The Swamp Man - The bald cypress of southern Louisiana is resilient and rot-resistant—and so is Dean Wilson, its most ardent defender (by Sierra Club)

Originally published by The Sierra Club at http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/201205/louisiana-bald-cypress-156.aspx

The Swamp ManThe bald cypress of southern Louisiana is resilient and rot-resistant—and so is Dean Wilson, its most ardent defender
By Bruce Selcraig


DEAN WILSON ONCE SURVIVED TARZAN-LIKE in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin for four months eating "horrible-tasting" ratty nutria and "fat and juicy" armadillos that he killed with a straightened fishhook. But now it's Sunday night on State Highway 1 in darkened bayou-burbia, and we need pizza.

"I don't know that we'll find anything at this time of night in Plaquemine," Wilson says, surveying the familiar commercial clutter of Family Dollars and auto parts joints. "Maybe we should go back home and have deer burgers." The nationally acclaimed swamp crusader clearly would prefer to be cruising the languid Atchafalaya Basin behind the wheel of his 18-foot aluminum bateau or whipping his kayak through the watery cypress forests he has spent years trying to protect from loggers.

Born to an American father and a Spanish mother on a military base outside Madrid, Wilson came with little English to the sweltering Atchafalaya Basin in 1984 to prepare himself for environmental work in the Amazon. "I just looked at a map and thought this place would be very hot and have lots of mosquitoes," he recalls. "I was right."

Wilson decided that Louisiana life suited him just fine, so he skipped the Amazon and stayed to become a commercial fisherman. For the next 16 years, the Spaniard learned the customs of his neighbors and picked up an intriguing but not always decipherable Cajun-Castilian accent. When he was just "the new foreigner," he received threats from locals, especially after he worked with a sheriff to stop the theft of crawfish traps. A "friendly" local told Wilson not to worry, that he probably wouldn't be killed because, the local said, "your skin is white and your eyes are right"—meaning not Mexican, not Vietnamese. The threats intensified after he became known primarily as an environmentalist: He was fired at, and his dog was poisoned.

"I still sleep with a gun," says Wilson, who likes to hunt, but only for food. "Guns have saved my life down here. I told one guy who threatened to burn me out of my house that he wasn't the only person who knew how to make a fire."

As a fisherman, Wilson witnessed industrial pollution, illegal logging, and the dredging of oil company canals throughout the basin. He thought that complaining to the proper authorities might help. "I was really naive," he says. "Coming from Spain, I had no idea how corrupt Louisiana politics was." His environmental epiphany came around 2000, when he realized that Louisiana loggers were harvesting thousands of acres of cypress trees—not for home building or flooring, as in years past, but to supply the flourishing $750 million annual market for garden mulch.

"That was the last straw for me," Wilson says, "knowing that people were clearcutting trees that were often centuries old in order to grow flowers in their garden."

WE SLIP KAYAKS INTO PEACEFUL Grassy Lake behind Wilson's simple home on Bayou Sorrel to survey the bald cypresses that have brought so much purpose to his life. You can almost feel his stress dissolving with each paddle stroke. "It gets a bit shallow up through here," Wilson hollers as he leads me into a watery forest draped in Spanish moss. He splashes into the muck with his knee-high rubber boots, and we tug the kayaks through soft grasses until we reach a deeper pool that's surrounded by smooth bald cypresses.

Wilson's environmental epiphany came when he realized that cypress trees were being logged not for lumber but for garden mulch. Photo by Christian Heeb/Prisma/SuperStock"

Almost the entire Gulf Coast, and certainly all of Louisiana's coast, was once covered with these wonderful trees," he says. "Only they were much taller, four or five times wider, and many were over a thousand years old. They say it better than I can. This is why I'm here."

It's a shame that movies and books often portray the cypress as a foreboding, mossy ghoul of the swamp, because it's among the most trouble-free, wildlife-friendly trees on the planet, and a close relative to California's Disney-darling sequoia. Since its branches grow out perpendicularto its trunk, the cypress is a great tree for nestingwaders like herons, egrets, and ibis. The hollowed-out trunks of older cypress become perfect homes for raccoon, otters, mink, bears, bats, and owls.

The massive root system of the cypress also makes it among the most hurricane-resistant of all trees.

The cypress decimation started long ago. In 1850, Congress passed the Swampland Act, deeding millions of acres of wetlands to the states along the Mississippi River. Louisiana officials, like others, viewed swamps as an impediment to progress and sold thousands of acres containing virgin cypresses to large corporations, often for 75 cents an acre or less.

"Instead of controlling floods in the Atchafalaya," write basin scholars Greg Guirard and C. Ray Brassieur in their 2007 book Inherit the Atchafalaya, "the Swampland Act enabled the complete devastation of one of the world's great forests." In the early 1900s, timber companies logged millions of board feet from the basin annually, usually by cutting canals (some still in use today) and floating the logs off to the mill. By the 1930s, most of the virgin trees were logged. Nearly a century later, about the only large cypresses left in the basin have been struck by lightning or a fungus.

Realizing he was witness to the last of the swamp's cypresses, Wilson formed a nonprofit called Atchafalaya Basinkeeper—one of about 200 programs affiliated with Waterkeeper Alliance, a global organization founded by activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—and began using litigation and public education campaigns to protect the basin.

Wilson won support from such groups as the Sierra Club, the Garden Club of America, the National Audubon Society, and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. Some days he prodded understaffed, poorly funded investigators in the New Orleans EPA office to better police the Gulf. On others he talked to schoolkids.

"If cypress had lined the coast whe Katrina and Rita struck, they could have saved lives."

Often Wilson's only legal toehold against the logging is to use the federal Clean Water Act to pursue companies that build unpermitted roads in the forest. Wilson says he's also gotten "crucial" help in doing aerial surveillance of the logging from SouthWings, a group of volunteer pilots based in Asheville, North Carolina, who monitor activities like pollution from animal feedlots and illegal coal-ash disposal. "SouthWings made the difference," he says, "between losing trees and saving trees."

Wilson's greatest success in the anti-mulch campaign came when Home Depot, Walmart, and Lowe's agreed in 2008 to stop selling mulch harvested from Louisiana cypresses. The news is comforting as we drift silently among the stately trees, but Wilson quickly puts it in perspective. "That's just one state," he says. "Loggers will move to Mississippi, Georgia, Florida."

If treehugging doesn't work, Wilson can also argue pure profit. "If you cut every cypress in Louisiana," he says, citing a Louisiana study commissioned in 2004 by then-governor Kathleen Blanco, "its one-time value as wood alone would be about $3.3 billion, but the total annual value of swamp tours, birding, fisheries, hunting, hurricane protection is more like $6.6 billion."

With the help of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, Basinkeeper currently has seven lawsuits going—most involving permitting issues—against foes like Tennessee loggers, school districts, and energy companies whose environmental practices have somehow impacted the basin. For now, he simply implores consumers not to buy cypress mulch from any source.

Back at Wilson's bayou-side house, he sits on a porch swing and whips out his laptop. He shows me surveillance photos tracking cypresses being logged from the Atchafalaya Basin, cut at local mills, "chipped" into mulch, and then stuffed into yellow plastic bags with labels that falsely claim the mulch has come from Florida or "forest-friendly" sources. Wilson has shown the photos to countless people, but he's careful not to demand outrage from the uninitiated. Still, he's dismayed that his smoking gun hasn't inspired more official action.

"It is immoral to lie to people about what you're selling," he says calmly. "Virtually everything we do comes down to corporations bullying people. I hate bullying. I hate injustice."

That's the Dean Wilson everyone knows. While a forestry association official once dismissed him as "all passion and no facts," colleagues respect his abundant idealism and his hard work. Thick EPA studies, brightly colored satellite maps, and hydrology reports dot his living room. A network of activists keeps his cellphone humming. "Dean does this every day, from the time he wakes up until the time he goes to sleep," says friend and Lafayette environmental educator Stacey Scarce. It's all necessary in a place where logging ancient trees is just one environmental threat, a place where the oil, gas, and chemical industries not only affect the Atchafalaya but also run right through it.


