Fat, Forties, and Fish (Oil)

Ah, it's a terrible thing to grow old. There once was a time I could nimbly hop from one slippery, seaweed covered tidepool to the next with what could only be described as oafish grace. Now spinal stenosis makes walking across the street occasionally a challenge––and usually painful. So it was with a certain resignation that I was instructed by my doctor last week to have a fasting cholesterol test. You see, I'm solidly in the Double-F's of life: Fat and Forties. After some painless bloodletting over the weekend, I called for the lab results this morning. Basically, things aren't as bad as I feared. Good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein-HDL) was close to ideal and bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein-LDL) was 144, a little higher than the doctor wanted to see. According to him, 130 to 159 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter) is considered borderline high and increases my risk factor.

When too much LDL cholesterol circulates in the blood, it can slowly build up in the inner walls of the arteries that feed the heart and brain. Together with other substances, it can form plaque, a thick, hard deposit that can narrow the arteries and make them less flexible, a condition known as atherosclerosis. If a clot forms and blocks a narrowed artery, heart attack or stroke can result. High levels of HDL "good" cholesterol seems to protect against heart attack. So my prescription? Increase cardiovascular exercise which gets the good/bad levels more in tune. And, begin taking daily dietary supplements of fish oil to increase my HDL cholesterol.

Fish oil dietary supplement pills, specifically the Omega-3 fatty acids they contain, have been found to decrease blood fats called triglycerides, raise HDL "good" cholesterol, and thin the blood a bit. You can also increase your Omega-3 uptake through a diet rich in cold-water marine fish known to be high in this particular fatty acid (salmon, tuna, swordfish, cod). But hey, a pill seems a lot cheaper and more convenient.

So off to the local drugstore I go. As I pondered whether the walk to Walgreens counts as cardio, I became curious as to whether the fish used to produce fish oil dietary supplements are sustainable. Considering the list of Omega-3-rich fish above, how could the fish oil supplement biz possibly operate sustainably. Then again, there are more fish in the ocean than are dreamt of in my little mind. And sure enough, a quick peek at the fish listed on the label of Nature's Bounty Fish Oil (1200 mg) indicates the oil is sourced from herring, anchovy, mackerel, sardine, and salmon.

Herring, anchovy, mackerel, and sardine? Forgive my limited western palate, but "Eww!" I don't see too many all-you-can-eat anchovy or herring eateries driving these fish to extinction (pickeled herring, anchovy pizzas, and saba sushi notwithstanding). In fact, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Guide lists herring and sardines as Best Choices. But what's up with the salmon? What sort of salmon is it? Farmed? Wild? Atlantic? And even if it's wild caught salmon, is it really wild? I'm sure it's salmon byproduct that's used to produce the oil, but was the fish originally harvested sustainably?

All this got me so puzzled I had no choice but to foist my puzzlement upon a colleague. I waddled back to the office and gave my conservation pal Sheila Bowman a call. Sheila is the Seafood Watch Outreach Manager for Monterey Bay Aquarium and an encyclopedia of sustainable seafood information. Plus she is always fun to chat with. Sheila initially directed me to a cool website that ranks fish oil supplements on a contaminant and purity scale using data collected by Environmental Defense. While informative from a safety perspective, the ranking was silent as to fisheries sustainability. Sheila and I both agreed to keep our eyes open and share any info we may uncover. If anyone knows more about sustainable fisheries and dietary supplements feel free to share.

I suppose if I wanted to be absolutely certain of sustainability, I could still increase my "good" cholesterol by eating fresh, sustainable fish high in Omega-3. Alternatively, I could go the flax seed route. Flax seed oil contains Omega-6 and Omega-9 essential fatty acids and some reports indicate it provides more Omega-3 than fish oil. While all of this fish oil or flax oil trivia is very interesting, it unfortunately doesn't sound as good as a Reuben Sandwich. But that's what got me into this mess in the first place.

Bleaching Events In Coral Triangle

While coral bleaching events due to increased sea surface temperatures have escalated throughout the Caribbean basin, Indo-Pacific reefs have faired somewhat better. A combination of isolation, greater oceanic circulation, and cold water upwelling have thus far provided insulation from massive warming and large-scale bleaching. But that insulation may be dissipating.

