Green Group discussion

Here is a copy of a group message I have just sent out to the group:

Dear Green Group members,

Our next group read will be Cod by Mark Kurlansky. A second choice would be Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg. Discussion topics can relate to fishing, overfishing, or sustainable fishing. Climate change enters in because of the affect it is having on our oceans.

Thank you,

Jimmy Pappas

Feel free to join in the discussion in any way possible. Submit scientific articles if you find them.

I am reading Cod. I will post my notes on Four Fish because I have already read that book. Don't worry about spoilers.

Here is the review for Four Fish back in 2011 when I first joined Goodreads. I find it interesting to read my old thoughts and see if I have changed:

Paul Greenberg writes about four fish: salmon, tuna, bass, and cod. He also includes stories about other fish and marine life. The subtitle says it all: "The Future of the Last Wild Food." And the future is not good. So what can I do about it? I mean, I only want to live the rest of my life trying to do the right thing. Why is that so hard? In this case, it really is tricky. Small steps are not making enough of a difference right now.

For one thing, I will never eat bluefin tuna. For another, I will try to do my best to be aware of what I eat, not only with fish but with all food. I always read labels. But that's not enough.

The main problem is people, all people. I am tired of the so-called anti-government movements like the Tea Party. The ultimate solutions to environmental problems will need regulations, strong regulations, good regulations, supported by governments that have the best interest of the future in mind. That will mean voters who are educated, who want good governments, who get involved in good governments. It will take governments from around the world, not just a few of them. Some societies will have to change their eating habits, so will some people. We need an international community working together for a better future for all. That takes cooperation and intelligence.

I think I would add to that review that it takes the cooperation of government, science, consumers, fisherpeople, restaurants, and the companies that sell the product.

Cod begins with two quotes:

1. Thomas Henry Huxley says that "the question of questions for mankind . . . is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things."

I love that quote because humans, at least the "civilized" ones, think of themselves as somewhat separated from nature.

2. Will and Ariel Durant in The Lessons of History say "the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. . . . peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths overrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law."

The fight for fish is for food and control of the oceans.

Thanks, I will try to get it.
I can suggest The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe

for a look at cod; this is one of many aspects shown in the book.

This book was copyrighted 1997. I am curious about the situation then, and I wonder if any progress has been made.

In July 1992, the Canadian government closed down the Newfoundland waters, the Grand Banks, and most of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to groundfishing. Fishermen had been demanding this for years. Their catch in numbers and size had been declining for years. Cod are bottom dwelling fish, and trawlers had been taking every last cod. Fishermen were helping scientists by gathering statistics. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that science must prove its conclusions. They can't just say, we better slow down here because the situation "looks" pretty bad. (Pages 3 to 4).

It is not only the cod that are gone, but the whales, herring, capelin, and squid. Fishermen used to catch cod on shore with traps.

Petty Harbour banned mass fishing techniques such as longlining and gillnetting since the 1940s. But it was not done for conservation, it was done to make room for all the boats.

The people of Petty Harbour are "at the wrong end of a 1,000-year fishing spree." (Pages 5 to 13).

Cod are omniverous. They eat everything. They swim with their mouths open and swallow everything that fits, including young cod. So fishermen just use a cod jigger made of lead. I wondered why the author failed to mention what a deadly poison lead is.

Cod are thus easy to catch but not much fun for sportsmen. Bluefish fight but they are oily. People prefer the white flesh of cod. We must change some of our eating habits and eat other fish. (Page 33).

Just reserved the book ( Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World ) from my local library.

My own Aquarius Rising trilogy of SF novels is set largely beneath the waves of a future Earth, so this hits close to home. Any human actions that disregard the importance of ocean ecosystems, which make up the largest chunk of biomass on the planet, are extremely scary. Most scientific theories indicate that life on Earth originated in the oceans; you can argue that we all carry the (saltwater of the) sea in our blood and tissues. If we cavalierly destroy the health of the oceans that make up 70% of our biosphere, that doesn't bode well for our future as a species...

Clare wrote: "Thanks, I will try to get it.
I can suggest The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
[bookcover:The Edge of the World: A Cultural..."

