Fish farming revisited

An interesting read about the effort to regulate aquaculture in federal waters... especially in light of the post from two weeks back about Brian O'Hanlon's fish farms in Puerto Rico and Panama.

Ecobia?

In a bizarre coincidence, while surfing Yale's Environment 360 site today I happened upon an article from last month about offshore aquaculture. It intrigued me, so I clicked. Lo and behold, within the first nine words, the author mentions Brian O'Hanlon -- my elementary school swimming archnemesis (at least in my mind). Now to track him down and wrangle an offer to move to Panama and swim with the fishes.

Ghost net retrieval

A great photoessay on fishing net removal efforts in Washington state:

A couple of new things

1. I'm working on an extensive green roof now that we should be installing over the next couple of weeks. (Unless it gets delayed -- then it'll be October sometime). I've sourced all the materials and put together an idea for the roof, will help to clear the roof of its existing tar and begin EPDM installation this weekend. I'll post pictures of the wknd's activities and the install as soon as these things happen.

2. I got a note from a colleague today re: a USGS study on mercury contamination in freshwater fish in the U.S. I've put the intro. blurb and link below. If you look at anything in the report, check out Figure 21 (pp. 36-9) for a number of interesting relationships between environmental variables and Hg levels.

The USGS released a study today that assesses mercury contamination in fish, bed sediment, and water from 291 streams across the nation, sampled from 1998 to 2005.

The report, along with a press release, podcast, and summary of major findings can be accessed at http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/mercury/.

Scientists detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in every stream. About a quarter of these fish were found to contain mercury at levels exceeding the criterion for the protection of people who consume average amounts of fish, established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than two-thirds of the fish exceeded the EPA level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

Atmospheric mercury is the main source to most of these streams — coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States — but 59 of the streams also were potentially affected by gold and mercury mining. Since USGS studies targeted specific sites and fish species, the findings may not be representative of mercury levels in all types of freshwater environments across the United States.

For more information, contact Barbara Scudder, bscudder@usgs.gov , (608) 821-3832 or Mark Brigham, mbrigham@usgs.gov , (763) 783-3274.

Clean water and culture

Two notes for today:

First, last night I was lucky enough to attend an artist's talk/book launch party hosted at the Aperture gallery and celebrating the release of Eirik Johnson's second monograph, Sawdust Mountain.  For four years, Eirik photographed in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, working to elucidate the complicated and fragile relationships between the region's ecology, industry, and individuals that harvest and/or preserve natural resources.  The images paint beautiful, desperate portraits of a region in transition and inherently reference water (whether they depict a fisherman cleaning a slamon along the Sol Duc River or a fresh clearcut in Nemah, Washington).  Take some time and check them out here.

Second, I haven't been following the moves of the Clean Water Restoration Act particularly closely, but I did notice today that, late last week, Ducks Unlimited came out with a statement of support for the Act.  In addition, the Grand Junction Sentinel reported Monday that other groups, including Trout Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership have expressed similar support.  Dissent remains among the sportsman community (here, for example), but the support of organizations like DU, TU, and TRCP is crucial, especially since many farmers' organizations that have expressed concern with the bill (here, here, and here, for example) are located in regions where organizations like DU and TU are most active (check out DU priority regions here, and TU's conservation projects here, for example).  For the latest on the CWRA, go here.