A recent news report from Indonesia's West Bali National Park indicates that increased sea surface temperatures are hitting Bali's coral reefs hard. A team comprised of researchers and conservationists from Greenpeace, WWF, and Reef Check have been monitoring water temperatures and bleaching events throughout the park's reef system. This news is particularly troubling considering that the mass bleaching is near the heart of the Coral Triangle, the global epicenter of marine biodiversity.

Surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, this extraordinary expanse of ocean covers an area of 2.3 million square miles (5.7 million km2), the equivalent to half of the entire United States. It is home to over 600 reef-building coral species, or 75% of all species known to science, and more than 3,000 species of reef fish. Over 150 million people live within the Coral Triangle, of which an estimated 2.25 million are fishers that depend on marine resources for their livelihood. Overfishing and destructive fishing (blast fishing, fishing with poisons) have already taken their toll on coral reefs throughout the triangle. Runoff and sedimentation from coastal development and mining, sewage, and coral mining for building materials and other uses have also stripped many reefs of their resiliency to guard against other stressors.

News of the decline of Bali's reefs comes on top of already slow-to-recover tourism to Bali following the terrorist bombings of 2002 and 2005. During my visit to Bali last October 2006, popular tourist hubs such as the Kuta district and the upland resort town of Ubud were practically deserted. Foreign tourist numbers to the West Bali National Park have fallen dramatically, but it is unclear whether terrorism or the declining reefs are to blame. Just 3,206 foreign tourists visited the park in 2006, compared to 20,168 in 2000 – before the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings.

With tourism as the lifeblood for funding marine protected area management and conservation, news of increased coral bleaching and its impact to coral reefs--one of the major tourist attractions--couldn't come at a worse time.

Scariest Pope Ever Meets Worst President Ever

CNN reports today that President Bush was "in awe" as he met with the pope on his stopover in Rome. "I was talking to a very smart, loving man," Bush is reported to have said. You'll excuse me for vomiting a little in my mouth over that statement, coming from a president who the history books will remember as neither compassionate nor erudite.

In awe over a venomously homophobic, ludicrously anti-evolution shill? Doesn't take much to impress our Commander in Chief. Why can't the man attempt to produce a scintilla of this apparently easy to manifest awe when meeting with authorities in the scientific community over global climate change, human rights advocates in his own country over same-sex benefits, and science education experts in ensuring no child is left behind in access to a scientific education unencumbered by theistic dogma?

Stop Reading This And Get Over To Carnival Of The Blue

As soon as I finish posting this traffic redirect, I'm heading over to blogfish for the first of what I hope is a long series of celebrating Carnival of the Blue. All ocean, all the time! More filling, same great taste! Kudos to blogfish organizer Mark Powell. Great work and thanks, Mark. Now I'm outta here and off to the Carnival.

Happy [insert your preferred ocean habitat and timeframe here]!

Friday, June 8 marks the 15th annual World Ocean Day. But you knew that already, right? It was marked on your calendar? No? Perhaps it's because you're celebrating the entire month of June as National Ocean Month, which President George W. Bush just proclaimed on May 31, 2007. I know, I know... not a lot of lead time for preparations, Mr. President. What's that you say? You have no time for National Ocean Month because you're still busy celebrating 2007 as International Polar Year? Well that's understandable. Best to celebrate polar ice while it's still around. And there must be a lot of people still wrapping things up with May 2007 having been American Wetlands Month. Or maybe World Ocean Day got lost, what with your planning for the 2008 International Year of the Reef (another contender for most rapidly shrinking habitat.) And besides, what's with all these new days? Don't we already have the annual Earth Day (April 22 in the US and March 20 internationally) to reflect on all things environmental?

I'm only partly kidding.

I suppose in the big picture, I'm all for any marketing or communications strategy that can register an up-tick of ocean awareness on the nanosecond attention-spans of todays society. But I struggle with determining an acceptable level of trade-off necessary in reducing persistent and complex problems in overall ocean health to a day, month, or even year of soundbites. Somewhat unsatisfyingly, many of these ocean awareness campaigns culminate in environmental clean-ups of some sort as the apotheosis of conservation engagement and action. Having been responsible for organizing many beach clean-ups in my time, I admit witnessing first hand the enthusiasm of volunteers personally improving their coastal marine habitats. At the end of the day, these ocean stewards would bask in the satisfaction of removing hundreds or even thousands of pounds of marine debris from the shores. And yet I always knew that come high tide and the next day of use, the beach would have an entirely new "crop" of debris to harvest.

