thus boosting demand while transforming the energy business.

This notion is gaining credence around the world. Last month the United Nations called for a “Global Green New Deal”. But it is in America that the idea is really taking off. The United States Conference of Mayors reckons that green investment should provide 2.5m jobs. The Centre for American Progress, a leftish think-tank, thinks $100 billion worth of spending in the area would spawn 2m jobs. The new president tops both. Barack Obama proposes spending $150 billion over ten years, thus helping, he says, to create 5m jobs.

There is a historical parallel to this synergy between two worthy aims. Just as military spending at the end of the 1930s defeated both fascism and the Depression, so spending on fighting climate change should both wean mankind off fossil fuels and avert what might otherwise turn into the most serious downturn since the 1930s. Isn’t that neat?

No. Mr Obama’s commitment to solving climate change is devoutly to be welcomed. There is also a case for giving the economy a boost through government spending. But combining the two by subsidising renewable energy is, like many easy answers, the wrong solution.

Governments can discourage companies and people from producing CO₂ by making polluters pay or by reducing the costs of clean energy. Europe does both, through a cap-and-trade system (which caps CO₂ emissions and requires companies to buy permits to pollute) and through subsidies. Mr Obama is, quite rightly, planning to introduce a cap-and-trade system, but he is also promising massive subsidies.

Making polluters pay is unpopular with companies. Politicians don’t much like it either, because it means a fight with business. But it’s the efficient way to discourage pollution, because it shifts costs onto those who should bear them, and allows the market to pick the best way of cutting emissions.

Sunless solar and the biofuels bust

Subsidies are more popular but both theory and practice argue against them. Subsidising clean energy requires politicians to decide on the best way of delivering it, and their judgment is likely to be worse than the market’s. America’s huge ethanol subsidies, for instance, have led to overinvestment in the businesses, which is now experiencing a sharp bust, and have helped drive up the price of food, with painful consequences for the world’s poor. Germany’s generous solar subsidies covered the roofs of one of the world’s most sunless countries with solar cells, thus pushing up the price of silicon and reducing the cost-effectiveness of solar power in countries where it actually makes sense. Both subsidies promoted the wrong technologies; both wasted taxpayers’ money.

The easy notion that there is a single solution to the world’s economic and climatic problems is, thus, a dangerous one. Yet there is a synergy, though a subtler one, between the two issues. In the midst of a financial crisis seen as emanating from Wall Street, a demonstration of leadership would help burnish “Brand America”. Combating climate change, which demands technological and financial resources of the sort that only America has, offers the right sort of challenge.

The world needs America to lead the fight against climate change. But if Mr Obama goes about it the easy way, rather than the right way, he will discredit the cause he espouses, and thus damage the planet instead of saving it.

This Qingdao algae thing is no joke

I was jumping around some of the Olympic blogs and came across these pics on McNay-Biehls' 470 Blog. (Hope you don't mind me borrowing your photos guys but these are frickin' scary). First the fog now this. How the bloody hell are they going to sort this out? It's not like it's going to stop growing. If anything it will get worse. If it's like Chesapeake Bay, there will be dead fish floating all over the place too.

In their blog McNay and Biehl reference an article that I think this probably spurred the NY Times article today. This one is unbelievable.

eeeeugh!

c/o BBC
The carcass of a humpback whale lies on an Alaskan beach. Scientists believe its death was down to its enormous deformed tongue, "the size of a small car". What caused the grotesque swelling is a mystery, but a ship strike and infection are the principal theories.