Mine the Gold and Kill the Salmon?

[Pearl Dreams]

A useful bit of info for you who, like me, prefer wild salmon--

It is routinely available in a sealed package in the frozen fish case at Wal-Mart. The price is good, and I always have some in the freezer.

 

[Valeria101]

Why do you need social pressure to do the right thing? Why not of your own volition? Or is there no volition? If not, then I am at a loss for words---which leads me to quote someone else's words---"If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem."

This discussion is a form of 'social preasure'. Perhaps we are again not talking about the same thing... remember the smoking ban? It is widely accepted that 'social preassure' was the one factor that made the policy effective, not individual recognition that the habit kills. Down to our case here, the same reasoning implies that your nudging others into action by talking about your strong convictions that has more impact then your own choices have... You may not believe in 'social preassure, but you are rather good at it...

And Chinese freshwaters could end up being a lot "greener" if we "deprived" ourselves of nucleated (some are plastic nuclei) oddball shapes dyed in "carnival" colours.

I would think that the better pearls also come with a cleaner environmental record.

I also think so, then we agree on something!

 

[Slraep]

This discussion is a form of 'social preasure'. Perhaps we are again not talking about the same thing... remember the smoking ban? It is widely accepted that 'social preassure' was the one factor that made the policy effective, not individual recognition that the habit kills. Down to our case here, the same reasoning implies that your nudging others into action by talking about your strong convictions that has more impact then your own choices have... You may not believe in 'social preassure, but you are rather good at it...

WOW! So informing people about pen farmed salmon and other bad environmental abuses is a form of "social pressure"?? That's interesting. Yes, this forum should ideally be a closed bubble where all we do is think happy thoughts about pearls and to heck with everything else happening to our oceans. The very oceans our cultured pearls depend on. Where is the logic in that?

Slraep

 

[Valeria101]

WOW! So informing people about pen farmed salmon and other bad environmental abuses is a form of "social pressure"?

I think so... if I understand the term well. Public information campaigns - including the ones about salmon that you might have been informed by, rely on these mechanisms... with varying degrees of success. Apparently, those issues that also appeal to self-interest (like the anti smoking campaign appealing to non-smoker's concern of second-hand smoking and disgust with the smoky offices and pubs) have an upper hand... 'thought that's quite interesting. Environmental campaigns are trying the recipe too: there must be more, but I am only familiar with a couple, such as the European bans on plastic bags appealing to every one's loath of the street garbage and kitchen clutter. In the end, such measure got legislated with barely any opposition... perhaps also because the manufacturers of said bags are so remote. Some effective conservation campaigns worked on similar principles... but that only works if the environmental matter in cause is really close to every day life, and the income level of the communities remains critical.
It's an interesting field altogether... just got a little dib into it so far.

Yes, this forum should ideally be a closed bubble where all we do is think happy thoughts about pearls and to heck with everything else happening to our oceans. The very oceans our cultured pearls depend on. Where is the logic in that?

This is far from a closed bubble... don't you think? I love that!

Frankly, the many clashes between pearling and the environment make the most fascinating story... How such an industry completely dependent on and by now well informed of environmental factors, still keeps getting hit and sunk by environmental damage, and that in such vastly different economic and legal context as Japan and China. 'Where's the logic in that' makes one hell of a question.

One can rationalize almost anything, I am afraid

 

[Caitlin]

I love it when 2 eloquent people have strongly diverging views.

However, I am really glad that Slraep and others are raising consciousness about how intensive farming of anything from fish, to pigs, to pearls, is just terrible for everything but business! How I longed for the small family farm and now, farmer's markets are everywhere selling organic produce from small family farms. Love it!

I want to grow my own pearls in a nice backyard pond--heck the Chinese are/were growing them in ditches and puddles, so I don't think it would be hard to do at all. I just need a backhoe and some water..........

 

[Valeria101]

How I longed for the small family farm and now, farmer's markets are everywhere selling organic produce from small family farms. Love it!

I am right with you there!

 

[Slraep]

However, I am really glad that Slraep and others are raising consciousness about how intensive farming of anything from fish, to pigs, to pearls, is just terrible for everything but business! How I longed for the small family farm and now, farmer's markets are everywhere selling organic produce from small family farms. Love it!

