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Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 25, 2013 - 06:42pm PT
I've probably consumed more than my weight in tuna, love the stuff, even fished for it off Block Island as a kid, but as an ecologist I can no longer allow myself to continue to support the industry.

It will destroy the oceans.

Everyone should start considering sustainable sushi.

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/re-nest/2011-6-27-fishy.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_sushi#cite_note-9

I'm gonna miss that hamachi too, as well as a few others, but I'm OK with it. Fair trade.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Oct 25, 2013 - 07:02pm PT
Yeah, it's a tough one. I love spicy tekka. But we're definitely over consuming tuna. What's the most similar good alternative?

And on your first link...I'd be very wary about consuming crayfish from China given some of the water pollution issues there.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 25, 2013 - 07:12pm PT
The ocean is broken


By GREG RAY
Oct. 18, 2013, 10 p.m.

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.


See your ad here

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."

But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.

"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.

No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.

If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.

"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.

Not this time.

"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.

"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.

"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.

And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.

"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.

He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.

More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.

Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.


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"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."


From the Newcastle Herald:

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/The ocean is broken
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 07:48pm PT
Sustainable What?

http://blog.sushibynature.com/


I'm working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium to become a Business Partner in their Seafood Watch Program.


It's why Unagi will never again be served at my sushi bar.


There's farmed Hamachi that my supplier has deemed sustainable.
Ghost

climber
A long way from where I started
Oct 25, 2013 - 07:55pm PT
The only sushi restaurant we eat in is devoted to serving only sustainable food. Nature's eaten there with us a couple of times, and will vouch for the fact that you don't have to give up goodness to achieve sustainability.

I expect most large cities -- at least on the Pacific coast -- now have at least one sushi restaurant that serves only sustainable. Go look for them.
crunch

Social climber
CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 07:57pm PT
Tuna? Meh. The white bread of sushi!

Smaller fish (mackerel, yum!) often have more flavor. They tend to have less mercury, to boot.

Not really a sushi fish, but a favorite:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/dining/anchovies-101-a-video-tutorial.html?hpw&_r=0
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:00pm PT
Ron A: have a reference for me? Thanks for reading... you just surprised a lot of people ;-)

I may have missed Salmon but in a way that wasn't the point of my blog.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I know what the Native Americans have done with their fishing rights. They have decimated some Salmon runs.

But the simple point of my blog is to point out that it may not matter what we do to a fisheries if AGW continues on the path it is on. Obviously we know your stance on that but the simple fact is I'm convinced by the evidence.

Ghost is talking about Hajime at Mashiko. Last time I was in Seattle I sat alone at the sushi bar and we spoke at great length about sustainability. I even asked him about his tobiko to which he admitted he doesn't have a sustainable source. I found one and passed along the info. He responded that it simply wasn't affordable for him to to that route. I have on the tobiko.
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 25, 2013 - 08:02pm PT
Glad to hear about hamachi but why isn't it on the list, Doug?

Too bad the unagi overrunning Florida aren't commercially available. Maybe they will be.



Crunch, I like anchovies (in small portions) but forget the mackerel.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:05pm PT
Ron, what list?

I think the problem with the Florida Eel is it isn't the right species. With freshwater eel what they do is find the wild eel and take their eggs and then raise them on a farm. These farms are mostly in Asia and they are not viewed as a good thing for the environment (like shrimp from Thailand or India where they are killing the Mangrove groves for shrimp farms). For Anago it's tough to tell - the science isn't complete - but there isn't any evidence that suggests it's a good thing to harvest them. So MBA errs on the side of caution and lists them in the red.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:13pm PT
Oh sorry I did see that. That chart is far too simple and probably why it's not on there.

My last shipment from Honolulu fish company I got two new items in - aquaculture rainbow trout from scotland (really probably steelhead) and Corral Cod.

