I don't like these developments any more than anyone else. In fact, I'm one of those lucky ones who was able to grow up in a time when there seemed to be no shortages but only abundance and the big threat was the Soviet Union. We believed our world was just going to keep getting better and better. Little did we know.
Those of us who remember the 'good old days' have something to use as a measuring stick when we look at where we are today and what awaits us and our children in the decades to come. I'm lucky enough to live on Vancouver Island. It's clean, it's beautiful and a pretty wonderful place to call home. It's also a place where small changes in the environment produce big changes in the ecology.
We used to be able to go out and get a salmon for dinner. No one even bothers going out anymore because the salmon are all but gone. Same goes for the ling cod. Now you have to go to a distant part of the island to have a good chance of getting some fish.
A few weeks back I was supposed to go with a friend down to Port Renfrew which is about as close to a "sure thing" for salmon as you find today. The trip had to be cancelled, called on account of rain. There had been no rains, so there was no runoff coming down the spawning streams. The salmon wait until the runoff lowers salinity levels so they'll have enough water in the streams to get up to their spawning grounds. No rain, no runoff, no salmon.
A warming climate also spells trouble for salmon. Even if they can get to the spawning grounds, their fertilized eggs are very heat sensitive. If the water gets too hot they die. We count on having a good snowpack on the mountains every year to supply an ample flow of cold, fresh water to the spawning streams while the eggs hatch. No snowpack, no water, no hatchlings.
Salmon, lovely as they are for dinner, play an important role in the coastal food chain. Resident Orca pods feed on them. Bears rely on their fatty flesh to see themselves through hibernation. Eagles rely on them. So do wolves.
British Columbia is feeling the effects of the warming climate on our forests. The mountain pine beetle attacks and kills lodgepole pine trees. We used to have big stands of pines in the interior but now they're being ravaged by the beetles. Why? We don't get the cold snaps we once received that kept the pine beetle populations in check. You have to freeze them to kill them off. Bye, bye pines.
In our coastal waters we're beginning to see an inundation of jellyfish and a great increase in the sunfish population that feeds on them. If you don't know what a sunfish looks like, here's one:
That's not an optical illusion or camera trick. These things come in at up to 3,000 pounds. They're usually found mainly in warmer waters, or at least they once were.
Maybe we can learn to eat jellyfish because they're booming around the world. Jellyfish eat the same plankton that small fish go after. Get rid of the fish stocks and there's that much more food for the jellyfish. More food for the jellyfish, more jellyfish.
A lot of the world relies on fish for their protein. A lot of the world may soon have to learn to live without. An article in the next issue of "Science" magazine reports that, if current overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of all fish stocks are expected to collapse in 2048.
Today, the study reports that 29 per cent of fish species have collapsed, meaning a reduction of 90% or more in their numbers. What happens when a species collapses? We call it "fishing down the food chain." You begin with the prime fish, exhaust them and then start cleaning out the next most desired fish, working your way down to stuff fisherman once wouldn't even touch. Hake is a classic example.
Naturally, the National Fisheries Institute, which represents the fishing industry, disputes the findings. To them it's just a matter of learning to fish more effectively. Would they were right, but they're not.
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