Over at Seedmagazine.com, I have a brief interview with Oliver Peoples, a biochemist who hopes that his new bio-based plastic will upend the petroleum-based industry—and help clean up oceans and landfills in the process:

Seed: So you’re turning corn into plastic in much the same way that the ethanol industry turns it into biofuels. As I’m sure you know, the big criticism of corn ethanol has been that if you account for all of the embedded fossil fuels, it doesn’t wind up being very good for the environment. How does this play out with Mirel?
OP: Grain ethanol has been around for more than 100 years, so the industry’s ability to shift the process to a more favorable energy balance is limited. A good illustration is polypropylene: The energy cost of making it when they first started was probably 10 to 20 times what it is today. This is typically what happens with any manufacturing technology—you get continuous improvements as you learn how to do it better and better. Ethanol has largely been through that cycle. Mirel plastics are still in their early days, but even with our initial start-up we’ve been able to manage the manufacturing of Mirel to make sure that it has an attractive greenhouse gas profile. We are pretty confident that it’s going to get better and better.

I found People's to be genuinely interested in ensuring the environmental sustainability of his bioplastics (trademarked as Mirel). There 's certainly a growing market for biodegradable plastic, so it'll be interesting to follow this story, and see if there is indeed a paradigm shift here in the making....You can read the full interview here. 

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There was unfortunate news from PEER recently that the Obamans/NOAA Chief Jane Lubchenco have no plans to consider new marine protected areas. She cited lack of funds as the reason. Hum.

In an era where oceans are under so much pressure, we need to prioritize efforts proven to bring life back to the seas, like MPAs. They work. As Jennifer Jacquet points out at the Guilty Planet blog:

Research by Callum Roberts et al. (2001) published in Science found:

a network of five small reserves in St. Lucia increased adjacent catches of artisanal fishers by between 46 and 90%, depending on the type of gear the fishers used. In Florida, reserve zones in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge have supplied increasing numbers of world record-sized fish to adjacent recreational fisheries since the 1970s.

But try to tell that to lobby groups like the Recreational Fishing Alliance. The RFA and their allies (marina owners, charter captains, and, ironically enough for them, commercial fishermen) fight MPAs tooth and nail, even though the reserves work to increase the size and probably the numbers of their favored species. They've got a case that MPAs should be based on sound science, of course, but the rhetoric often gets so overblown that it just starts to sound like their being told that they can't fish a certain area is far worse than catching more and bigger fish, elsewhere. Go figure.

Not waiting for the feds or fishermen to come to their senses, an alliance of ocean groups has just released an ad spot (an MPA PSA!) calling for establishment of marine reserves along the Southern California coast. MPAs here would benefit all sorts of marine life from octopus to seals, abalone to otters.

Heal the Bay, Surfrider Foundation, Save Our Coast and Shifting Baselines all had a hand in producing it, and it's got some star power: Bond sexy-man Pierce Brosnan, a guy from Scrubs I like, and some other people. It's for a campaign simply titled MPAs Work. 'Nuff said.

If the spot makes Joe Television stop and watch, it's a great message to get into the collective earhole:

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Some of the MacArthur Foundation “genius award” winners are doing work related to climate change. And they now they each have $500 grand, no strings attached. Neat-o:

Also sorta related:

Much, much more info on the foundation’s site.

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Courtesy Save the BayListen up all you Gristers who live along the California coast: This Saturday is Coastal Cleanup Day.  Join your friends, neighbors, frenemies and complete strangers in a community-wide effort to get the plastic crap out of the ocean.

Plastic isn’t just a problem way out in the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. For example, the folks at Save the Bay have put together a pretty neat interactive to show you just how bad plastic pollution is in the Bay area.

Find out how you can join the Coastal Cleanup fun: S.F. Bay Area, San Diego, Los Angeles.

And if you’re not in California, not to worry, because this Saturday is International Coastal Cleanup Day. Here’s all you need to know about how to connect with cleanup efforts in your coastal community, courtesy of the Ocean Conservancy. (Another list here.)

What’s that? You don’t live anywhere near the ocean? Well, how about spending a few minutes on Saturday picking up trash in your community.  Better yet, stop using plastic bags altogether and pester your pals to join the reusable bag crusade.

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A Penny Saved Is…

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

While Louisiana struggles to restore coastal wetlands ravaged in large part by decades of oil and gas drilling, its senior senator is leading the effort to lift the ban on drilling off Florida's Panhandle.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is the lone co-sponsor of legislation sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to open up new areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas development. Introduced last month, Senate Bill 1517 would allow drilling in federal waters 45 miles off the Panhandle's coast. Current law bans drilling any closer than 125 miles off Panhandle beaches and 235 miles off Gulf Coast beaches from Tampa south.

Opposing the Murkowski-Landrieu plan is U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a longtime foe of offshore drilling. He joins other Florida leaders worried about drilling's impact on the state's lucrative tourism industry, which in 2008 alone generated more than $65 billion for Florida's economy and $3.9 billion for the state in tax revenue. Nelson has criticized the drilling bill as giveaway to the oil industry, McClatchy reports:

"This isn't even thinly veiled," Nelson said. "It's an oil industry bailout plan. And it's Alaska and Louisiana's senators plan to boost their own revenues in tough economic times. But even in the toughest of times, there are some things states shouldn't sell out, like Florida's economy and environment."

Why is Landrieu pushing the plan? She says it's out of concern for rising oil prices -- though the U.S. Energy Information Administration says drilling in areas that are currently restricted would result in negligible savings to consumers. Meanwhile, Landrieu and and Murkowski are among the top congressional recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database, the industry is Landrieu's second-biggest contributor besides lawyers, investing more than $711,000 in her campaigns over the past 12 years. In the 2008 election cycle, she ranked first among all congressional recipients of oil and gas PAC contributions, receiving more than $171,600.  The oil and gas industry is Murkowski's third-biggest contributor after leadership PACs and electric utilities, donating more than $286,000 to her campaign over the past seven years; she's also the top recipient of oil and gas PAC contributions in the current election cycle.

