New York Times (June 23)
“First pineapples, now fish.” China is flexing its “economic muscle” with import bans that “pressure Taiwan.” The pineapple industry bounced back when public support rallied domestic consumption, but “Taiwan’s lucrative grouper industry is bracing for heavy losses after China’s recent ban on imports of the fish from the island.”
Tags: China, Domestic consumption, Economic muscle, Fish, Flexing, Grouper, Import bans, Losses, Lucrative, Pineapples, Taiwan
Bloomberg (June 8)
“It’s not like inflation is out of control in Japan. Far from it. Consumer prices rose 2.1% in April from a year earlier, finally reaching the BOJ’s target.” Nevertheless, “after a generation of ultra-low prices, Kuroda may not have appreciated how hard it is for Japanese to embrace something they haven’t had to deal with.” In April, fresh fish and vegetables rose by 12%, “including a nearly 100% increase in the cost of onions. Talk about eye watering.” The BOJ has worked for nearly three decades “to crank up inflation from dangerously low levels. How galling that Japan may not even want it.”
Tags: BOJ, Consumer prices, Dangerously low, Eye watering, Fish, Galling, Inflation, Japan, Kuroda, Onions, Vegetables
The Economist (May 27)
“Earth is poorly named. The ocean covers almost three-quarters of the planet.” While “the ocean sustains humanity. Humanity treats it with contempt.” One sign of this contempt is that “scientists expect almost all corals to be gone by 2050,” a time when “the ocean could contain more plastic than fish by weight.” Our very survival now hinges on successfully answering the question, “How to improve the health of the ocean?”
Financial Times (March 28)
“Helped by generous subsidies from Beijing, Chinese industrial fishing fleets are travelling further and further from their depleted home waters to find fish and squid, leading to growing tension with even friendly countries such as Argentina.”
CNN (December 1)
“Nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, by weight… Some 8 million tons of plastic trash leak into the ocean annually, and it’s getting worse every year. Americans are said to use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.” The potentially catastrophic impact largely lies beyond our gaze in remote places, like Midway Atoll, where birds are dying from plastic consumption. There is now also “growing evidence that fish may prefer eating plastic to food,” and that the nano-plastics and styrene that make their way into the food chain could have profoundly negative consequences for humankind.
Tags: Birds, Consequences, Consumption, Evidence, Fish, Food, Food chain, Midway Atoll, Nano-plastics, Oceans, Plastic, Remote, Styrene
Time (July 18)
We’ve been catching about 90 million tons of fish, the last great wild food, since the mid-90s and that’s simply “not enough to keep up with global seafood consumption, which has risen from 22 lb. per person per year in the 1960s to nearly 38 lb. today.” Worse yet, the U.N. reports that already “32% of global fish stocks are overexploited” so catches may decrease. Aquaculture and fish farms “might represent the last, best chance for fish to have a future.” Aquaculture is growing “faster than any other form of food production,” and now provides over 50 million tons of fish annually. Time believes, “if we’re all going to survive and thrive in a crowded world, we’ll need to cultivate the seas just as we do the land.”
We’ve been catching about 90 million tons of fish, the last great wild food, since the mid-90s and that’s simply “not enough to keep up with global seafood consumption, which has risen from 22 lb. per person per year in the 1960s to nearly 38 lb. today.” Worse yet, the U.N. reports that already “32% of global fish stocks are overexploited” so catches may decrease. Aquaculture and fish farms “might represent the last, best chance for fish to have a future.” Aquaculture is growing “faster than any other form of food production,” and now provides over 50 million tons annually. Time believes, “if we’re all going to survive and thrive in a crowded world, we’ll need to cultivate the seas just as we do the land.”
Tags: Aquaculture, Diet, Fish, Global population, Sustainability, U.N.
New York Times (April 10)
“Time is running out” for bluefin tuna, but an ingenious new hook may provide some relief. Commercial fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico, where the catch of bluefin is illegal, will now be required to use thinner hooks. The hooks still support yellowfin tuna and swordfish, but give way under the massive weight of a bluefin, thus preventing inadvertent bluefin catches. In just the last decade, the number of bluefin in the Atlantic and Mediterranean fell by over 60%. The New York Times lays the blame for the dwindling bluefin population on “vast overfishing fueled by Japan’s insatiable sushi appetite” and advocates a worldwide ban on the sale of bluefin to help stocks recover.
