By Mag­gie Koerth-Baker

Posted on boing​bo​ing​.net on Dec. 16, 2009

A cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.

See, humans today may look pretty dif­fer­ent from one another but, genet­i­cally speak­ing, there’s not much diver­sity at all within our species. In fact, chim­panzees, which look pretty much the same from one indi­vid­ual to the next, are much more genet­i­cally diverse than we are. To sci­en­tists, that sug­gests that humans have come through a genetic bottleneck–a point where our num­bers shrunk dra­mat­i­cally, and a rel­a­tively small pop­u­la­tion had to rebuild the species. For about 20 years, genetic anthro­pol­o­gists have been com­par­ing the genes of mod­ern human pop­u­la­tions. Over time, they’ve used big­ger and big­ger sam­ples, and bet­ter and bet­ter analy­sis, to hone in on when our bot­tle­neck likely hap­pened, and how many humans man­aged to slip through it.

Con­tinue Reading »

Posted Decem­ber 11, 2009 on Fish​newseu​.com

A new report spon­sored by Nat­ural Eng­land shows that there has been an alarm­ing pro­gres­sion of ocean acid­ity pos­ing major threat to marine ecosystems.

Ocean acid­ity has increased by 30 per cent since the begin­ning of the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion and the rate of acid­i­fi­ca­tion will accel­er­ate in the com­ing decades, accord­ing to a new guide launched at the UN Copen­hagen Cli­mate Change sum­mit today. The results could spell dis­as­ter for crit­i­cal parts of the marine food chain, with knock-on con­se­quences for fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the global fish­ing indus­try, and wide-scale destruc­tion of marine reefs.

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There is encour­ag­ing progress toward clean­ing up the Samish River after decades of inac­tion. The river is not long — just 29 miles — but its influ­ence on salmon, agri­cul­ture and tide­land shell­fish­eries is wide.

The causes of the river’s heavy load of fecal col­iform bac­te­ria are known — ani­mal and human waste — as are the means of fix­ing the problem.

And it’s a big prob­lem. The Depart­ment of Ecology’s test­ing pro­gram Con­tinue Reading »

In The Kitchen: Chef Keith Froggett, The Globe and Mail​.com

Chef Keith Froggett’s scal­lops are an explo­sion of flavour and colour – golden brown and topped with lemon rind, chives and chilies. Tim Fraser for The Globe and Mail

Fresh and grown in mesh: Qualicum Bay beau­ties are har­vested with­out dam­age to the sea

The recent news that there is to be a judi­cial inquiry into this year’s dis­ap­pear­ance of sock­eye salmon from the Fraser River in British Colum­bia under­scores how impor­tant it is to think about the way we farm and man­age wild fish.

Scara­mouche has been prac­tis­ing the tricky art of pur­chas­ing sus­tain­able seafood for eight years or so. I say “tricky” because the restau­rant is about 2,000 kilo­me­tres from the near­est ocean, so it’s not easy to get reli­able infor­ma­tion about where or how a par­tic­u­lar fish is being caught or farmed. It’s a con­tin­u­ing project that con­sumes a fair amount of time.

This per­se­ver­ance, how­ever, has paid off in a cou­ple of ways. In 2007, Scara­mouche was rec­og­nized by the Mon­terey Bay Aquar­ium and awarded the sta­tus of Seafood Watch Ambas­sador for mak­ing envi­ron­men­tally friendly seafood choices. Con­tinue Reading »

By William R. Sny­der, The Wall Street Jour​nal​.com

About a decade ago, when micro-brews became the fash­ion for beer sip­pers, it not only changed taste buds but also how peo­ple talked about beer. Con­sumers didn’t know that brews could be more involved than light or reg­u­lar and draft or bot­tle. Sud­denly, hoppy, wheaty and malty were com­mon descrip­tors for a beer’s palette.

The oys­ter is fol­low­ing this same tra­jec­tory. “Restau­rants used to carry one or two types of oys­ters. Today a lot of my clients have at least 10 on the menu,” says Chris Quar­tuc­cio, Con­tinue Reading »