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fisheries
Rebuilding the World: The Inspiring Success of the Klamath Dam Removals
The 2024 removal of four dams on the Klamath River is an amazing example of how, when you address a human-based problem, nature can come back.
Nov 23, 2025
Since 2002, I’ve been reporting on the generations-long battle led by Klamath River tribes to take down four dams damaging the northern California river and its salmon. Recently Natasha Benjamin and I got to interview Amy Bowers Cordalis, the former general counsel for the Yurok Tribe, the largest of California’s tribes, about her new book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life. We did this on our Rising Tide, the Ocean Podcast.
David Helvarg (DH): Amy, usually our opening question is about one's first connection with the ocean. But since all rivers connect to the sea, let’s ask what your first memory of wild water was?
Amy Bowers Cordalis (ABC): Oh, I love that question. My first memory of wild waters is not even a visual memory, it’s an embedded experience. My family is from the village of Requa at the north side of the mouth of the Klamath River, and our ancestral home is an old Yurok traditional redwood plank house. And that’s where I spent most holidays and that’s where we’d go and stay, that was home base during fishing season.
I grew up just running around the village area and grandma’s house, and it sits overlooking the Klamath estuary, the mouth of the Klamath River, and the ocean. And so, my first connection with wild water was just being in that place surrounded by different forms of water; there’s the ocean and there’s always these extremely powerful waves at the mouth of the Klamath. And then you go inland, in the mouth, and that’s a really powerful exchange of different kinds of water, of salt water and fresh water merging. And then you’re in the estuary and it’s just like deep and wide, but then it’s right in the middle of the redwoods. And so often there is fog and mist surrounding you.
I was on a Yurok Fisheries tribal boat looking at the dead fish, and I just felt like my great grandma who had passed away, 20 years before, came to me and was like, "You got to stop this. We can’t have this anymore."
DH: It’s amazing when you stand on the bluff at the mouth of the Klamath and you look north and south and it’s forested as far as you can see, and you think you’re in the most populous state in the nation? It’s just hard to grasp how much of it is still wild. Of course there’s been decline over time. Before we get into that, let’s ask a bit more of your history.
ABC: Well, I grew up fishing. I grew up hearing the family stories about all these fights just to be on the river, right? Just to sort of survive colonization. And I write about those in the book and so I just felt like I had to get all this out in a narrative format so that people could know this history, but also share this experience with me.
I heard about the family’s Supreme Court case, the fish wars, and how the family fought back against federal marshals armed with machine guns and how we, even, like my dad, who’s one of the kindest humans I know, he drove around with a machine gun in his trunk because they weren’t safe. I grew up hearing these fish stories, like about catching lots of salmon in one night and how much fun and all the hard work it was. And the role of salmon and the value of salmon in feeding our families and continuing our way of life. And, so I just had a deep, deep love for the river, for our culture, for our salmon. And then in 2002, tragedy hit. And you know, people have heard about the Klamath River fish kill. It was the largest fish kill in American history.
Over 70,000 adult Chinook salmon died in the Klamath River on the lower part of the river within the Yurok Reservation. I was in college then, and I was home that summer when the fish kill happened working for the tribal fisheries (department). And my job that summer was to go and count salmon harvested by Yurok tribal members. And so, I spent the whole summer up and down the river talking to the people. And then when the fish started dying, it was so deeply moving and profound. It was like we were under attack again. It was hard for all the Yurok families who depended on salmon for their livelihood, but also we as Yurok people have a duty to protect Yurok country and to protect our salmon. And so, I just felt compelled to try and do something to help.
I was on a Yurok Fisheries tribal boat looking at the dead fish, and I just felt like my great grandma who had passed away, 20 years before, came to me and was like, "You got to stop this. We can’t have this anymore." And then my next thought was, you gotta go to law school. So, I went to law school and the whole goal was to get a legal education and be in a position to try to help my tribe… I went out to Colorado for law school and was able to work at the Native American Rights Fund for a period of time. They are the largest and oldest legal defense fund for tribes.
And then eventually I was called home. I’ll never forget a call I got from the then-Yurok chairman saying, "Amy, it’s time." And he asked me to be general counsel, and I had two little kids. My second son was about a year old, and I thought, "Oh, the timing’s not right, I got young babies, how am I gonna do all this?" And also, things on the river were really, really bad. That was 2016. The river was just getting sicker and sicker and the dam removal agreements were not certain. Things were just awful. And I just thought, well, this is what you’ve been training for. This is what you were called to do. So, I moved home and started that job and made arrangements so that I could work remotely a couple days and also take the baby to work.
DH: So, for those who haven’t yet read your book let’s go back a little. During the Gold Rush there was what California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 apologized for, which was a (federal, state, and vigilante) genocide against California’s Native Americans. You fast forward and "cultural fire"—Indigenous fire setting for forest management and protection—was outlawed as arson. And then the fish wars of the 1970s and 80s (that Amy’s father was involved in) were about reasserting tribal rights or treaty rights to fish salmon on the rivers.
Fast forward and I wrote about the 2002 fish kill which was more like a fish assassination when Gail Norton, the secretary of Interior under George W. Bush, opened the floodgates for alfalfa and potato farmers in eastern Oregon against the science advice that had been put forward by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And that resulted in this disaster, the salmon kill (downriver), but also inspired the growth of the tribal movement and some environmental groups, who did what?
ABC: Everything we could to save our culture and ourselves. We have a myth that says if the salmon die, so to do the Yurok people, because there’d be no reason for Yurok to be here because we are so deeply connected to them, you know, the salmon and the river, and our sole purpose on Earth is to steward them.