The Atchafalaya's iconic alligator shares space with 60 species of reptiles and amphibians and some 250 bird species in America's largest river swamp. Photo by Adam Jones/Visuals Unlimited

IN EARLY RISING PLAQUEMINE, my Best Western breakfast nook features more petroleum mechanics and burly welders than blueberry muffins.

State Highway 1, a flat and sweaty industrial corridor that runs south from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico, is choked with pipe fitters and laborers headed to this area's largest employer, Dow Chemical, on the west bank of the Mississippi. There, more than 3,000 workers churn out polyethylene and methyl cellulose, key ingredients in milk jugs and even milkshakes.

In the shadow of Dow, a shimmering steel monument to the dirty industries that shape so many lives down here, it is easy to forget that just a few miles away is a world-class wetland. Wilson, who also runs the Last Wilderness, a swamp-tour business that attracts visitors from as far away as France and Germany, has told me to meet him at the Bayou Bait Shop in Bayou Sorrel. The village of 1,000 looks like a fishing camp; wobbly wooden homes beside the brown bayou are raised up on concrete piers. The straight two-lane road into town passes the U-turn-inducing Verret Shipyard, where they've been making Mississippi River towboats since 1966. Homemade signs tout "fresh coon meat" and Ron Paul rallies.

"Hey, Dean," a lady behind the bait shop counter says, "you know Junior's back in town, and he's got some new T-shirts."

That would be the town's unassuming but unfathomably famous celebrity, Junior Edwards, the gator-gutting star of the History Channel's hit reality show Swamp People, which has brought international exposure to the basin and its slowly disappearing Cajun culture.

Wilson and I walk to a little dock on the eastern edge of the Atchafalaya. From that vantage point, it's hard to imagine the extent of the basin, which is 1.4 million acres, runs about 100 miles north to south, and is more than a dozen times larger than New Orleans. It's the flood basin for the Atchafalaya River, a "pirate stream," or distributary, that broke through the natural levees of the Mississippi in the 15th century—and has threatened to divert the latter river's flow ever since.

Zippered against the wind in Wilson's boat, we rocket down the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway as Shanka, his German shepherd, patrols the squared-off bow. It's warm for January but winter nonetheless, so many of the swamp's most elegant creatures, like the Florida panther, the black bear, and the mink, are snoozing. But birds are everywhere. The basin is virtually at the mouth of the Mississippi, on North America's most important flyway, and is an indispensable, O'Hare-like terminal for migratory tropical birds. Two minutes into the boat ride we see a stunning bald eagle—removed from the federal endangered species list just five years ago—unfurl from a willow perch as if it has fallen from Mt. Rushmore. Ten more minutes and we've seen great egrets, yellow-rumped warblers, Carolina chickadees, and stocky barred owls with NBA wingspans. Missing are the swamp's divas, Alligator mississipiensis. They're brumating, which usually involves burrowing beneath the nutrient-rich sediment into muddy holes and lowering their body temperature to a torpid, football-watching state.

Amid all this tranquility, we pass a docked barge carrying black tanks of chemicals, a quick reminder that the basin, while elegant in places, is just another aging production field for Big Oil, woven with miles of exposed, often-leaking, 50-year-old pipelines and more than 500 oil and gas wells. "We've got leaks all over the basin," Mike Bienvenu, president of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association, recently told the Louisiana Weekly. "We've been fighting the oil and gas companies to get something done about their violations for 20 years."

Wilson checks some of his crawfish traps—mesh metal cages that he pulls from the cool freshwater—then idles into a shallow, moss-covered pool. Pretty but depressing, the water's surface is so completely carpeted by the leafy, invasive Salvinia molesta that dogs less hip than Shanka will often leap in, thinking it's dry land—unwisely waking torpid gators.

"In the spring, if I were to drop just a handful of Salvinia into clear water," Wilson says, "it would be covered solid in a month." Experts believe the menace arrived here in 2006 from local water gardens.

At times Wilson, a father of four on his third marriage, may seem wearied by the day-to-day demands of fundraising, lawsuits, and not missing his son's soccer games. But surrounded by this bright morning theater of cypress, he can't help being drawn back to what brought him here. "Imagine if millions of cypress, four or five times as wide as these, had been lining the Gulf Coast in 2005 when Katrina and Rita struck," he says. "They would have defeated the wind. They would have defeated storm surges. They would have saved lives."

Bruce Selcraig, a frequent Sierra contributor, wrote "Last Man Standing" (September/October 2011), a profile of Texas activist Hilton Kelley.
This article was funded by the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels program.

Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron - sustainability message and parable of humankind

I love James Cameron's "final word". Just stumbled onto this - the others of the family were watching the final fate of the Titanic, and then James Cameron closed with this - watch from about 4 minutes on.


But I've typed up every word, anyways.

James Cameron:

"I've been working on Titanic for nearly 20 years. I planned this investigation to be my final word. It's time for me to pass the baton, and move on to some new challenges.

"But I'll never stop thinking about Titanic. For me it's so much more than simply an exercise in forensic archaeology. Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of this sense that we're too big to fail. Well, where have we heard that one before?

"There was this big machine, this human system that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn't turn, it couldn't stop in time to avert a disaster. And that's what we have right now.

"Within that human system on board that ship, if you want to make it a microcosm for the world, you have different classes - you know you've got first class, second class, third class. Well, in our world right now you've got developed nations and undeveloped nations. You've got the starving millions who are going to be the ones most effected by the next iceberg that we hit - which is going to be climate change. We can see that iceberg ahead of us right now, but we can't turn. We can't turn because of the momentum of the system: political momentum, business momentum. There are too many people making money out the system the way the system works right now. And those people, you know, frankly have their hands on the levers of power and aren't ready to let'em go. Until they do, we're not going to be able to turn to miss that iceberg and we're going to hit it. When we hit it, the rich are still going to be able to get their access to food, to arable land, to water and so on, it's going to be the poor, it's going to be the steerage that are going to be impacted and it was the same with Titanic.

"And I think that's why this story will always fascinate people, because it's a perfect little encapsulation of the world and all social spectrum; but until our lives are really put at risk, the moment of truth, we don't know what we would do.

"And that's my final word."


By the way, I just realized who James Cameron is. I knew that Avatar contained an amazing message - but I didn't know that James Cameron had written it until recently. I really appreciate his wisdom, and clarity. Thank-you, James.

Blights - powdery mildew on pumpkin plants

This summer a few pumpkin plants seeded themselves in my garden, from seeds in the compost I had added. I happily let a few grow to see what happened. They grew so well that I felt like I was watching a B movie, Revenge of the Monster Plants, as they took over the garden - their curling tendrils grasping onto everything.

I thought all was well, but I am the type to learn by doing (and so I soon learned). In February, a few dusty spots appeared on them, which spread rapidly. Soon, many of the formerly healthy leaves were blighted by the dusty stuff.

I looked it up in my trusty gardening book (Xanthe White's Organic Vegetable Gardening). "Powdery mildew" which is best prevented rather than treating. If I had kept the plants consistently well watered, and sprayed the leaves all along with water with a bit of dish soap the mold would have had a harder time staying. (And knowing how much it spreads, I would have reacted far more quickly at the first spots.)

As it was, the mildew on the leaves got so bad I had to spray them all over with copper spray, both sides (Bordeux mixture would have been better, see recipe below). It was a lot of work, and the leaves still didn't look great, so I ended up destroying much of the plants trying to remove it. We did get a few large pumpkins out of it, but I had alot of sadness destroying the infected plants, along with the many flowers that all would have become pumpkins.

Boo hooo. Next year I will know to keep the leaves clear by watering the plants very well so they stay strong, and spraying with water and a bit of dish soap all along (or even Bordeaux mixture fortnightly) - but mostly by staying observant.

(I am also going to plant them in a devoted pumpkin monster plant area. Those things spread like crazy, tangling up all the other plants, they get damaged as you try to free them.)


Excerpt from Xanthe White's Organic Vegetable Gardening book:

"Powdery Mildew

"Cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins and beans are particularly susceptible to this common garden affliction. Powdery mildew thrives in the hot dry of late summer so water regularly and consistently. If you are hit, strike back with a spray of old dishwashing water or detergent mixed with water. If this fails, try baking soda dissolved in water at a ratio of half a teaspoon to one litre. Treat more serious cases with Bordeaux mixture or flowers of sulphur. Act swiftly and remove as much infected material as possible before the fungus spreads." -Xanthe White


Recipe (from her book as well):

"Bordeaux mixture

"Bordeaux mixture can be bought pre-mixed or made at home quite easily. It is the organic gardener's best defence against fungal disease, effective against everything from potato blight to powdery mildew, but should, as with all chemicals, natural or otherwise, be used with caution. It can damage soft or new growth so using the appropriate dilution is important.

