Earth Blog

Over the weekend Whole Foods Market announced that they would be making a major change to their seafood departments. They are going to stop selling certain species of fish because they are unsustainable. This new policy comes a whole year before Whole Foods’ original deadline to begin the practice.

The change will start on April 22nd or Earth Day and it means there will no longer be red-rated, wild caught fish sold in their stores. Examples are: Atlantic halibut, grey sole, and skate. Instead customers will be directed to purchase fish that are similar but sustainable like Pacific halibut which is a Marine Steward Council (MSC)-certified fish. The MSC-certification is on any wild caught, sustainable fish that doesn’t have the color-coded label the store also uses.

The seafood departments stoplight colored rating system, which works well at a glance for quick decision making, was set forth in 2010 by Whole Foods and two non-profit organizations: Blue Ocean Institute and Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

Once upon a time a team of marine researchers from Nova Southern University Oceanographic Center (NSU-OC) found what appeared to be an endangered scalloped hammerhead shark living off the coast of the Eastern United States. Upon closer inspection they realized they were looking at a shark remarkably similar to the scalloped hammerhead but not the same species- a rarity!

When another shark, identical to the one previously found, was noticed off the coast of Southern Brazil over 4,300 miles away from the first one it was exciting but troubling news. This shark wasn’t as rare as previously thought and now instead of one species of endangered hammerhead shark hunted for their fins researchers were afraid they might be looking at two.

A global research study conducted by an international team has found that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are functioning as intended- they are protecting marine life such as sea turtles.

An MPA is a designated no fishing zones which is excellent news for turtles. Fishing nets and lines, active or abandoned, are considered two of the most common ways turtles can die before their time. If a turtle gets caught in a net and can’t escape they will eventually drown because they are unable to surface for air. The fishing industry also inadvertently kills sea grass which is a turtle’s primary source of food.

Space may be the final frontier and while NASA works on mapping the moon’s gravitational field by scanning it crust to core, and monitoring solar flares that most certainly will not reach Earth, Google has cameras hard at work in the ocean.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the debut of the Catlin Seaview Survey a prototype of a program that will eventually collect images of our oceans; or Google’s next logical step in their quest to image-capture every inch of our Earth. 

A threatened coral reef off the coast of Florida’s Broward County received a staghorn coral transplant last week. Researchers at Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Oceanographic Center noted that this was the first time this specific reef has received coral.  Along the Florida coast and globally reefs have previously benefited from nursery grown coral. 

“This is the northernmost location on the planet for transplanted staghorn corals,” said Abby Renegar, a researcher and doctoral student, “Staghorn corals previously have been transplanted in the Florida Keys, Southeast Florida, and other tropical locations around the world.”

On January 18th we posted a blog about a dolphin stranding and the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (IFAW) emergency response and their research conducted to understand why dolphins strand in Cape Cod.  

Stranding season was in “full swing” when that blog was written and while the IFAW knew it was not close to being over they were not anticipating this week’s staggering realization: “In the past 26 days alone, the number of stranded dolphins has already surpassed the average number of strandings in 12 months,” blogged Fred O’ Regan, President and CEO of IFAW on February 8th.

Just in time for Spring Break a new federal regulation will prevent certain boats from discharging sewage -whether or not it’s treated- into California’s marine waters.  The sewage ban will create the largest “No Discharge Zone” (NDZ) in the country stretching from Mexico to Oregon and includes waters around major islands. The ban will stop an estimated 22 million gallons or more of treated sewage from being dumped into the oceans, bays, and estuaries each year along 1,624 miles of coast. Under the Clean Water Act the state of California was able to ask the EPA to approve the NDZ to help restore water quality.

“This is an important step to protect California's coastline. I want to commend the shipping industry, environmental groups and U.S. EPA for working with California to craft a common sense approach to keeping our coastal waters clean," said California’s Governor Jerry Brown.

Kids always have and always will get embarrassed or annoyed when their mothers make a big deal about them leaving or express suffocating levels of worry about their children’s safety. But a techie/slightly geeky father’s concern for his child’s welfare tends to translate a bit differently than that which is expressed by mothers. When it was time for me to hit the road from the middle of upstate NY out here to Sunny San Diego, my dad gave me a GPS to take along since I was making the trek on my own…here’s your GPS, now go west young man!