So, we fought with that kind of veracity and that kind of determination, and failure was not an option. After the fish kill a whole new generation of Indigenous peoples from the Klamath were launched into the fight. And you know what was interesting about that time was more and more non-Indians, NGOs, other folks were also compelled by the fish kill. And the fish kill was tragic, it was awful. And I write about how the fish kill started (on) the last day of a world renewal ceremony that the tribe hadn’t done in 100 years. And the whole point of that ceremony is to bring about world renewal and restore balance between humans and the natural world.
And so, there’s one way of looking at this, where it was like that ceremony really did its job. You know, the medicine was really strong and although we would never wish for the salmon to die in that way, their deaths launched the undammed, the Klamath movement, and showed the humans like, "Hey, look, you keep up this regime of out-of-balanced management of the system, it’s gonna collapse."
Natasha Benjamin (NB): So, can you describe to us just what happens to a river when you put up dams and why all these fish died?
ABC: There were a few contributing factors to the fish kill and so the order by then Vice President (Dick) Cheney to divert an extreme amount of water from the upper part of the basin in southeastern Oregon to support agriculture (and try and win Oregon in the 2004 presidential election), what that did was cause water flows at the bottom of the river, 250-300 river miles lower by my village, to be the lowest (water levels) in history. So, nothing about this was natural.
And this year, the salmon were bigger and beautiful and stronger than I’ve seen in years. I mean, they were just fierce.
Also, a contributing factor was the dams. The Klamath dams were built right in the middle of the Klamath River without fish ladders. So first off, you know, they’re blocking salmon habitat and salmon are on a mission. They will die trying to get to their spawning grounds. And so that’s what they would do at Iron Gate Dam is they would just hit their heads on the dam until they died. And if you ever went to Iron Gate, there was evidence of this. There were salmon carcasses all over. I mean, it was eerie. It was like a salmon graveyard.
But also, what was happening with the Klamath dams was that all of the agricultural runoff was coming down into the reservoirs behind the four dams. It (the upper Klamath) was former wetlands. They converted 200,000 acres of wetlands into agricultural lands. And so, what happens is that when you put chemicals on the land, it goes into the surface water and (into) the Klamath, and then that would pool behind the reservoirs and the water would get really polluted and it would get really hot. You’d have toxic blue-green algae blooms every year, and then that water would go down the entire Klamath River and poison it, from top to bottom. Then on top of that, the other thing that dams do is they block the natural sediment that would go down a river. And so, on a healthy river bed, you have lots of little, teeny rocks that help clean the river bar.
So you block that, and then you have just hard rock at the bottom of the riverbed. And what was happening under these bad conditions, is you would have these little worms (parasites) that would attach to those boulders at the bottom of the river and that would (then attach to fish and) spread fish disease. And that was causing the death of baby fish each year.
Also, behind the dams are these amazing cold water springs that cool the entire water system down the whole river. But it (the cold water) can’t get past the dams. It’s blocked under that hot, green, toxic (reservoir) water. So, all of those conditions were killing the river. By about 2010, over 90% of the Klamath salmon runs had been slaughtered. Like we were down to single digit percentages. So we had to do something, or there’d be no future.
DH: So, you moved from confrontation to collaboration to actually take the dams down. Maybe you could talk about what it took to get people to understand that taking out the dams was good for everybody on the river.
ABC: It definitely started with the grassroots Indigenous peoples of the Klamath. And they are diehards, they are hardcore, and they are brilliant. They organized protests all over the world and, you know, had signs that said things like "Warren Buffet kills salmon," because he was the owner of it (PacifiCorp, the owner of the dams) for a time. What they did was raise awareness about the issue, and they demanded attention. They demanded that the stakeholders be accountable for how their company’s business practices were essentially killing their way of life.
We have this common life force that is is bringing us together and in a lot of ways making us more accountable for our actions.
And then what happened is there’s also a bit of good medicine here too. In 2007, PacifiCorp’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license to operate the dams was set to expire. And so, in 2006, a relicensing proceeding started, which gave the tribes and our allies an opportunity to advocate for dam removal, and that really launched the whole movement. But the grassroots effort really set the stage and educated people in a way you couldn’t ignore. By the time that relicensing hearing started, everybody knew about the issue.
And then what was really cool in the FERC proceeding is that the tribe put forth its ancient, federally reserved fishing and water rights and said that these rights demand that these dams come out. And then we coupled those with energy law, the Federal Power Act, and environmental laws to basically make the case that the Klamath dams were so harmful to salmon, to the river’s overall health and Indigenous lifeways, that it was against the public interest to keep them in.
And then there’s this really powerful section of the Federal Power Act, Section Eight, that says if you’re on a river where there are salmon you have to have some kind of fish passage in order to get a new license. And so, what that meant in the context of the Klamath is that if PacifiCorp wanted to renew their license to operate the dams, they had to put in some kind of fish ladders. Then there was an economic analysis completed and it turns out that it was cheaper to remove the dams than it was to keep them in. And then we had our turning point.
(With the eventual dam removal ending in 2024) there was like earth and rock and rebar and all kinds of things, and we repurposed it or returned it to where it came from. And now we are restoring over 20,000 acres within the former reservoir footprint. We have planted over 19 billion native seeds through the whole area. And there will be restoration projects going on for at least 10 more years.
