Oceans | Grist

Come Fry With Me

A sizzling test of seven eco-sunscreen brands 3
Posted 5 months, 4 weeks ago
You know you need protection from the sun's rays, and you don't want a product that will harm you or the planet. So what should you slather on? Grist staffers expose their flesh to help you figure it out.
Come sail away

Around the Americas mission raises sails—and awareness 0
Posted 5 months, 4 weeks ago
The crew aboard the Ocean Watch aim to educate as they navigate 25,000 miles around North and South America.
a watery end

Oceans’ alarm: what the sea is trying to tell us 0
Posted 6 months ago
Whether you believe in end times or not, the oceans are sending clear signals that they are in distress.
Documentary touches the heart of ocean acidification

A Sea Change on film 0
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
"A Sea Change" is a new documentary on ocean acidification that follows retired educator Sven Huseby on a mission to Norway and Alaska to investigate the problem of too much atmospheric carbon and its detrimental acidifying effect on the marine food chain.
Response to Mark Bittman

Food writers and the state of the oceans 9
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Fishing for trouble

Bittman takes a bite out of the ocean 20
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Mark Bittman's a great food writer -- and that's why it pains me to call him out for pushing red snapper in his latest "Minimalist" column in The New York Times.
Kind of Bluefin

Umbra advises on tuna and mercury 6
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Which is safer for you and the planet: mature tuna, juveniles, or none at all?
Icier Depths

Q: How much can West Antarctica plausibly contribute to sea-level rise by 2100? 0
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Exxon redux

The ocean does represent a major source of energy, just not the one you’re thinking of 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
In the minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez poured 10.8 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. The spill turned pristine spruce-lined waters into a sticky death trap for countless animals, including a quarter of a million birds.
Water out of fish

Why the foodie press needs to do better work on seafood 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
I recently finished Taras Grescoe's wonderful, vitally important book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. Everyone who loves seafood and would prefer to be able to enjoy it in 20 years must read it.

Basic message: overfishing, pollution, climate change, and abusive aquaculture practices threaten to turn the oceans into vast pools of jellyfish, seaweed, slime and little else, within our lifetimes -- unless we change things fast.

And changing things fast means being hyper-conscious about what seafood we eat. For Grescoe, that means focusing mainly on so-called "trash" fish -- utterly delicious, low-on-the-food-chain stuff like anchovies and sardines. These magnificent creatures now get harvested en masse, to be ground into meal and oil to feed the ravenous maw of the aquaculture industry and its flavorless "salmon," "shrimp," etc.

Other good choices are farmed oysters and stuff that you know comes from artisanal fishermen. It turns out that small-scale fishermen who supply their nearby communities tend to be much better stewards of the seas than the vast industrial fleets that dominate fisheries.

Of course, relying on individual consumer choice to save the globe's fisheries is likely futile. The problems are so dire and immediate that we need concerted, global governmental intervention, as Grescoe makes clear in his conclusion.

Until that happens, there's an urgent need to educate the public about the dismal state of the oceans. The effort starts with food journalists -- people who have a direct impact on the public imagination about fish.

It seems to me that food journalists have generally failed at this task. I see examples all the time of foodie articles blithely extolling the culinary virtues of this or that fish species, without considering the impact of consuming them.

In an extremely evocative piece in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, NYT culture editor (and former food-section editor) Sam Sifton goes in search of the perfect homemade fish taco. The piece certainly isn't the most egregious example of ocean-blithe foodiness I've ever seen. But given Sifton's position, he should do better -- so I'll take him to task.
California has much to lose from rising sea levels, study says 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
The case for—and against—eating those suddenly pervasive, stinging sea creatures 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
A volunteer army takes on oceans of trash 1
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago
Shell and High Water

Climate change: Acid oceans transform marine life, says study 0
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago
Former Washington Gov. Locke would bring a strong voice for oceans to Commerce 3
Posted 9 months ago
The case for small-scale fishing communities 6
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago
Looking at climate change from a regional perspective 3
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago
Integrating science with management and policy at the Puget Sound Georgia Basin Ecosystem Conference 2
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago
West Antarctic ice-sheet collapse means more catastrophe for U.S. coasts 5
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago
14 Green Couples

Read about six couples who turned their eco-love into an eco-venture ... 15
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago