Tag Archive for: Oceans

There’s Nothing Average About This Year’s Gulf of Mexico ‘Dead Zone’

Author: Andrea Basche

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released Thursday its annual forecast for the size of the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”—an area of coastal water where low oxygen is lethal to marine life. They say we should expect an “average year.” That doesn’t sound so bad, but as we wrote last year, the dead zone average is approximately 6,000 square miles or the size of the state of Connecticut. Average is not normal.

This is especially troubling when we know that solutions exist for reducing agricultural pollution, which contributes to the dead zone. And for many years, there’s been a lot of effort dedicated to reducing the dead zone’s massive footprint.

The Dead Zone Starts on the Farm

Dead zones—also known as hypoxic zones—can occur naturally, but human activity perpetuates their presence. Hypoxia in the ocean results from low dissolved oxygen, a state that occurs when excess pollutants, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, enter bodies of water. These pollutants have various natural and man-made sources, but they are critical nutrients for plant growth and thus the active ingredients in fertilizers applied to farm fields.

The movement of water causes nitrogen to “leach” through the soil or “run off” into bodies of water, while phosphorus most commonly escapes from farm fields with sediment and soil erosion. However they get into water, these pollutants make delicious food sources for algae, which “bloom” as a result of the buffet. Dead algae sink and decompose in water, which depletes oxygen, suffocating other marine organisms.

The second largest dead zone in the world is the one predicted Thursday, in the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River empties into the Gulf and many other bodies of water that run through the Corn Belt and other major agricultural regions of the U.S. feed the Mississippi.

It has been a wet spring across most of the U.S., including the Midwest and it is true that the amount of rainfall (and thus water moving through and over the soil) impacts the size of the dead zone from year to year. But so do the practices on farms and these are much more within our control than the rain.

KEEP READING ON ECOWATCH

The Seas Will Save Us: How an Army of Ocean Farmers are Starting an Economic Revolution

Author: Bren Smith

I’m a fisherman who dropped out of high school in 1986 at the age of 14. Over my lifetime, I’ve spent many nights in jail. I’m an epileptic. I’m asthmatic. I don’t even know how to swim. This is my story. It’s a story of ecological redemption.

I was born and raised in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, a little fishing village with 14 salt-box houses painted in greens, blues, and reds so that fishermen could find their way home in the fog. At age 14 I left school and headed out to sea. I fished the Georges Banks and the Grand Banks for tuna and lobster, then headed to the Bering Sea, where I fished cod and crab. The trouble was I was working at the height of the industrialization of food. We were tearing up entire ecosystems with our trawls, chasing fish further and further out to sea into illegal waters. I personally have thrown tens of thousands of pounds of by-catch back into the sea.

It wasn’t just that we were pillaging. Most of my fish was going to McDonald’s for their fish sandwiches. There I was, still a kid, working one of the most unsustainable forms of food production on the planet, producing some of the most unhealthy food on the planet. But God how I loved that job! The humility of being in 40-foot seas, the sense of solidarity that comes with being in the belly of a boat with 13 other people working 30-hour shifts, and a sense of meaning and pride in helping to feed my country. I miss those days so, so much.

But then in the early 1990s the cod stocks crashed back home: thousands of fishermen thrown out of work, boats beached, canneries shuttered. This situation created a split in the industry: the captains of industry, who wanted to fish the last fish, were thinking 10 years down the road, but there was a younger generation of us thinking 50 years out. We wanted to make our living on the ocean. I want to die on my boat one day — that’s my measure of success.

KEEP READING ON MEDIUM

 

https://regenerationinternational.org/2015/10/15/1115/

Bren Smith’s Vertical Ocean Pasture, The Wave Of Future Farming

Author: Linnea Covington

In Food Republic’s new series Game Changers, we take a close look at a few of the individuals working to change the way we view the food industry. First up is fisherman and vertical farmer Bren Smith.

Why would you plant acres of land when you can build a farm of the same size vertically in the sea? At least, that’s one of the questions that got fisherman Bren Smith of Thimble Island Oyster Co. thinking. After all, you don’t need fresh water, land or fertilizer to make his oysters, mussels, scallops and various types of kelp grow. So, with these things in mind, he created the first vertical farm in the country.

