I had not heard of toxic algae before, but it does not surprise me.  Plants have always "fought back."

I agree, Tom, that countless peoples who live along the sea have always caught and eaten fish, from the water thereabouts.  And I admit that a minor part of the pleasure of visiting Cape Cod and coastal Maine has been eating their seafood.

I know nothing about Caribbean fish (and to my knowledge have never eaten them), and about the possibility that they have consumed too many toxic algae, or other fish further down along the chain, to be safe to eat themselves.  And I certainly did not know about the venerable tradition of using dogs as taste-testers.  Yipes!

Whatever we do, however we decide for ourselves personally, it always behooves us to consider the cost of our meat-eating practice (and "meat" includes fish and other seafood) in terms of the lives of all the animals involved.  So, in the case of seafood, it is not just a matter of what is in your dish; it is also a matter of the by-catch, and of the test-taste dogs.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Tee hee, Candis, just ask the French about the cost of Samoan meat-eating practice ; D

Another nicer way to test for bad fish is supposedly flies do not land on them if they are bad. But when in doubt, here pussy pussy pussy!

(just teasing... )

On another forum for Polynesians we are sharing stories... one of Haipuka, The Brother Who Lived Among the Coral.

In the story, Haipuku is like that quote, "Of his bones are coral made/ Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea-change/ Into something rich and strange." And then he gets civilized by his sister who washes off the coral with hot water and goes on to avenge the family... blah blah blah.

So many of our morals and aphorisms and speeches are based on these animals in the reef. Young men are like crabs without a bucket: directionless, undisciplined, tasty... that kind of thing.

Some best memories of Samoa is when I was a kid and the reef was still colorful and alive. Some of my best memories are still, sitting around on the shore just eating stuff (there is still crabs and sea cucumbers and octopus if you can catch it!) and floating and chatting.

I don't know you could give a speech in the fono (congress) if every other aphorism was about an extinct thing.. how we would raise a generation of well-bred Samoan kids who has never seen, or eaten, crabs and palolo worms.

Makes a teine mad enough to reconsider her meat-eating practice if you know what I mean.

The "cig" story is just the start of things.  Vibrio, a really nasty critter (V. vulnificus) can cause everything from vomiting to nerual damage and death much faster than Ciguatera.  V. vulnifucis was found as far north as Long Island last summer along with Portuguese Man-O-War.  In fact, many Bahamians and Floridians have been exposed to Ciguatera for so long they just get a headache - but if you have a cut and the vulnificus bacteria enters your bloodstream, you could be dead in a matter of days.  

I mean I appreciate the story and awareness, but the original "cig" story was a load of crap.  Everyone knows that around the reefs, one should not eat groundfish more than 7-10 pounds, as they can be wormy and get you sick.  Ciguatera toxin bio-accumulation takes years and the small fish such as yellowtail are perfectly fine ... but other bacteria can strike overnight.  Plus, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES CIGUATERA TO INCREASE.  We're just doing a better job of finding more sick people, as population grows.  I mean come on, the coral reefs are DECREASING about 10% a year.

Anyone who knew about living on the coast would also know about enterro-bacteria, beach closings, and the possibility that all this shit we're releasing into the bays and oceans might make matters even worse, Global Warming or not.  According to EPA statistics something like half the beaches and shores of the US were closed to fishing or swimming because of enterro-bacteria at one time or another.  We're talking E. Coli and their kin, some really nasty bacteria strains.  That stuff wouldn't reproduce and grow in numbers unless there were plenty of nutrients we were loading such as from fertilizer, farm operations, and so forth.  I mean get real, the fish are swimmin' in that crap!

I am in no position to argue this as an aquatic biologist or oceanographer, other than the northward shift in what we thought were only "southern" waterborne conditions is nothing short of amazing.  Lobster shell disease, which is caused by a varierty of factors including temperature, nutrients, and a bacteria source, is spreading around Cape Cod towards Maine.  

Please forgive the long posting but "cig?" That's a mere blip on the radar screen compared to what is really happening out there.  Respectfully,
sammie

sammie

Onward through the fog

What a wonderful pick-up line, when you have spotted on the beach just the sort of directionless, undisciplined, tasty fellow that you had in mind: "Oh, you poor young man!  You must have lost your bucket!  Let me help you find it!"

("No, I ain't lost nothin'."  "Oh, no?  Then why the sad face?"  "No business o' yours, that's for sure!"  "Well see, you're already beginning to say something's up!  What I think is ..."  "...well, you're thinkin' all wrong, see, 'cause I'm fine."  "Well, and so you are.  But no, what I was thinking was only, you look like you could use a good drink ... " "... well, you're right there ..."  "... and I know a place not far where they do very nice margaritas ..."  "... well, I'm more of a bourbon man myself ... "  " ... as I might have guessed, from the fine physique.  So, do come along, and if you have anything to get off your chest, I am the perfect listener."  "Well, OK, just for a bit.  Those pals of mine, anyway, they can wait, after doing to me what they did ... ")

(Et cetera, et cetera.  Send your children to bed, parents.)  

Here is a nice quote of Mimi's Shakespeare reference, grabbed from somebody's website, in case anyone was wondering, plus some lit-crit T.S. Eliot business:

<<
Full fathoms five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

William Shakespeare: The Tempest Act I, Scene II, ll. 400-406.

