Greenpeace’s Efforts Lead to Fishing Changes in Nauru

The tiny nation of Nauru (which has one of my favourite flags) has changed its laws thanks to the work of Greenpeace. The environmental organization found that fishing trawlers were catching fish at sea then offloading them to essentially a larger factory boat. This practice has been banned in many places because of the severe damage it causes to the fish populations.

The NFMRA, which credited Greenpeace’s exposure of an “illegal operation” for prompting the Nauru government ban, said it regularly observed “longliners in the high seas acting suspiciously and intruding on our borders”.

“These seas act like a safe haven for pirate boats, and transhipment allows them to stay at sea even longer, and launder fish out of the area,” it said.

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Nauru has become the third Pacific nation to issue a blanket ban on transhipments in its exclusive economic zone, after Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

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The Return of Rich Ocean Farming

Using the bounty of ocean to feed people is nothing new, but with a new spin on ocean farming we can have a sustainable food source (currently fishing is quite destructive) that also helps slow down the rate of climate change. We can use the very plants and animals that we are farming in the ocean to absorb carbon!

Seaweed is one of the fastest growing plants in the world; kelp, for example, grows up to 9-12 feet long in a mere three months. This turbo-charged growth cycle enables farmers to scale up their carbon sinks quickly. Of course, the seaweed grown to mitigate emissions would need to be harvested to produce carbon-neutral biofuels to ensure that the carbon is not simply recycled back into the air as it would be if the seaweed is eaten. The Philippines, China, and other Asian countries, which have long farmed seaweed as a staple food source, now view seaweed farms as an essential ingredient for reducing their carbon emissions.

Oysters also absorb carbon, but their real talent is filtering nitrogen out of the water column. Nitrogen is the greenhouse gas you don’t pay attention to — it is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide, and according to the journal Nature, the second worst in terms of having already exceeded a maximum “planetary boundary.” Like carbon, nitrogen is an essential part of life — plants, animals, and bacteria all need it to survive — but too much has a devastating effect on our land and ocean ecosystems.

Read more here.

Thanks to Greg!

Helping Fish Live can Generate Billions in Economic Activity

People who live on coasts tend to live off of the sea, which is a fantastic way to at local. However, due to modern commercial fishing fish populations and local ecosystems are being destroyed -so much so you can see damage done by commercial fishing from space. For years fisheries have argued that they have a right to continue their fishing practices because it’s how they earn a living. Well, here’s a better way to ensure they can earn a living: help those fish before you eat them (or don’t eat them 😉 ).

Pew has released a study that argues that rebuilding fish populations can generate billions of dollars for costal communities.

“Results from this study provide strong analytical evidence that there is significant value in rebuilding fish populations and lost financial benefits from delayed action,” said Dr. John M. Gates, report author and professor emeritus, Departments of Economics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island. “It’s important to note that the primary, direct benefits represent a conservative estimate and, if related economic benefits had been included, the result would likely expand well beyond the figures estimated in this study.”

Delays in rebuilding translate to lost opportunities for commercial and recreational fishermen to catch the maximum amount of fish that can sustainably be taken from a population. Failing to quickly address overfishing and allow populations to rebuild as quickly as possible forgoes current financial benefits and may result in more costly regulations in the long–term.

Key findings from the report show that:

Commercial landings would have increased by 48%, if the four populations had been rebuilt by 2007. The financial value would be approximately $33.6 million per year in perpetuity.
Rebuilding would bring an increase in recreational landings of 24% more per year than the status quo management. The economic value would be approximately $536 million per year in perpetuity.
These direct economic benefits would also likely generate secondary financial benefits in the Mid-Atlantic region through increased income, sales and jobs from businesses associated with commercial and recreational fishing, including bait and tackle shops.

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