I love salmon-- honestly, who doesn't? But if you knew what was behind farm-raised salmon, would you still want to? If you say "yes", I can only assume it is because you do not know what follows...
"Salmon farms differ fundamentally from terrestrial farms because their effluent flows directly, untreated into contact with wild species. While scientists have dubbed salmon farms pathogen culturing facilities (Bakke and Harris 1998), both provincial and federal governments in British Columbia refuse to examine the fate of bacteria, parasites and viruses emanating from salmon farms. Salmon are designed to move. Epidemics in wild fish are extremely rare, because, when pathogens strike - the sick drop out of the school and are eaten by predators.
Intensive farming, however, breaks natural laws of density, distribution bio-diversity and survival of the fittest. Disease is nature's relentless response to over-crowding and so the farmers have to resort to drugs. Small bays which might support a few hundred salmon in intermittent bursts throughout the year, are now filled with up to 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 stationary salmon. This is the best thing to happen to fish pathogens on this coast since the glaciers receded. In such close proximity, the feces of the crowded fish pass over each
other's gills. Because the fish are confined and unable to migrate, pathogens accumulate into a rich broth. Antibiotics can keep most farm salmon alive long enough to reach market size, but leave the fish contagious, shedding pathogens into marine currents."
http://www.raincoastresearch.org/salmon-farming.htm
Think I'll pass,
Mark
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Saturday, April 18, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
The 6th Ocean Film Festival
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| SAN FRANCISCO OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL 2009 ROLLS OUT BLUE CARPET Benign sharks. "Commando kayakers". Finless surfing to seaside chamber music. You don't see them everyday. But all will be shown on screen when the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival returns February 19-22 for four days of the best ocean films and filmmakers from around the world. Now in its sixth year, SFOFF 2009 will feature more than 30 films from around the world, including deep dives into marine science, coastal cultures, ocean exploration and saltwater sports. As in the past, programs will include talks by filmmakers and content experts. For the full program schedule, film information and trailers, visit www.oceanfilmfest.org/films.html For full immersion, get a Festival Pass good for all films at the Cowell Theater for $60,
Pirate for the Sea 7pm Friday; Eastern Horizons 10am Saturday; Call it Home: Searching for Truth on Bolinas Lagoon 4pm Sunday; Ice Bears of the Beaufort 4pm Sunday
ECO-PIRATES The Festival opens on Friday, February 20, with Ron Colby's feature Pirate for the Sea, hot from its premiere at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival. The film follows the adventurous life of eco-activist Paul Watson, leader of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, widely considered to be the most aggressive organization fighting to save the ocean environment. Director Ron Colby is expected to attend. SHARK ALERT! A particular highlight of this year's festival will be a special program on sharks: a diverse package of short films that examine one of Nature's most exquisitely designed, extremely misunderstood and severely threatened oceanic creatures. Join conservation filmmaker David McGuire for this special screening and discussion with filmmakers and local shark experts. The program will include David's new documentary, The City of the Shark, that reveals the lives of sharks in the San Francisco Bay. Other shark related films in the program include Great White Shark - A Living Legend, directed by Joe Kennedy about the sharks of South Africa; Sharks in Deep Trouble by Leslie Rochat; and The Man in the Grey Suit by returning filmmakers Roger Teich and Ron Elliott.
Musica Surfica 7pm Saturday; Between the Tides 4pm Saturday; In The Wake of the Belgica 1pm Sunday; Peace with Seals 10am Sunday
OPENING NIGHT PARTY Tickets are now available for our Festival kick-off on Thursday, February 19. Join us for the Festival's Opening Night Party and celebrate with ocean filmmakers and special guests at the beautiful Aquarium of the Bay on San Francisco's waterfront. We have a great selection of Bay Area restaurants and vineyards taking part, with a focus on sustainable seafood. Live music from Huna Wai Hawaiian Band and Mighty Mississippi will take us into the night. Tickets are on sale now at $60 each. Tickets are limited and last year this event sold out in advance - so be sure to get yours soon! FESTIVAL PASSES Treat friends, family (or yourself) to a Festival Pass, the most popular, and affordable, way to enjoy all that the Festival has to offer. At $60, this pass covers all 8 film programs at the Cowell Theater, February 20-22. New for 2009 ~ we've an additional screening on Friday night, adding more film, more discussion, and more value to your pass! Save even more and get an all-access pass to the Festival in our best deal yet: your VIP Festival Pass covers the Opening Night Party at Aquarium of the Bay and all screenings at the Cowell Theater for $110.
Dopamine 1pm Sunday; Rethink the Shark 1pm Saturday; Pearl Islands: The Story of Bahrain's Natural Gems 10am Saturday; Silent Snow 7pm Saturday
SUPPORT THE FESTIVAL Ticket and pass sales only cover a small percentage of the costs of producing the film festival. Your support helps underwrite the cost of producing this annual showcase of independent films from around the world - many of which will not be seen again in the Bay Area. Every dollar donated goes towards helping us bring the year’s most exciting marine films and filmmakers to San Francisco, and to expanding our festival audiences. SFOFF is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.  |
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Ocean Minds
Life on earth began in the ocean and then moved onto the land. But one precocious line of mammals returned to the sea. How has water shaped the minds, the bodies, the sensory worlds and the societies of whales? Our guide is Jeff Warren. Jeff is an explorer of consciousness in its various forms. In 2007 he published a book called The Head Trip: Adventures on The Wheel of Consciousness. He's spent the past 2 years thinking about whales and dolphins, visiting researchers in their labs and in their boats around North America and the Caribbean to find out what they're learning about mind, culture and society in the ocean.