"100 g copper sulphate dissolved in 1 litre of hot water

"150 g hydrated lime dissolved in 1 litre of cold water

"Add the copper sulphate solution slowly to the lime solution, stirring continuously. Dilute this mixture with a further 10 litres of cold water and use while fresh. Dilute to 10 parts further if you are using on tender young growth. If used as a preventative spray fortnightly; otherwise us as infection requires. Do not store in a metal container."

-Xanthe White

Space to Grow - my chilli plants' life lesson

One great thing about gardening - which is essentially nurturing the land - is that you get some great lessons on how nature works. Of course, this applies to human lives as well. You just feel these lessons about life so closely when you are out there gardening (or interacting in nature in any way, e.g. camping, hiking, working with wood).

This year Shane bought some chilli plant seedlings at what turned out to be the perfect time of year. However, he insisted on planting them right next to each other on one of our thin balcony planters which run along the edge of our raised gardens. Despite his protests, I moved two of the plants to the large raised bed above, with generous space all around them. The other three I spaced out further from each other and left them where he had wanted them.

The two with the spacious environment and heaps of fertile soil above became huge bushes, generously producing buckets upon buckets of large, shiny green delicious chillies. The other three in the cramped space fought against each other and eventually produced a few mid-sized chillies at the end of the season.

What did I learn from this? It's not just the genetics of the plant, it's the environment that allows the plant to really develop. This is something that gardening teaches all the time - as it's the soil and conditions around a plant that really allow it to thrive. That's just like children, I think. The genes are important, but one they've got them, what really makes the difference is the environment they are provided in which they can thrive.

I also know this as I was provided with an environment when I was growing up where I did really well - not due to being stronger by nature - I could feel, but by being nurtured and allowed space to grow, play, discover, make things, a place with some wildness to explore...we were able to develop fully.

I am so relieved that now the my kids are in the neighbourhood we live in now (we used to live in a cramped city suburb) that they will have space they need to grow.

NZ Herald Article by Dean Baigent-Mercer: Mining by stealth for Northland

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10793603

NZ HERALD: OPINION
Dean Baigent-Mercer: Mining by stealth for Northland

Northland needs to prepare itself for multinational mining companies. Photo / Thinkstock
By Dean Baigent-Mercer

Northland: the skinniest parts of our country with spectacular coastlines, low rugged mountains, is culturally and historically rich and under attack. The charge has been led by the National Coalition Government and Northland councils to smooth the way for multinational mining companies.

The public opposition to mining in 2010 saw 50,000 people march up Queen St against mining in conservation areas. I was there and the mood was clear, the public objected to Government plans to open our national parks to international mining interests. In response, John Key and Gerry Brownlee led us to believe that they had listened to the public, backed down and would protect our precious areas.

But since then it's been full steam ahead with the mining agenda. Without landowner consent, and using $2 million of public money, land from Warkworth to Cape Reinga had aerial geomagnetic surveys carried out last year. Again we were told there was nothing to worry about, that they just wanted to see what was underground.

Two weeks ago a Government delegation and the Far North Mayor Wayne Brown played host at the world's largest mining trade show in Toronto, Canada. They took a promotional booklet that gives the false impression that Northland would welcome all miners with open arms, the natives were friendly, and the Northland life would suit them fine and be prosperous.

The Government timetable sets the next fortnight for northern councils and Maori to point out sensitive areas where mining would be inappropriate then treat all other areas as open for mining applications from next month. Only in May will the ordinary landowners and the public be told in which areas what minerals have been found and where the mining industry is being directed.

This is mining by stealth, despite what the Far North Mayor says.

What we do know is that the two main gold deposits are in deep quartz veins beneath mountains of eastern Northland called Whakarara and Puhipuhi. Accessing gold beneath both would involve literally moving mountains, destroying native forests and reopening some of the largest mercury beds in the country.

