Reporter’s Journal: Disappearing Home
May07

Reporter’s Journal: Disappearing Home

By Melati Kaye A boy takes in the sunset on Barang Lompo, one of the Spermonde Islands in Indonesia. The loss of local reef cover from destructive fishing practices and soil runoff from the nearby city of Makassar exposes islands like Barang Lampo to extreme weather. Over the last thirty years, this tiny island, like others in the region, has lost a tenth of its landmass from the erosive force of storm surges and increasingly larger...

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Reporter’s Journal: Fighting poachers and Mother Nature
Apr07

Reporter’s Journal: Fighting poachers and Mother Nature

Fijians communities are largely in charge of managing their waterfront. Volunteer fish wardens in the village, appointed by the chief or the Minister, are the only official members of a village who can legally stop poachers. Though they rarely have any equipment to enforce protection of their tabus (swaths of temporarily protected marine areas inside their fishing grounds), they are harder pressed to fight the effects of climate...

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NY Times Article on Europe’s Hunger for Illegal Fish

Yesterday the New York Times printed an enlightening article on the massive illegal seafood trade in Europe.   It may be time for a moratorium on eating seafood altogether… The article can be accessed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/europe/15fish.html?scp=2&sq=fish+europe  An excerpt (by Elizabeth Rosenthal): “Fish is now the most traded animal commodity on the planet, with about 100 million tons of wild...

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