chuckanuttransition.com
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact Us
    • Newsletter sign-up
  • Sustainable Samish Garden Tour
  • Rural Rhythm Revival - Blog
  • Events & Workshops - Blog
  • Resources
    • Commercial Kitchens
    • Classifieds
    • Transition Book Store >
      • Seeds For A New Day
      • Serving The Skagit Harvest Cookbook
    • Newsletter Archive

What do honey bees and sardines have in common?  They are both a canary in the coal mine when it comes to the health of our food chain and food security.

4/20/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Three articles on poisons and their effects on our food chain and food security.
Cheers,
Ranger

On the topic of the NEONICOTINOID PESTICIDES, here's the scholarly link.
http://services.santabarbaraca.gov/Files/Parks_and_Recreation/Neonics%20in%20Runoff/Neonicotinoid%20Pesticides_Not%20Just%20Bees.pdf

Here's the NY Times article: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/business/energy-environment/pesticides-probably-more-harmful-than-previously-thought-scientist-group-warns.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-2&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pg&_r=0


On the beach below my house we used to go down and toss the star fish back out in the water at low tide –there were thousands of them .....TODAY NOT one anywhere !!   Catastrophic chain reactions eventually get to the top of the food chain
~Janet Needler
 
Food Chain Catastrophe: Emergency Shut Down Of West Coast Fisheries: "Populations Have Crashed 91 Percent"
By Mac Slavo

Earlier this week Michael Snyder warned that the bottom of our food chain is going through a catastrophic collapse with sea creatures dying in absolutely massive numbers. The cause of the problem is a mystery to scientists who claim that they can’t pinpoint how or why it’s happening.
What’s worse, the collapse of sea life in the Pacific Ocean isn’t something that will affect us several decades into the future. The implications are being seen right now, as evidenced by an emergency closure of fisheries along the West coast this week.
On Wednesday federal regulators announced the early closure of sardine fisheries in California, Oregon and Washington. According to the most recent data, the sardine populations has been wiped out with populations seeing a decline of 91% in just the last eight years.
Meeting outside Santa Rosa, California, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to direct NOAA Fisheries Service to halt the current season as early as possible, affecting about 100 fishing boats with sardine permits…
…
The action was taken based on revised estimates of sardine populations, which found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed…
The council did not take Wednesday’s decision lightly and understood the pain the closure would impose on the fishing industry, said council member Michele Culver, representing the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. She added that it was necessary because a new assessment of sardine stocks showed they were much lower than estimated last year, when harvest quotas were set.
Source: New York Times via Steve Quayle / ENEnews
Sardines, like honey bees, don’t seem important to the casual observer. But just like honey bees, which are experiencing their own colony collapse, they are critical to the propagation of the global food chain. The immediate effects can be seen on the creatures next in line:
… 90 percent of this year’s class of sea lion pups were starving for lack of sardines to eat.
“The sardine populations have crashed 91 percent since 2007,” he said after the vote. “We would have liked to see this happen much sooner, but now we can start to rebuild this sardine population that is so important to the health of the ocean.”

Picture

(Courtesy: The Seattle Times)
But even closing of commercial fisheries may not be the solution. As Snyder points out in the aforementioned report, there are some unexplained phenomena occurring in the Pacific ocean and either scientists don’t have a clue what is happening, or someone is keeping a gag order on researchers.
According to two University of Washington scientific research papers that were recently released, a 1,000 mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean has warmed up by several degrees, and nobody seems to know why this is happening.  This giant "blob" of warm water was first observed in late 2013, and it is playing havoc with our climate.  And since this giant "blob" first showed up, fish and other sea creatures have been dying in absolutely massive numbers.
The issue could potentially be one of climate change – but not the kind of climate change we hear from politicians who just want to put carbon tax credits in their pocket. Rather, we could be talking about cyclical climate shifts that have occurred regularly throughout the course of earth’s history. And with those shifts come massive migrations and species die-offs.
Or, as one contributor at ENEnews.com suggested, the answer to why this is happening should be obvious:
We have three cores melted out of their reactor buildings, lost in the mudrock and sandstone, which we have failed to locate and mitigate.
We have an underground river running under the ruins, which we have failed to divert around the reactors.
We have three empty reactors, containing nothing but corium splatter left when they blew up and melted out.
We have the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, which we have stressed beyond endurance, through ocean dumping, over fishing, agricultural runoff, and now unrestricted radiation.
We have the sudden collapse of the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, with a threatened collapse of the biosphere.
We continue to allow corporate and governmental inaction.
What in hell did you think was going to happen?
Something is wrong with world’s food chain and one Harvard Professor suggested last year that recent signs, namely with the die-off of honey bee populations, are a prelude of things to come:
But he now warns that a pollinator drop could be the least our worries at this point.
That it may be a sign of things to come – bees acting as the canary in the coalmine. That not only are we connected to bees through our food supply, but that the plight that so afflicts them may very well soon be our own.
Could it be that the collapse of honey bee colonies, mass sea life die-offs, and changing climates in once lush growing regions are all the result of the same underlying phenomena?
If so, then we can soon expect not just higher food prices, but a breakdown in the food chain itself.
And though none of us can truly prepare for a decades’ long (or longer) food disaster and the complexities that would come along with it (like mass migrations and resource wars), we can take steps to make ourselves as self sustainable as possible, while also preparing emergency plans to respond to the initial brunt of the force should it hit.
Related Reading:
11 Emergency Food Items That Can Last a Lifetime
Food and Garden Sustainability
Sustainable in the City
Prepare For Any Disaster
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Chuckanut Transition Community

    We're all rural, independent and capable people learning to live cooperatively with one another and with our natural surroundings while recreating our lost village economic network.

    Archives

    March 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Building Local Economy
    Buying Groups
    Cider Pressing
    Community Action
    Community Resilience In A Rural Area
    Conservation
    Cottage Industry
    Ending Childhood Hunger
    Food Security
    Harvest
    Local Food To Schools
    Market
    Natural World
    Natural World
    Non-gmo Project
    Rural Life
    Rural Life

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.