Sung by Ariel to Ferdinand; Eliot identifies the drowned sailor Phlebas of The Waste Land with the father of Ferdinand.
>>

And I might add, there are certainly not enough stories about cute but clueless lads washing up on strange beaches. : )

)))))))))))))))

Mimi, if you have digital images of marine wildlife in Samoa, I doubt there would be a problem posting them here in Gristmill.

And you should say more, and say it more directly, about extinctions or local disappearances of species near Samoa.  Your last bit, about speeches in fono, sounds pretty serious.

(((((((((((((((((

Thanks to Sammie, for his very serious message.  When I am in MA and ME, lobster is not what I order, when I order local seafood, as it happens.  But it is well known that many people on the Maine coast especially are proud of having managed a very carefully regulated lobster fishery, so far with success.  And it is sad to learn that in spite of all their careful, responsible work, their lobsters are being afflicted with "lobster shell disease."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Being a conservative means to conserve resources so as to not sqander them all at one and left with nothing.  In terms of money, that means saving money in the money pool rather than putting it into taxes.  In terms of forests is means managing them to as to balance the economic interests with environmental protections.  In terms of the oceans, it might mean lowering pollution into the oceans and protecting the seafood species before they are completely wiped out.  Be careful who you brand with some made up name.

In my previous post I said the Ciguatera was probably not related to Global Warming, as that seems to be a disconnect (reefs are disappearing at an alarming rate).  However, a case can be made that Global Warming has its hand in just about everything elase to to do with the ocean - and there is even a concensus ermging that yes, perhaps there is a relationship between Global Warming and hurricane intensity.  

My point was that as sea temperatures rise, different invasive species and pathogens will push northward and dramatically change things, such as having more bacteria in the water, some extremely dangerous such as Vibrio.  Some are harmful diatoms such as those responsible for red tide.  Another curious trend is that the size of "dead zones" of blackwater are expanding every year, if averaged over 5-10 years.  I have not done my homework on recent science papers on black zones, but I beleive a bacteria/diatom/algae mix is responsible for that, too, along with resulting hypoxia.

I am merely warning people that we should try to conserve our oceans as well as all the other things we are passionate about.  

Onward through the fog

I think to be a conservative in Jabailo's mind you'd have to live with him in that hotbed of conservative thought, East Kent Hill, WA. To him, being right is a place, not a state of mind. Must be quite a town...

Re conservation of fish stocks, how does that work in the ocean? I mean, conservation of plants and stuff, you just have to deal with the people who control the land, whoever that is. So in Samoa, the loggers and botanists and whoever had to talk with the Matai's (councilmen) who control the land on behalf of each town. And the botanist made the better offer, (which panned out pretty well recently - we're getting some serious drug patent money AND kept the neighborhood looking mostly the same).

But its not clear who controls the ocean, and anyways, a lot of what you want to conserve is going to swim from one end of the ocean to the other. I guess coral reefs stay put, and are mostly coastal so they are at least owned by one group or another - at least in Samoa you have to chat with the Matai's again if you're going to fish in a certain spot, and most likely they will say no because of the state of the fish stocks (or as we like to put it, "the fish are getting smarter") But if you're looking to conserve biodiversity in the sea, isn't a lot of the ocean just international waters?

Candis, I have no photos, just my poor memory. Speaking for the people is pretty much an olympic sport in Samoa, and I'm just an amateur. But if Grist were interested in hearing from the front lines of coral bleaching I'm sure I could point them in the right direction for an interview - Samoa is a small country, ( >200,000 people) so most of the politicians and peace core boys and botanists are friends of the family or cousins or something. In some ways we're a good case study because we're so isolated and so small and the economy so undeveloped that theres no pollution in the way to confuse the data. Also we're politically stable so there aren't huge social problems like war or famine or HIV/AIDS complicating the environmental stuff. Anyways. Its a cool place. Though I'm sure it has nothing on East Kent Hill.

I am so glad to hear from people outside the US addressing these kinds of issues because it is NOT just a liberal American theme.  I think you will find that even with many pelagic species, their routes take them a good part of the time within 200 miles of the government lands - most governments control out to 200 miles - the only problem is that some species are highly migratory.  Other species are resident stocks found in the continental shelf, slopewater, and inshore/reef ecology.  Since they don't move, they can be swoopped up with little chance for recovery - which is why the Magnuson Act in the US failed even for its good intentions.

Great, now we have Humbolt Squid in Alaska and it should be below San Diego.  Great, now we have tropical species found in Florida off Cape Cod.  The impacts on the oceans are severe, intense, and not very well advertised, other than for shock value in the media.  The Ciguatera story is a major case in point.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

The goddess of Justice, Dike (rhymes with Nike, I guess; and whether she is a dike or not, well, why don't you just go to her shrine and ask in person; I already know how she will answer, if she chooses to answer truthfully), has sent her representative on Earth, to say:
<<
It might seem perversely right that a rich person dropping $50 per pound for rare breeds like Napoleon wrasse shipped from great distances should risk death. After all, overfishing threatens to wipe out such breeds altogether.
>>

Through obscure channels that I am not at liberty to reveal at this time, the goddess Dike has told me that she is working on making shark fins lethal.

Unfortunately, she says, she is being opposed by an obstructionist coalition, consisting of Poseidon, Tethys, and as many of the Oceanids and Nereids as they can coerce.

Those jerks.  That is the last time I read the Iliad, and take Thetis's side.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!