Whakarara peak is over 300 metres above sea level. The gold begins 200 metres down through very hard rock. Tunnelling is not an option. Mining would mean another Waihi-type hole in the ground. Toxic waste from hard rock mining, over 18 tonnes per gold ring, would need to be safely stored beyond timescales we can imagine. Both areas are prone to extreme floods as witnessed in recent years and flooding around Kaeo this week.

These mountains head the catchments of the Bay of Islands, the Kaipara and Whangaroa Harbour making waterways downstream at risk of toxic mining pollution, including Matauri Bay, Helena Bay and Mimiwhangata. We can't risk anymore waterways being further contaminated. Already the Far North District Council and Northland Regional Council cannot deal with pollution from dairy farming, let alone pollution from mining companies.

Local authorities are claiming that all mining applications will be subject to 'strict' requirements. But right now the Crown Minerals Act is under review and powerful mining interests are lobbying to strengthen their corporate 'rights' and relax their environmental compliance. They want easier access to any land with minerals and the key objective of new mining laws to be promoting attractiveness for business and investment. All this would further undermine genuine environmental, public concerns and sensible protection.

And despite what the Government promised two years ago, mining investigation permits have since been given the thumbs up for World Heritage areas and South Island National Parks. Will Coromandel and Great Barrier Island be next in the firing line?

The Department of Conservation has recently sacked their "back office" staff with the knowledge and skills to address biodiversity and recreation threats from mining applications. Internal memos now instruct what the Department can and cannot comment on. In contrast there has been a major staff expansion within the Ministry of Economic Development to promote the discovery and extraction of minerals, metals and oil.

But the public backlash has already begun as local communities in Northland feel betrayed. Perhaps that's why the politicians are rushing ahead, to try and sign contracts with miners before the mining reality sinks in.

* Dean Baigent-Mercer is the Chairperson of the Far North Forest and Bird Branch. He has worked on national and international conservation issues.

END QUOTE

How to make your own toilet roll seed pots and peat free seed raising mix (sustainably sourced)

I saw a link to making toilet roll pots for seedlings a little while ago, and I thought it was brilliant. You plant the seed in a toilet roll with the bottom folded up like the bottom of a box, and then when you plant the seedling you never have to take it out - you just place it in the dirt and the paper rots away without disturbing the roots of the plant.

Not only was it something I hadn't thought of at all - and I just love using objects for not-their-intended purpose - the tutorial had a really great sustainable recipe for making your own seed raising mix. More sustainable, in that it used coir instead of peat to prevent damping off.

Peat bogs are ancient, and they store carbon. Peat may store twice as much carbon as forests globally. Digging up peat releases the stored carbon. Go here to read a BBC News article on the importance of preserving peat bogs.Coir was pretty new to me - so that was two great new ideas. One, make your own, free "jiffy pots" for planting seeds, and the other was the coolness of coir which I discovered when I used it. It's a lovely red fluffy fibrous substance that gives the soil lightness, or you can place it around trees in your garden for that forest floor feel.

I will provide the recipes and my experience below, but if you want to go to the source I got it all from this post by Colleen Vanderlinden on treehugger.com, Savvy Alternatives to Peat-Based Products for Starting Seeds Indoors.


toilet roll seed pots (with no disruption to soil as pot rots away)

girlingearstudio/CC BY 2.0

The one thing I realized I did wrong was to not cut the toilet roll in half. I think a half size pot (like above photo) would have been better - for waste of the mix, and the seedling doesn't need that tall of a pot! (And many veggies prefer to be directly sown, like carrots and onions - so check first if it's an advantage.)
To make the pot: cut the bottom of the empty roll in four places. You will have created four flaps. Fold them up against each other - as you do the top of a box, each flap holds the next one down.
Then fill with excellent coir-based seed-raising mix below!


peat free (sustainably sourced) seed growing mix


Mix together:

- 1 part coir
- 1 part vermicompost
- 1 part perlite

I got my block of coir for only $5 from the local garden centre - and it yielded a huge amount of fibre when it was wet and broken apart. For my seed-raising mix, I only needed a chunk off the corner, which I then soaked in water.