Last year the League of Conservation Voters placed Landrieu on their "Dirty Dozen" list of lawmakers, noting that her lifetime score from the environmental advocacy group of 43 percent made her the worst Democratic senator on environmental issues among those running for re-election.

"For a Senator from Louisiana, which faces severe consequences from global warming, to fail to protect Louisiana is disappointing," LCV's Tony Massaro said at the time. "Senator Landrieu joins the [Dirty Dozen] because she acts more to protect Big Oil than the future for the people of Louisiana."

A football field lost every 38 minutes

Sen. Landrieu was among those who suffered personal losses from Hurricane Katrina four years ago, as the storm and the subsequent levee failures and flooding destroyed her lakeside home in New Orleans.

One reason the devastation to inland areas like New Orleans was so severe when the Category 3 storm hit Louisiana is because coastal wetlands that once served as storm breaks have been swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past 75 years, Louisiana has lost more than 2,300 square miles of coastal wetlands -- an area equivalent in size to the entire state of Delaware.

Between 1990 and 2000, Louisiana lost about 24 square miles of land each year -- equivalent to about one football field lost to the sea every 38 minutes, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources.

While some of Louisiana's land loss can be blamed on natural processes, coastal experts say most of the destruction is due to human alteration of the landscape. One factor is the extensive levee system constructed along the Lower Mississippi River that prevents sediment from depositing naturally along the coast. Another key factor is the thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines and canals cut through coastal wetlands, opening them up to saltwater intrusion that kills vegetation and leaves the land vulnerable to erosion.

In fact, between 40 and 60 percent of Louisiana's coastal wetlands loss can be traced to oil and gas activities, according to the Gulf Restoration Network. From 1983 to 2008, for example, Houston-based Shell Oil dredged 8.8 million cubic yards of coastal lands in Louisiana while laying its pipelines -- activity that GRN and other environmental advocates calculated as having caused the loss of 22,624 acres of wetlands.

Land loss is not the only environmental damage from oil and gas drilling. Last month alone, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico contaminated several beaches along the Texas coast, while a leak from a Shell pipeline 30 miles off the Louisiana coast created a nine-mile-long slick in the Gulf.

Storms increase the risk oil and gas drilling pose to the environment. Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina and Rita together caused 124 offshore spills that dumped more than 743,000 gallons of pollution into the ocean, according to the federal Minerals Management Service [PDF]. Onshore spills from pipelines, tanks and refineries added another 9 million gallons of pollution to the mess.

Pattern of delay

If no decisive action is taken to address coastal erosion, Louisiana is expected lose another 500 square miles of land by 2050 -- and that will have enormous consequences for communities throughout the state's coastal parishes, where almost 2 million people live. And unfortunately, the current processes for addressing the problem are anything but decisive.

This past June, Steven Peyronnin, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, testified at the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works' hearing on Louisiana's coastal restoration. Noting that scientists and engineers have the expertise to restore sustainability to the landscape and protect vulnerable communities, he said what is lacking is a sense of urgency.

Peyronnin pointed out that it's been more than four years now since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers submitted a final report recognizing the severe wetland loss in coastal Louisiana and recommending five critical restoration projects for the near term. While Congress authorized these projects under the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) section of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, only one is scheduled to begin construction before 2012. That meant none were eligible for funding under the recent economic stimulus package.

"Not only is the lack of progress a troubling obstacle to restoring a sustainable coast, but it has also negated the ability to leverage federal opportunities that could provide desperately needed funding streams and a strong sense of urgency," Peyronnin told the committee. "Without a single project ready for construction, LCA projects were not considered in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 because they fell far short of the shovel ready requirement intended to urgently move projects forward."

In authorizing the LCA, Congress also directed the Secretary of the Army to come up with a comprehensive long-term restoration plan, but this still has not been done. Instead, the Corps is relying on an older document -- the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Technical Report -- that has shortcomings. For example, it provides no framework for how restoration efforts work with navigation activities, which currently focus on dumping sediment too far offshore to maintain coastal wetlands.

Peyronnin testified that the delay of LCA projects and the Corps' failure to comply with congressional mandates show that the traditional model for carrying out coastal restoration projects is "ill-suited" to respond to the crisis.

"If this pattern of delay continues," he warned, "it will eliminate any chance of success."

Earlier this month, Louisiana officials released recommendations for speeding up Corps projects, which currently take an average of 40 years to complete. But the recommendations remain in the discussion stages.

A starker choice for Florida

Sen. Landrieu has long been an advocate for coastal restoration efforts. For example, the annual energy and water appropriations bill recently passed by the Senate contained hundreds of millions of dollars for Army Corps projects in Louisiana that she championed, including coastal restoration initiatives.

But her push to allow the oil and gas industry to expand its operations in the Gulf of Mexico while federal processes to address land loss remain in disarray would inevitably mean putting other areas of the Gulf Coast at risk of the same drilling-related wetlands destruction experienced by Louisiana.

Unlike Louisiana, Florida has long opposed drilling off its coast, seeing it as a threat to the state's $65 billion annual tourist economy. When Chevron discovered natural gas deposits in Florida waters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, the state objected to plans to tap them, leading the Bush administration to buy back leases from Chevron, Conoco and Murphy Oil for $115 million.

This past April, amid concern about rising energy prices, the Florida House passed a bill allowing offshore drilling in state waters -- but the measure died in the Senate.

Then along came Murkowski's and Landrieu's bill, which resembles an amendment in a Senate energy bill written by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) that would also permit oil and gas rigs within 45 miles of Florida's Gulf coast, McClatchy reports. But unlike Dorgan's proposal, the Murkowski-Landrieu plan includes a revenue-sharing provision to sweeten the deal.

In 2006, another piece of legislation sponsored by Landrieu gave Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas 37.5 percent of proceeds from fuel production in the Gulf -- returning to the states an estimated total of $6 billion a year that previously went to the federal government. The arrangement aimed to compensate them for the environmental cost of pipelines and other infrastructure.

Florida wanted no part of that earlier deal, but Landrieu hopes the revenue-sharing provision will hold appeal because of the state's fiscal crunch. As she wrote in a June op-ed that ran in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call:

Had revenue sharing been a part of the bargain, Floridians would have faced a choice involving rewards and not just risks. Given Florida’s current $6 billion budget deficit, such a choice would be starker today.

