Articles by Robert Delfs
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New report on aquaculture
"Nearly half the fish consumed as food worldwide are raised on fish farms rather than caught in the wild," according to a new FAO report. The State of World Aquaculture 2006 report, presented at a meeting of the the FAO Sub-Committee on Aquaculture held in New Delhi earlier this month, stated that fish consumed by human beings originating from aquaculture, just 9% in 1980, today constitutes 43%.
The hard numbers are 45.5 million tonnes of farmed fish, worth US$63 billion, eaten per year, versus 95 million tonnes from capture fisheries, of which 60 million tonnes goes to human consumption.
Those are bigger numbers than I would have thought.
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Sic transit beach front real estate
Last month was the first time in history that China reported higher total exports than the U.S.
China's State Statistical Bureau reported total exports in July of US$80.34 billion, nudging ahead of the U.S. ($80.31 billion) as the world's biggest exporter of goods and services. Of course, China's gross national income (US$7.6 trillion in 2005) is still only 65% of the US (US$11.7 trillion), but China's economy has been growing three times faster over the past five years (9.4% annually versus 3.2%).
As China's export-led economy grows, so does its environmental footprint. Total carbon dioxide emissions in China in 2003 were 3.5 billion tonnes, 60% of the U.S. total in the same year. But between 1990 and 2002, China's emissions jumped 46% -- an average growth rate of 3.2% -- while U.S. total emissions grew at a more modest (but still horrifying) rate of 1.5% per year over the same period.
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Protecting the base of the Southern ocean marine food web
Krill are the basis of life for hundreds of different species of fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Vast krill banks in the icy Southern Ocean are now targets of a new generation of factory trawlers that can vacuum up as much as 120,000 tonnes of krill in a season, most of it intended for use as food for industrially-farmed salmon.
Decline or collapse of the antarctic krill banks could have immense effects on dependent predators such as whales, penguins, and seals.
In October, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) will meet in Australia to consider stronger measures to protect the Southern Ocean krill. Read Clifton Curtis' op-ed in the IHT. (Curtis directs the Pew Charitable Trust's Antarctic Krill Conservation Project.)