I got my "perlite" from a local brewing shop. It was like popcorn rock - the kids loved breaking it into dust. According to Colleen Vanderlinden... "the coir provides water retention and bulk. The vermicompost provides nutrients to the seedlings, but, perhaps even more importantly, protects seedlings from diseases like damping off. And the perlite (light volcanic rock) provides lightness and helps the mix drain well."

How to buy fish with a better conscience - guide for sustainable fish shopping based on Hook, Line and Blinkers book (NZ)

How to know which fish in the supermarket are truly sustainable is a murky issue. If all we have to go on is labelling of the product in the store, that is simply not enough information.

Forest & Bird has put out indepth information, including a wallet guide about which fish they feel is more sustainable, which is great. However, unless you have knowledge about the fishing industry, it's hard to understand the framework in which they have made their choices. That's why I was glad to read a synopsis of this book: Hook, Line and Blinkers: Everything Kiwis never wanted to know about fishing by Gareth Morgan and Geoff Simmons (Phantom House Books 2011, $35), in Good magazine.

Much of it is new to me - the lists of regulatory bodies, the fishing industry and so on - but it was interesting to get another opinion to weigh alternatively to Forest & Bird's conservatism and the fishing industry's obviously self-serving promises. I tend to be on the conservation side - but I too am not a millionaire and need to feed my family.

Here is a useful tool to assist you in the (ethically) hazardous journey to the supermarket, another opinion of which fish or more (or less) overfished, using the "Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch criterion" at http://www.blinkers.co.nz/wild-caught.aspx
And I have reproduced Good magazine's (Issue 23) original article about Hook, Line and Blinkers, below (but with my emphasis in red at times) to help you understand their thought processes. Reading the book itself would be great, but at least this is something - as we don't all have time to do all the research. Thanks, Good!

Something’s fishyYou’re looking for tasty, healthy and locally sourced food for yourself and your family – including fish. But is it possible to make an eco-friendly choice? Keen fishers and authors of the new book, Hook, Line and Blinkers GARETH MORGAN and GEOFF SIMMONS investigate the options

There are many challenges facing today’s ethical eater. There are carbon emissions to consider, the environmental sustainability of the food we eat and how the workers that grew and harvested the food were treated. That’s before we even think about whether it is healthy to eat, or get tangled up in random trivialities like food miles. Eating fish is no exception.

Gone are the days where the ocean can provide limitless food and hide all our waste. We believe the world has hit the point of depletion we’re calling ‘Peak Fish’ and that we have to think urgently about how we manage our impact on the oceans, before we damage them beyond repair. That needs to start with fishing.

In researching the book Hook, Line and Blinkers we looked at New Zealand’s supposedly world-class fisheries management regime. We were ‘struck’ by the huge gulf in advice about which fish to eat – between environmentalists on the one hand and the fishing industry on the other. It’s a source of huge confusion, with environmental groups telling us to steer clear of most fish on the supermarket shelves, and the fishing industry telling us that if it's in the supermarket, it must be sustainable.

Given the number of issues that a consumer has to consider in making a purchase, this confusion is decidedly unhelpful. But the question that we have to ask is, 'How much environmental damage are we prepared to accept in exchange for our supply of food?' All human activities cause some damage to the planet, but how much is too much? Where do we draw the line?

Clearly some environmental groups like Greenpeace and Forest & Bird are prepared to accept only a little bit of damage. By all means eat the fish that they recommend -they are the most environmentally friendly. But should you completely write off the fish on their red list? We have to think about the alternatives. What would we eat instead? If we were to replace this fish protein with farming for animal protein on land, it's very possible that we could end up causing even more environmental damage. I don't know about you, but our heads are starting to hurt.

Certification schemes like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) are designed to bring some balance to this debate. This scheme was created by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, and has subsequently put its stamp of approval on an impressive five million tonnes of seafood -around six percent of the global supply, with a total value of $1 billion. In an independent review the MSC criteria were considered the most robust of all certification schemes. However, the MSC system is still far from perfect: it relies on rating agencies that are paid for by the fishing industry -meaning there is some incentive to 'go easy' on the fishery during the rating process. We reckon the MSC needs to sort out this potential conflict of interest before it faces a crisis of confidence of Global Financial Crisis proportions.

