Sea Monster

Category: Environment

  • Assessing the impacts of the Gulf Oil Spill on coastal fish populations

    A nice article by Mark Derewicz (excerpted below) about work by my UNC colleague Dr. Joel Fodrie on the impacts of the Gulf Oil Spill on coastal fish populations. [cincopa AUMAbmqKig7H] The fish are all right? Chris Baillie hauled the net onto the boat and dumped its contents in front of Joel Fodrie. They spread out the…

  • Teach your children well

    Many of us of a certain age credit Jacques Cousteau with the inspiration that got us excited about marine life and started, or at least helped, us down the path to a life dedicated to the oceans. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Cousteau almost single-handedly created a human constituency for the oceans. Last…

  • The century of the environment and biology

    Watch the commencement speech by Dr. E.O. Wilson at UNC last weekend.  It is short and excellent.  He talks about the conflicts between our stone age emotions, our medieval institutions and our god like technology, about biodiversity and the urgent need to transform how we protect and manage the living world. “There has been proportionately…

  • Competition for krill links a rebounding ecosystem to penguin declines

    At the far bottom of the earth, at the bitter end of the Pacific Ocean, lies the Ross Sea, home to a large proportion of the world’s penguins. Although it’s often considered the last intact marine ecosystem on earth, it appears there is no escape here, nor anywhere else, from the invisible miasma of CO2…

  • What fish is in a fillet-o-fish?

    Ever wondered what you are eating when you bite into a fish sandwich and whether that species is fished sustainably?  Probably not.  Well in case you are, Climate Progress has a nice article about it.  Read it here. And now a word from our sponsor (not really): [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EeEDKErYJ4[/youtube]

  • Ocean friendly seafood? There’s an app (or two) for that.

    So you’re out on a date at your favorite little romantic seafood bistro, looking at the menu with whatever sanitized name the marketers have just invented for Patagonian toothfish or slimefish or whatever. With all the conflicting information out there, how does the average civilian choose what to order without pillaging the ocean? Fortunately, technology…

  • World without fish

    Another book on my to-read list (so no, this isn’t a review, just a suggestion). Mark Kurlansky has written lots of books about fish (Cod is still a bestseller after more than a decade – quite rightly) but this is the first one aimed at getting the message across to the younger generation that we…

  • Everything you ever wanted to know about climate change denial

    John Cook, creator of the wildly popular web site Skeptical Science, published a new book today with Haydn Washington. The book is titled Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and is available here and here at Amazon for less than $25. In John’s words: “In late 2009, I was approached by environmental scientist Haydn…

  • Are farm-raised salmon “good” to eat?

    While working on a response to Ray Hilborn’s silly and misleading op-ed in the NYT urging American’s to eat more fish, I ran across a great article about the complex issue of choosing farmed versus wild-caught salmon (and other fish).  The article “The Wild Salmon Debate” is superbly written and the author, David Dobbs, is…

  • Marshes, Sills, and Fish

    A nice article by Mark Derewicz (excerpted below) about UNC PhD student Rachel Gitman and her work to understand the implications of  “armoring” our shorelines to reduce coastal erosion. Sea level is rising in North Carolina at a rate of about 2-3 mm per year. Combined in some locations with boat traffic, sea level rise is…