Sustainable, healthy, cheap, and definitely not overfished! That's what we've been hearing about small, oily mackerel for years. Four varieties of mackerel have been listed as "best choices" on the Seafood Watch eating guide, and a fifth made the "good alternatives" list. Even Mark Bittman and Tom Philpott agreed on the virtues of mackerel over other less sustainable fishes back in 2009.

But all that popularity hasn't been so great for the poor little mackerels in the Atlantic. Due to overfishing, they were just knocked off the U.K.'s Marine Conservation Society (MCS) list of best fish to eat. From The Guardian:

There has been an increasingly bitter three-year dispute between Iceland and the EU -- mainly the UK -- over who has the right to land the once-plentiful fish.

Conservationists fear stocks could be at risk after Iceland and the Faroe Islands dramatically increased their quotas in recent years. In 2011, 930,000 tonnes of mackerel were fished from the north-east Atlantic, but scientists claim the maximum that should be caught is 542,000 tonnes. ...

Pro tip: Here is how not to ride your bike in a city unless you want people to think you are a total dick.

To that end, Transportation Alternatives has a new Street Code for Cyclists handbook. It's specific to New York City's rules of the road, but a lot of what's in here is basic common sense for bicycling commuters.

The No. 1 message: Biking may in fact rule, but pedestrians are the real road royalty.

We know -- and studies show -- that more bicyclists make cycling safer and safer cycling will encourage more people to get out and ride. This is a virtuous cycle that we can work together to continue. In this effort the public’s perception of cyclists matters as much as, if not more than, any new bike lane or scores of new riders. ...

Here’s a simple proposition: always yield to pedestrians. ...

Most holidays are about taking a day off in celebration, remembrance, or acknowledgment. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service. In other words, today is a day to celebrate, remember, and acknowledge through engagement with the community as opposed to the couch. You may be out of the office, but there is so much other work to be done.

This is the 30th anniversary of the day honoring the activist, clergyman, and iconic civil rights leader, who was gunned down in Memphis, Tenn., at the age of 39. The day is meant to empower individuals and communities, and to create solutions to social problems. From community gardening to clean-ups to food service for the hungry, we know damn well there's far more to be done than we could hope to accomplish in just one day. But this one day is a good time to start.

Alameda County, Calif., where I live, has banned stores from giving out plastic bags as of Jan. 1. It's great news that was a long time coming, considering the county is home to eco-minded cities Berkeley and Oakland.

The county suffers from its fair share of local plastic bag pollution. “Each year, the equivalent of 100,000 kitchen garbage bags worth of litter end up in our local waterways, including an estimated 1 million disposable plastic bags,” says Jim Scanlin, manager of Alameda County's Clean Water Program. And without a water treatment plant, all that plastic flows directly into local creeks and San Francisco Bay.

Most businesses have switched to paper bags. But because of a loophole in the law, they actually don't have to -- they can simply call a plastic bag "reusable," like this awesome one I got from my local liquor store the other day.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and North Atlantic Garbage Patch have some new competition from the south, where scientists have discovered evidence of a new floating garbage island off the coast of Chile.

Scientists at the 5 Gyres Institute -- which tracks plastic pollution in all five swirling subtropical gyres -- discovered this mass of plastic by looking at ocean currents. This patch has accumulated in the South Pacific subtropical gyre, right around Easter Island. It’s the first documentation of a trash patch in the Southern Hemisphere.

This video shows the projected spread of plastic pollution over the next 10 years:

"To create a solution to an ecosystem-wide problem we must understand the scope and magnitude of that problem," said 5 Gyres Executive Director Marcus Eriksen. "It's our mission to be on the frontlines of that understanding, and to continue monitoring the most remote regions of the world's oceans."

If only they moved this fast!

When riders are spurned by bad transit service, specifically late buses and trains, they switch to other modes of transportation entirely, according to new research from the University of California at Berkeley. From the Governing blog:

One statistic in the study stands out in particular and should give transit agencies pause: More than half of the riders said they had reduced their use of public transportation specifically because of its unreliability. Most of them didn't just make fewer trips overall; rather, they switched to other modes of transportation to fill the void.

