Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Monday, August 18, 2008
Meet me in St. Louis Louis, Meet me at the fair!cotton Candy goes solar.
If they’re going to dump that crap it may as well serve a porpoise!
DuPont make waders that ‘breath underwater’. Haven’t they done enough already?
Three amigos, three pesticides not friendly to Salmon!
Pass me the rake, I have a little something here I need to bag up!
Cap-and-trade-program. Who is paying for their profits?
Will liquid coal quench our thirst?
I’ll buy it from you, then sell it to you…what do you think?
Labels: Alaska, Dead zones, Dupont, Green for a Day., Salmon, cap and trade, carbon-trading market, coal to liquid
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
EcOLinks
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
A company called Aqua Bounty is developing advanced-hybrid fish. ‘Average’-Hybrids just aren’t good enough anymore. The new ‘avanced-hybrids’ come in the form of salmon, trout, and talapia broodstocks.
These fish are “engineered to grow faster than traditional broodstock. The Patented fish, called AquAdvantage ™, were developed to reach market size twice as fast and convert their feed into body mass 10-30 times more efficiently than normal fish.
Aqua Bounty thinks their new ’super fish’ will decrease fish waste and use their food more efficiently. Less time in the tank automatically means less waste in the water. The faster the fish grows to market size the fewer meals it needs to eat. With luck they will also grow faster than those pesky diseases known to affect aquaculture’s farmed, pen grown fish.
These fish can be grown efficiently inland which will also mitigate the need for more expensive “consequential ocean pens.” The fish are also neutered so there is no threat of interbreeding with native populations. I wonder if each little fish gets a vasectomy or a tubal ligation. That sounds pretty labor intensive. Maybe these fish are ‘engineered’ to be sexless. Maybe engineering creates a ‘happy accident’ of non-gendered fish.
At any rate, finding faster ways to provide food for an ever expanding population will turn out to be part of our salvation or part of our destruction.
Maintaining the status quo won’t solve the increasing problem of how to feed the world’s increasing population. It isn’t clear yet what increased and unintended problems we will be creating. Only time will tell and time is running out on a hungry world.
Labels: Aqua Bounty, Salmon, aquaculture, genetically altered fish, gentically modified, trout
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Touting the Virtues of Trout. Super fish may become the new Super Hero.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The West Coast fishery managers put it to a vote; suffer now or maybe suffer forever. They voted on Thursday to ban salmon fishing for one year hoping a rest will allow the salmon population to recover along the Oregon and California coast.
Two years ago the salmon catch was only at 80% of normal and the Commerce Department estimated the losses then at $16 million. This year with the catch being 0% of normal the losses will be unthinkable.
The loss of the king salmon is being billed as the “catastrophic disappearance” of the famous fish.
6 years ago the Sacramento River and tributaries had more than 800,000 salmon spawning. The predictions for this coming fall are a frightening 50,000. The reason for the vanishing king salmon (chinook) could be a ’sudden lack of nutrient-rich deep ocean upwellings. The sudden lack is thought to be caused by ocean temperature changes.
The decline in the salmon isn’t something that happened overnight in spite of the sudden lack of upwelling. There can be problems in the ocean that affect the salmon populations, or problems in the rivers that do the same. This year there are problems in both and that spells catastrophic.
As gas reaches $4.00 a gallon in the U.S. a lovely salmon entree any favorite eatery could reach $40.00 a portion.
This has to be good news for the salmon aquaculture business. For the consumer trying to stay clear of Malachite Green, Ciprofloxacin and Enrofloxacin just to name a few known toxins in aqua-farmed fish this ban on salmon fishing is bad news.
The list of reasons for the down turn in salmon populations could be a foot long. For years juvenile salmon have been turning up in irrigation ditches and in some cases dead juveniles have turned up in fields that are irrigated by those ditches. The laws requiring screens that hold back young salmon have not been enforced and the regulations are not uniform.
Diseases that spread quickly through high density farmed salmon populations can spread to adjacent waters. Some salmon often escape and compromise nearby native salmon habitat.
This news release from the Pacific Fishery Management Council indicates just how bad the situation really is for the salmon population. It also indicates this news came rather suddenly after a very successful rehabilitation of the Chinook previously known as the “work horse”.
Labels: Ciprofloxacin, Enrofloxacin, Global Warming, Malachite Green, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Salmon, aquaculture, upwelling
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Salmon Season Canceled; Oregon and California take steps to protect the species.