Another very good option, Clare.

A forty inch female cod can produce three million eggs. A fish ten inches longer can produce nine million eggs. A good reason to let the fish grow. In all nature, lots of eggs means lots of deaths. Here is an incredible statement: "If each female cod in a lifetime of millions of eggs produces two juveniles that live to be sexually mature adults, the population is stable." (Pages 44 to 45).

Cod and climate change:

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/cl...

There are many other great articles out there.

In one article, a commentor complained about blaming carbon in the atmosphere for warming. Climate change deniers claim carbon will make a plant utopia. They want more carbon, coal burning, and so on. It shows they are reaching some people.

The first reports of cod off the Maine coast were incredible. "Codfish as big as a man." John Cabot reported people catching them with baskets there were so many. In 1895, a codfish weighing 211 pounds was reported. In 1649, there was also a report of six-foot lobsters.

What have we done. Large animals cannot survive alongside humans.

(Page 49)

From the middle of the 1500s to the middle of the 1700s, 60% of all fish eaten in Europe was cod. (Page 51)

Herring, a smaller fish, was also very popular and was caught around Scotland. This was salted and put in casks by teams of women - three to a team - who were paid by the full cask. This time of year meant income for the farm or fishing village women. The barrels were shipped to London or to Holland; the chief fish eaten in Holland at that time was salt herring.
Then, of course, the herring numbers crashed.
A Sparkle Of Salt

The Shimmer Of The Herring

The turning point comes on Page 75: "New Englanders were growing rich on free-trade capitalism. . . . Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century economist, singled out the New England fishery for praise in his singular work on capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. To Smith, the fishery was an exciting example of how an economy could flourish if individuals were given an unrestricted commercial environment."

That type of thinking still goes on today. Eliminate regulations and we will flourish. Get rid of those dastardly government agencies like the EPA and the money flows.

Everyone thought such a free-wheeling system could work forever.

No different to the whalers who thought God had put whales there for man to exploit and there would never be a shortage.

I heard a coal miner say the same thing: God put the coal there to be mined and used.

People became rich on cod. Carvings of the fish were everywhere.

There is the unpleasantness of selling cheap fish for slaves.

Slaves could be picked up by cod merchants in West Africa. And more cod could be sold there. To this day there is still a West African market for cod sales.

There was often a moral contradiction between freedom loving New Englanders and social injustices. (Chapter 5)

In Ireland, salt cod known as ling would be transported and sold, hard as wood. The cod would be stored in a house and a piece cut off and soaked in milk on Thursday, ready to be eaten on Friday, the traditional day of no meat. This was a good way to feed farmworkers.

Salt cod as described above is still a traditional Christmas dish in Portugal. I suppose because the fishermen could not get out to sea in winter storms.

Jimmy wrote: "That type of thinking still goes on today. Eliminate regulations and we will flourish. Get rid of those dastardly government agencies like the EPA and the money flows. "

This still amazes me. I'm not as far into the book as you, Jimmy & Clare, but this again reminds of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. I'm continually amazed by the attitude that "natural resources are unlimited and we'll never run out of food, water, etc." In our regular, day-to-day experience, we all know that's wrong. Resources are finite. We need to budget. If we spend more than we make, we go bankrupt.

I desperately want to believe that the younger generation is more conscious of the risks, the tradeoffs we're implicitly making as a society, and the potential implications of unchecked over-consumption. My kids definitely seem to "get it." Let's hope they're able to make up for the sins of their parents...

On RTE, our national broadcaster, I saw a programme last night called Nationwide. Among other topics covered, a professional communicator on the environment came in to a school and rigged up bicycles to generators so kids could see for themselves how much pedal power it takes to do what electricity does.

The kids were there pedalling hard, six at a time, making power go for storage or work a blender to make smoothies which they were enjoying. One lad was interviewed and he said he would have thought it didn't take much to boil a kettle, but he now saw it took forty people to boil a kettle. This made him much more aware of what power is needed in our lives.

We have made our living look so easy because nobody sees horses pulling hard on carts anymore.

Great story, Clare.