Isn't it great! All these small organic farms have popped up like mushrooms here in Quebec over the past few years. Activists have been drilling the "buy local" slogan into people's heads until it worked! There's a small farm with gorgeous luscious organic black raspberries(nope, not blackberries)that set up shop last year just 20 mins. from my place. Heaven!

Since the municipality here banned the use of pesticides two years ago, the frogs have come back after a 15 year hiatus! Time to maybe throw a few mussels into the pond. No more run-off to kill them!

Slraep

 

[Valeria101]

There's a small farm with gorgeous luscious organic black raspberries(nope, not blackberries)that set up shop last year just 20 mins. from my place. Heaven!

Black raspberries? Wow! never heard of those! 'Thought white ones were as wild as you get...

I don't know if local farms could ever pump up as much as current demand levels, but that's just as well. It's so much harder to waste any product when you know the growers and appreciate the effort. I hope that this relation between food buyers works on your side and does not get broken here... It is not all good about it as it is now (allot of subsistence agriculture), but the 'industrial' alternative that produces cardboard tomatoes and salmon farmed in its own filth is not something to look forward to either. Crazy world.

 

[Pearl Dreams]

Black raspberries? Wow! never heard of those! 'Thought white ones were as wild as you get...

Black raspberries make the best homemade jam ever....

 

[Slraep]

This was sometime last June. I picked two giant cases during a lightening storm. Yes, dumb of me but I couldn't help it. Once at home I ate a dozen small basketfulls. I spent a couple of hours lying on the sofa "digesting" afterwards. Utter bliss.

 

[GemGeek]

Those photos put me right into Spring -- how wonderful!

 

[KAC]

This discussion is a form of 'social preasure'.

Absolutely it is and I have no problem with it. I'll continue to apply "social pressure" until either the fish farms are removed from my beloved corner of the pacific ocean or the Pacific salmon goes extinct.

If you've never experienced the "wild west coast", then I fear you may never understand my conviction - but I won't let that stop me.

on another note - those raspberries do look delicious!!

 

[pattye]

How nostalgic,

"Black caps" and fresh salmon! Gifts of nature!! Back in the late 60's and 70's lived in Bellingham and often fished in the San Juans, my specialty was jigging for herring (used for bait)-----the wild salmon population was declining even then.

Pattye
so many pearls, so little time

 

[Slraep]

Prince Edward Island, home of Anne of Green Gables.

Surfside Beach. An ocean inlet leading to my other home where it joins a river flowing back out into the ocean. The Piping Plover nests in the inlet. It is on the endangered species list. We try to protect its eggs, which are laid on the sand, by installing metal wire cages around them. The plover can get through the small openings and go in and sit on them, but predators(fox) and pesky dogs cannot get to them. Clams use to be very abundant in the inlet but have now been over harvested, like all wild bivalves around the island.
The tiny blob sitting on the left is me and my dog at 5:00 a.m.

Singing Sands Beach on the other side of the island. Snails nestled on a rock getting some vit. D. If the oceans continue to become more and more acidic, these and all shell bearing creatures will disappear. That is a day I dread. It will break my heart. Much of the island has red soil and rock. Lots of iron. Looks a bit like a Mars landscape to newcomers.

 

[GemGeek]

I feel like I went on a mini-vacation. I LOVE the photos!

 

[Slraep]

Oh, as if the problems with regular open-pen fish farming aren't enough! Here is some interesting news from Prince Edward Island.....lab-created genetically modified frankenfish that can escape commercial fish farms and roam into the wild, and there's not a darn thing anyone cares to do about it! Mmmmmm.....tasty frankenfish fillets, anyone? Soon to be at a supermarket near YOU!

"Research on genetically modified fish began in the early 1980s. Canada doesn't have its own commercial farms for genetically modified fish, but a U.S. company has had a Canadian subsidiary on Prince Edward Island since 1994.

The company asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2006 to allow it to sell its fish as food.

Canadian government officials say it's reasonable to expect a similar request to sell the fish in Canada, the audit says."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/310135

 

[Caitlin]

Dang! I was hoping the frankenfish were another of Z's fan-t-zees.

 

[Slraep]

Dang! I was hoping the frankenfish were another of Z's fan-t-zees.

I think she was talking about the northern snakehead. Unfortunately it is REAL too. Just maybe not eating her transgrafted pearls in Heilongjian.

Slraep