Here's is MBA's list:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_recommendations.aspx

but even with this the Honolulu Fish Company doesn't really observe what's on their list because they feel they do a better job. So there's a disconnect for me trying to become a Business Parter. There's a number of species HFC offers that isn't on the MBA list (or where it is it's red). It depends on the source as well as the species. Bill Fin from the atlantic is in the red (and on the MBA list) but Bill Fin from the Hawaiian Fisheries is not - yet Hawaii sees it as sustainable (and I tend to believe Hawaii and Alaska in particular above all others as they do a great job of managing their fisheries)
Daphne

Trad climber
Northern California
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:28pm PT
I've been bailing on tuna and most other Pacific ocean fish because of the radiation from Japan.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:40pm PT
Over the weekend I'm going to be writing another blog on the radiation concerns in the Pacific from Fukushima. If you have any good sources please share them.

In no way will I try to state that it isn't a problem. It is. But thus far I've yet to see a lot of hard core science that backs up the perception of how bad it is. I've run across a lot of bogus science or qualitative information but the quantitative date is lacking. Further, there is a lot of disinformation and scare-technique information available.

From what I've seen/read I'm remain more concerned with mercury than I do radiation.

Here's an example. Discuss:
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 25, 2013 - 08:48pm PT
Mercury poisoning is serious.

Look up Boston Corbett. He was literally mad as a hatter. He was an actual hatter's apprentice. Castrated himself with scissors and became the Jack Ruby of the 19th century, and is suspected of being Jack The Ripper as well.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 25, 2013 - 08:51pm PT
Mercury is a far more serious problem. My wife tells all her preggers patients to lay off the tuna, swordfish, and other predator species if they want their baby to come out with only two
eyeballs.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 09:06pm PT
Regarding Yellofin:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_search.aspx?s=yellowtail

Problem here is that the source that HFC gets their Hamachi is missing from the list. Or perhaps it's on there and the MBA has incomplete info.

Chaz

Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 25, 2013 - 09:36pm PT
Mercury is nothing you want to fool with.

Mercury poisoning is what turned RFK Jr into a spaz.
bergbryce

Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Oct 25, 2013 - 09:51pm PT
Wow, you're an ecologist? Never heard of one of those who was also a gun enthusiast.

Sushi? You guys are rich. I just ate some frozen something I got at the Gross Out (Grocery Outlet) called swai.

I ate Kenai R. sockeye salmon, rockfish and halibut until I couldn't stand it anymore living in Alaska. Miss that.

Oplopanax

Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
Oct 25, 2013 - 09:56pm PT
And i do mean mountians of salmon piled and rotting.

"rotting" fish is a traditional preparation method, here and iceland

nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 25, 2013 - 10:38pm PT
Jim - there is aquaculture salmon that is full of flavor, not squishy and not full of crap.

Ask the sushifesterers. They love it!

Fish butter.
clinker

Trad climber
California
Oct 25, 2013 - 11:27pm PT
In ignorance I consumed a tuna bagel today. Does anyone have a problem with cream cheese?
aguacaliente

climber
Oct 26, 2013 - 12:34am PT
Reilly thanks for posting that article. I mean, I don't like it, but I'm glad that I read it.
Studly

Trad climber
WA
Oct 26, 2013 - 12:44am PT
Massive die offs of sealions along the northern west coast, along with mass die offs of starfish. Something is killing eveything in the ocean. Fukushima..
Peter Haan

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
Oct 26, 2013 - 02:32am PT
an important documentary to see about this same issue, sustainable sushi:

Sushi: The Global Catch

Netflix has it; probably others too.
patrick compton

Trad climber
van
Oct 26, 2013 - 09:32am PT
Want to save the oceans?

Stop having kids.

until then, pass the wasabi.
jsavage

climber
Bishop, CA
Oct 26, 2013 - 10:00am PT
Nature-Your radiation map...isn't that the tsunami wave energy map?

Catching big ocean fish on a line sure is fun. It is expensive, but between the experience and knowing where your fish came from, is worth a lot.
couchmaster

climber
pdx
Oct 26, 2013 - 10:03am PT
You can still choose to eat other things at a Sushi bar Patrick. Don't order Bluefin, for instance, when albacore is a thriving fishery and the taste is close. Fish farmed Tilapia is a bit hard to choke down. Fact is, there are many non-fish or other non-fish seafood choices at Japanese places. Pickled cucumbers, Edemame, Clams, Octopus....etc etc...
patrick compton

Trad climber
van
Oct 26, 2013 - 10:21am PT
Fair enough.