Cod has to be fished out of water that is 34 to 50 degrees. Fishermen used to wear thick rubber gloves with cotton linings. Now there are new synthetic materials. They lost fingers from frostbite, line snags, and machinery. There is a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood. They are like combat veterans who feel only understood by their comrades who have survived the same battles. Any fisherman who can't keep up is out. Very few are over 50. Fog was one of the biggest enemies. Dorymen used to drown or starve to death or die of thirst while being lost in the fog. Too much fish could sink a dory. One reason is that they worked with little sleep. One doryman called it "a terrifying death without witness in the cottony fog that stifles all sound. Like a nightmare from which there is no awakening."

I point out the difficulties of fishermen in order to understand them. They are independent. They don't like government officials and land lovers trying to tell them how to do their job, even if it is for their own good. I have been to Gloucester many times. I have seen the memorial to dead fishermen. It is both prominent and powerful. There are always random tourists reading off random names. Between 1830 and 1900, about 3,800 Gloucester fishermen were "lost at sea." In a 1985 Canadian government report, 212 out of every 100,000 Canadian fishermen die on the job. That's far more than miners, foresters, and construction workers. In Britain, the rate of death for fishermen is 20 times higher than manufacturing.

Longlines with hooks can be as short as half a mile or can extend for four or five miles. They catch many fish, all of which now are noticeably smaller. This caused improving catches which fooled people into believing the stocks were not being depleted. (Chapter 7)

Looking at what the fishing industry has been and is still doing is also "Like a nightmare from which there is no awakening." Perhaps it is just a reflection of what they are doing to the oceans diversity in order to keep people happy.

Freezing fish made a big difference. It meant more fish could be taken.

Bottom nets left the ocean floor a desert. Mesh size could help, but once the back wall is filled with cod, the small fish are trapped. "Millions of unwanted fish--undesirable species, fish that are undersized or over quota, even fish with a low market price this week--are tossed overboard, usually dead."

Now schools of fish are detected by sonar or spotter aircraft. A trawler can move in and clean out the area. They take the target fish and the by-catch. (Chapter 8)

Bycatch is a huge issue in Europe right now. The fishermen are not even allowed to land the bycatch if it is some variety over quota. So one demonstration was of fishermen giving away the dead bycatch instead of selling it. They were prosecuted. This was part of a movement to get landing of bycatch allowed.
Now, bycatch can include anything from immature fish to rare species to dolphins, so clearly there were good reasons to ban landing of these. But if it's dead anyway by the time it's thrown back, it just covers the seafloor with rotting fish.

Quota for catches has been the rule here. But in recent years a fishing town in Wales was caught out. There was a duplicated entry mechanism for fish being brought to port. The fish were brought in from the boat and dumped into a facility which weighed and separated the types, for the books. The duplicate facility was right beside it and was not for the books. Each one was handling the same weight of catches so the fishermen were illegally doubling their quotas and profits.

Into Chapter 13 now. This is just another heartbreaking example of tragedy of the commons. Every nation jealously guards its own right to catch as many fish as possible while condemning the similar behaviors of their competitor nations' fishing fleets. Everybody denies that there's any danger of depleting the "boundless resource" of cod and other, similar species... until the population crashes so precipitously that no one can pretend it's not a problem. Then, everybody argues over how to divide up the quotas, and everybody tries to find a way to cheat and get more than their allotted share.

In the end, the whole world is confronted with the same dismal trend:


Hopefully, we (globally) are getting smarter about conserving precious resources. This (I hope it's accurate ;-) provides at least some cause for optimism:

The great northern cod comeback

Here's a key quote from one of the marine biologists publishing the research:

Dr. Rose credits many equally important yet diversified factors in the continued rebuilding of this stock, "The important take-away from this study is that with favourable environmental conditions, in this case the increase in capelin as a key food for this stock, and a severe reduction of fishing, even the most decimated fish stocks have the potential to recover." Stressing the importance of responsible management, Dr. Rose continues, "Without a doubt, maintaining low removals of this stock over the past decades has been essential to recovery. While the timing of a full recovery remains uncertain, continued protection from excessive fishing remains essential to achieving that outcome."