But as Sen. Nelson has pointed out, the proposal is hardly a panacea for Florida's financial woes, since the money states raise from offshore drilling in federal waters can be used only to repair damages caused by drilling, such as coastal restoration and pollution cleanup.

The question facing the Senate is whether that makes drilling worth the environmental damage that Florida will inevitably suffer.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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We'll be brief
Want to change the world? Start with your underwear.

Hoofin' it
Forget gasoline, veggie oil, and electric plugs. When it comes to ecofriendly travel, all you need is horse power. Giddy up!

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My family supported coal and all I got was this lousy coloring book (and an asthma inhaler).

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"Maintaining a connection to nature, either through the presence of indoor plants or artwork depicting the natural environment, has been shown to ... make us better people." People who don't know what actually constitutes "nature."

Horror show
The Cove: It's Whale Wars meets Oceans Eleven meets, well, actual oceans. Dive in ... if you dare.

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Photo: Yuriy via PicasaDive into the NRDC's new documentary Acid Test and you're immediately immersed in a beautiful undersea world complete with vibrant coral reefs, graceful kelp beds, and rhythmic schools of fish.

But Acid Test is no Blue Planet, thanks to heavy use of green-screen technology. And what's in front of those screens is a lot less pleasant than the fish porn projected onto them. (No offense to the scientists, commercial fisherfolk, and other experts who are doing the talking, of course -- it's more about what they're saying.)

The 30 minute film, part of Discovery Planet Green's "Blue August" month of online and onscreen ocean coverage, is about the threat of ocean acidification, the gradual chemical changes in our waters linked to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Just how much CO2? Turns out that since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed about one quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.

But don't go celebrating all the sequestered CO2 that's been kept from contributing to global warming, because it's beginning to cause more problems than it's solving, increasing the acidity of the water by 30 percent. And that acidity is starting to dissolve seashells in areas as close to home as the California coast, meaning tragic consequences for many organisms -- and the millions more who count on them for food, including us.

It's a scary phenomenon that scientists are only just coming to understand, and it's only going to get worse -- leaving us with "an urgent choice," as narrator Sigourney Weaver puts it, "to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds."

As you watch Acid Test, keep an eye on the beauty projected onto the green screen and the choice seems pretty obvious.

Acid Test premieres tonight on Planet Green and continues to air throughout the month. Catch the trailer below:

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So long and thanks for all the fish

In the current issue of Science twenty-one leading ocean scientists declared a truce--it's as if Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner agreed to stop the chase for a day. The paper was authored by many of the biggest names on all sides of the debate on ending overfishing--Boris Worm, Ray Hilborn, Andy Rosenberg and Chris Costello. So what are the terms?

First, they agree on what I will call a "Goldilocks" catch level (You know--not too hot, not too cold, but just right.) If we fish too much, then fish get smaller, catch levels eventually go down and lots of species end up on the road to ruin. If we fish too little, we can keep the fish in the oceans healthy, but fish for people goes way down. Fishing just right would mean aiming to catch about 20 percent of ocean fish every year. At that level, fish would be bigger, the long term catch would be stable at a high level, and the news for ecosystems--whales, dolphins, and turtles--would be good too; at least 90% of species would be at healthy levels-which is quite a bit better than we are doing now.

The second part of the paper is where the scientists waded into the hot debate on what management works to get to the Goldilocks level. The scientists looked at the big ocean places that are making progress and asked managers what worked. The first thing they found was that most places use a mix of approaches for the mix of ecosystem types-so there is not a panacea. Pretty much everyone will agree to that.

What comes out on top, though? It comes down to effectively implementing caps on catch levels using two key tools: reducing the Total Allowable Catch and putting in place catch shares. (You can look at their table where a solution was identified in at least five of the ten fisheries, and was usually ranked an "essential" part of the solution.) This is strong stuff!

There are lots of questions yet to answer--like why is it that a catch share program always had a reduced allowable catch level? Is the theory right that catch shares make it easier to set the catch level properly? And what makes it possible for enough stakeholders to agree to close off areas of the ocean? What are the keys to community co-management, which seems to work in small-scale fisheries? I expect that the scientists will go back to their corners and duke out those questions. I can't wait.

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So long and thanks for all the fish

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

This post is co-authored with Discovery Channel GM & President John Ford.

-----

Photo: Willy VolkEvery half-second a shark is killed for its fins, so in the time it takes you to read this post, hundreds of sharks will die. “Finning," as the practice is known, is decimating shark populations world-wide. Every year up to 73 million sharks are caught, stripped of their fins, and left for dead in the ocean.

Shark fins are a delicacy in many Asian countries, and the market is expanding to other parts of the globe. Fishing boats can save cargo space and pack more shark fins by just cutting off the fins and throwing the rest of the shark back into the ocean. But a shark can’t survive without its fins.

Sharks are the ocean’s top predators. They sit at the apex of the food chain, and their presence balances out the populations of the ecosystem.

They’ve roamed the seas since hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs, adapted to perfection for their habitat and purpose. But many species of shark are now facing extinction because of finning.

Sharks are often large, slow-growing, and slow to reproduce. They just can’t be slaughtered in large numbers and still survive as species. Already some scientists believe that there are species that are “functionally extinct,” unable to perform their role as top predator.

Removing sharks from the food chain will have broad, cascading, and unpredictable effects. To see this, we can just look at the experience of removing top predators on land.

Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone National Park in the early 1900s. As a result, elk populations boomed, with unchecked numbers grazing on aspen trees. In turn, the aspen trees were decimated, and their loss had a devastating effect on animals that relied on the trees for their habitat -- songbirds and beavers, in particular. Moreover, with the aspen trees gone, there was little to prevent rivers and streams from eroding their banks.

Yellowstone’s ecosystem deteriorated until wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s. Then, the aspen stands recovered and with them the species they supported.

Sharks serve the same purpose in our world’s oceans, balancing out populations of species so the whole system works. To protect sharks, Congress passed the Shark Finning Prohibition Act in 2000. But the act left some big loopholes, and we are working together to push to close them.