We can say we overfish, or we can say there are too many mouths..

..except we cant say that.

Everyone has to have 2.4 kids and live the 'Merikan dream of reproducing top-tier over consumers.

anita514

Gym climber
Great White North
Oct 26, 2013 - 10:58am PT
Want to save the oceans?

Stop having kids

pretty much...
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2013 - 11:16am PT
Too late.

This ship is sinking and there aren't nearly enough flotation vests.
There is going to be a huge crash in the human population.


But on a lighter note; I make a mustard cream dill sauce that makes tilapia quite tasty!




Edit;
and bergbryce, plenty of ecologists have guns.
In fact one of my favorite herpetologists, Erik Pianka, was able to obtain an almost impossible Australian handgun permit for collecting samples.
RtM

climber
DHS
Oct 26, 2013 - 11:17am PT
The first time I saw footage of a commercial longline haul - that was the last time I ate tuna, and the last time I ever will. That was about 5 years ago!
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 26, 2013 - 11:35am PT
Jsavage - that's exactly what that is. Problem is a disinformation campaign is spreading that map saying its radiation.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 26, 2013 - 11:45am PT
It's not a radiation map! ;-)
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 26, 2013 - 12:21pm PT
Let me make this perfectly simple






















Yer gonna die!!!!?!
Rock!...oopsie.

Trad climber
the pitch above you
Oct 26, 2013 - 01:29pm PT
nature -

Yeah that map is pretty disappointing. It keeps popping up all over the place with radiation claims. It TOTALLY undermines any credibility of those using it since it is a wave height map. The people using it are either idiots themselves or take their audience for idiots. In either case they can GFTS until they can get their data straight.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 26, 2013 - 01:58pm PT
Rock - I generally agree. However, I've seen some rather bright people refer to the map as a radiation map. I think they are just so caught up in it all they don't spend the time to verify the facts.
TrundleBum

Trad climber
Las Vegas
Oct 26, 2013 - 03:54pm PT

Good one Locker... so true !

And of note:
The New England Lobster industry has been on the edge of collapse for years.
Very soon if your Grand children are to ever experience eating one we will have to have a cpl decades of moratorium on the fishing of the species.
And to think that in Colonial America it was illegal to feed slaves or indentured servants more than three square meals a week of the stuff. It was considered to be 'bait fish', trash, worthy of use as fertilizer and not much more !
RtM

climber
DHS
Oct 27, 2013 - 11:28am PT
"The first time I saw footage of a commercial longline haul - that was the last time I ate tuna, and the last time I ever will."...

How did you think they caught the fish???...

Did you think they invited them over for tea???...

LOL!!!...
I'm gonna bite here, because this is something that I believe to be important.

Its a sad fact, but the majority of people in the world have no idea what a commercial longline is or how it works -

In longline "fishing", a very long, sometimes miles long, net is deployed in a large circle. When the ends of the circle are connected, they begin to constrict it. The fish don't know to swim under it, so they continue around the perimeter. When the circle gets small enough, the "fishermen" fold the undersides up, so the ocean life is now completely trapped inside. Then they haul the catch into the boat. The sheer weight of the biomass kills most of the creatures inside. Once the net is onboard the craft, they open it up, blood spilling out in hundreds of gallons, out comes the dead: dolphins, sea turtles, sunfish, manta rays, sharks, and even a few tuna. They collect the tuna, then throw the other dead creatures off the edge.
pyro

Big Wall climber
Calabasas
Oct 27, 2013 - 11:36am PT
They collect the tuna, then throw the other dead creatures off the edge

good! bait balls keep sharks from eating surfers and swimmers.

looks to me like a radiation map.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 27, 2013 - 11:50am PT
RtM - the practice you describe is purse seining.

longlining you deploy a long line with hooks distributed along that line. The problem with this (as well as purse seining) among other things is the incidental catch (turtles, dolphins, etc.)


Edit: see lockers video
bluering

Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 27, 2013 - 12:00pm PT
Why not just eat trout? Or Kokanee, or crappie, or speckled trout, or Red Drum, or a f*#king steak?

