WiLD Blog

Jason Kelly visited Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, the largest in the world, and was overwhelmed by how many fish it processes in a single day. He wondered how many fish there can be in the ocean.

He researched and discovered that there aren't enough to survive our efficient methods and voracious appetites.

He read many books on the subject. They were wonderful books by marine biologists and policy makers. People have given elegant speeches on the subject. Politicians have passed laws protecting fish.

Bottom line: none of it is working.

Overfishing continues at a pace today that will see the end of the ocean's fish by 2048, according to the latest study by Dalhousie University. Jason decided that the world needs a simple plan delivered in a simple package.

He took a break from writing his bestselling "Neatest Little Guide" series of financial books to write and illustrate "No Fish In My Dish." It's a charming story that, in just 2,300 words:

A) Explains the problem

B) Demonstrates industry's reluctance to change

C) Shows that change must come from consumers, not fishers

D) Teaches to refrain from eating fish for five days a week

In the memorable phrase of the fisherman's daughter in the book, "For five days a week, say 'no fish in my dish!'" If the whole world follows that advice:

"The fish will have time to have babies and then,
slowly the oceans will fill up again."

Jason and Darcy, his editor, are just beginning to get the word out about "No Fish In My Dish." They're seeking a publisher, and want people to show support for the book and idea by joining their "No Fish" list.

For us at WiLDCOAST it is a pleasure to join with them in working toward the common goal of saving the ocean's fish.

Please help Jason and Darcy solve this global issue that not only affects us, but generations to come. Spread the word!
Visit:
http://www.nofishinmydish.com/spreadtheword.html

Today's New York Times Science Section has a review of a new book “Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future,” by noted coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey and his daughter Linda that illustrates why costly sand replenishment projects don't work. Basically the book argues that nature is a lot more complex than the mathematical models used by bureaucrats to predict how costly coastal engineering projects will work. 

 In Southern California, the Army Corps of Engineers plans on spending up to $70 million on sand replenishment projects that will have little impact on preserving our beaches. City and regional government agencies desperate for the pork barrell project and the milions of dollars they see as a subsidy for their wealthiest residents and political  contributors are eager to promote these projects. They are not concerned that sand replenishment projects have been a total failure in California.  Dr. Pilkey is the world expert on sand replenishment projects and coastal geology. As Cornelia Dean of the Times writes his new book explains why the assumptions agencies like the Army Corps make about sand projects are all wrong: 

 When coastal engineers decide whether to dredge sand and pump it onto an eroded beach, they use mathematical models to predict how much sand they will need, when and where they must apply it, the rate it will move and how long the project will survive in the face of coastal storms and erosion.

 Orrin H. Pilkey, a coastal geologist and emeritus professor at Duke, recommends another approach: just dredge up a lot of sand and dump it on the beach willy-nilly. This “kamikaze engineering” might not last very long, he says, but projects built according to models do not usually last very long either, and at least his approach would not lull anyone into false mathematical certitude.

 Now Dr. Pilkey and his daughter Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, a geologist in the Washington State Department of Geology, have expanded this view into an overall attack on the use of computer programs to model nature. Nature is too complex, they say, and depends on too many processes that are poorly understood or little monitored — whether the process is the feedback effects of cloud cover on global warming or the movement of grains of sand on a beach.

Their book, “Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future,” originated in a seminar Dr. Pilkey organized at Duke to look into the performance of mathematical models used in coastal geology. Among other things, participants concluded that beach modelers applied too many fixed values to phenomena that actually change quite a lot. For example, “assumed average wave height,” a variable crucial for many models, assumes that all waves hit the beach in the same way, that they are all the same height and that their patterns will not change over time. But, the authors say, that’s not the way things work.

 Also, modelers’ formulas may include coefficients (the authors call them “fudge factors”) to ensure that they come out right. And the modelers may not check to see whether projects performed as predicted.

 Eventually, the seminar participants widened the project, concluding that erroneous assumptions, fudge factors and the reluctance to check predictions against unruly natural outcomes produce models with, as the authors put it, “no demonstrable basis in nature.” Among other problems, they cite much-modeled but nevertheless collapsed North Atlantic fishing stocks, poisonous pools unexpectedly produced by open pit mining, and invasive plants and animals that routinely outflank their modelers.

They also discuss concepts like model sensitivity — the analysis of parameters included in a model to see which ones, if changed, are most likely to change model results.

 But, the authors say it is important to remember that model sensitivity assesses the parameter’s importance in the model, not necessarily in nature. If a model itself is “a poor representation of reality,” they write, “determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit.”

Given the problems with models, should we abandon them altogether? Perhaps, the authors say. Their favored alternative seems to be adaptive management, in which policymakers may start with a model of how a given ecosystem works, but make constant observations in the field, altering their policies as conditions change. But that approach has drawbacks, among them requirements for assiduous monitoring, flexible planning and a willingness to change courses in midstream. For practical and political reasons, all are hard to achieve.

 Besides, they acknowledge, people seem to have such a powerful desire to defend policies with formulas (or “fig leaves,” as the authors call them), that managers keep applying them, long after their utility has been called into question.

 So the authors offer some suggestions for using models better. We could, for example, pay more attention to nature, monitoring our streams, beaches, forests or fields to accumulate information on how living things and their environments interact. That kind of data is crucial for models. Modeling should be transparent. That is, any interested person should be able to see and understand how the model works — what factors it weighs heaviest, what coefficients it includes, what phenomena it leaves out, and so on. Also, modelers should say explicitly what assumptions they make.

