BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England

Subject: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: The Shambles
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:05 PM

The Independant's front page story yesterday 30 July 2004. reported the complete failure of the seabirds of Orkney and Shetland to breed this year. Today they report that English seabird colonies are also affected.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546514

The scale of this failure is unprecendtent in Europe and is being linked by scientists directly to global warming and its effects in the North Sea on the bird's main food source - the sandeel. The temperature of the North Sea has risen by 2C in the last 20 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:13 PM

Get ready for the Big Freeze. Not good.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: The Shambles
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:19 PM

Yesterday's article should be here:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546138

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:28 PM

It doesn't help when Dutch trawlers suck up sand eels by the ton without hindrance from anybody. What do they do with them, I hear you ask? Well they're turned into either fish meal, which is fed to farmed fish, mostly salmon. Or they have their oil extracted to run a power station, which sort of makes them electric eels. No, it's not funny, it's fucking tragic, sand eels are a big link in the food chain for so many forms of marine life, and it shouldn't be happening. But what the fuck they're only little fish, and we're big fish, so we can wipe them out if we want: can't we??
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: The Shambles
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:30 PM

A bit more detail is here: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546129

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Amos
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 02:15 PM

LH:

I dunno about the Big Freeze -- these eco-disasters are presumably brought about through the rising temperature of North Sea waters. Up two degrees C in 20 years on the average, this destroys the viability of life forms low on the food chain.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 02:49 PM

Now if only something would reduce the number of seagulls...

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: The Shambles
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 04:05 PM

Kittiwake

A small and elegant gull which typically feeds in groups on the sea surface. Recent census recorded 16,700 pairs in Shetland; breeding failure this year 'almost complete'.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 11:09 AM

I've always preferred gulls to pigeons... why can't something like that happen to the pigeon population.

The most tragic thing is that we can do nothing about it immediately. We can campaign and demonstrate, but the damage is already done. We can't all just pack up a sand eel and post it to Orkney, as we would an aid package to Sudan....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:37 PM

My take on this isn't very helpful. I'm not happy about that, as I enjoy wild things and the wilderness more than most.

Sure, sand eels are hoovered up for fishmeal, 66% protein Capelin fishmeal. God knows, I've bought enough of the stuff for animal feed over the years. Animal feed requires high protein ingredients for meat production in pig and poultry feed rations, and as we in Europe have banned meat and bone meal for use in the diet of omnivorous animals, we now use either fishmeal or 60% protein maize gluten (Prairie Meal) to achieve a workable alternative. However, using the vegetarian option does not deliver the amino acid profile required, and therefore the farmed animal does not grow as quickly as the economic model requires, and therefore eats more food than the meat-eating equivalent from south east Asia (Thailand, mainly).

The only way that demand for vast amounts of factory food changes is either that volume food buyers switch to organically and inefficiently produced equivalents, vast numbers of the populace become vegetarian (on macro-economic grounds instead of personal health reasons) or everyone who cares about the planet commits suicide. Frankly, the third option is more likely than the first, in my opinion.

BTW, comparatively expensive fish oil isn't burned for generating electricity. The EU produced fish oil is used almost exclusively in farmed salmon feed, and the volume margarine manufacturers use hardened fish oil from Japan or South America so us European consumers won't whine about them depleting 'our' natural resources. Tallow is used for burning, and used vegetable oil is refined into biodiesel after its life in food production ends. We have been using it in animal feed in the UK, but it is banned for this use from 1st November this year, when all retail used frying oil will be used for non-food uses, mainly biodiesel. The only other possible increase in vegetable oil for burning is rapeseed oil produced from set-aside land, but I believe the political ramifications of burning food in a starving world are long-term unpalatable to the politicos.

So I guess as long as we want to eat more salmon than swim up rivers, we will see a massive reduction in North European sea birds as a direct result, and despite the factual nature of my posting, that saddens me. It seems that it is a market deciding.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:47 PM

< a href=http://www.idw.org/html/conservation.html> Scroll down to GREED THAT MUST BE STOPPED
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:49 PM

Try again

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 12:35 AM

That's true, Amos. Yes, the northern seas are getting warmer, but that's the very problem that may lead to a dramatic cold snap in Europe and North America...if it causes the ocean currents to change in a way that reduces or eliminates the Gulf Stream. It's a theory. I don't know it it's correct, but it may be.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: The Shambles
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 02:08 AM

The point is that birds, generally, whatever one's personal preferences are a visible indication of the the whole planet's health. The seabirds of the Northern Isles have been monitored for many years because of this. If entire populations of species, involing tens of thousands of seabirds fail to breed and this is proven- it is for the survival of you and I that should be the concern. We may not be able to detect the health of the marine system but the visibe effects on the scale that we are seeing now, should be alerting us to the fact that things are seriously wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 04:12 AM

And all the UK government can think to do is propose charging sea anglers a £22 a year licence fee. That'll stop the wiping out of sea birds! Try here

Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Seabird crisis - spreads to England
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 08:55 AM

The destruction of sealife isn't limited to the UK or its effects to birds. Its causes are not limited to ONLYs, such as "global warming causes..." but to ANDs -- "global warming AND fish sucking AND uncaring politicians AND...".

Salmon runs in Alaska are way, way, down and have been for several years. This affects the people who depend upon salmon for their main source of protein in the winter, wildlife such as bears and eagles (not to mention the less noticable suhc as mice, voles, and bacteria), and even the productivity of the land along their migration streams.

ONE reason is trawlers operating outside the US territorial limits. Another could be global warming affecting the Aleutian and Bering Sea currents. Pollution of the seabed could be a third. There are others to consider as well.

Damnit, it all TOUCHS!