Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, July 27, 2007
Breeding Bluefin Tuna Like Cattle!
In Australia a company called Clean Seas Tuna Limited is attempting to breed the highly sought-after Bluefin Tuna in captivity.
For the Tuna this may be a little like trying to get drunk on Sherry. It can be done, but it’s a lot of work, and probably not very satisfying. But, for the sushi and sashimi eater it could be very satisfying.
In 2003 researchers near Osaka Japan became the first in the world to successfully spawn southern Bluefin tuna in captivity. They were able to grow that generation of fish to the point where some actually produced their own eggs.
Remember how excited the world was when the first Panda Bears actually bred in captivity? This, for a lot of people is something like that.
In 2004 Marcus Stehr, Clean Seas Tuna Limited, was able to successfully move 6 Bluefin tuna from offshore nets into an onshore dam. At the time Clean Seas Tuna may have been the only company to even attempt such a thing, let alone succeed.
In April 2007 Clean Seas Tuna’s Bluefins started pairing up. Marcus Stehr be lived this to be one more milestone moving toward his quest. The Bluefins were very healthy and they were showing spawning tendencies. The captive tuna’s were also very healthy eaters.
Showing signs of wanting to breed, and having a healthy appetite sounds like the tuna aren’t too depressed with their situation. Maybe fish Viagra keeps their spirits high.
In the Clean Seas’ Arno Bay Breeding facility male Bluefins were given hormone therapy to stimulate their ‘need to breed’. Again, maybe like trying to get drunk on Sherry, as I recall the Panda’s were shown some X rated Panda films. What ever does the trick I suppose. Though the release of sperm by the Southern Bluefin Tuna was captured on film by an underwater video camera.
How are the females responding to all this courtship behaviour? Hagen Stehr Clean Seas Chairman says the broodstock will continue to be monitored and the therapy potentially repeated, with the expectation of completing their reproductive maturation and producing viable (fertilised) eggs.
If all of this turns out to be really successful the Bluefin in the wild may be given a chance to get a little R&R. While they rest up maybe their Bluefin Brethern in captivity can help shoulder the burden of supplying at least some of the world the protein it so desperately craves.
Oh please, someone pass me the Sherry!
Photo thanks (c) Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank
Labels: Bluefin Tuna, Longline Fishing, Ocean, aquaculture, bycatch
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Breeding Bluefin Tuna Like Cattle. Home, home on the Range.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
This story falls under the heading of news you can use.
Don’t ever forget: it doesn’t matter for whom you vote, what really matters is who counts your vote!
Actions for bringing you internet voting are going on across the globe. Canada, the USA, France. The UE has launced the Cyber Vote Project trials have already been used in Sweden, France and Germany.
Why leave the club when the party is just getting hot? Text in your vote while in a drunken stupper via your cell phone. How about casting your vote for the next American Idol and then voting for your next Prime Minister or President. Careful now don’t get the two mixed up.
In spite of the US Department of Security warnings in 2004 listing its top 5 reasons to not use internet voting Evoting is rolled forward:
Our conclusions are summarized as follows:
DRE (direct recording electronic) voting systems have been widely criticized elsewhere for various deficiencies and security vulnerabilities: that their software is totally closed and proprietary; that the software undergoes insufficient scrutiny during qualification and certification; that they are especially vulnerable to various forms of insider (programmer) attacks; and that DREs have no voter-verified audit trails (paper or otherwise) that could largely circumvent these problems and improve voter confidence. All of these criticisms, which we endorse, apply directly to SERVE as well.
But in addition, because SERVE is an Internet- and PC-based system, it has numerous other fundamental security problems that leave it vulnerable to a variety of well-known cyber attacks (insider attacks, denial of service attacks, spoofing, automated vote buying, viral attacks on voter PCs, etc.), any one of which could be catastrophic.
Such attacks could occur on a large scale, and could be launched by anyone from a disaffected lone individual to a well-financed enemy agency outside the reach of U.S. law. These attacks could result in large-scale, selective voter disenfranchisement, and/or privacy violation, and/or vote buying and selling, and/or vote switching even to the extent of reversing the outcome of many elections at once, including the presidential election. With care in the design, some of the attacks could succeed and yet go completely undetected. Even if detected and neutralized, such attacks could have a devastating effect on public confidence in elections.
It is impossible to estimate the probability of a successful cyber-attack (or multiple successful attacks) on any one election. But we show that the attacks we are most concerned about are quite easy to perpetrate. In some cases there are kits readily available on the Internet that could be modified or used directly for attacking an election. And we must consider the obvious fact that a U.S. general election offers one of the most tempting targets for cyber-attack in the history of the Internet, whether the attacker’s motive is overtly political or simply self-aggrandizement.
New Report:
The US Department of Defense has continued analyzing Online Voting and concluded in a new report that reads in part May 2007:
“There really is no good way to build such a voting system without a radical change in overall architecture of the Internet and the PC, or some unforeseen security breakthrough.” Online voting security is “an essentially impossible task.”
