Author: Emmett Duffy
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The fish that launched a thousand ships, then disappeared
A recent analysis clinches the growing evidence that the North Atlantic is a unique region of the world ocean, and helps explain both its special vulnerability to fishing, and perhaps also its fundamental importance in the historical expansion of European influence around the globe. This is a big fish tale. Scientifically speaking, the body size…
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An antidote to gloom ‘n’ doom: Ocean chill
The Blue Planet set to music. Lean back . . . [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jema_dTA8wM[/youtube]
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Have we reached “peak fish”?
During the 20th century fishing became a heavy industry, expanding rapidly to the global scale, and fishing pressure now appears to be near—if not beyond—the ocean’s capacity to provide. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently reported that “the maximum wild capture fisheries potential from the world’s oceans has probably been…
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Daily Sea Monster: The earthquake fish
The largest ecosystem on the planet is also the most mysterious–the bathypelagic or “midnight zone“, that thick layer of seemingly monotonous dark water between the film of sunlit surface ocean above, where the alchemy of photosynthesis spins sunlight into the tiny algal cells that feed the rest of the ocean, and the cold dark desert…
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Anchors aweigh — into hot water
There are a wide range of reasons to be concerned about the changing climate, as John has explained in recent posts. And because policies to address these challenges involve very large stakes, economically speaking, the issue is mired in intense debate, skulduggery, and deviousness on a colossal scale (despite the very clear scientific evidence). But…
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Daily Sea Monster: the Phyllosoma
In retrospect, it seems I might trace the first recognizable step in my path toward a career in marine biology to sitting in Miss Evanson’s 2nd grade classroom at Barcroft Elementary one day in . . . well, I won’t tell you when, but I came across Dr. Seuss’s incomparable treatise on marine biology McElligot’s…
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The Silent World
A few months ago I happened to pick up a copy of Jacques Cousteau’s classic first book, The Silent World, less from a burning desire to read it than for the mysterious and evocative cover photo, and out of a sense of comradely solidarity with this pioneer submariner. It gathered dust on my bedside table…
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Who pays for overfishing? Poor people in Africa
The pervasive detrimental impacts of overfishing on marine life and ecosystems have been widely publicized in recent years, ratcheting up calls for stricter regulation and protection. A counter-argument commonly heard in debates on this issue is that fishing (like coal mining, oil drilling, pillaging of old-growth forests, etc.) provides essential jobs, revenue, and food, particularly…
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The secret social lives of shrimp
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z735I4m8F8c[/youtube] No, we’re not making this up. Deep in the crevices of coral reefs, even deeper inside the hollow Swiss-cheese-like bodies of living sponges, are hundreds of little “pistol” shrimp that band together for protection in a cooperative colony headed by a queen, much as ants and honeybees do. These secretive creatures are in fact…