That's significant because transit agencies and advocates alike place a heavy emphasis on courting so-called "choice riders" -- those who have other options besides public transportation, but for one reason or another choose it anyway. The lesson from the researchers is that quality of service is important, and if it declines, choice riders don't mind finding alternatives. Unlike commuters who travel by car and have few options when it comes to changing their routes, some transit riders do have flexibility. And that flexibility can work against transit agencies if their services becomes too unreliable.

Riders were especially annoyed by delays that seemed to be the transit agency’s responsibility. But crowded trains? Delays due to traffic? Not so annoying.

"High-speed rail is well on its way, and it is not turning back," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a train-happy crowd at this week's Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (#TRBAM for all you plannerds who want to follow along on Twitter).

LaHood is right, and not just because of hefty federal funding earmarked for building infrastructure and boosting speeds.

Today, Amtrak announced it is teaming up with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to find trains that would run at up to 220 mph along both the West Coast and East Coast corridors. By combining their buying power, they could both save serious resources as they look to purchase about 60 trains over the next 10 years -- and the partnership could make California's high-speed rail look a little less pie-in-the-sky. From the Associated Press:

The high-speed rail efforts in California have come under increased scrutiny by members of Congress who say it has become too expensive to build and operate. The more ties it has with Amtrak, the better its future prospects might be, but officials said the announcement was not designed to bolster high-speed rail in California.

"It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to go out and have a different set of standards for California or any other high-speed train," said Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman. "So, no, it's about doing the right thing for the United States."

Outside of its cities (and inside a lot of them, too), California is a typical car-happy American state, with about .84 cars for every person. With its miles and miles of looping roadway and ingrained car culture, it can be easy to forget how many other forms of transportation there are in the Golden State, too.

Enter the California Rail Map, one giant badass master map of California's trains, buses, and ferries, showing routes to 500+ destinations throughout the state.

A new, green future awaits the concrete drainage ditch that we know as the Los Angeles River. But it may have to wait for quite a while.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which originally poured all that concrete about 80 years ago (thanks for nothing, dudes), is teaming up with city engineers on a $10 million study of the potential for restoring the river's ecosystem, creating wetlands for animals and hang-outs for people. From The Wall Street Journal:

The study examines an 11-mile stretch of the river on the city's east side, where some resilient plants have survived in a narrow, muddy strip of so-called soft bottom at the center of the channel.

Efforts to manipulate the river's concrete form without losing its flood-control function will be a "delicate balancing act," said Josephine Axt, the Corps' local planning chief who is leading the study, known as Alternative with Restoration Benefits and Opportunities for Revitalization, or Arbor.

It's like "setting the table," said Omar Brownson, executive director of the L.A. River Revitalization Corp., which coordinates economic-development projects along the river. "We're creating a more attractive destination for investment."

Yes, well, what's a revitalized habitat without the business it attracts? I guess?

The Corps is expected to present the results of the study to the public in June. But that public might not take so kindly to the Corps and their master plans by then. Just last month, the Corps razed dozens of acres of the river's wildlife habitat along the Sepulveda Basin, seriously pissed off the local water agency, violated the Clean Water Act, and potentially also violated endangered species protections.

Are you sick of hearing about colony collapse? Hey, me too! But I'm guessing the bees are even more fed up at this point.

For the first time, Europe's food safety agency this week officially labeled the world’s most popular insecticide, imidacloprid, as so dangerous as to be unacceptable for use on crops pollinated by bees, though the body lacks the power to ban the chemical. The report also called into question two other types of neonicotinoid pesticides. All three sound super-evil.

From The Guardian:

[Imidacloprid's] manufacturer, Bayer, claimed the report, released on Wednesday, did not alter existing risk assessments and warned against "over-interpretation of the precautionary principle".

The report comes just months after the UK government dismissed a fast-growing body of evidence of harm to bees as insufficient to justify banning the chemicals. ...