And one thing I’m really excited about is that we’re also seeing more collaboration between all the Indigenous peoples (four tribes) on the basin. My nonprofit Ridges to Riffles is facilitating an inter-Indigenous group that is advising all of this restoration work. So, we’re renewing the world and rebuilding it and decolonizing it. And that’s not just good for us, but that of course also creates ecosystems for all the little critters. And so, you go there now and it’s remarkable. And there are fish that, oh the fish. I mean the fish. We have a salmon phenomenon happening. It is a straight up phenomenon. Amazing. This year the fish have gone past upper Klamath past the (now removed) dams. They haven’t been there in 100 years, but they went past the dams, past Keno Dam, past upper Klamath Lake, and are now in the Williamson and the Sprague rivers (in Oregon). We always said we’re gonna open up 400 miles of spawning habitat, and we’re about there with all that.
NB: Within a year of taking down the dams?
ABC: So last year we took out the dams, and there was every kind of scientific study, I mean 20 years of studies about what was going to happen, and they never anticipated that this many salmon would come back this fast and that they would go back into those spawning grounds, you know, where they hadn’t been in 100 years.
And this year, the salmon were bigger and beautiful and stronger than I’ve seen in years. I mean, they were just fierce. They just fought and they were gorgeous. And so, I kind of knew like, these guys are gonna do something, and they just surpassed everybody’s expectation.
You know we have this common life force that is is bringing us together and in a lot of ways making us more accountable for our actions. Because what happens at the top of the river so greatly impacts what happens at the bottom.
NB: This is an amazing example of when you address a human-based problem, nature can come back.
ABC: Absolutely. The concept is to remove the dams so that the river’s natural ecosystem functions can start performing again. And when we did that, I mean it was almost instantly the water was cleaner, you don’t have those reservoirs and those stagnant bathtubs, like everything is just being flushed out. And the river almost immediately was stronger and healthier.
NB: The Klamath is the antidote to the current political and climate crisis.
ABC: And what’s interesting too is that Klamath dam removal was also profitable. You know, it pumped $515 million into the economy. And some of the world’s largest construction corporations were responsible for the physical removal of the dams. And they used the same engineering techniques and business practices as they use for regular construction projects or building infrastructure. So, there’s a scalable business model that supports nature-based solutions… You know, there is a movement of people who are using nature-based solutions to solve the climate crisis and they’re accepting that humans are a part of the natural world and that we can actually work to rebuild the world!
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Tribes Celebrate as Dam Removals Set Klamath River 'Free' for First Time in a Century
"The biggest thing for me, the significance of the dam removal project, is just hope—understanding that change can be made," a Yoruk activist said as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history neared completion.
Aug 29, 2024
Crews breached the final of four dams on a key stretch of the Klamath River on Wednesday, letting salmon run freely there for the first time in over a century and garnering tears from Indigenous activists who had campaigned for the dam removals for decades.
Together the four demolitions mark the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.
The Klamath, which runs from south-central Oregon into northwestern California, has long been bordered by Native American tribes—"Salmon People," as they call themselves—that once relied on the protein-rich fish for about half of their caloric intake but were impoverished by the institution of the dams, among other white settler colonialist initiatives.
"Another wall fell today," Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a statement. "The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free. Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today's events represent a fulfillment of that obligation."
The world's largest dam removal to date is restoring and reconnecting hundreds of miles of the Klamath River allowing salmon to go to their spawning grounds for the first time in 100 years.https://t.co/hts6nH3fbG
— American Rivers (@americanrivers) August 29, 2024
The four dams were built between 1918 and 1962 to generate electricity in the region and have been owned in recent years by PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate owned by Warren Buffett.
Beforehand, chinook and coho salmon were plentiful in the river.
"My grandpa said that there were so many salmon when he was younger that you could walk across their backs to the other side," Brook Thompson, a 28-year-old activist who grew up on the Yurok reservation, told The New York Times. "It's just so hard to express to people who are so used to fishing for sport or fun that salmon is really everything for us. The health of the river is literally our health."
The campaign to remove the dams took flight in 2002 following a devastating salmon die-off which Thompson and other Indigenous activists still talk about as a turning point. Campaigners went as far as the United Kingdom—where Scottish Power, which then owned the dams, was headquartered—to demand their removal.
The campaign faced opposition but was pushed through by a coalition that included Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Kate Brown of Oregon, who left office in 2023.
"This moment is decades in the making—and reflects California's commitment to righting the wrongs of the past," Newsom said in a statement on Wednesday. "Today, fish are swimming freely in the Klamath for the first time in more than a century, thanks to the incredible work of our tribal, local, and federal partners."
The Klamath decommissioning project is part of a larger movement aimed at restorative justice for Indigenous peoples and ecological renewal. More than 2,000 dams have been removed in the United States, mostly in the last 25 years, according to American Rivers, an advocacy group.
Thompson said the removal of the dams showed that activism can pay off.
"The biggest thing for me, the significance of the dam removal project, is just hope—understanding that change can be made," she recently told the Los Angeles Times.
The Klamath is unusual in that it runs from a desert area into the mountains and then back down to the Pacific Ocean—National Geographic has called it "a river upside down." Two upstream dams on the river have not been removed, but they have swim ladders that allow salmon to get through.
Construction work to remove the last infrastructure on the four dams is expected to last another month, while ecological restoration work will go on for years, led by Indigenous groups and Resource Environmental Solutions, a company contracted to do the work.
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What US Militarism Has to Do With Japan's Quest to Slaughter More Whales
Whaling, it turns out, has very little to do with whaling and much more to with how powerful nations want to dominate the world's oceans.