Here's another positive article. However, if you look carefully at the details of both articles, it is not difficult to find phrases that cause concern.

https://www.theguardian.com/environme...

Here is the World Wildlife Fund take on the issue:

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endan...

(chapter 12)

"There is only one known calculation: 'When you get to zero, it will produce zero.' How much above zero still produces zero is not known." In the big ocean, how can you tell when it's too late to rebuild the stock?

"Overfishing is a growing global problem. About 60% of the fish types tracked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) are categorized as fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted." I wonder what the percent is now?

Ninety percent of the world's fishing grounds are now closed off by 200-mile exclusion zones. Fishermen switched to fishing at greater depths. Little is known about the ecology there.

Some countries are just not known for their international cooperation.

Seals are our competitors for fish.

Cod seemed to have stopped migrating. One theory is that bigger, older fish are no longer there to lead the way.

Gorton's is still in Gloucester, the largest plant with the biggest sign, but the company hasn't bought a fish from a Gloucester fisherman in years.

I finished the book and liked it a lot. This thread is always open to future readers of the book.

I'm also interested in articles that update some of the information.

This Wikipedia article about Gorton's is interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorton%...

Thanks Jimmy!

Someone reading my review recommended this book:

The Founding Fish

by John McPhee

Here's another relatively optimistic article from CTV in Canada from only a few months back. (Again, I hope and pray it's accurate...)

Cod populations rising along shores of Newfoundland: experts

Here's a key quote:

Cod research scientist John Brattey said the department is reporting “levels that we haven’t seen since the late 1980s, early 90s.”
...
Experts are currently reporting about 600,000 tonnes of cod biomass on the shores of Newfoundland. That’s only about a third of what it would take for cod to no longer be considered critically endangered.

The promising news, however, is that Wednesday’s figures are double what they were in 2013, the last time the DFO [Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans] conducted calculated the cod biomass in the region.

Two points: 1. More time is needed, and 2. Climate change is the elephant in the room.

Jimmy wrote: "Two points: 1. More time is needed, and 2. Climate change is the elephant in the room."

I agree wholeheartedly. I admit that I'm desperately searching for signs of hope related to this issue, because the situation -- for our species on this planet -- so often seems depressingly dire.

:-(

Cod is a cold water fish. The entire Eastern Atlantic habitat is shifting north. The fish in the normally warmer waters are able to go farther north because it is warmer and the fish used to colder water are moving farther north. I don't see any mention of this in the article. That's the human factor at work. For whatever reason only half the subject is adequately covered when the entire story is available by googling effect of global warming on cod populations in Atlantic ocean. That's how people fail to understand how the internet works and why they should research whatever they are writing about so they can write a complete article instead of half an article. Nowadays half the truth is usually done to make something look better or worse than how it actually is.

Canada has inherited the cod stocks that use to be off the US coast. So now Canada thinks it's cod population is increasing because of something they did - not catching cod commercially - when in reality the cod are simply moving north. You see this all the time. The US thinks it cleaned up it's environment all by itself when in reality the US transferred most of it's manufacturing jobs to other countries while the US continued to use those same products minus the local pollution.

It's really quite simple, the Canadians need to continue to not commercially catch cod no matter how good things appear. They will inherit an ocean full of diversity as everything shifts north. As long as their ocean temperatures stay cool. All the fish and ocean life is in the ocean to keep the ocean healthy, they are not in the ocean for us to indiscriminately eat massive quantities. Those days are long gone.

Thanks, Robert.
The entry to the Arctic Ocean is now ice-free and I saw a documentary following a family of killer whales as they travelled into this ocean, which used to be denied to them. They knew where they were going as the film did not catch their first trip, and went straight to a nursery fiord for narwhals, catching and eating the entire population.
Sadly many giant fishing vessels will now be able to fish these waters too.

And they will be digging for oil. Russia has already claimed some of the territory for future oil drilling.

Jimmy wrote: "Someone reading my review recommended this book:

The Founding Fish

by John McPhee"
Second the recommendation. Good read.