The clash of ideals over how much environmental damage is acceptable has come to the fore over the New Zealand hoki fishery. The MSC has faced heavy criticism from environmental groups for its certification of the fishery. This criticism was over the use of bottom trawling to catch the fish, the levels of bycatch (particularly mammals and seabirds), and the perceived overfishing during the mid-2000s.

In our opinion, the claims of poor management and overfishing in hoki fisheries are ill-founded. In the early 2000s the allowable catch was slashed from 250,000 tonnes to 90,000.

Environmentalists seized upon this as a sign of overfishing, but fisheries science is a difficult beast, and these rapid cuts were in response to several seasons of low breeding rates. Indeed such rapid cuts in catch are a sign of excellent fisheries management -quickly responding to problems when they arise. As it stands, hoki stocks are voluntarily managed by industry at 35-50 percent of their original population, far higher than the 25 percent target required of most fisheries.

Other areas of the hoki fishery are more debatable. There have been bycatch problems but these have improved significantly over time -something that the MSC continues to watch closely and encourages improvement on. As for bottom trawling -well there is simply no other way to catch the fish. So while it causes damage to habitat. most of this is sandy or muddy seafloor with a comparatively quick recovery time.

As long as the area of trawling is confined, this damage could be deemed acceptable -otherwise we would struggle to catch New Zealand's largest fish stock.

Does that make hoki okay to eat? MSC thinks so, and we reckon they're as good a guide as any. But what about other seafood in our supermarkets?

We decided to put our money where our mouth is and try to develop a more balanced recommendation list. To do this we borrowed the criteria from Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch (MBASW) which is respected internationally. You can check out the results in more detail at http://www.blinkers.co.nz/wild-caught.aspx

Of course the sort of fish that gets the approval of Greenpeace and Forest & Bird will pass the test with flying colours. Most of these are small, fast­growing fish that can be caught with little environmental damage - for example sardines, blue cod and kahawai. MBASW's criteria award fish stocks with one major environmental problem but otherwise good management a 'Good Alternative' rating. Hoki with its bottom-trawling issue makes this grade, but other fisheries with more than one problem, such as orange roughy, are rated as 'Avoid'.

How about farmed fish? Just because a seafood is farmed doesn't automatically make it sustainable. Farmed filter feeders like mussels are ideal from an environmental and health perspective. Carnivorous fish like salmon face the problem of needing to eat fish oil to grow, which reduces the total supply of fish for the world population to eat.

Unlike overseas operators, New Zealand salmon farms are well managed environmentally, so they squeak in a 'Good Alternative' rating. Vegetarian fish like basa don't face the feed problem. but they are generally grown in Asia where the management is not so good - so again they get a 'Good Alternative' rating.

Most imported prawns are from farms in Asia, and face the double whammy of the feed problem as well being poorly managed environmentally -so they should be avoided.

The debate over which fish to eat overlooks the question of how much we should be eating in the first place. The health benefits of eating wild fish are well known as it's high in protein, low in fat (depending on how it's cooked) and rich in omega-3 oils. On the other hand, we need to go easy, as we've hit the capacity of the ocean's ability to provide wild fish, and the world's population is still growing.

The recommended intake of fish (100­150g twice a week) for health purposes adds up to about 15 kg per year. Currently there is enough farmed and wild fish for everyone in the world to eat 17kg each. New Zealanders typically munch down around 25kg a year -more than our fair share. And yet Kiwis don't eat seafood as regularly as recommended.

How is this possible? Like most of our eating, portion size is the problem - we scoff large amounts of seafood in one sitting, which significantly lessens the health benefits of omega-3 oils.

The lesson? We need to eat smaller portions of high quality seafood. The sad truth facing ethical consumers is that all of our food choices have some impact on the planet, and there are no easy answers, other than smaller portion sizes. In the end it comes down to how much we're willing to trade off our conscience for taste.

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"We're starting to understand what can go horribly wrong when our fishing technology outstrips our ability to restrain ourselves."
- Gareth Morgan, Hook, Line and Blinkers: Everything Kiwis never wanted to know about fishing