Could California's Salmon Make a Comeback?

Kannu

The collapse of the pisiculture and fish stocks is one of the big disasters currently happening. There are loads of reasons. Like this happening outside normal life. Who cares about fish? You can't see them can you? 

Second is the issue of politics. The European fisheries policy, the American one. The Asian policies are frankly extremely stupid and short sighted. 

So we are slowly screwing up one of the worlds most important biodiversity species and sources of protein. 

And once fish stocks collapse, they don't return usually. They leave behind a sea desert. As a Bengali son, this is cultural, scientific and logical for us to Worry about and raise our voices. 

Love

Baba 

Could California's Salmon Make a Comeback? | OnEarth Magazine
http://www.onearth.org/print/35449

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After years of decline, the rich human community that depends on California’s salmon runs may at last be rebounding

Jon Rosenfield and I bushwhack through the scrubby willows that line the American River east of Sacramento. The air is crisp this October morning, and the timing of our visit should be just right to watch California’s Chinook salmon as they return to where their lives began and spawn the next generation. Rosenfield, a biologist, works for a conservation group called the Bay Institute, and he wants me to witness an annual ritual that future generations might not have the opportunity to see.

For the salmon, it’s the end of a hard journey that typically lasts three years. After hatching in the river’s gravelly bottom, the young often hang out in its shallow backwaters, developing the bulk and camouflage they need for survival. They then travel downstream toward the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the tidal estuary where they start their transition from fresh to salt water — and out through San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. There the fish spend most of their lives, feasting on krill, crab larvae, herring, sardines, and anchovies. This is in preparation for the most arduous part of their life cycle: the swim upstream to close the loop. By the time the salmon reach the spot where Rosenfield and I are standing, their energy has been channeled entirely from survival toward reproduction. They’ve stopped eating. Their skin is falling off. After depositing eggs or fertilizing them, they will die. Their carcasses — “these millions of 20-, 30-, 40-pound bags of fertilizer,” says Rosenfield — will be eaten by coyotes, bears, and eagles, which in turn will spread their droppings across forest floors and agricultural fields. “In watersheds where wine grapes are grown and salmon still spawn,” he says, “you can detect the ocean-nutrient signature in the wine.”

How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Great book review, I would very rarely purchase water but still see quite a lot of them going about with bottles of water. And I think, IDIOT!

Anyway, some excerpts:

Americans and bottled water--what is the deal? Can anyone leave home without their plastic bottle of water? Americans view bottled water as commonplace and normal, those plastic bottles are ubiquitous, but actually the practice is a bit odd. When my parents were kids, they never had a bottle of water stuck in their sack lunch--they used the water fountain. What happened? Why are people now willing to pay a premium for something they can get cheaply out of their tap? And what is the environmental and social impact of the choice to buy bottled?

In her book Bottlemania, Elizabeth Royte offers a balanced, accessible account of the rise in popularity of bottled water, while laying out the pros and cons of both bottled and tap water from health, environmental, and ethical perspectives. People in the United States are beginning to question the marketing juggernaut that is bottled water, yet the business still generates billions of dollars annually for multinational corporations and boutique bottlers. Throughout her book, Royte uses the small town of Fryeburg, Maine, as a central example to explore the questions bottling water generates from a community to a global level.

Technorati Tags: Water

Cabinet bows to protests over dyke breach plan

Take this as you will.

Water Wars

Well, the South African Constitution says this.

Section 27(1) of the constitution says: “Everyone has the right to have access to ... sufficient food and water.”

Section 27(2) says the state must “take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights”.

Ok, so everybody has a right to food and water. Now, does that mean free water? As I have said so many times before, there is nothing free in the world. Somebody has to pay. So the South African High Court has ruled that the state has to pay for a basic provision of water to everybody. See here for more details.