The Shark Conservation Act of 2009 [introduced by Senator Kerry and supported by John Ford of the Discovery Channel] would ban any U.S.-flagged vessel from carrying shark fins without the rest of the shark, and they must be brought to port with their fins naturally attached.

The legislation also would protect the American fishing industry by allowing the United States to identify and take action against any countries that do not have a regulatory framework comparable to ours to protect sharks.

We’ve already got some great support for this bill. There are 10 co-sponsors in the Senate representing some of the biggest fishing regions in America. In addition, the Pew Environment Group has joined the cause, pushing for protection of these amazing species of fish.

This week, during the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, there’s no better time to step up the effort to end the disturbing and destructive practice of finning.

Time is running out on some species of sharks. If we don’t take action soon, some of them will become extinct. And with the oceans under increasing strain from the effects of the crisis of global climate change, we can’t afford to slaughter such an important part of the ecosystem past the brink of extinction.

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James Bond calls for more marine protected areas

If you're curious about critters that live under the sea, I recommend you check out The Reef Tank. The website started as an information source and community-building tool for aquarists, and to that end, it features product reviews, discussion forums, and even a marine species wiki.

But they've since realized that people who keep giant fish tanks as a hobby also care deeply about what's going on outside the fish bowl, so they've beefed up their blog with features about climate change, ocean acidification, and conservation efforts. In addition to interviews with scientists and other reef enthusiasts, they also regularly feature the work of notable contributors like Coby Beck and, oh yeah, me.

My latest post is about the Live Blue Initiative, a project of the New England Aquarium that calls on fish-huggers everywhere to pledge to "live blue" by reducing their carbon footprint.

So dive right in and check it out! And pledge to live blue while you're at it.

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School of hard knocksIn this month's Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook writes that privatizing the seas through use of individualized transferrable quotas (ITQs) is the solution to the grave problem of overfishing. Recently, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco came out strongly (PDF) in favor of ITQs (which the agency is calling "catch shares"), and has committed her agency to " transitioning to catch shares " as a solution to overfishing. Would that the solution to overfishing were so easy!

Today, fisheries managers set a "total allowable catch" (TAC) for open-access fisheries. A fishery is open until that TAC is reached. Not surprisingly, there is often a mad scramble to capture as large a share of fish as quickly as possible. Sometimes fisheries, like the pre-ITQ Alaskan halibut fishery, are only open for a few days, or even a few hours.

Catch shares work to eliminate this incentive to catch all of the fish today. Thus, Easterbrook contrasts the orderly halibut fishery in Alaska today with the free-for-all of the pre-ITQ days. And catch shares do make a fishery more orderly. When a boat has a right to a specified share of the TAC, it removes the incentive to catch each fish before someone else does, the so-called "fisherman's dilemma." ITQs seeks to solve this problem by enclosing the commons and creating clear private ownership rights.

I question the assumption, though, that private ownership will convert fisherfolk into stewards of the long-term health of the fishery. As the recent financial collapse has shown, merely having a market with clear private ownership rights does not protect against short-sightedness, misvaluation, and greed--all of which come into play when we talk about overfishing. All ITQs do is remove the economic incentive to catch the full TAQ immediately-they do nothing to address the more structural problems that bedevil fisheries management decisions: the political aspect of nominally scientific resource management decisions and overcapacity in the fishing industry.

First and foremost, catch-shares can only be an effective tool to prevent overfishing if fisheries managers set the TAC at an appropriate level. And therein lies the rub. In theory, the TAC is set scientifically, based on applying a fixed harvest rate to the estimate of exploitable biomass in the fishery. But fish recruitment fluctuates based on a host of environmental conditions-rendering the fixed harvest rate problematic. Fishery managers are under intense pressures not to lower a TAC, even when the long-term survival of a fishery depends on reducing or even eliminating fishing pressures. The levels of uncertainty involved in estimating "exploitable biomass in the fishery" make it very difficult to defend decisions with immediate and serious economic impacts.

That brings us to the real problem with fisheries-- overcapacity, often subsidized by the very governments Easterbrook accuses of poorly regulating the fisheries. The accusation is correct-fisheries are poorly managed, but I seriously doubt that ITQs are the answer. There are simply too many boats chasing too few fish. The argument that ITQs will result in lower fishing pressure depends heavily on the assumption that as the industry consolidates in the hands of "efficient producers," those producers will voluntarily retire a portion of their shares. This assumption of producer self-regulation is entirely speculative, and to my mind unlikely. The recent financial crisis is enough to give anyone pause about the ability of markets to self-regulate. Instead, we are likely to see near-monopoly catch share holders seeking to bend the TAC calculation to their short-term economic interests. This will happen against a backdrop of technical advances that facilitate fishing pressures undreamt of in the past, with immense floating fish processing factories decimating entire fish stocks in one go. It is hard to see how creating a market for trading catch shares will solve this problem.

Fisheries present an unusual set of challenges that make it extremely difficult to have effective regulatory oversight. Regulators have clearly defined geographies of authority but fish do not cooperate by staying in one place. Many fisheries straddle Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs - waters under the effective control of a coastal state) and the high seas (you may remember that Spain and Canada almost went to war over precisely this issue in the 1990s), rendering ITQs meaningless. The Alaskan Pollock fishery, for example, spans the so-called Bering Sea Donut Hole--a region of the high seas in an area otherwise within the EEZs of the United States, Canada and Russia. Other fisheries straddle the EEZs of more than one state, making decisions about TAC and catch share into international agreements. Even when a fishery is wholly within the EEZ of a single state, most coastal states do not have the capacity to enforce TACs within their jurisdiction, let alone police catch shares.

This is not even to mention bycatch--the dirty little secret of the fishing industry. At least half a million endangered marine mammals (PDF) and an unknown number of endangered sea turtles die every year as bycatch. By most estimates, at least 40% of every catch (PDF) is discarded as bycatch-fish other than the target species. ITQs are likely to exacerbate this problem because it creates a powerful incentive for fishing boats to discard not only unwanted or uncommercial fish, but also any fish potentially subject to someone else's share.