Aug 26, 2024
In early August, the crew on Japan’s new whaling factory ship dismembered a male fin whale, the first commercial catch of the species in several decades. A few days earlier, Paul Watson was arrested in Nuuk, Greenland. He sits in a Danish prison, waiting a decision on his extradition to Japan. Given the Japanese courts’ record of 99.9% conviction rate for criminal cases, and issues with Japanese justice system, if extradited, he will probably spend the rest of his life imprisoned.
A few months ago, a paper led by Norwegian government scientists showed that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just one small part of the Southern Ocean. Also in Antarctic waters, the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has been running a research program which, as the the Institute states, is the “aimed at the sustainable use of whale resources in the Antarctic Ocean.” A new era of commercial whaling in the Antarctic looms.
Forty years ago, the International Whaling Commission introduced the whaling moratorium—a pause in slaughter, to allow whale populations to recover. At the time, the belief by most in the whale conservation community was that by the time that whale populations finally recovered, those still engaged in whaling would have given up, making the moratorium permanent. That’s not what’s happened. Three nations—Japan, Norway, and Iceland—still engage in commercial whaling.
There are many arguments against whaling: it’s cruel, it has to be subsidized, most people in whaling nations don’t care about it, it’s traditional in very few places in Japan, whales don’t eat all the fish, instead they’re ecosystem engineers that contribute to carbon sequestration. These points have been made for many years, and have never had the slightest impact on the Japanese whaling bureaucracy. They’re not only irrelevant, they’ve proven pointless.
Whaling, it turns out, isn’t about whales at all. Japan’s primary interest in commercial whaling is to maintain their geopolitical clout to exploit other marine wildlife (“living marine resources”) internationally. Tuna, for example. This point’s been made recently in a couple of forums. For the Japanese government, whaling’s a thin-edge-of-the-wedge problem. The moratorium was a big win for marine conservation that couldn’t be repeated with other international fisheries.
Given this framing, the actions of the Japanese whaling industry over the past forty years are rational. Whaling is primarily about asserting dominance in international negotiations over access to marine wildlife, so whether or not Japanese people eat much whale meat is irrelevant. What matters is access to other fisheries by Japan’s pelagic fishing fleets. Subsidizing whaling is a minuscule price to pay. The primary role of Japan’s new floating factory, the Kangei Maru, is as a flagship, a symbol of Japanese hegemony in international maritime negotiations. So its $48 million price tag is trivial. A Ford class US aircraft carrier, with a build cost of around $13 billion and an annual upkeep of $700 million, puts that in perspective. The Kangei Maru’s costs are a rounding error.
Despite Japan leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in late 2018, the Japanese fisheries bureaucracy still controls the activities of the pro-whaling bloc. This September, the IWC meets again. One rumor currently swirling is that the Japanese will rejoin the IWC with a reservation to commercial whaling, one way to demolish the whaling moratorium. Another appeared a couple of weeks ago, when the prestigious scientific journal Nature published an opinion piece calling for the IWC to be dismantled. The article’s first author is a former chair of the IWC, who with his coauthors, argue that the IWC is now a “zombie” organization that has outlived its usefulness and should be dismantled.
Interesting timing.
Once, the threat of US sanctions in response to “diminishing the effectiveness” of the IWC regulated the manner in which the whaling bloc engaged there. That threat—obviously—no longer exists. How have the whalers brought the U.S. to heel on whaling? What’s their lever?
There was a belief in the NGO community that the threat of withholding IWC quotas on U.S. Inuit bowhead whaling was driving U.S. acquiescence. The pro-whaling bloc engaged in brinkmanship on this several times in the past. But the “Aboriginal Subsistence” whaling issues at the IWC have been resolved, removing this threat. Besides, ending the IWC would put bowhead whaling management back entirely with the U.S., internally. It can’t be that.
It’s here the military comes in. The U.S. has around 55,000 military personnel based in Japan. This is, for example, almost the size of the Australia’s active duty defense forces. Their weaponry includes some the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Most of those personnel are based in Okinawa, where there were over 6,000 criminal cases involving U.S. military personnel in the 50 years since the island was handed back to Japan in 1972. That’s a couple of crimes a week. And they include reported 134 rapes, or two to three reported rapes per year, including recent charges of the sexual assault of a child. Understandably, there is a vocal anti-US-base movement in Okinawa that regularly engages in mass protest.
These put Paul Watson’s “accomplice to assault” and “ship trespass” charges in context.
At the same time, the U.S. is reconstituting its forces in Japan, a buildup in response to the perceived threat to U.S. hegemony now posed by China. The Japanese government has leverage. Getting its way on whaling is Japan’s price for U.S. bases.
What could happen? Possibilities include Japan rejoining the IWC with a reservation that allows it to conduct commercial whaling wherever it wants. Perhaps the IWC will collapse. The recent Nature article shows that destroying the IWC is being considered. Returning the management of whaling to whaling nations? We know how that worked. And allowing Japan’s return to the IWC with a reservation will return the IWC’s role to that of a toothless body overseeing mass slaughter.
The huge U.S. military presence in Japan matters to the national security apparatus of the United States. The bureaucracy has worked with the Japanese government to see commercial whaling return. The return of commercial whaling is the U.S. military's quid pro quo for its regional dominance in the Pacific—not to mention its rapists in Okinawa.
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Factory Fish Farming Threatens Fishermen and Farmers - But New Legislation Could Change That
By using commodity grains produced on factory land farms to feed fish in factory ocean farms, Big Ag has brought small-scale farmers and fishermen like us together.