Friday, March 28, 2008
ISAV, infectious salmon anemia virus was first reported in Norway in 1984. In Norway the virus was thought to be controlled by biocontainment measures.
In January 2000 with health certifications the ban of sea water in smolt farms along with transportation vehicle hygiene and regulations on fish slaughterhouses ISAV was reduced. A paper written by Dr. Eric Anderson, at the University of Maine said, “despite these efforts, ISAV is now endemic in Norway and will pose an on going problem to the industry.”
Today the NYtimes is reporting that ISAV is killing millions of salmon being farmed off the waters of Chile. Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, at New York Medical College in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in Valhalla says,” Parasitic infections, viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the fish (north atlantic salmon) are stressed and the centers are too close together.” Cabello thinks all these problems are “related to an underlying lack of sanitary controls.”
The NYtimes is reporting that high levels of antibiotics have been used in the aquafarming of salmon in recent years stemming from a rash of nonviral illnesses from which the fish were suffering. Some of those antibiotics are prohibited in use on animals in the U.S.
The Times article says 29 percent of Chilean salmon is destined to reach the U.S. in spite of those bans. In Chili there is still no registry to track the use of banned drugs on the fish landing in the U.S. or anywhere else.
Apparently the vast majority of salmon infected with the disease end up in Costco and Safeway stores as well as other major outlets in the U.S.
No one wants to hear is that the Salmon she has been buying at Costco is infected with anything. The second least favorite thing to hear is that due to sanitary conditions the fish has been pumped full of antibiotics.
Environmentalists are saying that salmon farms are contributing to the deadzones in the oceans. Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen.
The O.E.C.D.,Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a 2005 said Chile’s aquafarming needs to get a grip on approximately 1 million salmon that escape each year from aquafarms and excessive use of antibiotics and the use of fungicides like green malachite
control the use of fungicides like green malachiteand the excessive use of antibiotics.
Photo Santiagotimes
Labels: Chile, Malachite Green, Salmon, aquaculture
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
ISAV, infectious Salmon Anemia Virus. What’s in the Salmon you eat?
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The old joke ‘if you want to feel like a real woman, then wash this shirt and get me a beer’ may actually have more truth to it than we previously thought.
I don’t mean to imply men don’t do laundry. But, the constant contact with household cleaners usually does fall upon the human female. So it’s remarkable to find a connection between a class of toxic chemicals widely used in household detergents and the feminization of male fish.
This development has been studied for about the last 10 years. Nonylphenol ethoxylates, (NPE) known as estrogenic, means contact with this chemical will actually stimulate the production of estrogen.
There’s some irony! Maybe washing shirts really does make me feel more like a woman.
I don’t know if the mature male fish that carry eggs in their testes exhibit female behavior, but eggs in the reproductive system is definitely a female trait.
Canada and Europe have tighter restrictions imposed on the use of NPEs than the US.
In the US the answer to the use of these toxic class chemicals appears to be awarding certificates, maybe bronze plaques to companies that voluntarily commit to the use of safer substitutes for NPEs. How’s that for feminization? Why not a nice scrapbook page for their memory book too?
Voluntarily reducing the use of toxic chemicals is a ‘good thing’ as Martha Stewart would say. Procter & Gamble and Unilever have voluntarily substituted NPE’s with other chemicals in their products. Wal-Mart is still trying to hop on the green-train by rewarding companies it does business with that find alternatives to NPEs.
The Sierra Club thinks it’s time the EPA takes action to restrict or ban the use of this class of chemical.
Feminized or intersex fish have been found nearly everywhere. This leads me to agree with the idea that more than on estrogen stimulating, endocrine blocking chemical is being introduced into the environment and in more than one way.
Meanwhile, male salmon are loosing their urge to swim up stream, and becoming more amiable to staying home with the kids and keeping house.
More tomorrow on Phthalates, Nonylphenol ethoxylates, the Feminization of Marine life and the Human Male.
Labels: Canada, FDA, Feminization, Nonylphenol ethoxylates, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, PVC, Phthalates, Plastic, Poison, Polar Bear, Polar Bears, Salmon, Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome, USA, Wal-Mart, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Feminized Intersex Fish, Deformed Male Penis, Hermaphroditic Whales. Linking estorgen stimulating, endocrine blocking chemicals.
