Who Knew?

The US Treasury is going to issue new National Sites Quarters in 2010. Vermont has nominated the Appalachian Trail for theirs. I bet Maryland will pick Fort McHenry.

Destroying The Oceans

One little fish at a time.

Per capita meat consumption more than doubled over the past half-century as the global economy expanded. It is expected to double again by 2050. Which raises the question, what does all that meat eat before it becomes meat?

Increasingly the answer is very small fish harvested from the ocean and ground into meal and pressed into oil. According to a new report by scientists from the University of British Columbia and financed by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, 37 percent by weight of all the fish taken from the ocean is forage fish: small fish like sardines and menhaden. Nearly half of that is fed to farmed fish; most of the rest is fed to pigs and poultry.

The problem is that forage fish are the feedstock of marine mammals and birds and larger species of fish. In other words, farmed fish, pigs and poultry — and the humans who eat them — are competing for food directly with aquatic species that depend on those forage fish for their existence. It’s as if humans were swimming in schools in the ocean out-eating every other species.

The case is worse than that. When it comes to farmed fish, there is a net protein loss: it takes three pounds of fish feed to produce one pound of farmed salmon. This protein pyramid — small fish fed to farmed fish, pigs and poultry that are then fed to humans — is unsustainable. It threatens the foundation of oceanic life.

Here in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay much of the menhaden is caught. The town of Northeast for many years had the largest commercial catch of any town in the country because of the menhaden. Now they are just catching a fraction of what they used to catch. Rockfish, the Maryland state fish, love menhaden. But now you will find rockfish feeding on blue crabs. Sadly, the blue crab has declined precipitously in the bay. The waterman and a way of life is soon to be lost forever.
Via Cab Drollery.

Wow!

And way to go Donna Edwards. I am Amazed that Edwards is the first black woman to be elected to congress from Maryland.

Donna Edwards became the state's first black woman to be elected to Congress after easily defeating Republican Peter James Tuesday night in a special election for the vacant 4th District seat.

With 74 percent of the precincts reporting by 10 p.m., Edwards had captured 79 percent of the vote.

Edwards, an activist and lawyer, will serve out the remainder of former Rep. Albert R. Wynn's term. Wynn, who lost to Edwards in the February primary, left office May 31 to join a powerful lobbying group, leading to Tuesday night's election. She will serve the rest of the year.

"It really didn't hit us about the element of history, but what it says is that we're ready for change and for people who represent all of us," said Edwards, 49.