Oct 15, 2023
Farmers neither milk cows with nets, nor harvest vegetables with rods. And fishermen neither scatter seeds in the oceans, nor catch fish with sickles.
Despite our differences, something we do share is a common threat from the expansion of industrial fish farming and big agribusiness.
More specifically, the expansion of industrial fish farming provides an increasingly profitable outlet for large-scale agriculture corporations to market surplus grains like soy and corn as “fish feed.” Such developments threaten both fishing and farming communities, as the model promotes industrial production of genetically modified monocrops for concentrated animal feeding operations on land and at sea.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), marine and inland aquaculture production has significantly increased around the world from 1990 to 2022, with the former growing from 12.6 to 44.7 million live weight tons, and the latter moving from 9.2 to 26.8 million live weight tons.
Factory fish farms have emerged to line the pockets of big corporations by producing monocultures of fish at mass volume, under the guise of satisfying seafood demand. This "demand" is artificially created by the fact that we currently export 75-80% of U.S. wild-caught seafood. US wild-capture fishermen landed more fish domestically than Americans consumed in 2020, according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.
The influx of nutritionally inferior farmed fish devalues sustainable and diverse wild-caught fisheries, forcing fishermen to accept pennies on the pound for hard-earned fish. Furthermore, wild forage fish, which make up the base of healthy marine ecosystems, are being harvested for incorporation into aquaculture fish feeds, along with soy and corn. These fish, specifically Menhaden and herring, are the main source of protein for every species of finfish.
Densely packed fish farms also degrade ocean ecosystems. They amount to floating feedlots that pollute waters with antibiotics and fish waste; endanger marine mammals that interact with the cages; and compromise local coastal economies that depend on fishing and tourism. From coast to coast, lobbyist-backed efforts are underway to expand this industry in the United States.
Certain large-scale agribusiness firms have jumped on the bandwagon and made offshore industrial fish farming an area of focus. In a nutshell – or perhaps a soybean – the firms together referred to as “ABCD” (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and the Louis Dreyfus Company) are developing what is known as “aquafeed.”
According to Cargill, aquafeed includes “co-products” that are “not of marine origin.” Those “co-products” include all kinds of things, including large amounts of soymeal and corn - most of which is genetically modified.
Should fish eat corn or soy? Common sense says no.
As you can imagine, fish have trouble digesting grains. On top of that, placing thousands of fish in confinement generates other issues, including disease and illness.
In response, Cargill has acquired firms, such as Diamond V, which specialize in producing feed additives to improve fish health and digestion. They are also working on new “co-products,” such as insects and algae to supplement the soy and corn that fish are forced to eat.
Notice the circle: agribusiness firms create solutions for problems they created in the first place. In fact, we wouldn’t have to worry about fish diets if they were not sick from being crammed into unnatural habitats, eating manufactured food — basically, if there were no factory fish farms.
Meanwhile, our current industrial agricultural system rests upon bailing out farmers just enough through schemes like crop insurance, so that they continue to grow excess corn and soy, regardless of demand. In fact, crop insurance has become the second largest section of the Farm Bill, the mammoth piece of federal legislation that covers programs ranging from rural development to food access to beginning farmer training. In comparison, federal agencies spend a pittance on policies that could promote diverse operations and climate solutions.
The truth is that mega-scale agribusinesses' grain merchants wouldn’t be looking to force-feed soybeans and corn to fish if we had a decent agriculture policy that supported farmer incomes and local, diversified operations, rather than crops that feed into the commodities market. Instead, soy and corn are being overproduced in the U.S. and the Global South, often on land seized from Indigenous peoples for mono-crop expansion that relies on deforestation and pesticide use.
This plays out as a perfect scenario for agribusiness giants to pad their pockets. But not so for small-scale farmers and fishermen, who don’t see any benefits for themselves or their communities.
Still, there’s hope. New proposed legislation for the currently debated Farm Bill may yield positive results, instead of more commodities in our global industrial food system.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently introduced the Improving Agriculture, Research, Cultivation, Timber, and Indigenous Commodities (ARCTIC) Act, much of which is aimed at including seafood in the Farm Bill. The legislation bans offshore fish farms in federal waters, while increasing portside processing facilities for small-scale fishermen. It also calls for country of origin labeling for cooked crab that may come from outside of the US into our markets, as well as a ‘Wild USA Seafood’ label for fish that is landed in US waters.
Preventing the development of offshore factory fish farms is a win for fishing communities. But it’s also a potential win for farmers and the environment. It could deter farmers from continuing on the commodity grain treadmill, allowing them to instead diversify in search of market alternatives and better profits.
By using commodity grains produced on factory land farms to feed fish in factory ocean farms, Big Ag has brought small-scale farmers and fishermen like us together. The Farm Bill, up for reauthorization, seems like an apt opportunity for cross pollination. Why not use this important legislation to address farmers’ and fishermen’s issues together?
We hope more food producers from land and sea join in on our shared fights. After all, our farming and food systems don’t end at the water’s edge.
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Japan Releases First Fukushima Wastewater Amid Protests
In response, China said it would ban the import of all Japanese ocean products, with one ministry spokesperson calling Japan's decision "selfish."
Aug 24, 2023
At around 1:00 pm local time Thursday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company began to discharge wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant, in keeping with the schedule Japan announced Tuesday.
In response, South Korean protestors attempted to enter the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, and China said it would ban the import of all Japanese ocean products.
"The ocean is the common property of all humankind, not a place for Japan to arbitrarily dump nuclear-contaminated water," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said ahead of the first release of water Thursday, as The Guardian reported.