I know it's not as nouveau as precious sushi, but since you're trying to save the world (and oceans) and all, why not give up a little? Do us all a favor and each a deer. I hear squirrels are tasty too. Same with crawdads, I had some last night.

Meh...
RtM

climber
DHS
Oct 27, 2013 - 12:19pm PT
thanks nature, for that info! Its not something I think about often, I just know its a common practice in the industry.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 27, 2013 - 12:21pm PT
yeah... you're welcome.

It's one of the areas I've had to look in to. Not only do we have to look at the state of a species as well as the state of that species in a particular fishery the catch method is important. It can get pretty bad.

Back in the early '90s I worked in the fishery industry - night crew at a processing plant. Didn't know much about catch methods.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 27, 2013 - 01:08pm PT
Riley, you mean Bottom Trawling (when you drag the net).


http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_gear.aspx
bluering

Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 27, 2013 - 01:20pm PT
I'm no fan of mass commercial fishing, especially at the disregard of other species.

Who is the highest demand for commercial fish? What drives this? I have a feeling it's Japan. I know they've decimated their fishing industry, their waters.

With shark-finning and dolphin massarce, I lost respect for their appetite for fish long ago. They are marine marauders.

(let's not even go into their "scientific" whaling adventures").
bergbryce

Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Oct 27, 2013 - 01:41pm PT
this is precious. people trying to diss commercial fishing but not having a GD clue what they are talking about.
bluering

Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 27, 2013 - 01:47pm PT
this is precious. people trying to diss commercial fishing but not having a GD clue what they are talking about.


My intention was not to 'diss' anything really, except for Japan's illogical overfishing of certain species, and their cruelty to others. That's all...
bergbryce

Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Oct 27, 2013 - 04:28pm PT
Bluey, I was referring to those mixing up long lining and purse seining and bottom trawling. Long lining is considered one of the more accurate methods to catch wild fish with the other two methods, less so, especially bottom trawling which is particularly devastating.
pyro

Big Wall climber
Calabasas
Oct 27, 2013 - 05:21pm PT
it's not a radiation map ron!!!
rottingjohnny

Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
Oct 27, 2013 - 05:30pm PT
Yeah Ron..The lobster at base camp was under cooked or rotting...WTF...Go plant a tree for the sierra club...RJ
justthemaid

climber
Jim Henson's Basement
Oct 28, 2013 - 10:09am PT
So this story ties in with "The Ocean is Broken" story a bit. I was watching Anthony Bordain on tour is Sicily and the episode was the craziest travel-report I've ever seen. He hires some locals to take him "fishing" and (humorous but sad) hilarity ensues when not a live animal can be found anywhere:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/2013/10/anthony_bourdains_almost_lost.php


The Best Lines from Anthony Bourdain's Drunk Disaster in Sicily


AnthonyBourdainSicily

...

...

Bourdain starts the show with a local chef on a boat, bobbing up and down over the choppy waves of the Mediterranean. They're supposedly going to catch a variety of sea life that they'll proudly haul up to the restaurant and serve that night for dinner.

Bourdain has on a full wetsuit and seems pretty much cool about the excursion. He's skeptic about the loot the chef plans to catch -- a skepticism with roots in his previous show, No Reservations -- but gladly plays along. He jumps in the water with snorkel and mask. What happens next is crazy.

The guys that stay in their boat throw octopus and fish in the water, that the chef, Torino, pretends to heroically catch. They're simply fetching dead sea life out of the water for, what the chef obviously hopes, will be a highly edited version of the show. Something got lost in translation. Bourdain is shattered. A drink-himself-into-oblivion level of depression ensues. He actually gets so drunk after going "diving," and he says he doesn't remember dinner (which, yes, was also filmed).

Following are Bourdain's best excerpts and one-liners, all of which took place in just the first 14 minutes of the episode:

"So I get on the water and I'm paddling, and 'Splash!' Suddenly, there's a dead sea creature sinking in front of me. Are you kidding me? I'm thinking, 'This can't be happening.' There's another one! And another rigor mortis half-frozen freaking octopus.

