Tag Archives: Forage fish

Cost of Climate Change, Food

The Quadra Project – What’s the Beef?

A team of Australian and Japanese researchers have quantified the damage to human health that is done by eating red meat. If people shifted their diets from beef to such forage fish as anchovies, herring and sardines, the study found, an estimated 750,000 lives could be saved per year (The Guardian Weekly, April 19, 2024). The comprehensive study of 130 countries identified that human health deteriorates as red meat consumption rises.

The study also revealed the clear environmental benefits to shifting away from beef. Instead of feeding these nutritious forage fish to animals, which are how most of these aquatic species are consumed, the nutritional benefits that were passed directly to people would reduce the diseases caused by excessive beef consumption, but also save huge amounts of agricultural land that is presently used to raise cattle for beef.

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Parks

Friends of Cortes Island at Mansons Landing Provincial Park

Originally published, as part 2 of the Cortes Island Resonance series by the Cortes Community Radio Society.

With its shallow watered tidal lagoon and long sandy spit, Mansons Landing Provincial Park is one of Cortes Island’s most treasured tourist spots. It is also the home of several plant species not found in many places along the coast, as well as forage fish, biodiverse marine life and birds. Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) have been helping BC Parks maintain this location since 2016. 

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Environment

Only A Week From Now: FOCI’s 2024 AGM

The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) 2024 AGM is coming up at 5 PM on December 3rd. They are celebrating more than 30 years with their Marine Stewardship program. Sabina Leader Mense will be the guest speaker. 

“That’s the second part of the AGM. For the first part, we will be talking about  the work we’ve done in 2024. We’ve just produced our 2024 Annual Report and that’s bursting at the seams with amazing work that we’ve been doing over the last year,” explained Helen Hall. executive director of the Friends of Cortes Island.  

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

The Pacific Herring Spawn and Nurseries Project

A citizen scientist project to photograph Pacific herring spawn along the West Coast, from Alaska down to California, has been underway for close to two months. It is based in the Comox-Courtenay area, and one of its many partners is the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI).

Project lead Jacqueline Huard, a scientist with Project Watershed,  explained, “I work with the Coastal Forage Fish Network. We are very community scientist based and working on a herring project in iNaturalist just was a natural fit for us. I wanted to encourage the folks that we work with to put their data somewhere where they could also access it. The goal is twofold, both to collect some data and address a gap, but also to get it out to the public and have a publicly available data set for the public created by community scientists.”

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Rivers & Oceans

Satellites track the tiny silver fish hugely important to marine life

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A new scientific endeavour has taken to the sky using high-tech drones and satellite images to understand better the annual spring herring spawn vital to salmon and wildlife on the West Coast. 

Between February and March each year, frigid ocean waters transform to a milky tropical-looking turquoise green when male herring release milt to fertilize the countless eggs deposited by females on eelgrass, kelp and seaweed fringing coastal shores.

Unpredictable and dramatic, the small silver fishes’ spawning event is large and best monitored from great heights, said Loïc Dallaire, a researcher with the SPECTRAL Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Victoria. 

“It’s one of the very few animal formations that we can see from space, excluding human developments and towns,” Dallaire said. 

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