Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos PDF Version. Contents Columns • Guest Editorial : “Restoring Abundant Oceans” by Andrew Sharpless, Oceana • The Literal Landscape: “Portrait of Fernando, Bahía de Loreto” by Simmons B. Buntin, Editor/Publisher, Terrain.org • Bull Hill: “To Wail with a Whale: Clarinet Meets Humpback Whale in Island Paradise” by David Rothenberg, Editor, Terra Nova • Plein Air: “Days of Grace on Rutherford Island” by Deborah Fries, Editorial Board Member, Terrain.org Interview • “Places Wilder and Less Traveled” Terrain.org interviews author David Quammen UnSprawl Case Study • The Villages of Loreto Bay in Baja California Sur, Mexico ARTerrain Gallery • Ten natural light photographs by Joel B. McEachern Poetry • Susan F. Benjamin : One Poem • Donna J. Gelagotis Lee : Three Poems • J.D. Schraffenberger : Three Poems • Margarita Engle : Three Poems • Eric Paul Shaffer : One Poem • Wendy Burk : One Poem • Scott T. Starbuck : Two Poems • Paul Fisher : Two Poems • Yvonne Carpenter : One Poem • Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda : One Poem • Jane Levin : Three Poems Essays • “Searching within the Archipelago” by Steve Kahn, photos by John Hohl • “St. Francis and the Isle of Foula” by Lynne Shapiro • “Navajo Women: Doorway Between Traditional and Modern Life” by Betty Rreid, photos by Kenji Kawano • “Land and Money” by William R. Stimson • “My Farmhouse in Japan: A Breakfast to Remember” by John Roderick Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos 1 Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org Contents Fiction • “The Third Way” by Tamara Kaye Sellman • “Pelicans” by Julian Hoffman • “Her Best Interests” by Janet Yung • “The Way Things Fall” by Richard Denoncourt Articles • “Rice Island: Bali and the Cultivation of Tradition – A Narrative Slideshow” by Colin Donohue • “Sky Islands of North America: A Globally Unique and Threatened Inland Archipelago” by Matt Skroch • “No Community is an Island: Tributary and the Young & the Restless” by Rick Mildner and Brian Canin • “Tourism Takes the Bird: Are Proposed Changes to Four Seasons Development Enough to Protect the Rare Grenada Dove?” by Dr. George Wallace • “Ocean Acidification: A Greater Threat than Global Warming or Overfishing?” by Dr. William G.C. Burns Reviews • “The Poems She Gathered Along Her Path” : Deborah Fries reviews Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, 1981-2007, edited by Jessie Lendennie • “Home in All the Lush Senses” : Simmons B. Buntin reviews Phantom Limb: Essays by Theresa Kishkan • “A Life Intertwined with Landscape” : Stephanie Eve Boone reviews Nature Culture: A Story of Depression and Healing by Richard Mabey • “Planet Ocean: An Essential Wide-World Book for a Widescreen World” : Terrain.org reviews Planet Ocean: Voyage to the Heart of the Marine Realm by Laurent Ballesta and Pierre Descamp Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos 2 Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org Guest Editorial by Andrew Sharpless : Chief Executive Officer, Oceana Restoring Abundant Oceans In 2006, an international team of scientists assessed the state of the world’s oceans in an article that was published in Science. Their findings had the ring of the apocalyptic: nearly a third of the world’s commercial fisheries had already collapsed. And if trends are allowed to continue, all the world’s fisheries would collapse by mid-century. This is a serious problem for the world because a billion people turn to the seas for protein. Hundreds of millions of people rely on an abundant ocean for their livelihoods. Countless coastal villages, some quite remote, will become ghost towns if the oceans collapse. And of course there are many wonderful wild ocean creatures—whales and dolphins just the celebrities among them—that do not deserve to be hunted to virtual extinction. Practical people want to work on problems that are solvable. And many people assume that saving the oceans is impossible. Let me give you some very good news: restoring abundant oceans is the most solvable global ecological challenge that we face. And we can get it done in our lifetimes. Why? Discouragement is rooted in several fundamental misconceptions about the causes of the problem. First, people assume that ocean collapse is driven by pollution. That’s discouraging, because pollution is difficult to prevent. For example, oil and mercury pollution of the oceans is a consequence of things that people want and need—for example, gas in their cars, electricity to their homes. The good news is that most of the collapses in ocean fisheries are not caused by pollution. They are instead caused by short-sighted commercial fishing practices that include overfishing, habitat destruction, and high levels of bycatch. Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos 3 Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org These are fixable problems. We know what to do. We just need to get the government officials who set the rules for commercial fishing to do a better job. Second, people assume that international action is required to save the oceans. Because vast parts of the oceans are beyond the reach of any one country, one naturally assumes that ocean protection requires action by the United Nations or other international treaty bodies. That’s discouraging too because, sadly, the track record of many such bodies is long on words and short on results. The good news is that many of the most ecologically and commercially valuable parts of the ocean are coastal. Shallower coastal waters produce more productive marine environments. In the 1980s, the nations of the world took control of their coastal oceans out to a distance of 200 nautical miles. That means that you can protect much of what is most important in the ocean by national action. Third, people assume that fish farming is a solution to overfishing. The facts are that it depends what fish you are farming. If you’re farming a fish that eats fish, then aquaculture does not reduce the pressure on the wild ocean ecosystem. In fact, quite the reverse. Salmon farmers need at least three pounds of wild-caught fish to produce one pound of salmon. With that conversion ratio, every new salmon farm is a giant new customer for the rapidly depleting supplies of wild-caught marine fish. On the other hand, if you are farming a fish that eats vegetable protein, then with appropriate safeguards (on use of pesticides and antibiotics, for example), such a fish farm can indeed contribute to solving the problem of ocean depletion. Ocean ecosystems are generally quite resilient. While there are distressing exceptions—the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery off Canada is a vivid one—fisheries will rebound if managers enforce scientifically sound quotas, protect habitat, and reduce bycatch. One example: during the years of World War II, when fishing in the Atlantic dropped off due to the war effort, fishery populations increased dramatically. As a result, one can look to a near future in which abundant oceans are not just planned, but fact. At Oceana, we make it a practice to give ourselves a limited number of policy objectives—restoring ocean fisheries, for instance—and to hold ourselves accountable for delivering results within three tor four years. We resist the tendency to spread ourselves too thinly among too many objectives, doing just enough on everything to lose. And by results, we mean a policy change that will deliver concrete benefits to healthy oceans. We do not mean objectives like “raising consciousness of the problem.” Happily, our practical approach has made us very effective in the seven years since our founding. Here’s to an abundant future. Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos 4 Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org A graduate of Harvard, Andrew Sharpless has been CEO of Oceana since 2003. Previously, he was a founding manager of RealNetworks, vice president of the Museum of Television and Radio, and a consultant with McKinsey & Co. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with his wife and two children. Issue No. 21 : Winter/Spring 2008 : Islands & Archipelagos 5 Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments : www.terrain.org Column: The Literal Landscape by Simmons B. Buntin, Editor/Publisher, Terrain.org Portrait of Fernando, Bahía de Loreto Fernando is from Loreto, a quiet town nestled between Baja California Sur’s Sierra de la Giganta and the Sea of Cortés: where the mountains come to swim, legend says. Originally settled ten-thousand years ago by the Cochimi and Guaycura peoples, it houses Baja’s first mission, Nuestra Señora de Loreto, and for many years served as the first capital of the Californias. Today, Loreto is a small but growing fishing village, a site destined—developers and Mexican tourist authorities hope—for the fame and fortunes The Mision de Nuestra Señora de Loreto. Photo by Simmons B. Buntin. of ecotourism and sustainable development. For now, at least, it remains authentic. Fernando steers our panga over the turquoise water, away from a beach-lined cove and away from El Don, the yacht our group chartered to take us to Isla Coronado and the Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto. He is of medium height, muscular but not overly so, tanned from his Mexican heritage and from working in the subtropical sun. He is perhaps twenty-five years old. Shirtless, Fernando wears only deep yellow swim trunks. Like us, he just finished snorkeling—serving as our guide—but unlike us, he is not already exhausted with delight from the day’s early events. Our boat skips over small waves and into deeper water, where dozens of dolphins leap and splash, fin after flashing fin. I sit next to Clifflyn, the fifty-something educator and photographer from Seattle whose digital SLR snaps photos in rapid succession.