Listen to the show.
Mark~~~~
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Wavelets in nature?
For eight years now I have been exploring the acoustics of birds, whales and dolphins using wavelet analysis. Why use wavelets? Simply because spectrograms were too limited, in my opinion, in what they could show you about a signal. They tell you the characteristics of a sound in the frequency domain. That is all.
Although wavelets have been useful in this exploration, even, perhaps, aesthetic-- they were still just a tool, another way of considering the structure of sounds. Then I found an interesting behavior in the song of a Blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus. There is a note about that here.
Since then I thought that this extraordinary song might be the only example of this kind of relationship; that is, wavelet coefficients increasing with wavelet scale.
Six months later, continuing with my explorations, now on the completely opposite end of the frequency spectrum used by cetaceans, I found the same behavior. The echo-location click-trains of a White-beaked dolphin, at around 150,000 Hertz, are the highest frequency sounds I have worked with. And the higher you go in wavelet scale, the higher the values of the wavelet coefficients.
Which led me to wonder, how close does a sound have to be to the shape of a wavelet base function, in order for it to be considered a reasonable facsimile of one? I take it as a given, perhaps incorrectly, that reproducing a wavelet base function as a sound may be done only approximately-- certainly for most of the bases in common use [ there are technical reasons for supposing this ]. But it may be that approximately is good enough to be useful.*
What are we talking about, exactly? Here is a graph of the amplitude waveform of an echo-locating White-beaked dolphin, Lagenorhynchus albirostris.
And here is a graph of the relationship between wavelet scale and the maximum values of the wavelet coefficients of a biorthogonal 3.1 transform of this sound, ending at 19000.
Finally, here is an image of the transform itself, with scales on [1..19000]. Left-to-right is about 1/25th of a second, low-scales at the top, high at the bottom. The sample rate used for this recording was 705,000 samples per second, so 19000, although it sounds high, is only considering 24/1000ths of a second of the sound at a time.
* Since this first draft I have re-written some code to go much higher in wavelet scale (than 19000) without creating an image (because it can take weeks to render an image at these scales). At the time of this writing I can document wavelet coefficients for this waveform in the low-200s (at just over 228). Thus, it would appear that we are no longer discussing a sound in nature that is a useful approximation of a wavelet base function. This sound may actually be a wavelet base function within the limits of what is physically realizable.
And yet, it is made by a dolphin.
Mark
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Whales in a Changing World
The 11th International ACS Conference will be held November 14-16, 2008, in Monterey, California. Photography Workshop
Thursday - November 13, 2008
Field Trip
Friday - November 14, 2008
Conference
Saturday and Sunday
November 15 & 16, 2008
American Cetacean Society conferences have a long tradition of presenting the latest findings and news about whales and other marine life. We also work to promote discussion and thought about the role and conservation of whales in an ever-changing world, and leave attendees motivated to work together for the good of the whales
American Cetacean Society conferences are open to everyone - you don't need to be in the field to participate. So come, be energized and enlightened, and immerse yourself in "Whales in a Changing World".
More information is at:http://acsonline.org/conference/changing2008/
I hope to see ya' there,
Mark
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Saturday, May 17, 2008
Bryant Austin in Monterey, May 29th, 2008
Bryant Austin: An Artist Working Intimately With Whales To Save Them
* Thursday, May 29, 2008
* 7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
* Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station,
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
* Speaker: Bryant Austin, Artist and Conservationist
Bryant Austin is a fine art photographer who produces life-size photographs of whales to fulfill his vision of inspiring change within countries who continue to hunt or harm these creatures.
While the scale of his envisioned works is impressive, reaching up to 15 feet in height and 90 feet in length, it is the subtle and varied expressions in the eye of the whale and the emotions they evoke in us that he explores in-depth. He collaborates with experienced whale biologists and invests entire seasons with specific whale populations. He seeks out genuine connections with his subjects, and then, at a mere body's length from the whale, he begins the process of composing a series of photographs along the whale's body, ultimately producing a full-size composite.
An exhibition of Bryant's work is now on display at the La Mirada facility of the Monterey Museum of Art through May 18, 2008. The next scheduled stop for his exhibit is the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) Annual Meeting in Santiago, Chile. There he will share insights into his joint collaboration with the World Society for the Protection of Animals where together they are working to inspire unexplored thoughts, emotions and ultimately change from the IWC delegates and attendees.
At the May presentation for our Chapter we will receive an exclusive preview of the audio/visual installation Bryant will bring to the IWC Annual Meeting. Please join us to celebrate Bryant's work and his mission to save the whales.
See ya' there,
Mark
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