Aquaculture slideshow
aquaculture-slideshow
Volume 10 Number 2
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea
by Jim Robbins
Volume 10, number 2
Read the article>>
Discussion Questions
1. What is the conservation dilemma at the heart of this article? What is the “devil” referred to in the article’s title?
2. Trace connections between Antarctic ice shelves, Everglades National Park, and the conservation of […] Read More »
Taming the Blue Frontier
Taming the Blue Frontier
by Sarah Simpson
Volume 10, number 2
Read the article>>
Discussion Questions
1. What are the crucial issues that must be addressed in order to make aquaculture more sustainable? How do the new approaches described here address these challenges? What issues remain to be solved?
2. Will dilution solve the issue […] Read More »
Biofuels Déjà Vu
Biofuels Déjà Vu
by David Malakoff
Volume 10, number 2
Read the article>>
Discussion Questions
1. What fundamental conflict of ideals within the environmental community does this article address? After reading the article, do you feel that human energy sustainability will be achieved only at a further cost to biodiversity, or do you feel that […] Read More »
Aquapod in motion
Courtesy of the MIT Sea Grant College Program
Cliff Goudey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is developing a self-propelled fish cage. Mobile aquatic farms prevent buildup of concentrated fish waste and save energy now used by the towboats that haul commercial fish pens. Above is footage from a trial run of the mobile pod. […] Read More »
War & Peace
In a small way, the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilized world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered. The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the environmentalist movements […] Read More »
Book shorts
The Natures of Maps:
Cartographic Constructions of the Natural World
By Denis Wood & John Fels
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Maps, argue Denis Wood and John Fels, aren’t representations of reality so much as they are sets of arguments. Behind every map is a cartographer with a purpose and an agenda. Although we might […] Read More »
Flying Solo
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet
By Edward Humes, Ecco Press 2009.
Review by Florence Williams
How important are individuals to social change? The question has been a topic of lively debate since at least the Enlightenment. In Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving […] Read More »
Bat Tunnels
It’s common knowledge that animals are reluctant to walk across highways and that this can block migrations and dilute gene pools. Researchers have now discovered that some critters—in this case, a species of bat—won’t fly over busy roads. Strangely, the bats will happily cross beneath the roads, and researchers hope to build bat tunnels […] Read More »
Taming the Blue Frontier
Story by Sarah Simpson
Illustration by Ira Korman April-June 2009
A shipment of 100,000 fresh, sushi-grade cobia, each fish amounting to about five pounds of firm, white meat, arrives on schedule in the Port of Miami. In this case, “fresh” does not mean beheaded and ice-packed—these fish are very much alive and swimming. As […] Read More »
Biofuels Déjà Vu
Story by David Malakoff
Illustration by Randy Lyhus
April-June 2009
These days, Jason Clay walks around with an eerie sense of déjà vu. Over the past few years, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) anthropologist has become deeply entangled in the tortuous struggle to ensure that supposedly “green” biofuels—such as ethanol brewed from corn and […] Read More »
Smooth Blend
Jha, S. and C. Dick. 2008. Shade coffee farms promote genetic diversity of native trees. Current Biology 18(24): R1126-R1128.
The more they look, the more scientists discover that the benefits of shade-grown coffee extend far beyond its robust flavor. Instead of leveling the forests, shade coffee farms leave a canopy of trees intact and […] Read More »
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Story by Jim Robbins
Illustration by Tim O’Brien
April-June 2009
When NOAA published its latest climate change research in January, it might have been tempting to file it away as just another dire prediction. The researchers found that, if CO2 emissions continue to rise throughout this century, the consequences will include dramatic increases in […] Read More »
To Catch a Rat
Igual, J.M. et al. 2009. Buying years to extinction: Is compensatory mitigation for marine bycatch a sufficient conservation measure for long-lived seabirds? PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004826.
It’s payback time—or not. Recent proposals have suggested that long-line fishermen who take in seabirds as bycatch compensate by paying to remove other threats to seabird populations—namely rats, […] Read More »
Course Correction
Duncan, R.P. et al. 2009. Do climate envelope models transfer? A manipulative test using dung beetle introductions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI:10.1098/rspb.2008.1801.
Birds are shifting their ranges north, and butterflies are fleeing toward mountaintops. Predicting exactly where they and other species will live as the earth warms has become something of a […] Read More »
