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Encyclopedia of Life off to a slow start

A couple of emails and an article in the latest issue of Science have roused me to post on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) website. The site is not functional yet but has a whiz-bang demo (completely fake) put together by a company called AvenueA|Razorfish that is well worth checking out.

However, that was the only thing that impressed me about the site. The article in Science just inflamed my skepticism:

Satellite images reveal scale of destruction

To you, this picture may look like ants marching in a desert, but among ocean experts, it has gone as viral as Britney's shaved head. What you're seeing is an image of shrimp trawlers off the coast of China, taken from space. Those teeny tiny specs are responsible for destroying huge swaths of seafloor, and thanks to these images, which appeared in the prestigious journal Nature yesterday, scientists now have irrefutable visual evidence to prove what they could only conceptualize before.

Limits set on high seas bottom trawling

More than 20 nations recently met in Chile to set up a regulatory body to watch over a huge swath of ocean. The meeting, which was targeted by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and included staff from Oceana's South American office, also netted (no pun intended) a landmark agreement that reels in high seas bottom trawling fleets. New regulations set to take effect next September will severely limit the destructive fishing method in waters from Australia to South America and from the Equator to the Antarctica.

Destructive trawls and dredges used for commercial fishing have bulldozed entire seafloor environments. Today's decision is a major leap in the right direction toward protecting our oceans.

So What’s Plan C?

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Roller Curby

High seas of South Pacific protected from bottom trawling A landmark agreement between 21 countries will restrict the controversial practice of bottom-trawling in the high seas of the South Pacific. […]

Dan Peplow and Sarah Augustine, activists for indigenous health in Suriname, answer questions

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You Know the Drill

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