Wang also called the decision "extremely selfish."
"The sea is not Japan's trash bin."
The Chinese customs agency said it would immediately and "completely suspend the import of aquatic products originating in Japan" to "prevent the risk of radioactive contamination of food safety." This means that, in addition to seafood, marine products like seaweed or sea salt would also be covered, CNN explained.
In South Korea, around 50 people gathered for a protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Reuters reported. A group of them entered the building and reached the eighth floor, where they unfurled banners.
"The sea is not Japan's trash bin," one banner read. "Stop releasing contaminated water at once."
Police arrested 16 people for trespassing, physically carrying and dragging some out of the building and on to a bus, a Reuters photographer said.
While South Korea's opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung calls the Fukushima release an "act of terror," the country's government under President Yoon Suk Yeol has backed Japan's decision, Deutsche Welle explained. However, the release is unpopular with the public, with more than 80% opposing the release and more than 60% vowing not to eat Japanese seafood afterward, The Associated Press reported. This has prompted the government to threaten Japan with a lawsuit if radiation levels surpass the safety limit, according to DW.
"I totally oppose the Japanese plan. The radioactive wastewater is truly a bad thing," Seoul resident Lee Jae-kyung told AP. "My feelings toward Japan have worsened because of the wastewater release."
The governments of Hong Kong and Macao have also placed a more limited ban on seafood from 10 Japanese prefectures including Fukushima. Hong Kong chief executive John Lee called Japan's decision to release the water "irresponsible," according to The Guardian. There, the release also drew protests, with demonstrators ripping up a sign with the Japanese flag and the words, "No trace of humanity. An enemy of the whole world," when they reached the consulate, as AP reported.
Domestically, too, the release has prompted opposition from fishers and environmental groups, as well as concern from citizens.
"I'm not going to buy fish from Fukushima again and I will ask the sushi restaurant where I usually go where they are buying their stocks from. And I definitely will not go to any of the beaches there with my children until I am absolutely sure that it is safe again," Kanako Hosomura, who lives less than 200 kilometers from the plant, told DW.
Around 400 protesters gathered outside the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) headquarters Thursday morning, Greenpeace Japan tweeted.
The protests continued even after the release began.
Japan insists that its plan for the release is safe, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded it is "consistent with relevant international safety standards." TEPCO is first treating the water in an advanced liquid processing system to remove everything except for the radioactive tritium, which is not possible to remove because it is an isotope of hydrogen, a key component of water, as NPR explained. The water containing the tritium is then further diluted with seawater to one-seventh of the World Health Organization's safety standard, according to DW. The government says some nuclear plants release tritium-contaminated wastewater at higher levels, NPR reported. And The Guardian observed that Chinese plants also release wastewater into the ocean.
TEPCO said it would release 7,800 tons of water over the next 17 days, and around 31,200 tons by April, according to DW. The entire process is expected to take around three decades.
Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., told NPR that Japan's plan was "the least bad of a bunch of bad options."
"The idea of deliberately discharging hazardous substances into the environment, into the ocean is repugnant," Lyman said. "But unfortunately, if you do look at it from the technical perspective, it's hard to argue that the impacts of this discharge would be worse than those that are occurring at nuclear power plants that are operating worldwide."
However, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute senior scientist Ken Buesseler said it would be better to keep the waste stored on land where it could be watched.
While he didn't think the waste posed a threat to the wider Pacific, "nearshore in Japan could be affected in the long term because of accumulation of non-tritium forms of radioactivity," Buesseler told NPR.
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UN Launches High-Stakes Effort to Prevent Catastrophic Oil Spill From Tanker Near Yemen
U.N. chief António Guterres called the initiative to transfer oil from the decaying FSO Safer to another tanker "the critical next step in avoiding an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe on a colossal scale."
Jul 25, 2023
"The United Nations has begun an operation to defuse what might be the world's largest ticking time bomb," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced Tuesday.
"A complex maritime salvage effort is now underway in the Red Sea off the coast of war-torn Yemen to transfer one million barrels of oil from the decaying
FSO Safer to a replacement vessel," said Guterres.
If all goes as planned, the oil will be pumped from the abandoned supertanker to the Nautica over the next three weeks, UN News reported.
"In the absence of anyone else willing or able to perform this task, the United Nations stepped up and assumed the risk to conduct this very delicate operation," Guterres explained. "This is an all-hands-on-deck mission and the culmination of nearly two years of political groundwork, fundraising, and project development."
The U.N. chief called the oil transfer initiative "the critical next step in avoiding an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe on a colossal scale."
"Without action," he warned, "the vessel could have exploded or broken apart, spilling as much as four times the oil released in the Exxon Valdez disaster. Fishing communities would be wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would instantly disappear. Whole communities would be exposed to deadly toxins."
Moreover, "major ports including Hodeidah and Saleef would be forced to close indefinitely. Food, fuel, and life-saving supplies for millions would halt," Guterres continued. "Water, coral reefs, [and] sea life would be utterly devastated. Shipping all the way to the Suez Canal could be disrupted for weeks. The potential clean-up bill alone could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars."
"That is why we have been raising the alarm and working to mobilize support to avoid this nightmare," he added.
Peer-reviewed research published in October 2021 warned that an "increasingly likely" oil spill from the slowly corroding Safer into the Red Sea could cut off access to clean water and food aid for millions of people in a matter of days and completely decimate the region's fishing stocks within three weeks.
