Protecting the Bering Sea Canyons
November 24, 2014
The North Pacific is an important are with unique and vital resources. We know it is under increased stress from warming.
This 8 minute vid is a really well done and fascinating first look at a very remote, but very productive area of the ocean.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
November 28, 2014 at 3:35 pm
Great Video, Thanks for posting this!!!
November 28, 2014 at 5:11 pm
Yes, a nice video, but a bit bright-sided and optimistic.
Mankind has an abysmal record when it comes to managing the oceans, and even though we have learned a bit from our mistakes, we are not making the global effort needed to reverse the downward trends. We must not allow what happened to the fisheries in the Atlantic to happen in the Bering. The Grand Banks have been turned into a sacrifice zone for short-term gain, the cod will never return, and 30,000 to 60,000 fisherman and others “downstream” are out of work forever.
The figure of 40% was mentioned as what part of the oceans need to be set aside as “marine sanctuaries”—–we currently have set aside only 1% and are not moving very rapidly to increase that.
In addition, the same “free market” forces that want to burn every speck of fossil fuel want to get rich by catching every last bit of “sea food” on the planet. Pirate behavior is rampant among the commercial fisherman. They evade rules and regulations and go into restricted areas and poach with impunity, and the world’s governments devote minimal resources to policing them.
I just read a piece about how there are plans to use a ship-locating system intended to help locate ships in emergencies to track all commercial fishing vessels and help enforce the rules. IMO, this is a good first step, and should be extended to requiring all fishing vessels to file “flight plans” and being inspected when they return to port.
November 28, 2014 at 5:21 pm
PS I forgot to mention that the oceans are the classic illustration of the Tragedy of the Commons, and a more extreme one than that of just adding extra sheep. No one ever did anything to maintain the “commons” of the ocean until very recently—it was out of sight, out of mind.. The rule was to “Catch, baby, catch” for centuries as fishing fleets ranged farther and fishing vessels got larger and more efficient. Only recently have we noticed that what we’re doing is unsustainable, and like the villagers with the sheep, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to reverse course in time. (And global warming is only making it worse—-everywhere, not just in the Bering).
December 1, 2014 at 7:35 am
Woke up feeling especially cynical today – hey, it’s Monday, after all.
“The council chose not to act without more research /visual evidence”
Which one of the stages of denial is that?
It’s telling that the billion-dollar industry couldn’t be bothered to survey a locale that’s their lifeblood so a tiny bunch of greenies had to do the heavy lifting.
December 1, 2014 at 8:17 am
I wake up feeling “especially cynical” more and more these days.
The only “surveying” the “industry” does is how big their profit margin is and whether they can get a good ROI if they exploit the resource even more unmercifully by building more and bigger ships, sending them to farther away places, and keeping them out there longer.
They look around in bewilderment when fishery after fishery collapses under them. At least the loggers went away once they had clear cut the land and that allowed trees to return in many places. The fishing “industry” virtually strip mines the oceans to the point that recovery will never occur.