marine life

Preaching the gospel of ecotourism

Costas Christ has a knack for handling sticky situations. I got a glimpse of this as I was making my way home from an ecotourism conference in Senegal in the early 1990s. Along with a number of other conference participants, I was stuck in the airport in the capital city of Dakar. For some unknown […]

In an Octopus's Garden

Another Reason for Lobster Die-Offs

Forty

• percentage by which energy consumption in developing nations is expected to grow by 2010 • percentage of written prescriptions that are either based on or synthesized from natural compounds found in plants and animals • percentage of total paper used in Germany that goes toward packaging • percentage by which one can reduce pollution […]

A Bad Deal for Dolphins

Grist readers deserve better than the poorly informed coverage of the tuna/dolphin issue in a recent article by Rick Gaffney, which makes false and misleading claims about “dolphin safe” tuna fishing methods. A dolphin in the deep. Earth Island Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States, and dozens of other organizations […]

Seventy

• percent by which global energy use has increased since 1970 • percentage of the world’s commercially important marine fish stocks that are fully fished, over-exploited, or depleted • percentage of the roughly 3,000 plants identified as having cancer-fighting properties that grow in rainforests • percentage of irrigation water in developing nations that never reaches […]

The Deep Six

Months ago, the United Nations decided to make an event out of the fact that the human population meter would soon click over another billion. They picked an arbitrary date — October 12 — and declared it the Day of 6 Billion. What kind of event should this be? A day of repentance? A celebration? […]

Who Consumes the Most?

Singapore, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, United States, Norway. Those are the world’s five top nations, in descending order, in — well, what category would you guess? If you say income per capita, you’re close, but no cigar. Since the 1985 oil price crash, the Middle East no longer dominates the list of the world’s richest […]

A Tale of Two Fisheries

At the beginning of this millennium, the Norse began to fish what is now called the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1501, the Company of Adventurers to the New Found Lands was chartered in England to make summer expeditions to that rich fishing ground. For the next 500 years, the Grand Banks […]