Moreover, the social justice implications of ITQs are troubling. Privatizing the ocean through ITQs further reinforces the same dynamic we see in other forms of privatization that accompanies development schemes around the world. A strata of society with access to capital, loans and equipment benefits richly but the poor become even poorer because they lose access to traditional resources.

This is not to say that catch shares are necessarily a bad idea, but neither are they a panacea. What's needed is a cultural change-subsidy removal for fishing fleets, new opportunities for fisher folk, and a recognition that there are real, albeit imperfectly understood, biological limits to ocean ecosystems. Uncertainty argues for precaution in setting TACs, no matter how economically inconvenient that is, and no matter how painful this will be for affected fishing communities in the near-term. There is not always another fish in the sea.

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So long and thanks for all the fish

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

De Rothschild hopes his catamaran made of plastic bottles will draw attention to the need to develop solutions to increase the recycling and reuse of plastic.Courtesy Adventure EcologySan Francisco's waterfront is but a Disney-fied ghost of its former life as a maritime hub. But amid the chi-chi cafés along The Embarcadero and the tourist trap faux crab shacks on Fisherman's Wharf, some actual boat building is going on.

Peer through the window of a battered green door at Pier 29 ½ and you'll see -- but not hear -- the form of a rather quirky catamaran quietly taking shape. That's because it's being built almost entirely of recyclable plastic that has been melted and molded to form hulls and bulkheads. Plastic bottles -- the universal symbol of a disposable consumer culture poisoning the planet -- form the pontoons and keep the boat afloat.

The Plastiki is the latest project of British environmentalist and polar adventurer David de Rothschild, the 31-year-old scion of the famous banking family. De Rothschild and his crew of five plan to set sail later this year for Sydney on a three-month voyage across the sometimes treacherous Pacific to draw attention to a host of environmental problems, from rising sea levels and coral bleaching to the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic trash twice the size of Texas.

Standing 6-feet-4-inches tall with shoulder-length brown hair and piercing eyes, de Rothschild is a media magnet -- a gaggle of reporters and television cameras recently gathered for the opening of the Plastiki Mission Control Center on Pier 45 as throngs of souvenir-hunting tourists passed by a window covered in a curtain of green plastic bottles.

But the pretty-boy messenger has an unconventional message. "For a very long time, plastic has been vilified as one of those materials we say that we have to ban," says de Rothschild, standing next to Plastiki's equally telegenic skipper, 29-year-old ocean-racing veteran Jo Royle. "We're looking at the Plastiki not to vilify the material but to understand it. A big part of this project is to use technology to innovate new plastics, innovate new uses. We have to move from Planet 1.0 to Planet 2.0."

In other words, don't outlaw plastic, but develop technological solutions to reuse, recycle and reduce. (Only 20 percent of those ubiquitous plastic water bottles are recycled, according to de Rothschild.)

The Plastiki -- an homage to the Kon-Tiki, the balsa raft that took Thor Heyerdahl from South America to Polynesia in 1947 -- itself is Exhibit A.

When de Rothschild's crew at Adventure Ecology -- his enviro organization -- found that pontoons of plastic bottles would make the craft uncontrollable, they scoured the world for material to add structural rigidity. The answer: self-reinforcing polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET is the stuff plastic bottles are made of but, srPET is a cloth-like material that contains plastic fibers that give it fiberglass-like strength. The cloth is heated and fused to PET foam to make panels for bulkheads and hulls. It's all 100 percent recycled and recyclable plastic.

"You start to realize this stuff is super lightweight and super strong -- this is a surfboard right here or a skateboard," de Rothschild tells me, holding up a piece of srPET. "It's a new type of material we are engineering. That helps us not only to achieve our project but has the ability to change an industry. Not just the naval industry but many other industries."

Look closely and you can see the plastic bottles that will make the Plastiki's two pontoons float.Photo courtesy ekornblut via Flickr."Imagine if you start changing business models," he adds, standing on a floor made of recycled Nike athletic shoes. "What if I as a company own your surfboard and you own the graphics that cover it. So every time your board gets damaged, you bring back to us and we'll give you a new recycled board and you buy new graphics. So you never really are having to generate new waste."

De Rothschild, who comes across as charming and self-effacing, declined to say what the mission will cost, citing confidentiality agreements with Plastiki's sponsors, but he indicated that it's in the mid seven figures.

The launch date for the mission was been delayed twice as the team works to solve the challenge of building an all-plastic boat that can withstand a transoceanic voyage. De Rothschild will only say the Plastiki will sail out of San Francisco later in the year (presumably before the Pacific cyclone season begins). He says he expects the hulls and cabin to be completed by the end of July.

Hewlett-Packard is equipping the Plastiki with computer and communications technology and has made the engineers and researchers at its HP Labs available to the Adventure Ecology team.

"They've allowed us the ability to throw crazy questions at them," says de Rothschild. "We'll say, 'How do we convert appliances for the boat and how do we create energy saving devices for the boat?' and they come back and say, 'We've been developing this and this' -- I'm not allowed to say what. They have this amazing thin-film solar technology they're working on which I hope we can try to include in the boat."

The Plastiki will feature stationary bicycles that will be used to generate electricity, a small wind turbine and "biodigestible composting" toilets.

An artist's rendering of the Plastiki.Courtesy Adventure Ecology"As you can imagine, electrical equipment and the washing machine-like environment we'll be living in don't mix too well," says Royle, the Plastiki skipper, pointing to an HP laptop computer. "This EliteBook will be used to run most of our onboard systems and not only is it 90 percent recyclable and fits in with our message about the Plastiki, it has been designed to withstand all the crashes of life in the field."

The catamaran's crew will be living in a geodesic dome-like cabin and blogging and vlogging about the mission, sharing the environmental data they collect. Each crewmember will also be wearing a gadget that will monitor heart rate and other biometric data that will then be broadcast to the Web. At Plastiki Mission Control, people can use HP touchscreen computers to follow the Plastiki's progress, learn about environmental issues and interact with the crew.

"My favorite demography is between 13 to 17 years old," de Rothschild says. "It's an age where kids start to make decisions, start to form their opinions. They say, 'I can do that, I can get out there.'"

So will de Rothschild be Twittering?

"I will. I'm Twittering now."

The Plastiki mission's Twitter handle is @Plastiki.