Perhaps we need to connect cod populations to people populations, one is decreasing & one is increasing, so is there a big
Mystery staring us in the face? Or is the obvious so obvious that we
Can't see it. Overpopulation of human & over extraction of resources beyond carrying capacity of a population. We will never
solve the cod population issue until we solve the human population
problem, & the human population problem is connected to human values, & growth money values, our first task is to get the elephant in the room on the table as an issue of discussion.

I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees with you, James. How do you convince the world? I'm close to being an absolutist on birth control. It should be accessible to all. It's worth the investment. I remember when Richard Nixon used to speak of overpopulation. Can you imagine someone doing that today? They'd be afraid of losing votes from segments of the population.

Here is a place to begin. Read: Turning Point by Robert McClory. It
Is on Amazon & on this site. It is about:

In 1965 Pope John XXIII called together a Birth Control Commission made up of cardinals & bishops & women from all over the world to look at the impacts on women's health on having many children. The population of the world was at 3.5 billion. The commission studied the impacts for 3 years.

As a result of their deliberations, the commission produce a majority vote to relax the concerns of the Catholic Church on birth control. They also looked at the pill as being acceptable because it did not cause an abortion.

Pope John died. Pope Paul VI became pope. There was a miniority report filed by a cardinal, with a miniority vote to support a minority position of maintaining the traditional view. Pope Paul accepted this miniority report because he was worried about losing the "creditability of the church." There was no consideration on human carrying capacity in the 1965 deliberations, there were only concerns with women's health.

The world population is now over 7 billion & 2 more billion
will arrive in 2050. Biologists can provide a convincing argument for
Carrying Capacity based on resource limitations. And the concern for women's health is still there.

If you do not know the long list of running out of resources, nature abuse, & global warming impacts, associated with the carrying capacity concept, Then you need to do some research. There is a great deal of info on this subject out there.

Pope Francis said, "If we destroy nature we destroy ourselves." He knows what is happening.

So please read the book, let history set the record straight. If we can not get support for another birth control study in the Catholic Church "in this group" & go forward with it in a positive, respectable way based on This book, then where will we begin to get this much needed support?

There are over 1 billion Catholics in the world.

Catholics in the past preferred to gain control of many people by encouraging and enforcing women to be barefoot and pregnant. So this clearly shows that when women's rights are respected and widened, the women get to choose how many children they would like to have. Birth-rates plummet, because few women actually want to be chained to a sink in poverty. I'm Irish and I can say this. Apparently we are not supposed to talk about other religions than those we have experienced. Catholicism here is now a token; educated people choose which aspects they wish to follow. Less educated people still try to enforce early marriage.

Plainly, though, the more aggressive religious dominated cultures in the world today are those which give women the fewest rights and choices. At least one of these, Islam, preaches world domination by outbreeding everyone else, among other methods. Women's wombs are being used as a weapon - and sometimes against the women as with forced rape and childbirth when the women are kidnapped from other cultures. Don't forget FGM, which negatively affects a woman for her entire life, if she doesn't die of it.

Overcrowding is plain to see in the North African / Asian cities where this kind of cultural war is in progress. Children are then considered so disposable that they are deliberately used as human shields, as lures to booby-trapped cars, as a shield in the front of a vehicle so anyone firing at the vehicle for running a roadblock will be accused of firing on children - all shown by Wikileaks - as deliberately forced victims of mortar fire or bombing - shown happening on news footage - and as an excuse for demanding more food, aid, territory for a people in an arid land who deliberately all have seven children per family.

Children provide an excuse for economic migration and a large family or dead child is seen as a way of gaining sympathy. And a house in Canada, when it happens to a family who decided to leave a steady job in peaceful Turkey where they'd been for three years and get on a rickety boat to Europe because everyone else was.

Sorry for straying off the topic of cod, but women's rights are dear to my heart and Catholics can only be blamed in under educated countries like the Philippines.

India has taken the step of a male ten-year vasectomy. This is an injection of a polymer into the vas deferens. When the gel sets it creates a blockage for ten years, then dissolves. Condoms are still recommended to prevent disease transmission.
I'm told that American college students are flying to India to have this done.
Before anyone jumps on a plane, I don't know what research has been carried out into safety of the treatment. But if it's safe I'd recommend having it available everywhere.