Now, where do we get the money from? General taxation? so why would the poor pay for the rich? Remember that payments for services out of general taxation are disproportionately and comparatively bad on poor people. It is like the child benefit that is given to every child in the UK. Its about 20 pounds of so. So think about it, this money is taken from the general taxation pot. So even I, who is a higher rate taxpayer, gets this 20 pounds for my children. Now I can afford to pay for my children myself. But because it comes out of general taxation, the vast majority of the poor end up paying in general taxation and then getting a wee bit in return. So paying for core services from general taxation is not that hyper efficient... Here are some good options on it.

Check out what happened here. This is indeed quite a curious decision and goes to show that when politicians say things like "right to jobs, or water, or or or", well, when rights are given, then ability to protect and provide those rights should also follow. Otherwise, its just words...

They killed my goddess

Our human civilisation have a very close relationship with rivers. Most of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India were based next to the Euphrates, Nile, Saraswati, Yangtze, Indus, Mekong, etc. And when the river died, many of the civilisations died as well, such as the Indus Valley Civilisation. It is no wonder that most of the river were considered to be divine, giving life to humans, animals and plants. Nile was considered to be ruled by(Hapi) Hapy, a river god. A hymn to him goes like this

Homage to thee, O Hapi.
Thou appearest in this land
And thou comest in peace to make Egypt to live.
Thou art the Hidden One
And the guide of the darkness
On the day when it is thy pleasure to lead the same.
Thou art the waterer of the fields which Ra has created,
Thou givest life unto all animals,
Thou makest all the land to drink unceasingly
As thou descendest on thy way from the heavens.

Now that just shows how venerated he was!

Then we have Ganga, Jamuna, Brahmaputra, Saraswati, Narbada, all river goddesses or gods.

Here's an example of how somebody is addressing Ganga.

I come to you as a child to his mother.
I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.
I come without refuge to you,
giver of sacred rest.
I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.
I come undone by disease to you,
the perfect physician.
I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.
Do with me whatever you will.

EUPHRATES was a River-God of Assyria in west Asia (modern Turkey and Iraq), and as we can see in the enclosed story, Baiji was the Goddess of the Yangtze. And she was killed by man.

My river goddess was killed. My goddess has been stopped by walls in the shape of dam's, she has been diverted by canals, she has been polluted by man who dumped chemicals into it. She has been made stinky by man dumping his feces into it. She has been made sterile by so many pollutants that fish literally gasp for breath in it. Her womb is drying up because of the glaciers melting away. My goddess has turned from a silt laden, life giving river into a foul smelling, full of sludge geographical entity. My goddess's sea mouths are retreating in the face of ever rising sea water. Once my goddess dies, the river dies. When the river dies, man dies.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!


China dolphin believed extinct
By
Hannah Belcher

In Video

Click to watch Al Jazeera's report [AFP]They call her the Goddess of the Yangtze - the Baiji dolphin has navigated China's longest river for millions of years. According to Chinese legend, this prehistoric freshwater mammal was a river god. It hasn't been seen since 2002. In December last year a concerned group of international scientists searched the Yangtze for six weeks ... using visual and acoustic surveys. They covered the dolphin's nearly 1,700km range, stretching from Yichang to Shanghai. August Pfluger, chief executive of the the Baiji Org Foundation, said: "We didn't see any animals in the river. "And if there are maybe one or two or three left in the river, I don't think, we don't believe, they have any chance to survive." An international team of marine biologists announced the Baiji is likely to be extinct and could be the first dolphin or whale to be wiped out by human activity. China's economic growth has had a huge impact on the country's biggest waterway. Marine biologists believe the nearly blind Baiji has fallen victim to the increased shipping, overfishing, development and pollution. Scientists hope the Baiji's disappearance is a major warning sign to governments to act quickly to save other threatened mammals, especially in shallow waters. "We have to rethink our fresh water strategies, we have to find a way towards a sustainable way to treat the ocean and of course the fresh water resources in general," Pfluger said.

"And I think we should take the loss of the Baiji as a warning signal to really go ahead with these issues." Many who live along the Yangtze river and revered the Baiji dolphin, say a part of China's soul has gone forever.