overfishing
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This restaurant fines customers who waste food
It’s harsh, but this policy is both eco-friendly and humanitarian.
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Overfishing Threatens Critical Link in the Food Chain
By J. Matthew Roney The fish near the bottom of the aquatic food chain are often overlooked, but they are vital to healthy oceans and estuaries. Collectively known as forage fish, these species—including sardines, anchovies, herrings, and shrimp-like crustaceans called krill—feed on plankton and become food themselves for larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Historically, […]
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Why are we eating bluefin tuna to extinction?
Photo: Tom PuchnerCross-posted from Gilt Taste. If you eat fish regularly, you’ve probably grown used to regularly being told by conservation groups — or that slightly irritating, politically correct friend — that certain fish shouldn’t be eaten: American Striped bass, Atlantic swordfish, Chilean sea bass, and Caspian sturgeon have all been the focus of vocal […]
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Western Pacific nations create the world's largest shark sanctuary
If you never quite believed your parents when they told you big, scary animals have more to fear from us than we do from them, consider this, via The New York Times' Joanna Foster: Sharks kill two or three people every year. People kill 73 million sharks in the same time period.
To protect these sharp-toothed scapegoats, Micronesian chief executives have decided to create a shark preserve of 2 million square miles in the western Pacific -- the largest shark sanctuary in the world.
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The sustainable seafood myth
Seafood sustainability ratings don't get to the heart of the matter: If global warming continues unabated, there won't be any fish left to eat.
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Til dinner do us part: Ask Umbra on wedding meal choices
What's the most sustainable choice on the dreaded three-choice wedding dinner card? Ask Umbra digs in to the question.
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How a company you've never heard of could destroy the ocean ecosystem
Omega Protein, Inc. (a company you've never heard of) is quickly overfishing the Atlantic menhaden (a species you've never heard of). As a result, a number of fish that you have heard of -- striped bass, bluefish, tuna, dolphin, seatrout, and mackerel -- as well as the ocean ecosystem as a whole, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Long Island Sound (which you’ve heard of) are suffering.
Menhaden are tiny, bony, oily fish that humans can't eat, but which, according to marine scientists, are "the most important fish in the sea." Menhaden are the main consumers of phytoplankton, and without them, areas like the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound are clogged with algae. They are also a staple food for bigger, tastier fish, who, deprived of menhaden, are growing sad and malnourished.
In the past 25 years, the menhaden population has shrunk from 160 billion to about 20 billion. -
Critical List: $6 billion ethanol subsidy to end; Wyoming wolves screwed by Senate politics
The Senate is ending a $6 billion subsidy program for ethanol; anti-ethanol food and environmental groups say it's "not a perfect comprise" but that they're "encouraged" by the step.
Carbon captured from coal plants can feed biofuel-producing algae. Which is awesome because nobody else wants to eat it.
Put that tuna burger down! Overfishing could extinguish five out of eight tuna species. -
The most important fish in the sea
Menhaden are vital for a clean and healthy ocean ecosystem -- and they're in trouble.