Short-term disaster, long-term hope

The ugly stories and pictures of the Deepwater Horizon spill's impact on the Gulf Coast ecosystem and economy are rolling in. But while the short-term prospects look grim, reason for longer-term hope can be found in an analysis of Mexico's devastating Ixtoc oil spill (an anagram for "toxic," I noticed) of 1979.

Soto, who followed the fish and shrimp population off Mexico closely, found to his surprise that for most species the numbers had returned to normal within two years.

"In 1979, the islands around Veracruz looked like black doughnuts, there was so much oil clustered around them,'' he remembers. "It was 12 to 15 inches thick in some places. But as I came back over the years, it got harder and hard to find. After five to seven years, it was hard to see the outline, and by 2002, an unsuspecting person would have thought it was a rock ledge ... it was covered with algae and shells and just looked like a normal part of the environment."

Even under water, where the sun can't help the oil break down, nature subverts it, says Mexican marine biodiversity analyst Jorge Brenner. "If you visit the coral reefs in the Gulf of Campeche, the tar has been covered with sea grass, algae and sediment,'' he says. "You actually have to dig a little bit to find it, although it's definitely there."

The spill might also be, ironically, good news for environmentalists, although perhaps not across the board, as finite public attention and energy for environmental and sustainability issues is diverted from less acute (but still enormous) challenges like climate change.

Tragedy of the commons solved by pirates

Who needs Nobel Prize-winning political economist Elinor Ostrom when you can solve the tragedy of the commons with pirates?

The increasing levels of piracy off the coast of Somalia have caused an unexpected spin-off, raising the levels of fish in the sea.

Fisherman in Kenya have reported bumper catches of shark and shellfish because commercial fishing boats from China and Japan have been scared away.

Now the fishermen are able to catch up to £200 worth of fish per day in an area where the average daily earnings are less than £5.

The massive factory trawlers which used to drain their fish stocks have been scared away and that means there is a huge bounty for local fishermen as well as helping to restore the health of the marine eco-system.

Hat tip to Aid Thoughts (one of the new Africa/aid-related blogs I've added to my RSS reader, given my new whereabouts and the ubiquity of aid here).

Trying but failing to help, dolphin-safe tuna edition

In a classic illustration of the unintended consequences that well-intentioned environmental advocacy can generate, it turns out that dolphin-safe tuna is an ecological disaster. It turns out you can catch (lucrative) tuna by either following dolphins (in which case you also catch dolphins) or by attracting tuna with floating objects (in which case you also catch every other kind of ocean fish).

If you work out the math on this (and you don’t have to, because the environmental justice foundation did) , you find that 1 dolphin saved costs 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks, and almost 1,200 small fish.

Ouch. Oops.

Bluefin tuna on the brink

Bluefin tuna may be tasty and in "enormous demand" at Nobu, but it's a classic tragedy of the commons (as are many fishery resources more generally):

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Atlantic bluefin will be wiped out in three years unless radical action is taken

Good thing environmental groups, celebrities and the French Navy are on the case. I prefer salmon sashimi to tuna anyway.