Michael Pollan speaking at BioneersBioneers is going on this weekend in California and green inventors, entrepreneurs, activists and enthusiasts from around the world are now gathered together talking about all that’s new and trendy and amazing in the green world. One of the keynote speakers was Michael Pollan, and I watched his speech this afternoon, after spending a hour or two roaming the Alemany Farmer’s Market in San Francisco and marveling at how much more beautiful the food was with its dirt-crusted glean in the afternoon sunshine, rather than the neon bulbs that distort the colors of the rotten spots from sitting for too long on the garlic I end up buying down the street in a pinch…

Photo Credit: Henkimaa

Pollan gave a great speech about the state of food production and what needs to change. It was great.

Read more >

The file clam is electrifying, to say the least. Watch this documentary snippet to see this amazing clam "show its stuff".

This is some of the best conservation news I've heard in ages. The island nation of Palau has decided to ban shark fishing in its waters, a territory of ocean about the size of Texas.  The New York Times points out that the tiny, impoverished nation of 20,000 is going to have trouble policing the ban, but it still remains an important step in the preservation of the oceans.


Read more >

Geoducks in an aquarium.: courtesy Flickr user cubemateA Geoduck (pronounced like 'gooey duck') is a weird one. There are creatures you see and think to yourself, damn, that's weird. Things like Big Foot, unicorns and giant spiders. The geoduck is in that category, except it's actually in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest too. Besides having a rather odd appearance, like a two-foot meat tube with a wallet glued to its back, these weird clams have several other qualities that push them deeper into the weird animal file.

Geoducks are among the oldest living creatures on Earth with an average age of 146 years. That's a long time to spend in a tributary in Seattle. Only a handful of animals survive longer, including some tortoises, some boring ass sponge from Antarctica and some other boring slimes and microscopic things. None of those animals are more action packed and exciting than the Geoduck.

Read more >

I went vegetarian-ish earlier this year, and I have eaten a lot of Filet 'O Fish sandwiches since then.  (I call myself "vegetarian-ish" because I do eat seafood.  And as you may have noticed, fish is not a vegetable.)  I have had ample time to study the little cardboard box, with its printed message that "McDonalds Supports Sustainable Fishing."  Conspicuously missing from the box is any information on what kind of fish is in that Fillet!


Read more >

If you’ve ever watched salmon spawn—okay, you probably have never actually sat by the water and passed the time watching salmon spawn, but you’ve probably seen them on TV or something—you know what hell these little fish already endure just to reproduce. Hell, if our moms and dads died just trying to get us fertilized, they’d be like, no way, I’m heading off to the East Australian Current with the turtle hippies; screw spawning.

So it’s like adding insult to injury continuing on with Bush II’s federal plan for salmon in the Colombia and Snake Rivers—which was to pretty much sit and do nothing.

Read more >

France's river Seine, which begins at the coast across from the English channel, near Atlantic SalmonHonfleur and runs right on through Paris and past, was used as a dumping ground for centuries. The Seine around Paris was so polluted by human and animal waste in the middle ages that there were bawdy French rhymes about it. But elsewhere, outside of Paris, the Seine was teeming with life, and provided not only lesser fish for human consumption, but salmon, the king of fish. But that changed, as more and more industrial waste was dumped into the river, so that by 1995 only the more tolerant species—only four of those (specifically, eel, carp, bream and roach) were to be found.

Read more >

The thing I feared and wrote about in Lobster the New Bologna has come to pass.

Read more >

Arctic Cod

If you’ve seen Earth or An Inconvenient Truth, or you’ve read any reports about global warming lately, you probably know how fragile the Arctic ecosystem is today. The bowhead whale, walrus, sea bird, polar bear and many other species are literally facing life-or-death struggles as their habitats change and decrease.

These problems, caused by global warming, industrialization, and ocean acidification, are largely exacerbated by human activity, which means that we have the power to take measures to harm—or to help.

Right now, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce is deciding on whether or not to allow these waters to be open to industrial fishing. Such activity would further deplete the Arctic area, wiping out these creatures’ food sources even more and causing them additional stress—as well as death.

Read more >

Shame on you, Trader Joe’s. Chilean sea bass and orange roughy aren’t fish that should be regularly on the shelves in the store; they’re the kind of fish that cause fishermen to destroy habitat as if they’re all nautical Terminators.

According to Greenpeace, Chilean sea bass, considered “red list seafood,” are so scarce that Trader Joe’s actually has to hired pirates to catch them—and that, if not protected, will be extinct within five years. Then what will you sell, Trader Joe’s—crappie?

I thought it was illegal to sell endangered fish, anyway?

Read more >