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Read the two pieces at the beginning of your course reader (Duncan – Adoration of a Hose; Szimborska - Water) and then write a maximum of 1 page (double spaced) answering one of the following questions:
You are about to contact a group of people you feel are making a difference in some aspect of aquatic conservation and management. Before you can ask them for thoughts on how you might make a difference for them, you need to tell them who you are and what the course you are taking is all about. Write a one page (double-spaced) reflection which does exactly that. Organize your reflection according to the guidelines described in the Fish/Enviro 101 Writing Guide.
OR
Address the following questions:
Do you feel that you could make a difference in aquatic conservation? If
so, why? What do you have to offer? If not, why? What obstacles are in the
way? Again, write a one page (double-spaced) reflection, organized according
to the guidelines described in the Fish/Enviro 101 Writing Guide.
The following is quote from Carl Safina’s Gulf of Maine chapter:
“Clear, blue offshore waters are oceanic deserts, with pockets of dense life separated by great expanses of relative emptiness. In terrestrial deserts life is limited by lack of water, while in oceanic deserts life is limited by a lack of nutrients. Camel-like, many open-ocean creatures are in effect desert-adapted animals, able to cross vast tracts of barren habitat until they find the oases containing the food they need.”
Write a reflection which draws together points made by Payne (1995- course
reader) and Ryther (1969 – course reader) about what an oceanic desert
is and how marine animals have become “desert-adapted”.
The following three quotes are claims that we pulled out of Safina and Greenlaw. Pick ONE of these claims. Write a 1 page (double space) reflection which describes (a) how the claim was supported or refuted in the readings, and (b) what your opinion is about the issue associated with the claim. Be sure to back up your opinion with support from the readings.
"But I don’t buy the argument that man is the thing that is expendable in the quest to correct whatever is wrong ….. if we’re going to err, we ought to err on the side of employment." - Gerry Abrams, Safina p. 48.
"The cod crisis has taught us a valuable lesson that others are going to have to learn: that we must err on the side of conservation." - Ron Bulmer, Fisheries Council of Canada, Safina p. 108
"And in seventeen years of swordfishing, I have seen no evidence of depletion." - Linda Greenlaw, p. 144.
No reflection assignment this week. Mid-term on Friday.
The following statements hint at relationships between such things as culture, aesthetics, ethics, and aquatic conservation.
"…fish and game were not, after all, quite like other commodities in the marketplace. They were the biological manifestation of a dynamic balance between the environments that nurtured them and the forces that consumed them." - Arthur McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem
"When these elements (aquatic plant and animal life and humans) are in balance, the results can be beautiful [aesthetics] and can allow everyone to have their needs met." - Sonia Luthra, Fish 101 2005 Reflection
"People are joined to the land [or ocean] by work. Land [or ocean], work, people and community are all comprehended in the idea of culture … We can understand them only after we acknowledge that they should be harmonious – that a culture must be either shapely and saving or shapeless and destructive… And so, I suggest that, for humans, the harmony I am talking about may bear inescapable likeness to what we know as moral law [ethics]…" - Wendell Berry, Standing By Words
Write a 3 to 5 page (double-spaced) essay in which you:
a) Describe your interpretation of two of these statements and how
they are connected.
b) There are two textbooks in the course: Song for the Blue Ocean and Hungry
Ocean. Pick one of these. What does the book title mean and how does it relate
to your answer to part a) above?
c) Describe how the role of your md2 organization relates to your answer to
part a) above. Write your answer with particular reference to the following:
culture, aesthetics, ethics and aquatic conservation.
Base your essay on information and ideas studied in lecture, section, course reading, extra credit films and talks as well as information gathered from your md2 organization.
Suggested reading on the concept of culture:
Quinn, D. 19??. Ishmael, pp198-207 (in course reader).
Barbara Kingsolver calls Darwin’s theory of evolution “the greatest, simplest, most elegant logical construct ever to dawn across our curiosity about the workings of natural life. It is inarguable, and it explains everything.” (A Fist in the Eye of God, p. 96)
• What are your thoughts on her statement?
• Describe how the theory of evolution and its resulting footprint,
biodiversity, relates to one important issue surrounding coral reefs.
Hilborn et al (2003) say:
“Biocomplexity of fish stocks is critical for maintaining their resilience to environmental change.”
Berry (1990) seems to expand on this when he says:
“But I am beginning to see what is needed, and everywhere the need is for diversity. This is the need of every American rural landscape that I am acquainted with. We need a greater range of species and varieties of plants and animals, of human skills and methods, so that the use may be fitted ever more sensitively and elegantly to the place.”
Write a 1 page reflection which describes a linkage between these two statements.
If you can, speak to the linkage from the point of view of McEvoy’s
broad definition of a fishery.
Write a 3 to 5 page (double-spaced) essay on the following issue. Base your essay on information and ideas studied in lectures, sections and readings.
E.O. Wilson (paraphrasing Aldo Leopold) defines an ethic as a set of rules invented to meet circumstances so new, or intricate, or encompassing responses so far into the future, that the average person cannot foresee the final outcome.
There are 8 readings for Fish/Envir 101 that exemplify an ethical transformation: E.O. Wilson’s The Conservation Ethic; Barbara Kingsolver’s A Fist in the Eye of God; Wendell Berry’s An Argument for Diverity; Sylvia Earle’s’s Introduction from Sea Changes; A Message of the Oceans; Terry Tempest Williams’ Winter Solstice at the Moab Slough; Mike Connelly’s Home is where they’ll lay me down; Barry McCovey’s For the Yurok, salmon is everything; and Carl Safina’s Sulu (pp 408-434 of Song for the Blue Ocean). In his or her way, each of these writers describes a conservation ethic that depends on redirected moral reasoning.
1) Describe your interpretation of two of these ethics and how they are connected. (A draft of this question will be due as a reflection in M/Tu Section on Week 9)
2) This question has three parts:
a) Define your own conservation ethic.
b) How is your ethic similar to and/or different from the ethics described in part 1) above?
c) Based on your Fish/Envir 101experience this quarter with contemporary marine aquatic resource issues (Atlantic bluefin and swordfish, Western Pacific coral reefs, Pacific Northwest coastal marine fisheries, the whole range of md2 projects), choose one or more of these issues and give three ways you could personally translate your conservation ethic into concrete action.