In the "file under hindsight is 20/20" category, these sorts of activities perhaps only reinforce a misconception. The public seems to be stuck in a mid 1970's mindset that marine debris is the top ocean threat. A seminal national survey conducted in 1999 by The Ocean Project revealed some startling public perceptions and attitudes that I, sadly, think have not changed much. They found that since the majority of Americans interact with the ocean from the shore, little awareness exists of ocean health, especially beyond the beach. When asked to identify the most salient threat to ocean health, respondents overwhelmingly listed pollution/marine debris. This doesn't quite jibe with a threat ranking that ocean scientists might compile. I'm not suggesting clean-up events are bad. But I do wonder how coastal and underwater clean-ups in 2007 are only perpetuating the misconceptions first uncovered in 1999.

In pondering the assorted ocean days, weeks, and years, I've come to call this affinity for short-term awareness building the "One-Off Effect". The basic premise is there is often one--and only one--day, week, or year set aside for a focused environmental awareness effort and action campaign. Hence, your Polar Years, Wetlands Months, and no doubt someone somewhere is scheming-up an Abyssal Plains Week. Earth Day appears to be one of the few recurring and tremendously popular annual events, yet statistics from both US and international Earth Day events show that the bulk of activities (almost 80%) are local environmental clean-ups. Other recurring events, like Year of the Reef, cycle every 10 years. With competing global environmental appeals (not all of them ocean-focused) bombarding an already limited public attention, many of us have resigned ourselves to being satisfied with the day, week, or year we can eek out for ourselves.

Have these multitudes of temporally defined outreach and awareness efforts succeeded? My answer on any given day will depend on how optimistic (or pessimistic) I happen to be feeling. I think I could argue pretty confidently either way. In my own coral reef conservation-focused world, I think we have only begun to scratch the surface of raising global awareness. Coral reefs are not part of the everyday experience of most of the developed world, and the maxim out of sight, out of mind is only too true. And I also wonder how effective we have been in conveying the urgency of the threats to ocean biodiversity. I have seen conservationists refer many times to coral reefs as the canary in the coal mine. In other words since coral can only survive within a narrow range of ecological parameters, they are early indicators that something is awry in the oceans. But in just the last few weeks, I've heard scientists and conservationists refer to polar bears, penguins, sea otters, small traditional fishing communities, and polar seas as canaries in the the coal mine. If we included terrestrial habitats, we could throw in pandas, amphibians, honey bees, and spotted owls. If this is true, it seems like a lot of "canaries" are keeling-over and signaling that the "mine" has become unsafe. But maybe the growing frequency of alarms is beginning to numb the ears of our intended audiences.

Lest I leave readers of this first Carnival of the Blue feeling a little blue themselves, allow me to add some closing perspective. I'm amazingly proud to be part of an extremely small cohort of conservationists, scientists, and private citizens who are fortunate enough to spend our lives working towards solutions for issues affecting our much-loved oceans. In an ever growing blogosphere of science blogs, it's encouraging and empowering to see a community of blog voices collaborating to represent the 75% of our planet surface that is ocean. One of those voices, Mark Powell--the heart and sole (sorry, it was too easy) of blogfish--deserves credit for building a more cohesive online ocean community. A quick scan of carnival contributors on June 8, World Ocean Day, should show he's done a great job. It's true, our conservation challenges are formidable. But once in a while (if we are smart, diligent, and yes, lucky) we get to go to sleep as champs. Is the blogosphere shaping-up to be our next great tool or next great distraction? Let's check back in next Ocean Day.

See What Happens When The Freezer Breaks?

Ever defrost the freezer and find stuff you can't identify? Well this tops any mystery meat you may have waiting in your ice box. In what I find at once very cool and sort of delightfully gruesome, scientists are puzzling over some big, and as yet unidentified animal bones dangling from an iceberg adrift off Newfoundland's northeast coast. What looks like a vertebral column and ribs can be seen in the image along with a brownish stain in the surrounding ice.