“The idea was to just grow things that are restorative and grow naturally in the water, which means they have zero impact,” says Smith, who runs his 40-acre farm off the Long Island Sound. “The beautiful thing about farming in the ocean is you can do multiple species, you aren’t fighting gravity, you can use the whole column and it’s very affordable.”

Though Smith has been involved in green farming since he started his company 13 years ago, the vertical approach came into practice in the last few years after hurricanes Irene and Sandy wiped out his original farm. After that, Smith got together with seaweed expert Charles Yarish of the University of Connecticut and redid his operation. It turned out to be so successful that he plans on replicating it soon in five different areas.

A vertical farm is an organized stretch of water that grows mollusks and seaweed in column form.

But what is vertical farming exactly? Simple. A vertical farm — also called a 3D ocean farm — is an organized stretch of water that grows certain mollusks and seaweed in a column, from the top to the sea floor. To make this method even more desirable, the species that inhabit these “rows” help restore the ocean by keeping it clean, healthy and more habitable to other sea creatures.

 

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Climate Change, Healthy Soils, and Holistic Grazing… A Restoration Story

Author: Savory Institute

Summary

Regenerating the health and productivity of our soils is critical for ensuring the Earth’s climate remains conducive to not only human life but other species as well. Moreover, we need to take direct action so that we have enough water and food to sustain a growing population of people. Livestock, properly managed, have a critical role to play in achieving these goals.

Reducing fossil fuel emissions is essential for curtailing the acidification of our oceans and for reversing the rapidly increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But it is just as critical that we greatly reduce the CO2 emissions tied to modern agricultural practices. In addition, there are still many billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere that need to be drawn down to Earth and safely stored if we are to maintain a livable climate for life on Earth.

The most obvious place to store this “legacy load” of CO2 is in our soils, where soil organisms convert it into organic matter, or soil organic carbon. The world’s soils, however, are unable to store the vast amounts of carbon they once did; scientists estimate our soils have lost up to 80 to 537 billion tons of carbon and that land misuse accounts for 30% of the carbon emissions entering the atmosphere.

Efforts to limit emissions from fossil fuel Combustion alone are incapable of stabilizing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Here we will shed light on the process of atmospheric carbon capture and storage that has developed in the natural world over millions of years, has minimal possibility for unintended consequences, and has myriad benefits for the health of lands worldwide as well as all dependent on them.

The quantity of carbon stored in soils is directly related to the diversity and health of soil life. Bacteria, fungi and other soil life convert carbon that plants have extracted from the atmosphere through photosynthesis into organic matter. When soils are healthy, soil life is healthy and more carbon is converted and stored.

Keep Reading on Revitalization News

The Solution Under Our Feet: How Regenerative Organic Agriculture Can Save the Planet

Author: John W. Roulac

Many of us are now choosing to eat holistically grown foods. We want:

  • more nutrition from our food.
  • to avoid toxic pesticides and GMOs.
  • to create safer conditions for farmers and rural communities.
  • to protect the water, air and soil from contamination by toxic agrochemicals.

While these reasons are important, one critical issue is missing from today’s conversation about food. The concept is simple, yet virtually unknown. The solution to our global food and environmental crisis is literally under our feet.

If you take away only one thing from this article, I want it to be this quote from esteemed soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal at Ohio State University:

NutivaLalCarbonQuote_1

Through the past hundred years, we’ve steadily increased our rate of digging up and burning carbon-rich matter for fuel. This is disturbing the oceanic ecosystem in profound ways that include reducing the plankton that feeds whales and provides oxygen for humans. And we’re not just talking about the extinction of whales. As I’ll detail in this article, even Maine lobsters could become a relic of the past.

We’ve severely disrupted the balance in the “carbon triad” by clearing rainforests, degrading farmland, denuding pasturelands, and burning coal and oil. The carbon triad? Yes; think of the three main carbon sinks: the atmosphere, the oceans and the humus-sphere. While I’m sure you’re familiar with the first two, you might not know about the latter carbon sink. Humus is the organic component of soil. (Gardeners create it as compost.) The humus-sphere is made up of the stable, long-lasting remnants of decaying organic material, essential to the Earth’s soil fertility and our ability to grow nutrient-rich crops.

Keep Reading On EcoWatch.com

Tag Archive for: Oceans

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