The 47-year-old supertanker has been moored roughly five nautical miles southwest of the Ras Issa peninsula on Yemen's west coast for more than 30 years. Maintenance of the vessel ground to a halt in 2015 amid the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition's ongoing war on Yemen. As a result, it has deteriorated to a state beyond repair.
Despite several warnings about the life-threatening dangers posed by the decaying ship—including one made in June 2020 by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to the U.N. Security Council—it has taken years to finalize a plan to remove the 1.1 million barrels of crude it is holding.
According to Guterres, "The United Nations enlisted the best in the business: a team of world-leading experts in maritime law, oil spills, salvage operations, marine engineers, naval architects, insurance brokers and underwriters, chemists, surveyors, and more."
"This operation required relentless political work in a country devastated by eight years of war," Guterres noted. "It depended on generous financial support."
"The ship-to-ship transfer of oil is an important milestone, but it is far from the end of the journey," the U.N. chief continued. "The next critical step is arrangement for the delivery of a specialized buoy to which the replacement vessel will be safely and securely tethered."
"Looking immediately ahead, we will need about $20 million to finish the project, which includes cleaning and scrapping the FSO Safer and removing any remaining environmental threat to the Red Sea," he added. "I urge donors to act at this crucial time."
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World Bank Confirms Reallocating Fossil Fuel, Factory Farm Subsidies Key to Solving Climate Crisis
"If we could repurpose the trillions of dollars being spent on wasteful subsidies and put these to better, greener uses, we could together address many of the planet's most pressing challenges," said one official.
Jun 15, 2023
The World Bank on Thursday reached a conclusion that progressives have been shouting from the rooftops for decades: If governments redirected the trillions of dollars they spend annually to prop up fossil fuels as well as industrial agriculture and commercial fisheries, humanity would be in a much better position to address the climate crisis and other life-threatening global issues.
"People say that there isn't money for climate but there is—it's just in the wrong places," Axel van Trotsenburg, senior managing director of the World Bank, said in a statement. "If we could repurpose the trillions of dollars being spent on wasteful subsidies and put these to better, greener uses, we could together address many of the planet's most pressing challenges."
According to the bank's newly published report, Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies, governments around the world collectively spend at least $7.25 trillion each year—roughly 8% of global gross domestic product—to sustain the socially and ecologically damaging fossil fuel industry along with often destructive forms of farming and fishing.
Notably, the world needs to invest trillions of dollars each year in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and compensation, from ramping up clean energy production to strengthening the capacity of communities to withstand and recover from extreme weather. As van Trotsenburg suggested in a blog post, vast sums of public money to do just that are "hiding in plain sight."
"Repurposing subsidies literally saves lives."
Some of the annual support for fossil fuels, farming, and fishing comes in the form of more than $1.25 trillion in explicit subsidies, or direct government expenditures.
The report notes that governments provided $577 billion in 2021 to "artificially lower the price" of planet-heating coal, oil, and gas. That's nearly six times as much as the $100 billion of financing wealthy countries pledged to mobilize annually for climate action in impoverished nations starting in 2020—a promise that has yet to be delivered.
"By underpricing fossil fuels, governments not only incentivize overuse, but also perpetuate inefficient polluting technologies and entrench inequality," states the report. "Of all subsidies to the energy sector, about three-quarters go to fossil fuels."
Explicit subsidies for agriculture are estimated to exceed $635 billion per year. Over 60% of this amount "is in the form of coupled support, which distorts producers' decisions and leads to harmful environmental and economic impacts," the report laments.
Explicit subsidies for fisheries are estimated to exceed $35 billion per year. According to the report, $22 billion of this constitutes "harmful subsidies that can lead to overcapacity and overfishing—often in international waters or the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of low-income coastal countries."
The problem is much larger than explicit subsidies, however. The report estimates that implicit subsidies for fossil fuels, farming, and fishing range from $6 trillion to $10.8 trillion per year. These are the indirect costs attributable to the three heavily subsidized sectors and the havoc they wreak on the health of the world's air, land, and oceans and by extension, its people.
Implicit subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to an estimated $5.4 trillion in 2020. This includes "impacts from local air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, road congestion, and forgone tax revenues," notes the report.
Estimates of the annual value of implicit subsidies for agriculture vary. At the low end, the report says they could amount to anywhere from $548 billion to $1.1 trillion in damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Citing a study that takes into account the costs of greenhouse gas emissions (which those researchers put at $1.5 trillion), land degradation and biodiversity loss ($1.7 trillion), and pollution, pesticides, and antimicrobial resistance ($2.1 trillion), the report finds they could be as high as $5.3 trillion.
As the report explains:
Subsidies incentivize excessive fertilizer usage to the extent that it suppresses agricultural productivity, degrades soils and waterways, and damages people's health. More than half of global agricultural production now occurs in regions where fertilizer is suppressing rather than increasing productivity. This means there is significant room to reduce fertilizer use with positive impacts on crop production. Yet the opposite is achieved by subsidies, as excessive fertilizer application is not absorbed by crops and runs off into waterways. Inefficient subsidy usage is responsible for up to 17% of all nitrogen pollution in water in the past 30 years, which has large enough health impacts to reduce labor productivity by up to 3.5%.
Agricultural subsidies are responsible for the loss of 2.2 million hectares of forest per year, equivalent to 14% of global deforestation. Agricultural subsidies in rich countries are driving significant tropical deforestation around the world. For instance, livestock subsidies in the United States drive deforestation in Brazil by increasing the demand for soybeans as feedstock. In turn, subsidy-driven deforestation causes the spread of vector-transmitted diseases—including 3.8 million additional cases of malaria each year, with an economic impact of up to $19 billion per year.
