Global Warming: Better for Invertebrates
According to an article in The Week, crediting National Geographic, global warming has caused dramatic shifts in some aquatic environments causing fin fish populations to recede as lobsters, crabs, and squid move in. Scallops also. "Experts say it may only be a matter of time before fish that are now relatively cheap, because they are abundant, will become more expensive, while lobster and other bottom-crawlers will lose their rarefied status."
hmmm... sucks to be kosher, I guess
Our kids will have to listen to, "Not Lobster Again!", and "When can we go out to the special place that serves Cod?" (I think that the latter is already happening...)
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Sam Fujisaka
Jul 13, 2008 07:23 PM
Jellyfish are no joke. Apparently, their life cycle includes a stage in which most live in near infinite numbers at a microscopic size with regular shifts of a relatively few to macro reproducing adults. Pollution and the effects of pollution in the sea of Japan is leading to massive production of adults--but in numbers that do not significantly affect the stocks of the micro-stage form. Many or most other species are gone in this stage of jellyfish florescence.
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Caroline1
Jul 13, 2008 07:03 PM
I have avoided reading too much about global warming beyond realizing, without maps and projections, that melting solar ice caps will mean horrific changes in coast lines around the world. Hey, if you live on the 3rd or 4th floor in Manhattan, give it a few years and you may be able to wade in the ocean on your very own balcony! And those live "Maine"lobsters may be caught beach-side in western New Jersey! Or the new CoC campaign, "Come Scuba Florida, The New Atlantis!"
Few people realize how much negative impact we've had in our own country over the last fifty or sixty years. It's not just the lack of abalone in California coastal waters that distresses me as part of the reason I won't go back. When I was in high school, I cut my feet on live coral gowing in the La Jolla Cove. We used to have midnight swim parties on New Years Eve in the warm balmy water behind the Hotel Del Coronado. All of that has changed for one simple reason: Every river from the Canadian border to the Mexican border has been dammed for hydroelectric power, completely blocking sand from reaching the ocean so long shore drift could continue moving it southward to protect the shores and guide the ocean currents. Pogo was one smart alligator!
The best news I've heard lately, though it may be too little too late, but... T. Bone Pickens, the Texas oil billionair, is now extremely vocal here in Texas about putting his money where his mouth is and developing alternate energy sources that will free us of our need for oil. When you hear that from a Texas oil man, maybe there is hope!
As for the ocean, I just don't know. It has to be thirty years or more since Thor Heyerdahl made his Ra II voyage across the Atlantic in a papyrus (reed?) boat, and he said that there was no area of that ocean that was free of floating detritis from man. We have a long history of using ecosystems we don't begin to understand as our dumping grounds, and it's simply catching up with us and biting back. I won't eat Gulf of Mexico/NOLA seafood because of the toxic waste still slushing around in the mud from Katrina. I know it's there, even if the government doesn't want anyone to talk about it.
I worry that I'm leaving my grandson a ticket aboard Earthship Titanic. Or maybe I should just be angry at Paul Ehrlich over all those seminars of his I attended way back in the seventies warning me about all this stuff... <sigh>
Please pass the spiny lobster caught off the balmy minimally polluted shores of green Antarctica.
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re: tarteaucitron
applehome
Jul 13, 2008 10:20 PM
That, I published earlier:
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/511993
But this is a new, working link to the same article:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/31349/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__The_Costs_of_Meat_and_FishActually, Science News followed that referenced article up with an entire issue devoted to eating bugs. The best article is "Insects (the Original White Meat)":
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/issue...Perhaps all this will lead to a major shift in our foods. In 100 years, it may be that mankind will get their protein mainly from bugs, shellfish, squid and even jellyfish.
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That's actually what people were saying in the 1800's. Lobster was extremely plentiful at one point and very cheap. Servants had it in their contracts that they couldn't be served lobster more then twice a week. It wasn't until this plentiful status was exploited that lobster became smaller in number and expensive.
That being said lobsters are scavengers. They are a pretty basic form of life and I wouldn't be surprised if they rise in number.
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Sam Fujisaka
Jul 12, 2008 05:40 PM
Modeling of changes in oceanic temperatures is less developed than for terrestial systems. So far, some of the modeling of effects of rises in seawater temperatures is incomplete given the systemic nature of oceans (they're all connected and stuff flows with currents) and increasing contamination from rivers and coastal land use. The future may bring scenarios such as is developing in the Sea of Japan as a result of mainland Asian effluents: killing off of fish and species now used by man and the incredible domination of jellyfish--whose populations are currently held in check by ecosystemic checks-and-balances.
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re: beth1
porker
Jul 13, 2008 05:45 PM
I'm assuming its the 'bell' part of the beast. I'm not positive as I never cleaned one before, nor would I want to....
You can buy it in an asian market already prepared - something like thishttp://food.limingxu.com/images/Radis...
I've eaten it like a salad, similar to a japanese seaweed salad. You soak the jellyfish in hot water and rinse, toss with sesame oil, soy, and sesame seeds.
On its own, the prepared jellyfish isn't THAT flavorful. It has a cartilige-like consistency and the soy-sesame gives the dish its character.-
re: porker
I suppose, however, that jellyfish is nutritionally very sparse, given that it is made up of 99+% water.
For the longest time, I thought without thinking that it was the tentacles that got eaten, because they were always served in those long, thin strips. Now I realise those strips are all cut quite uniform in shape.
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re: tarteaucitron
Here is some nutritional information on jelly fish: dried salted form:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fi...
I cup of dried salted jellyfish is only 21 calories! We'll have to eat a lot of it. Some fat, mostly protein. Lots of salt though... You have soak and rinse it a lot.
Porker's picture is interesting, it looks like the jelly fish has been reconstituted. My mother usually buys it dried, and soaks it to reconstitute it. It then gets used in a cold jelly fish salad. He is also correct that it doesn't have much taste, it is more of a texture thing. Quite harmless to try, not as icky as one might think. I find it very refreshing and fun to eat.
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re: moh
Hi moh, how are you? (Me, I'm fine, thanks, and very busy as you'd imagine :)
Never thought of jellyfish as a health food as a source of protein. Now we got to think outside the box, in light of rising food costs and scarcity.
I used to get the prepared and seasoned jellyfish in a plastic bag packaging. Very handy as a snack.
Actually from porker's seaweed analogy, I'm inspired to pair the seaweed with jellyfish into a salad when I am up for it next time.
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