Ebb and Flow

The United Kingdom blew past previous wind power records in 2014 while Germany generated a record amount of electricity from wind in December, setting the stage for 2015 to bring more industry growth across Europe. Exactly how quickly it grows, however, is contingent upon several political and regulatory decisions to come.

Using statistics from the U.K.’s National Grid, the trade association RenewableUK found that wind generated enough electricity to power just over 25 percent of U.K. homes in 2014 — a 15 percent increase from 2013. Wind turbines provided 9.3 percent of the U.K’s total electricity supply last year, a 1.5 percent boost from 2013.

“It’s great to start 2015 with some good news about the massive quantities of clean electricity we’re now generating from wind,” said RenewableUK’s Deputy Chief Executive Maf Smith.

In December, Germany generated more wind power, 8.9 terawatt-hours, than in any previous month. According to the IWR renewable energy research institute, this record will be overtaken in 2015 as more offshore wind farms come online.

1,000 Logs + 4,000 Boulders = Happy Fish!

Brush Creek, located in southwest Oregon, is a tributary that feeds the Umpqua River. The Brush Creek watershed contains important habitat for coho salmon, winter steelhead, cutthroat trout, and Pacific lamprey. Historic practices of stream cleaning (removing all the logs from the stream) unfortunately left Brush Creek with poor habitat for fish and other organisms. The “bedrock dominated” habitat had very little gravel for fish to spawn in and very few deep pools that provided cover for adult and juvenile fish. This is an example of this “simplified” habitat.

The Brush Creek watershed restoration project began in 2012, and has placed over 1,000 logs and 4,000 boulders in over 11 miles of stream, drastically improving the fish habitat in the watershed. By placing logs and boulders in to the channel, the logs are able to slow the stream down, thus allowing spawning gravel to drop out during the winter months. The logs and boulders also provide cover during high winter flows for adult and juvenile salmon and trout. The project is a result of a partnership between the BLM, State of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Partnership for the Umpqua Rivers, and Lone Rock Timber Company. 

Future plans include riparian noxious weed removal and planting of native species and effectiveness monitoring of the instream restoration work in the form of photopoints, spawning surveys, and snorkel surveys to count juvenile fish. This restoration work will act as a “band-aid” fix to provide fish habitat until the trees in the Riparian Reserves can grow and fall into the stream providing the source of instream wood and fish habitat into the future. 

A fascinating and beautiful hydrozoa.

The Portuguese man-of-war is infamous for its painful sting, but one photographer finds the beauty inside this animal’s dangerous embrace.

By Jane J. Lee

Photographs & video: Aaron Ansarov

Shrimp is the #1 seafood in the USA. It is tasty, usually quite inexpensive, and is easily cooked and eaten. Unfortunately, such a craze for shrimp has created an environmental nightmare. 

Americans currently consume over one billion pounds of shrimp every year, and about 90% of that is imported from overseas. The primary producers of shrimp—namely China, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil and Ecuador—provide mostly farm-raised shrimp. American shrimp is almost always caught in the wild. Nevertheless, neither options are ideal or sustainable, and both have horrific consequences on the sea.

Shrimp farming affects human health

The majority of shrimp farms is comprised of open ponds with a small amount of water exchange. Shrimp farming is usually based in coastal areas, and can be destructive to both the ecological and human communities with which it comes into contact. When multiple intensive farming operations are concentrated around the same river, estuary, or bay, as they often are, the waste, uneaten feed and bacteria produced by the farms pollutes the surrounding waters, overwhelming the environment and harming other species. This waste also creates conditions that breed infections among the shrimp themselves.

To protect from the shrimp pathogens that inevitably spread, some farmers feed their shrimp chloramphenicol, a carcinogenic antibiotic which may be unsafe for human consumption. Shrimp may also be treated with sodium triple phosphate, a neuro-toxicant, to prevent it from drying out during shipping, and borax to preserve its pink color.

Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics.

(Shrimp farms in Borneo on the edge of mangroves. Photo by Marc Gunther)

Shrimp farming affects mangroves and local ecosystems

Scientists have found that shrimp farms have destroyed over 40% of the world’s mangroves, which are some of the most diverse, productive and necessary ecosystems on the planet. Mangroves indeed act as carbon sinks, and serve as valuable buffers against hurricanes and tsunamis, while also providing a safe nursery habitats for many invertebrate, fish, and shark species.

A shrimp farmer will clear a section of mangroves and close it off to ensure that the shrimp cannot escape. Then the farmer relies on the tides to refresh the water, carrying shrimp excrement and disease out to sea. In this scenario, the entire mangrove ecosystem is destroyed and turned into a small dead zone for short-term gain. Even after the shrimp farm leaves, the mangroves do not come back.

Wild-caught shrimps, bottom trawling, and bycatch

Farmed shrimp have their problems, but wild-caught shrimp aren’t always a much better alternative. Fisherman catch wild shrimp using fine-meshed trawl nets pulled through the water. Worldwide, for one pound of shrimp, there can be 5 pounds of bycatch—other species that become trapped in the nets. Scientists have found that up to 90% of marine life in the nets brought onboard during shrimp harvesting is actually not shrimp! On top of fish that ultimately end up being dead or dying from being in the net, nets routinely pull up 9,000 endangered or threatened sea turtles annually, in addition to sharks, red snappers, and other animals. 

(Typical shrimp bycatch. Photo credit: Powered-by-produce.com)

The vast majority is caught using trawling, a highly destructive fishing method. Football field-sized nets are dragged along the ocean floor, scooping up and killing several pounds of marine life for every pound of shrimp they catch and demolishing the ocean floor ecosystem as they go. Where they don’t clear-cut coral reefs or other rich ocean floor habitats, they drag their nets through the mud, leaving plumes of sediment so large they are visible from outer space!

While shrimp trawl fisheries only represent 2% of the global fish catch, they are responsible for over 1/3rd of the world’s bycatch. Trawling is comparable to bulldozing an entire section of rainforest in order to catch one species of bird.

The truth is, not everyone is willing to give up eating shrimp. And you don’t necessarily have to. New, more sustainable production practices are being developed, but it’s up to the consumer to ask for them in supermarkets and restaurants.

What You Can Do!

Eat less shrimp! The Worldwatch Institute estimates that for every 1,000 people who stop eating shrimp, we can save more than 5.4 tons of sea life per year.

Replace your industrial shrimp purchases with Henry & Lisa’s Natural Seafood (Ecofish’s retail brand) available at 3500 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods and Target Superstores.

Seek out the blue Marine Stewardship Council ecolabel, which indicates sustainable practices, when shopping or dining out. Here’s a list of stores and restaurants that stock MSC-certified products.

When buying wild-caught shrimp, look for varieties from the Pacific coast, particularly Oregon and British Columbia.

“Technologies like solar panels were just too expensive and wouldn’t produce enough energy in this region.”