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February 15, 2004
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Mr. P.P. Kaku, Peacock Front Page Photo by MC Kauffman
National ocean commissioners & scientists call for overhaul of ocean policies & management - The Pew Ocean Commission released its report last June. Now, the long-awaited draft report from the U.S. Commission is slated for release to state governors for their review in early March. Both reports call for major changes in the governance of U.S. oceans and coastal resources. Ocean policies and laws in the U.S. have not been comprehensively reviewed for over 30 years and now lag dangerously behind our scientific understanding of what we need to do to address the present crises in our seas. "For a long time, we have
been asleep at the wheel," says Boris Worm, a marine ecologist
from Dalhousie University who coauthored the 2003 Nature paper
showing that only 10% of large predatory fish are left in the
global ocean. "Oceanographers have mostly studied ecosystems
minus the fish. Fishery scientists have mostly studied fish minus
the ecosystems. Society has not thought much at all of fish,
or ocean ecosystems, except as a commodity. This is changing
and changing rapidly. We now understand how we have been altering
the ocean on a global scale, how our own well-being is linked
to this largest system on earth, and what we need to do to protect
and restore its health." - Read
more... North Pacific Fisheries Offer Positive Model; "Sustainable management that protects habitat is a reality, organization says - Even while a dramatic press event Saturday sounded ominous warnings about oceans and sea life, the Marine Conservation Alliance (MCA) emphasized the hopeful example of the North Pacific Ocean, source of more than half the seafood consumed in the U.S., and a model of successful, science-based fisheries management. "It's easy for some groups
to despair in the face of sweeping, sky-is-falling generalizations
about the health of the oceans while steadfastly ignoring considerable
evidence to the contrary here in the North Pacific, MCA Executive
Director Ron Clarke said. "The MCA's members are dedicated
to managing fisheries and fish habitat to ensure both healthy
fish stocks and sustainable, bountiful harvests and the practices
in place here have a decades-long track record of achieving exactly
that, Clarke said. "The news is far from gloomy. - Read
more... |
And the heroine who survived it There is a desolate island
in the Chukchi Sea on the frigid top of the planet. It is 83
miles north of the coast of Siberia and it is named Wrangel Island
- Wrangel with one L. It is roughly kidney-shaped and said to
be about 80 miles long and 18 to 30 miles across, with a cluster
of low mountains at its center. During the warmth of its very
brief summer, rivers flow north and south over rolling tundra
to the sea. Along the frosty riverbanks are buried the bones
of a race of woolly mammoths, evidence of dwarfed survivors of
a larger race of Russian Steppe mammoths of perhaps 20,000 or
30,000 years ago. The island today is inhabited by a tiny Russian-Eskimo
settlement and is largely visited by polar bears, seals, foxes,
ducks and geese and the occasional scientist from around the
world. - Read
the rest of this story...
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