Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from May 2001

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from May 2001

Empty oceans: (the decline of fish in the Atlantic Ocean).
May 1, 2001... John Cabot sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1497 to what he called "New Founde Lande." He reported that the cod were so numerous in the water off the island's coast that "they sometimes stayed his shippes." Fishing itself was a poor test of...

Food chain: everything starts with plankton.
May 1, 2001... These microscopic little guys are at the bottom of the marine and freshwater food chains. Scoop up a litre of lake water and you might capture as many as 500 million planktonic organisms. There are two main groups -- phytoplankton and...

Atlantic cod: the cod-forsaken island.
May 1, 2001... They came from England and Ireland and settled on the southern coast of Labrador and the east coast of the island of Newfoundland. These first immigrants to Newfoundland were entirely dependent on the Atlantic Cod. Early each summer, the...

Northeast Atlantic: another fine mess.
May 1, 2001... The fishery on the European side of the North Atlantic appears to be in a mess. A scientific survey in the summer of 2000 said the survival of all species is threatened by pollution and overfishing. Carried out by OSPAR, an international marine...

Great Lakes: chemical soup.
May 1, 2001... From the western end of Lake Superior to the eastern extremity of Lake Ontario is a little under 1,300 kilometres, as the crow flies. This makes the Great Lakes the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. The lakes are also home to the world's...

Pacific salmon: sounding the alarms.
May 1, 2001... The Pacific coast fishery used to be dominated by salmon. The salmon spend their adult lives feeding in the rich ocean waters off the West Coast of North America. At the end of its life each salmon returns to the same freshwater stream in which...

Aquaculture: the blue revolution.
May 1, 2001... While the number of wild fish plummets, those raised in captivity are getting more numerous. The process of rearing fish in controlled conditions is called aquaculture or fish farming. Starting from an insignificant total production, inland...

Bycatch: innocent victims.
May 1, 2001... More than 27 million tonnes of "untargeted" fish and other marine creatures are caught and thrown away each year by the world's fishing fleets. That's almost a third of the total world catch. The vast majority of this "bycatch" does not...

Eating choices: off the menu.
May 1, 2001... A number of conservation groups are trying to persuade consumers to avoid eating certain species of fish. The idea is that by reducing demand, fishers will ease up on the catch giving threatened species a chance to recover. The Monterey...

Whaling: giant killers.
May 1, 2001... Whales, of course, are mammals. But, the industry that grew up around their capture and exploitation belongs among the world's fisheries. There's evidence that whales were hunted and killed in prehistoric times. There's also evidence...

World report: expolited to death.
May 1, 2001... Unfortunately, Canada is not alone. More and more warnings are coming in about fisheries around the world collapsing or nearing collapse. First a bit of history from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): "For the two decades...

Databank (of fish information).
May 1, 2001... World fishery production in 1997 in millions of tonnes: 122 Percentage of this consumed by humans: 76% Number of times this is greater than 1950: six Probable total world aquaculture production of finfish, crustaceans, and molluscs...

In brief: (information on fish).
May 1, 2001... "Pelagic" fish are fish that swim near the water's surface. Examples include: herring, tuna, salmon, anchovy, pilchard, sardine, menhaden, and mackerel. Molluscs are invertebrate animals that come in six classes. The most familiar are the...

No Way to Treat a Friend.(water history and usage)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... "In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it." Lao-tzu (sixth century BC) The first important human settlements grew in the valleys of the Tigris...

It's Not Inexhaustible.(fresh water supply)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Water is the fundamental resource without which life, in the forms we understand it, will cease to exist For something most of us think of as being very dull, water does have some astounding features: * A human can live for about a...

Too Much of a Good Thing.(water usage and monitoring)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Canada with only half of one percent of the world's population, has 5.6% of the world's supply of fresh water, but we're using too much and we're not taking very good care of what we have A Canadian family of four uses about one tonne of...

Using and Abusing.(water supply)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Worldwide consumption of water is doubting every 20 years, so it should come as no surprise that there's a shortage now, and this is going to reach serious levels in a very short space of time. One place where the shortage is becoming critical...

Running Dry.(water shortage)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... At the start of the 20th century there were 1.65 billion people on Earth; one hundred years later there are more than six billion people, and the United Nations estimates there mill be nine billion people by 2050. But, the annual supply of...

Dust To Dust.(desertification)
May 1, 2001... Deserts are growing around the world and one may be coming soon to a neighbourhood near you The Sahara Desert has an area of about 9,065,000 square kilometres, and covers parts of ten countries in northern Africa. It's the largest desert...