 And instead of demanding to know exactly how high seas will rise or how many fish will be left in them or what the average global temperature will be in 20 years, they argue, we should seek to discern simply whether seas are rising, fish stocks are falling and average temperatures are increasing. And we should couple these models with observations from the field. Models should be regarded as producing “ballpark figures,” they write, not accurate impact forecasts.

 “If we wish to stay within the bounds of reality we must look to a more qualitative future,” the authors write, “a future where there will be no certain answers to many of the important questions we have about the future of human interactions with the earth.”

Book Information
USELESS ARITHMETIC
Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future. By Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis. 256 pages. Columbia University Press, $29.50.

 

Congratulations to our good friends Fher, Alex, Sergio and Juan of Maná who this week joined Al Gore to announce a historic global concert series to raise awareness about planet earth. Of all the groups selected for the concert none have done more to promote the protection of the planet than our friends from Mexico.

Detailing a historic effort to engage billions of people across the globe, Kevin Wall, Al Gore, Pharrell Williams, , Cameron Diaz, and the MSN Network today launched Save Our Selves (SOS) – The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis. The announcement was made at the California Science Center.

SOS is designed to trigger a global movement to combat our climate crisis. It will reach people in every corner of the planet through television, film, radio, the Internet and Live Earth, a 24-hour concert on 7/7/07 across all 7 continents that will bring together more than 100 of the world’s top musical acts. Live Earth alone will engage an audience of more than 2 billion people through concert attendance and broadcasts. MSN has partnered with SOS to use its reach to make the Live Earth concerts available across the globe. The Live Earth audience, and the proceeds from the concerts, will create the foundation for a new, multi-year global effort to combat the climate crisis led by The Alliance for Climate Protection and its Chair, Vice President Al Gore. SOS was founded by Kevin Wall, who won an Emmy as Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8.

Today's New York Times feature a story on the vaquita marina or Gulf of California harbor porpoise, the world's most endangered cetacean. The vaquita has been the poster child of conservation efforts in the Sea of Cortez for the past 20 years and unless a radical plan to end large-scale commercial fishing is implemented in the Upper Sea of Cortez, the species faces certain extinction.  

February 13, 2007
Golfo De Santa Clara Journal

Vaquita Porpoise, and a Way of Life, Face Extinction
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.


GOLFO DE SANTA CLARA, Mexico — The fishermen gathered in the early evening light where the desert meets the blue gulf to talk over the way they had always lived off the sea and the fate of a small, endangered porpoise few of them had ever seen.

Environmentalists from the United States and Mexico had begged the fishermen to stop using the gill nets that are killing off La Vaquita, or the little cow, a porpoise that now has the dubious distinction of being one of the most endangered marine mammals in the world.

Only about 400 of them survive in the waters at the tip of the Gulf of California where the Colorado River once poured into the sea, environmentalists say, and the only way to save them is to ban commercial fishing with nets in about 1,545 square miles to a line cutting across the gulf about 70 miles south of the mouth of the river.

Environmentalists have put forward proposals to pay the fishermen not to fish and to develop tourism as an alternative source of income. But the men with rope-hardened hands and weathered faces are skeptical.

The desert here is a vast expanse of beige dunes and craggy rocks that bears nothing but scrub. The sea has always been the only source of food and money.

“They want us to stop fishing,” said Andrés González, a 43-year-old fisherman. “They want to take care of the animals here, but they are not taking care of the people.”

Scientists trying to save the vaquita from extinction say they have run out of alternatives as well. The Mexican government set up a reserve in 1993 to protect the porpoises, which become entangled in fishing nets and drown. But it is too small, with fishing banned in only about 637 square miles.

Animals roam outside the protected area and their numbers continue to decline, biologists say. The year the reserve was created, for example, gill nets set for fish and shrimp killed about 39 vaquitas in just one of the three main fishing ports in the upper gulf, researchers say.

“There is a high risk that the species will disappear in a few years,” Omar Vidal, a biologist and the director of the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, said. “We have to act immediately.”

The solution, they say, is to ban fishing with nets in the upper gulf and establish a $50 million trust fund and use the earnings to pay fishermen a total of about $4 million a year, not to fish but to pursue other trades. The program would last at least seven years, until the porpoise population could recover.

The buyout is a last resort. Lorenzo Rojas, a biologist with the National Ecology Institute who studies the vaquita, said his surveys had shown that the porpoise population is so thin that if more than one died each year in fishing nets the species would be doomed. Each female porpoise has only one calf every two years.

 “What will happen?” said Antonio Villegas, whose six brothers and four sons fish for a living. “What worries me is what are we all going to do? We live off fish. We want to keep fishing. We don’t know anything else.”

 

[This letter was addressed and sent to local, state and federal representatives, including the Mayor of Imperial Beach, and Senators Boxer and Feinstein of California.]

February 7, 2007

Dear Ladies and Gentleman,

My name is Julian Briseno and I am 9 years old. I live in Imperial Beach, California.

Today we went to the beach but the water was polluted (again). The lifeguard said it was polluted from the Tijuana River.

I look foreword to Wednesdays because it its minimum day at my school and I get to go surfing. But today was the same as last Wednesday because it was polluted then too.

Please build something to stop the dirty water from the Tijuana River to go to our beaches.

You should talk to Wildcoast because they do a lot of good things for Imperial Beach.

Please send me a message back as soon as possible.

Here is a picture of what happened today.

(signed)

Julian Briseno

Imperial Beach

 

WiLDCOAST was CC'd on the letter and it was the very first thing I read this morning. It got me so fired up. This is why we're fighting for clean water. If every surfer affected by ocean pollution voiced their discontent like Julian, it would be much harder for our politicians to ignore the problem of Tijuana River sewage. Get fired up, write your representatives and say enough is enough. CLEAN WATER NOW!

 --Ben