Next page: Videos about the Plastiki mission >>>

A promotional video about Plastiki produced by Adventure Ecology:

Watch an interview with de Rothschild conducted by 7x7 Magazine:

Read more Green State columns by Todd Woody.

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Think people who love the planet are all wimps and weenies? Think again. Here are thirteen who are giving green a bad reputation—in a good way. Read on to learn more about these Mother-lovers—and leave your own nominations in the comments section below.

Training day.Beige Luciano-Adams/ELLA13. Homeboy Industries. With the tagline “Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job,” you know these homeboys aren’t messing around. Thanks to an ambitious job-training program that includes solar-panel installation, the former East L.A. gang members are slashing energy use instead of each other.  “I wanted a new way of life,” says ex-convict Albert Ortega. “Solar puts me on the cutting edge.” Can we get that on a tattoo?

Bonds rallies support for her mountain home.OHVEC 12. Judy Bonds. It takes a badass to take on Big Coal, and Judy Bonds is doing it. The daughter of a coal miner and a self-described “hillbilly,” Bonds has gained international notoriety for her tough bituminous talk. It’s all an effort to protect her native West Virginia from the mountaintop removal practice she says turned her home into a “war zone.”

He wrestles with his conscience.11. El Hijo del Santo. This Mexican wrestler may hide his face with a silver mask, but he makes no secret of his intentions when it comes to the environment. As spokes-hero for the nonprofit WildCoast (CostaSalvaje), El Hijo del Santo is packing a world of hurt for the ocean’s enemies. Watch out, polluters—you don’t want to endure the Tope de Cristo.

The Isa-ing on the cake.eight double via flickr10. Isa Chandra Moskowitz. This vegan-punk chef is taking over the world—one decadent, dairy-free delicacy at a time.  As an author and co-founder of the cooking show Post Punk Kitchen, Moskowitz is bringing mainstream audiences two flavors of badassery for the price of one. But will punk officially be dead when The Man starts baking vegan cupcakes?

Global Coolio-ing.9. Coolio. When the rapper toured historically black colleges and universities to throw down the truth about climate impacts last year, he was fully armed—with stats. But earlier this year, Coolio made headlines by denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change. “The earth’s been doing this for millenniums,” he puffed on Celebrity Big Brother. Oh Coolio—stop blowing smoke up our ass.

An offer you can’t refuse.8. Wind farm mafia. Looks like the garbage biz is yesterday’s news: a leading mafia family got busted in a Sicilian wind-turbine scheme earlier this spring, leading to a major investigation into fraudulent power-selling practices. Translation: There was no wind in their sales.

That’s Mr. Mayor John to you.thecapsolution.org7. John Fetterman. The mayor of Braddock, Penn., is a big, bald, tattooed badass. Who just happens to have a heart of gold. “Mayor John,” as he’s known, is reinventing this downtrodden steel town in Pittsburgh’s shadow—and getting the word out about proactive climate and energy solutions. Yeah, that’s right, he’ll carbon cap your ass.

Just the flax, ma’am.EPA.gov6. EPA Criminal Investigation Division. Didn’t know the EPA had a Most Wanted list, did you? Didn’t know the agency tracked and shot its first eco-fugitive earlier this year, did you? The EPA: Not just for prairie grasses anymore.

Grr.5. Ah-nold. Yes, he’s the most overreported “unexpected environmentalist” of the new millennium. But how could we make this list and leave him out? We know what lies beneath the fancy suits, Arnold. Once a badass, always a badass.

Who you callin’ shrimp?Texas Gold4. Diane Wilson. A fourth-generation shrimper who captained her own boat, Wilson turned activist when she found out her Texas county was the most polluted in the country. The self-dubbed “unreasonable woman” took on Gulf Coast manufacturers, wrote a book about it, and hasn’t stopped fighting since.

His dedication is permanent.mytats.com3. Jess Yen. This award-winning southern California tattoo artist has a yen for influencing people’s perspectives on green issues. Amidst the tat-samples on his site, he dedicates some ink to educating clients about climate change—and gives 10 reasons to go vegetarian. “As an individual or an eco-tattoo artist,” he told one interviewer, “I do what I can every day to cherish and conserve the sacred resources.”

Don’t let the grandfatherly smile fool you: Ted is tough.governor.oregon.gov2. Ted Kulongoski. Sure, he looks like a gentle 69-year-old who merely “cares” about climate legislation, state parks, sustainable housing, and tailpipe regulations. But the governor of Oregon, whose second term ends next year, has a storied past that includes stints as a Marine, truck driver, bricklayer, and steelworker.  On top of that, he was raised by nuns—so you know he’s got a tough hide.

Munter puts it best: “Never underestimate a vegetarian hippie chick with a racecar.”NextEra Energy1. Leilani Munter. Stunt double? Check. Race car driver? Check. Biologist and conservation activist? Uh, OK. Munter doesn’t mess around when it comes to the environment: she hopes to educate racing’s 100 million racing fans about green living, serves as an ambassador for the National Wildlife Federation, has testified on Capitol Hill, and wants to convince her industry to use more alternative fuels. Says this CarbonFreeGirl: “Just because you’re green ... doesn’t mean you can’t be fast.”

This badass list was created by Ashley Braun and Katharine Wroth.

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It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford

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When I was growing up, my family lived in New Orleans for several years, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One of my father's friends had a boat, and he liked to take it out shrimping. My dad and I would often join him and his son.

I loved those early morning boat trips (except for the time that I got very seasick -- probably my fault for snacking on Fritos -- and the trip that I'm about to tell you about). The lake was so big that you could barely see the shoreline.

On one occasion, our nets were coming up empty, so my dad's friend steered the boat toward the mouth of the lake where it meets the Gulf of Mexico and ventured into a cove where he hoped to find some shrimp. Soon, the boat started dragging. We feared that the net had gotten snagged on the bottom of the lake. But when they winched it in, the cause turned out to be quite a bit scarier for my 10-year-old self.

The boat had gone right over a school of stingrays, which had probably ventured into the lake from the Gulf, and our net was full of them. As the net came up, it looked like they were going to spill into the boat. My dad and his friend struggled to release them without damaging the boat or the fishing equipment, but eventually they had no choice but to cut the net away.