"Each specimen dropped to the sear floor to moments later be discovered by our hero, Torino.

"I'm no marine biologist, but I know dead octopus when I see one.

"Strangely everyone else seems to believe the hideous sham unfolding before our eyes, doing their best to ignore the blazingly obvious."

"Then, they gave up and just dumped the whole bag of dead fish into the sea.

"At this point I begin desperately looking for signs of life. Hoping one of them would become revived. Frantically swimming around the bottom for one that's still twitching, then turn to the camera and end this misery. But, no, my shame will be absolute.

"For some reason I feel something snap and I slide quickly into a near-hysterical depression.

"'Is this what it's come to?' I'm thinking, as another dead squid narrowly misses my head. Almost a decade later and I'm back in the same country staging fishing scenes?

"Complicit in a shameful shameful incident of fakery, but there I was bobbing listlessly in the water with dead sea life sinking to the bottom all around me. You've got to be pretty immune to the world to not see the obvious metaphor here.

"I've never had a nervous breakdown before, but I tell you from the bottom of my heart, something fell apart down there. And it took a long long time after this damn episode to recover.

"I'm sitting in a nearby café pounding one Negroni after another in a smoldering, miserable rage."

"By the time dinner rolls around, I'm ripped to the TV-bleep. Did I mention it's my birthday?

"I've had three hours of bobbing around on a pitching boat, a couple more hours getting looped, two more hours lying on the sidewalk outside while the crew hangs lights, so I'm gone, baby, gone. I don't remember any of this. Any of it.

"Apparently there were white olives from some tree only Torino knows about. Maybe next to his secret fishing hole.

"There was great Sicilian wine apparently. And, apparently, I drank a lot of it.

"I must have sulked back to bed somehow, collapsed into a sodden drunken heap of self loathing. I would have ordinarily turned on the porn channel and loaded up on prescription meds, but there's no TV at agriturismo."

What got me was that there were no fish of any size or kind in the water. Even with all the dead fish dumped in the water no live fish even came into scavenge them. Kinda creepy.
RtM

climber
DHS
Oct 28, 2013 - 11:35am PT
bergbryce

my apologies, I incorrectly named the netting method.

However, the (original) topic of the thread is the unsustainable practices of the tuna industry. The method I described is used in the tuna industry, and is unsustainable.


go-B

climber
Hebrews 1:3
Oct 28, 2013 - 02:48pm PT

Sea Lion stealing Monster fish!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/sea-lion-pancho-steals-fish-cabo-mexico_n_4166670.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D397798
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 28, 2013 - 03:55pm PT
On the Today Show they showed a clip from off Cabo where a guy hooked a big marlin that jumped right into the boat!

In order to escape the huge spike one of the guys on deck backs up to the stern and falls overboard!
You can see him bobbing in the wake.


Al Roker made a quip about the marlin having a story about "the one that got away."
McHale's Navy

Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
Oct 28, 2013 - 06:10pm PT
I've thought about writing the 7-11 corporation to stop selling canned tuna and only sell canned chicken. I know that sounds funny since tuna is the chicken of the sea, but it would be a small step for dolphin-kind. It's hard to tell the difference in the two once they're canned anyway. Personally, I quit eating tuna many years ago, loved eating it with pitons and all that.
goatboy smellz

climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
Oct 28, 2013 - 06:34pm PT
This is one of the few scientific articles I've read.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096706371300112X

Short version, we gonna die and this is just another cause.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 28, 2013 - 07:21pm PT
can't argue with that method of hunting.
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 28, 2013 - 09:07pm PT
It matters less to me how the fishing is done than the net effect (if you'll pardon the pun).

By hunting tuna and other apex species to extinction (which is what short sighted fishermen are attempting) the top predators are removed and the ecosystem does a tailspin. The secondary predator population grows unchecked until the prey base collapses, and then it too crashes.

We'll be left with jellyfish and mollusks.

I just won't be a party to it any more.
Chaz

Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 28, 2013 - 09:41pm PT
JTM writes:

"He hires some locals to take him "fishing" and (humorous but sad) hilarity ensues when not a live animal can be found anywhere"




What do you bet every restaurant within sight of the coast there is a seafood joint?
the albatross

Gym climber
Flagstaff
Oct 29, 2013 - 12:28am PT
A little late on this discussion, back to the first page on the mercury warnings.