…”Most of the security problems with Internet voting are generic to any PC and Internet application, and fundamentally have no effective solutions. This is why the majority of all email transmitted ove the Internet is spam, and an estimated 50% of all Internet-connected PCs in the world are infected with malicious software, despite more than a decad of effor and immense investment by the world’s high technology companies in trying to fix these problems.” …”The real problem is that no fundamental solution is possible using the current Internet protocols and the current PC hardware and software platforms.”
Demand that your vote be counted as cast. Demand paper ballots that can be verified. Your most fundamental of rights are in peril regardless in what nation you live.
THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF, don’t ever forget, it isn’t them against us. They are us, we have sent them into our goverments to represent us, now demand that they proctect our right to cast an unempeachable ballot. We need to stop letting the tail wag the dog.
Labels: Ewaste, Toxic Ewaste, bycatch, eballot, electronic voting
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Eballot For World: More Ewaste and Bycatch, Texted Your Vote In!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
What kind of applications are there for deep seawater? It would seem there is nothing this water can’t enhance, change into or be used ‘for’.
So how deep is ‘deep seawater’ and what could it be used for? Deep sea water is located at a depth of generally lower than 200 meters. It takes about 2,000 years for this water to circle the globe.
Once it was discovered that, for example, the Japanese would pay up to $33.50 for a single bottle of desalinated deep seawater all kinds of people started jumping on the deep seawater pipeline.
The NELHA upwells a mind boggling 88,000 metric tones of the stuff per day. Japan has started several deep seawater projects as well as Norway.
Once the attributes of this water were discovered, the race was on to develop new ways to exploit its properties. Can we develop new industires based around this here to fore unexploited resource?
Ice-cold deep seawater was found to be advantageous in the aquaculture of cold-water species unable to be farmed in tropical seawater climates. Other aquaculture benefits are deep seawater increases the ability to grow cold water organisms, disease control and it contains few viruses and pathogenic bacteria.
Other applications could be used in the food industry, in medical treatment facilities, and even cooling water for power stations.
The demand for this water is growing as private companies are inventing new uses for it. Commercial fisheries often don’t take their catch directly to market, holding it until prices go up. The need to keep fish alive and in sanitary conditions is another use for deep seawater.
The ease at which water temperatures can be controlled by mixing surface water with the cold deep seawater is another benefit being touted. How can further changing the surface temperatures of the sea be a good thing?
This up-welled water is even being run through pipes underground to cool the temeratures of soil. Cold weather crops such as spinach can be grown in parts of the world where it was never intended to be grown by nature.
This up-welled deep seawater accounts right now for only .05% of all water in the ocean, but it supports nearly 50% of all sea products being manufactured.
The prospect of pulling this water up and sending it all over the earth to cool homes, soil and even power plants sounds like a tricky idea to me. Growing fish and crops in places they were never intended to be grown sounds like a bad idea to me.
Yes, we need to find new ways of sustaining life on the planet, but what will be the unintended consequences of using these methods?
Only time will tell if man will become his own bycatch.
Photo thanks OceanBoy Farms/Marine Photobank
Labels: Deep seawater, Japan, NELHA, Ocean, aquaculture, bycatch
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Will Deep Seawater Systems Produce a New Kind of Bycatch?
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Longline Fishing is said to be one of the most efficient methods of killing unintended sea life by commercial fisheries.
These lines can stretch for 50 miles. In some cases up to 3,500 hooks are baited per day. Longlines aren’t discriminating when it comes to what they catch either.
In the course of a year more than 4 million creatures are the unintentional bycatch of these longlines. This bycatch includes whales, dolphins, sea turtles and porpoises. Sea lions can also fall victim to the longlines.
Longline fishing has killed approximately 65,000 albatross and Southern Giant Petrels, in just the last 20 years, in the waters off of New Zealand. Longline fishing is a huge threat to these petrels.
Longline fishing is used to catch the bluefin tuna among other types of fish.
Diving birds, like the petrels, plunge into the ocean to grab a morsel of bait and are then hooked and pulled under the sea to their death.
There are method being employed by some to mitigate bycatch of some types of sea birds. Weights attached to lines can cause them to sink faster thereby taking the bait out of the petrels view. Streamers attached to the lines may also scare some of the birds away from the bait. Setting lines at night can also decrease the attraction to birds. But, these methods of mitigation don’t address other species in the bycatch such as sea turtles.
In what seems to be an unimaginable or at least surreal scene they bycatch is tossed back into the ocean either dead or dying.
On the other hand, the bluefin tuna once caught on the longlines are very carefully ‘KILLED with a SPIKE to the head’. The crew will gently lift the catch wearing gloves to protect the bluefin ‘gold’. Blankets and grass mats are used to protect the fish from bruising.
How can mankind be so cruel?
With the advent of bluefin aquaculture maybe flooding the market with more tuna will bring down the prices. If prices are lower maybe it will become economically unfeasible to continue longling fishing.
Photo thanks to Lucy Kemp / Marine Photobank
Labels: Bluefin Tuna, Longline Fishing, Petrels, aquaculture, bycatch
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Longline Bycatch is a Cruel Way to Die