I watched from the prow as those ghostly stingrays spread out beneath us, silently gliding away from the hapless weekend fishermen who had inadvertently disturbed them.

Drawing food from the sea is one of the most fundamental interactions that we can have with the our oceans, and I'm glad that I have those early experiences in New Orleans to draw upon. The stingray incident taught me a respect for the ocean and its creatures -- and a concern for how we interact with them -- that sticks with me today.

The fish we choose to eat -- and the way we fish for them -- can have a tremendous impact on our oceans. As part of a personal goal to eat healthier, I'm trying to increase the amount of fish in my diet. It's a lean protein with great health benefits. But there are risks, as well: Some types of fish can be contaminated with mercury and PCBs, and sometimes seafood is harvested in a way that's bad for the oceans.

A new Sustainable Seafood Guide from the Natural Resources Defense Council can help me -- and you -- make better choices about what we eat. It provides seven basic guidelines to follow when shopping for seafood or ordering at a restaurant, as well as specific advice about America's five favorite types of seafood, from shrimp to tuna to fish sticks.

I was a little disheartened to see that many of my favorite varieties of fish -- grouper, halibut, orange roughy, cod -- had landed on the recommended "avoid" list. (Pacific cod and halibut are OK, but the Atlantic varieties are badly depleted.) I was aware of the overfishing problems that many species face, but this put it in pretty stark terms.

Today is the first-ever World Oceans Day, designated by the United Nations as an occasion to celebrate and protect the world's oceans. And there are certainly a lot of problems facing our seas -- overfishing, habitat destruction, acidification, water pollution, giant trash vortexes in the Pacific ... the list goes on.

We might not be able to tackle all of those big problems all at once. But as NRDC's Laura Pagano suggests, one way that each of us can make a difference right now is to make smarter choices about the seafood we eat and understand its impact on the oceans.

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If scientists are correct, 2048 will be a terrible year for sushi restaurants. And diners selling tuna melts, too.

The End of the Line isn't going to make you feel so good about hitting the neighborhood sushi bar.In fact, if I had any money to invest in a seafood venture, Carl Safina's suggestion to "consider the jellyfishburger" may be the best advice. By mid-century, jellyfish may be the only "fish" left to catch.

Though it lacks the starpower of a certain former vice president, The End of the Line does for the fish what Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth did for the climate: scare the pants off the viewer. The documentary deftly makes the case that industrial exploitation of the world's fish stocks will result in the end of seafood by 2048, if not sooner, and that some species may already be in collapse.

Accompanied by many graphs, interviews with prominent marine scientists, and scenes of gruesome fishing practices, Charles Clover, a British journalist and narrator of this film, says that he first became aware of the dangers of overfishing when he mistakenly stepped into a meeting at The Hague in the early 1990s. "They said that trawling is like plowing a field seven times a year," he said. "As a farmer's son, I know that you can't possibly plow a field that often and expect it to produce."

The film particularly highlights the plight of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, whose breeding population may have already collapsed in 2007. Because high-end restaurants like Nobu fetch high prices for bluefin, some in the fishing industry have regularly ignored international quotas for the endangered bluefin, and the quotas themselves tend to be much higher than the science suggests.

In 2008, scientists recommended to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas that quotas should be set at 10,00-15,000 tons of bluefin per year to regenerate the fish stock. ICCAT chose to set them at 29,000 tons. And the fishing industry? It hauled 61,000 tons anyway.

The last 20 minutes of the documentary, which offer suggestions for how consumers can make changes, feel like an afterthought. And after the powerful first 70 minutes, which effectively frighten viewers about the state of the world's fish stocks, the consumer tips fall flat.

Though it's predictably grim (what environmental documentary about the oceans is going to be reassuring?), there were some moments that took me by surprise. Did you know lobster is on the upswing? And some fishing practices in the United States (yes, the U.S.A.!) are considered on the cutting edge of sustainable practices? What's more, any environmental documentary that ends with comforting words from former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens certainly knows its, um, fishy business.

Gruesome, candid, and definitely not a date movie, The End of the Line is required viewing for anyone who's ever snacked on the bounty of the sea.

Watch it: In honor of World Oceans Day, The End of the Line will show June 8 at the Seattle International Film Festival. Check the SIFF website for details.

For readers outside of Seattle, check the film's website for many screenings in the U.S. and the U.K. during the month of June.

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Photo: Christopher ChanAround the world, fishermen and swimmers are running into a problem: jellyfish. The slick, stinging blobs are showing up in increasing numbers, earlier in the year, and in more places than ever before. Is there a reason for the jellyfish invasion? Unfortunately, yes—and like most reasons for ocean decline, it relates to how we are changing the environment.

Data is lacking, but it’s likely that warmer waters help jellyfish grow faster and reproduce better. Also, overfishing can mean both fewer jellyfish predators and fewer competitors, which means more peace and more food for jellies. As large predatory fish are disappearing from the world’s ocean, we are left with the cockroaches of the sea: simple filter feeders like jellyfish.

Jellyfish in the Gulf of Mexico are so numerous they have clogged nets and prevented shrimp fishermen from making their catch. And as any fisherman will tell you, a sea full of jellyfish does not make for good fishing, swimming and boating (jellies can make children cry). Their abundance can disrupt the balance of marine ecosystems, and hurt the fisheries that depend on that balance.

But let’s not blame the jellyfish themselves—they’re simply thriving in an environment that we’ve created for them. Instead, we should take simple steps in our own lives to restore the balance of our oceans, so that fish, seabirds and marine mammals can live as they lived for millions of years before we started changing things.

One way we can do that is to support efforts to create more marine protected areas. Government-supported initiatives, like California’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), bring scientists, conservationists, and fishermen together to determine how to best protect our most threatened and unique ocean areas. The MLPA will create a string of underwater parks that, according to scientific studies, can be strategically placed in important spawning and nursery habitat in order to make marine habitats more diverse, healthy and bountiful.

