Plankton - could we live without them...??

Ran across an excellent website by Dr. Richard Kirby www.PlanktonPundit.org. Dr. Kirby is a plankton scientist and science communicator based in the UK.  It's easy to overlook these tiny plants and creatures, but we are beginning to realize that plankton are fundamental to life on earth as we know it.

I can highly recommend Dr. Kirby's website; he does a great job of explaining and illustrating how plankton influence the marine food web from fish to whales, and from penguins to polar bears.  He also shows how plankton are responsible for the oxygen in every second breath we take!!

The Ocean Drifters video is excellent. "Ocean Drifters, a secret world beneath the waves" is a short film about plankton written, produced and directed by Dr Richard Kirby (Marine Institute Research Fellow, Plymouth University) with a narration by Sir David Attenborough and music by Richard Grassby-Lewis.

Drawing upon Richard Kirby's plankton imagery, Ocean Drifters reveals how the plankton have shaped life on Earth and continue to influence our lives in ways that most of us never imagine.
Further information about the plankton can also be found at the Ocean Drifters website (oceandrifters.org) and in the popular book about plankton also titled "Ocean Drifters, a secret world beneath the waves".

Volendam Japan to Vancouver - greetings friends!!

Fushimi Inari shrine; Kyoto, Japan

We've just returned from a very special voyage on board the ms Volendam, from Kobe Japan to Vancouver Canada.  I want to thank all the very kind and supportive guests who attended my lecture series and made the crossing such a great experience for Jan and I.

I promised a link to a couple of the books I referred to:
"Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean" by Lisa-ann Gershwin
"The Once and Future World" by J.B. MacKinnon (see a good review here...)

I also referred to the paper by economists Crow White and Christopher Costello, who examined the provocative idea of completely closing international waters to fishing.

My next big idea came from E.O. Wilson who wrote a provocative article in Smithsonian magazine in 2014: "Can the World Really Set Aside Half of the Planet for Wildlife?"


Thanks again!  Please keep in touch...if you have a chance, sign up for my future postings down below to the right - all you need is your email address.

Best regards, George

Japanese Crane near Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan

Crane chick - about 10 days old

Cherry blossom time in Kyoto, Japan

Triple Gains if Fisheries Closed on High Seas

An important study was recently published by economists Crow White and Christopher Costello, who examined the provocative idea of completely closing international waters to fishing.  They found that closing the High Seas to fishing would, on a global scale, simultaneously give rise to large gains in fisheries profit (>100%), fisheries yields (>30%), and fish stock conservation (>150%).

Amberjack.  Photo by Dee Wescott

View the study here

Abstract

The world's oceans are governed as a system of over 150 sovereign exclusive economic zones (EEZs, ~42% of the ocean) and one large high seas (HS) commons (~58% of ocean) with essentially open access. Many high-valued fish species such as tuna, billfish, and shark migrate around these large oceanic regions, which as a consequence of competition across EEZs and a global race-to-fish on the HS, have been over-exploited and now return far less than their economic potential. We address this global challenge by analyzing with a spatial bioeconomic model the effects of completely closing the HS to fishing. This policy both induces cooperation among countries in the exploitation of migratory stocks and provides a refuge sufficiently large to recover and maintain these stocks at levels close to those that would maximize fisheries returns. We find that completely closing the HS to fishing would simultaneously give rise to large gains in fisheries profit (>100%), fisheries yields (>30%), and fish stock conservation (>150%). We also find that changing EEZ size may benefit some fisheries; nonetheless, a complete closure of the HS still returns larger fishery and conservation outcomes than does a HS open to fishing.