Lake Mary supplies about a third of the drinking water to the city of Flagstaff. The state officials warn it is ill advised to consume Walleye from Lake Mary due to mercury and limit consumption of other fish to one 8 oz. filet per month.
While researching this I realized that most all of the lakes in AZ have some sort of mercury warnings, for Striped Bass, Largemouth and others. Damn, some of my favorite fish to capture and consume.

http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/fish_consumption.shtml

We
are
all
going
to
die...
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Oct 29, 2013 - 03:48pm PT
Might be the best article on the hype on Fukushima I've read yet.

I like these guys at southern friend science.

http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=15903





23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning: “Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”

Actually, Gary Stamper said that. and Gary Stamper’s claims were completely debunked.
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/09/02/are-your-days-of-eating-pacific-ocean-fish-really-over/
couchmaster

climber
pdx
Oct 29, 2013 - 04:28pm PT
Well, as long as the fish are disappearing, maybe the Democrats can keep paying the fishermen with your tax money so that they can be viable and finish driving a stake in the heart of the fishery.

Oh wait, been there done that: http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/west-coast-senators-urge-disaster-relief-forfishing-communities


......and another $60 million in 2008....
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/closure-of-salmon-season-declared-a-fisheries-failure

I was pissed enough to write him when Senator Wyden gave the Tuna Fishermen $14,000,000 as they had successfully over fished to the point where their boats were near sinking and they had so much Tuna at the dock that the processors couldn't handle it - prices had collapsed so the gov. gave them some money and collected what by then was cat food. So bitch all you want about the fish disappearing, you are assisting and paying for it via your tax gifts for them overfishing.

Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 5, 2013 - 10:39pm PT
Well, I dropped $85 for one dinner two nights ago at Tataki, the original sustainable sushi place in San Francisco, and already I broke my word, but not really, because they serve only pole caught tuna.

I gotta tell the ST gang about this place (not that they need any more business). Even on a sunday it was packed with three couples ahead of me in line, but I spotted the single free seat at the bar and swooped right in.
The place is small; 6 tables packed so close that if the next table orders one of those flaming dishes you could get singed. The sushi bar has 4 seats, making 24 in the place total.

The menu is modest (but I was happy to note that ikura is considered sustainable by them so I do not need to give up my Piton Rolls). But despite the brevity they still carry my two favorite sakes, Kurosawa and Otokoyama. I had a carafe of the latter and was shortly joined by a nice young couple with a small startup company who, like me, had already taken care of their business in town and were just playing tourist.

They knew nothing of the documentary and had yelped the place, being sophisticated enough to check the number of revues besides the rating (third in the city).
I called for more glasses and quickly made Otokoyama converts. They ordered more.

We had a lively discussion interrupted from time to time by the passing of flaming plates.
Besides 3 oysters I had 2 of their signature dishes, scallops Tataki and a Tataki roll (multiple fish, cucumber and multicolored tobiko) and 2 orders of nigiri, shiro maguro and suzuki.

Everything was superb. I couldn't even pick a favorite.



There may be hope for fish lovers yet, but sadly, I doubt that ethical eating will catch on.
It is human nature not to appreciate something until it is gone.

BTW on the way home I stopped for 10 raw clams at the REAL seafood house by the hotel and by the time i had my "pirate's breakfast" (after a late night, sleeping until 11:00 and then eating 25 clams washed down with ale!) I had eaten 65 in 4 days!
bergbryce

Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Nov 5, 2013 - 10:51pm PT
huh, i had carp balls tonight
[Click to View YouTube Video]
ß Î Ø T Ç H

Boulder climber
extraordinaire
Nov 5, 2013 - 11:23pm PT
You can live off it (and the local avacados) in deepest darkest Mexico, if that's any indication.
Sierra Ledge Rat

Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
Nov 5, 2013 - 11:56pm PT
We need a good calamity to devastate the world's population. That's the planet's only hope. A giant meteor would do nicely.
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