By giving fish and wildlife a break from human impacts, marine protected areas help build strong communities of fish that keep jellyfish and other species like sea urchins in check, while also building resilience for marine ecosystems that are increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

If we don’t start building back the health of our marine ecosystems, we may need to start fishing for things that we never imagined. A jellyfish burger and fries may not seem so appetizing to your average American seafood lover, but the notion isn’t too far off. The Chinese have eaten jellyfish for over a thousand years. In Asia, these slippery snacks can fetch ten to twelve dollars a pound wholesale.

Culinary preferences aside, the increase of jellyfish in our ocean is indicative of a much larger problem. Our ocean is sick, and struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing demands for seafood.

But the ocean is more than just the food source for millions of humans. It is the lifeblood of our Earth, providing us with clean air, a regulated climate and a playground for ocean researchers, divers and surfers. By making smart seafood choices and supporting local marine protected area efforts like the MLPA, we all can work to improve our fisheries and ocean ecosystems, and in the process, keep jellyfish out of burger joints.

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Sven Huseby and his grandson Elias during production of the film A Sea Change.Photo: Daniel de La Calle

If you've ever doubted the power of the printed word, strike up a conversation with one Sven Huseby, whose entire life was changed by one article in the New Yorker.

The retired history teacher found himself one day reading Elizabeth Kolbert's "The Darkening Sea" and the next traveling all over the world in search of answers about ocean acidification -- with a documentary film crew tailing him all the way. The result is A Sea Change, a film about the largely underreported effects of excess carbon dioxide on the chemistry of our sensitive seas.

One reviewer has called it a "global warming horror documentary." And there is certainly plenty to fear as Huseby -- and the audience -- learns more and more about the threat of ocean acidification. He interviews scientists who tell him 118 billion metric tons (or 118 billion VW Bugs worth) of CO2 have already been absorbed by the ocean. He watches the enamel of a human tooth quickly dissolve after sitting in a cupful of carbonated water. He listens during a conference where scientists ask each other how they missed this big issue -- and whether we're already screwed (answer: probably).

Huseby and his trusty sidekick.Photo: Daniel de La CalleBut despite all this, A Sea Change emerges as more love story than horror flick. For one, the film is centered around Huseby's relationship with his (almost unbearably adorable) grandson, Elias, who serves as both sidekick-style comic relief and helpful narrative device as Huseby reports on the progress of his quest. The gap-toothed five-year-old is incredibly precocious and knowledgeable about the ocean environment ("no, it's a lungfish!" he says, pointing to a drawing he's made in the sand) -- perhaps it's an inherited trait.

A competing love story also develops as Huseby begins to learn about pteropods, a type of planktonic snail about the size of a lentil. They're known as "sea butterflies" because of the wing-like appendages that help propel them through the water, but the name is also apt to describe their frailty: the organism's thin, colorless shell disintegrates with the dip in pH associated with excess CO2.

They play a starring role in Kolbert's article and consequently become a sort of mild obsession for Huseby, who's shown Googling image after image of the transparent sea creature and cooing when he sees them alive for the first time in a lab. He's even planning to produce a children's book about them. But Huseby's crush isn't unwarranted: The humble pteropod serves as food for a large variety of fish who become meals for larger fish as well as birds and mammals (and us!), making them vital to the marine food chain.

A pteropod.Photo: NOAAThe pteropod isn't the only organism that will be affected by the increasing acidity of the ocean, though. Anything with a calcium carbonate-based skeleton or shell will have trouble making and maintaining those structures; these include corals, crustaceans like crabs, shrimp, and lobsters, and shellfish like oysters, clams, and mussels.

So what do we do about all this? Huseby goes there too -- or rather he goes to Norway and to Silicon Valley and other places around the world where exciting advancements are being made in solar, wind, and geothermal energy generation. He talks to the entrepreneurs and investors who are putting wind in the sails of a carbon-free energy economy. He walks on the beach with a young environmental lawyer who helped in the court cases that led to the EPA's determination that CO2 is a pollutant and should be regulated.

These scenes provide hope for what Huseby calls "our entrepreneurial opportunity, our chance to explore what's possible." And the conversations he had -- and continues to have -- with folks making bold moves in the right direction helped lift him out of the depressive state he appears to be in during some portions of the film.

And it's a good thing, too, because Huseby is more energized than ever in his quest to publicize the dual threats of ocean acidification and global warming. During a panel discussion following a Seattle International Film Festival screening, Huseby announced that he'll be attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December and will be showing the film there. He's also planning screenings for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a UN delegation. He's even been asked to testify on the topic in front of Congress.

"We have a 10-15 year window to make some noise," he said. "I would love to see the term 'ocean acidification' become part of the political discourse."

And thanks to this film -- and Huseby's love of the ocean -- it just might.

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In the Carteret Islands, Papua New Guinea, a rise in sea level is cutting off people’s supplies of fresh water and fertile land. The islands’ residents will be among the first people to be forced to migrate due to climate change.Photo by Toby Parkinson for Oxfam AmericaYou like media that matters -- you are reading Grist after all -- so check out the Media That Matters film festival. It's an online screening of shorts about pressing social issues, and this year the winner of the MTM jury award is a documentary on some of the first climate change refugees.

"The Next Wave" by Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger follows the Carteret islanders as they take steps to relocate their community, which is located on an atoll off the Pacific island of New Guinea (see a map of the Carterets). The islanders need to move because rising sea levels have polluted their fresh water wells with salt water. High tides flood more and more of the islands, and erosion is a growing problem.

This eight-minute film follows some of the Carterets as they travel to Tinputz on the nearby island of Bougainville to investigate relocation on the "mainland" (Bougainville is about two-thirds the size of Connecticut). According to the film, this is their third attempt at relocation.

Warning to Grist readers: this film is earnest. Very earnest. And it leans heavily toward lamenting the loss of the Carterets' cultural identity. But its message is loud and clear: climate change is real. Rising sea levels are going to displace a lot of people, and the aftermath is going to be much harder to deal with than we presently expect.

Redfearn is also working on a feature-length film, "Sun Come Up," on the Carterets. Find out more on the Redfearn's blog at the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Web site. Dan Box is also documenting the Carterets' migration on his blog and for BBC Radio 4.

Below is a video report Redfearn produced for the Pulitzer Center:

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