I've seen funny things come out of ice in the past … but we've never seen a skeleton hanging halfway out of an iceberg, commented Garry Stenson, a St. John's-based scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Stenson has forwarded photos of the skeletal remains to some zoologist colleages and is awaiting a reliable ID on the critter. So while loss of polar ice due to global climate change is a bust for polar bears and iceberg watchers, it may potentially be a boon to forensic scientists and paleontologists as the ice releases a treasure trove of stinky cadavers.

A Movie Almost As Bad As 100 Years Of Servitude Aboard The Dutchman

Even Clorox® can't wash the stink out of the storyline for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, but damn those were fun special effects. Too bad about the kraken, though. Oops, spoiler! I'll go to the opening of an envelope if the ocean is somehow involved. And a big bag of popcorn helped me make it through the 2 hours and 45 minutes of painful dialogue. But Davy Jones still kicks ass and made the whole experience worth it.

It's Not The Size Of Your Genome... It's How You Use It

There's more to a coral polyp than meets the eye. Sure, cnidarians have a fairly simple body plan that has remained relatively unchanged over 550 million years. But a recent surge in coral genome projects has been yielding surprising facts about the genetics of corals. Based on the genetics already performed on other early metazoans, researchers had originally predicted that corals would have approximately 10,000 genes. These estimates have now been upped to as high as 20,000-25,000 genes. What makes this amazing is that makes the coral genome comparable in size to the estimated 20,000-23,000 genes that comprise the human genome.

Why so many genes? That's what evolutionary biologists and geneticists are excited to find out. But beyond the evolutionary insights, the comparably sized genome may also provide exciting practical applications. Genetic information contained by coral may lend insight into immune system structures in vertebrates including humans. Scientists hope that by studying coral immune systems they may learn how to better fight human diseases through better understanding of the overall system. Sounds like a great utilitarian reason to keep coral reefs healthy into the future.

Time To Fish Or Cut Bait?

Allow me to ask this question: When your house is on fire, do you start looking for the short in the wiring that ignited the fire or do you run for the hose? I bother to ask because I continue to be dumbfounded over the ongoing hairsplitting and equivocation that's required before the academic community can get behind conservation. Case in point, the loss of ocean biodiversity and the collapse of commercial fisheries.

Last November in the journal Science, a team of researchers made quite an international stir by documenting the importance of biological diversity in the oceans and linked it to the long term sustainability of fisheries. The paper made front page news in numerous news outlets worldwide and was even picked-up by CNN and national and local news. Interestingly, most of the media attention skipped-over the core message of the paper, that healthy fisheries are a byproduct (or ecosystem service) of robust ocean biodiversity. Instead, media reports chose to focus on the articles chilling prediction that if current fishing trends continue, most of the world’s fisheries could be headed for collapse by mid-century.

After the chill came the heated response from the research community. Collapse? What collapse? Let's be certain we all understand what collapse means. Don't you mean reduced, not collapsed? Or depleted. Depleted is a more accurate word, right? And what fish stock will collapse? Surely not all! Oh, and what's the cause? We have to completely understand the cause before we should sound so alarmist! It all made my head hurt. Meanwhile, what is apparent to the lay observer––fish catches continue to shrink, market fish get smaller, and unsustainable fishing practices continue––remains "anecdotal" therefore "unimportant" to the research community.

This week, a follow-up article by the same group of researchers was published in Science to address the backlash. Emmett Duffy, Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science and co-author of the original paper and this week's response, succinctly summarized the criticism on his blog, The Natural Patriot,

In a nutshell (or dare I say, in a clamshell), the criticisms raised do not invalidate the main conclusions of the original analysis by [the original paper]. Fish stocks have declined worldwide over the last few decades, as widely recognized and documented not only in our paper but by the comprehensive assessment of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. What is new is our documentation that biodiversity is critical to maintaining the normal functioning of marine ecosystems, and the goods and services that they provide to human society, including the productivity and resilience of global fishery catches.

Despite the nitpicking, Duffy remains positive and actually suspects that the research community is closer to agreement than all the debate suggests. Over on blogfish, Emmett comments,

Although the Science exchange highlights some of the disagreements, I really do sense that the various sectors of the marine scientific community are beginning to come to consensus that diverse, functioning marine ecosystems are critically important to sustainable fisheries, and that effective management will be enhanced by better linkages to the ecosystem context in which fish populations live.

