Articles by Andrew Sharpless

Oceana names names as part of seafood contamination campaign

Along with your omegas, you've been getting a dose of mercury in some of your seafood. In fact, the amount of mercury in some seafood has risen to dangerously high levels, putting children at risk for neurological problems. In an effort to combat the growing number of contamination cases, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory in 2004 warning women of child-bearing age and children to avoid certain types of fish and limit their consumption of albacore tuna, for example, to six ounces a week. That's about one sandwich. Grist readers undoubtedly know this, but what about those that don't check the FDA website on a daily basis?

Oceana has been pressuring supermarkets for nearly a year to post this warning at their seafood counters. Yesterday, we held press conferences in eight cities across the nation, revealing which supermarkets are stepping up to the plate and outing supermarkets that aren't. On Monday, I got word that Whole Foods joined Safeway, Dominicks, Carrs, Genuardi's, Tom Thumb, Vons, Wild Oats and some others as members of the Green List by agreeing to post the signs.

Check out our new website to see if your store is on the "Green" list or the "Red."

When auto-delete just isn’t enough

In this day and age, there's little you can't do online. Book a flight? Click. File your taxes? Click. Chat with Aunt Sally on the other side of the world? Click. Contact your representative? Not so fast.

Congress wants to add "logic puzzles" to its already difficult web forms in an effort to reduce the number of emails it gets from those troublesome voters. Apparently, sending an email like this one through an advocacy group doesn't qualify you as a constituent with a legitimate concern. You need to answer questions like "what's 5 minus 1?" to get your Congressman (most likely, your Congressman's staffer) to read your email.

Advocacy groups are not letting this slide. Oceana has joined with at least 30 other groups in a letter to Congress today stating among other things that this technology "raise[s] dangerous questions about the infringement of constituents' First Amendment rights." It's not yet clear whether we'll be sending this letter via snail mail.

Hawaii Islands Win Unprecedented Protection

In the last five years, I can count on one hand the number of times environmental groups have come together to praise a new policy by President Bush -- and that one hand was probably making a fist. So for the ocean conservation community to be celebrating the president's announcement today, you know this is a VERY big deal.

George W. Bush is designating the world's largest fully protected marine reserve -- 84 million acres to be exact. A biologically rich string of islands known as the Northwestern Hawaii Islands (NWHI) will now enjoy complete federal protection from commercial fishing activities as a new National Monument. This is fantastic news for the seals, turtles, albatrosses, sharks, corals, and other marine life that call these waters home, and a strange, welcome, happy, confusing moment for conservationists everywhere. Congratulations to our colleagues who worked so hard to make this happen, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, The Ocean Conservancy, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Environmental Defense, and especially all the groups in Hawaii. Read all about it.

Possible Whaling Majority at the IWC

The International Whaling Commission will gather this Friday in St. Kitts for its annual meeting. For 20 years now, Japan and other pro-whaling nations have done everything in their power to convince the IWC to reverse the whaling moratorium it set back in the '80s.

What remains a mystery is why Japan is so obsessed with the resumption of whaling. Recent polls suggest that fewer than half of Japanese people have ever tried whale meat, and just 1% eat it regularly. Over 2,000 supermarkets have stopped selling it in the last few years, due to lack of demand.