I'll stand with Emmett and hope for the best. I just hope it won't take till we are buying zooplankton at the local fish monger before all the hand-wringing stops and conservation action can begin.

A Different Kind Of Feeding Frenzy

You enter the warm, tropical waters above a spectacular coral reef, adjust your mask, and start swimming. In seconds, you are mobbed by schools of damselfish, chubs, wrasses, and other deadbeat fish hovering just centimeters from your fingers. You wave your hand to shoo them away, but some of these moochers are real bullies and charge--mouths open--straight for your hands. Some will even nip at exposed areas of skin on your legs or arms. If you've snorkeled or dived any of the popular coral reef destinations of the world, you're familiar with this scenario. You're witnessing some of the more visible impacts of fish feeding.

Trying to eliminate fish feeding is one of the more contentious topics when discussing sustainable marine tourism. It's contentious because the outcome is closely tied to the happiness of two major players: tourists and tourism businesses. How do you make tourists happy? Well, if they are on a dive or snorkel boat, you make certain that they see lots of fish and can leave with lots of great pictures. And how do tourism businesses ensure this? They make certain that every tourist who enters the water has some fish bait in their hands. And what also makes this a big win-win situation for operators is that tourists are happy to shell-out hard, cold cash to buy that fish food from them. Fish food sales can be a very attractive boost to their bottom line. Happy tourists are also inclined to be tipping tourists which, not surprisingly, results in happy tourism business employees. So, everyone ends up happy. Tourists are happy. Operators are really happy. Fish? Not so much.

While fish get the immediate gratification of a full stomach, it comes at a cost. Often the "foods" provided lack anything resembling their nutritional requirements. I once dove with a group who emptied no less than 2 full cans of Easy Cheese into the ravenous mouths of fish. I mean, this shit is barely food for humans. If you hear someone rationalize fish feeding by saying, Well the data is unclear on the negative effects of fish feeding, I suggest treating their motives as suspect. Chances are they have some materially invested reason for that neutral position (or they are just blatant shills for the fish feeding crowd.)

Feeding wildlife habituates the fed animals to expect handouts and become less interested in seeking out their normal food as grazers or predators. Haven't decades of experience with bears in national parks taught us anything? Further, surveys of divers and snorkelers have also demonstrated that visitors to reefs are increasingly seeking an authentic experience with nature, not a contrived experience mediated by the offering of food. Savvy tourists are using criteria such as whether or not an establishment feeds fish in order to choose which company to patronize.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, fish feeding also makes fish more aggressive and less cautious around humans. Again, I bring up the lessons learned from overly "friendly" bears as a result of handouts. Human feeding of bears in national parks (either intentional or accidental) has resulted in the death of too many bears who have become habituated to human presence and, as a result, have become a threat to safety. I'm honestly not that torn-up over pictures of the random bites (or missing fingers) that a tourist incurs as a result of fish feeding. It's karma balance in my mind. But what does trouble me is that aggressive, non-shy fish make for easy targets to spearfishers. Do we really need to make their job any easier?

But hope and ingenuity will perhaps prevail in Hawaii. Boss Frog’s Dive & Surf Shops and Frogman Charters became the latest Maui-based business to cease fish food sales as the Take a Bite out of Fish Feeding campaign is launched. A joint effort between conservation NGO's Project S.E.A.-Link and CORAL, and the state of Hawaii's Division of Aquatic Resources, the campaign objectives are to eliminate fish feeding, along with other actions such as handling marine life when engaged in snorkeling or diving. That's Liz Foote, Project S.E.A.-Link Director and CORAL's Hawaii Field Manager with Boss Frog's Retail General Manager/Buyer Michael Webb (left) and General Manager Chris Kasper (right), displaying the "Fish Friendly Establishment" decal at their Lahaina, Maui, location.

Our belief is that tourists and operators generally want to do the right thing. They just lack awareness on the issues. We think this campaign can be a starting point for that awareness building. Perhaps armed with information of the potential risks to fish, humans, and overall reef health, dive and snorkel businesses will be convinced that selling fish food is worth reconsidering in the long view. If not, perhaps their operation may lose some of their tourist appeal (and local credibility) when compared to more sustainable businesses in the same destination. Customers certainly have no dearth of otions in selecting a dive or snorkel business in tourism destinations. Let's see what happens.