"For fisheries, the largest implicit subsidy is the lack of regulations to prevent overfishing," states the report. "Estimates suggest that the lack of regulations results in lost economic benefits of $83 billion per year."
As van Trotsenburg pointed out in his blog post: "It's not just about the money. Ending these colossal subsidies would also be good for people and the planet."
"The burning of oil, gas, and coal causes 7 million premature deaths each year around the world through the toxic air that people breathe—a striking figure when you consider that it is roughly the same as the number of people who have died from Covid-19," he wrote, citing the World Health Organization's 6.9 million tally. "That burden falls mostly on the poor. Repurposing subsidies literally saves lives."
"People say that there isn't money for climate but there is—it's just in the wrong places."
Richard Damania, chief economist of the Sustainable Development Practice Group at the World Bank, said that "with foresight and planning, repurposing subsidies can provide more resources to give people a better quality of life and to ensure a better future for our planet."
"Much is already known about best practices for subsidy reform," Damania added, "but implementing these practices is no easy feat due to entrenched interests, challenging political dynamics, and other barriers."
With the window for climate action rapidly closing amid a mounting debt crisis in the Global South, the World Bank stressed that "repurposing... wasteful subsidies will help ensure a green and just transition that can provide jobs and opportunities for all."
For subsidy reform to be successful, "governments must compensate the most vulnerable groups through social assistance programs, like cash transfers," the bank said. In addition, policymakers should:
- Build public acceptance through transparent communication;
- Give people and businesses time to adjust; and
- Show how freed-up revenue is being reinvested to support longer-term development.
"The world's sustainable development goals are directly undermined by the roughly $1.25 trillion in explicit subsidies paid every year to fossil fuel, agriculture, and fishery sectors," the World Bank observed. "This report documents the hidden consequences of subsidies. It shows that subsidy reform can remove distorted incentives that obstruct sustainability goals, but it also can unlock significant domestic financing to facilitate and accelerate sustainable development efforts that would have greater, wider, and more equitable benefits."
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Saving the Oceans, Preserving Fisheries
Aug 14, 2015
Studies have shown that responsible fisheries management practices, including catch monitoring, have clear environmental and economic advantages. By analyzing thousands of fisheries around the world, researchers have found the benefits of sustainable management policies outweigh the costs by an average ratio of 10-to-1. The responsible management of fisheries not only helps a fisherman's bottom line but also the industry's long-term viability and the oceans' overall health.
Bycatch, or the capture of non-target species, is a serious threat to the sustainability of fisheries. Researchers estimate that between 17 and 22 percent of the fish caught in the United States are actually thrown out as wasted catch. In fact, the decline of the iconic Atlantic cod population in New England is partly due to the bycatch of this species by fisheries in this region. By discarding around 2 billion pounds of non-targeted seafood every year, the amount of fish thrown away in the U.S. is equivalent to the annual catch of some other fishing nations worldwide. This practice is not only wasteful but if not carefully measured and controlled; it also endangers the continued abundance of fish stocks that fishermen depend on.
In order to effectively monitor bycatch, impartial observers are assigned to a portion of a fishery's trips out on the water. While onboard, observers count the number of fish caught (including the ones thrown back overboard), measure the catches, and record where fishing occurs. Accurate and independent observer monitoring provides crucial information to help ensure that catch limits are being respected and that periodic assessments of fish populations more accurately reflect what is really happening in the water.
In 1976, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act became the primary law governing federally managed fisheries in the United States. This law includes provisions to prevent overfishing, to rebuild stocks that have been overfished, and to minimize the amount of wasted catch through catch-data reporting. The Magnuson-Stevens Act is meant to be enforced by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which coordinates eight regional fishery management councils ranging from New England to the Western Pacific. Until 2007, however, NMFS did not have a standardized way to count the number of fish being taken out of the water by Northeast federal fisheries. Each fishery was (or in some cases, was not) monitored based on politics and one-off actions, but there was no central plan to adequately count and report the amount of catch, especially wasted catch that is thrown overboard, in every fishery.
Fishermen have already seen the consequences of failed monitoring firsthand. The Northeast region has already seen the crash of the New England groundfish fishery, which includes the Atlantic cod populations. In 2008, Oceana successfully sued NMFS, claiming it violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act by not establishing an adequate catch-reporting method in New England. This Oceana lawsuit resulted in the federal government working with the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils to create its first plan for monitoring catch in the Northwest fisheries last June.
On July 29, Oceana again filed a lawsuit against NMFS, claiming NMFS has continued to disregard rulings from previous lawsuits, and that the current bycatch reporting proposal in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic is underfunded and will fail to provide accurate information on fisheries management. Funding an adequate number of observers is essential to the long-term viability of all fisheries, including those in New England. If allowed to continue, unmonitored amounts of bycatch will exacerbate overfishing and lead to diminished catches and lower profits. Holding the federal government accountable for long-term management is essential for getting the reliable data our oceans' health depends on.
The short-term burdens that come from proper monitoring are small compared to the long-term economic damage that could occur if mismanagement were to continue. Hopefully, this lawsuit will encourage NMFS to fulfill its responsibility and finally begin effectively enforcing proper monitoring and fishery management.
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EPA Causes Massive Mine Waste Spill in Colorado That Turns River Orange
Agency calls leak 'unexpected' as environmental groups slam the government's response
Aug 07, 2015
Workers with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spilled roughly one million gallons of mine waste into a Colorado creek on Wednesday, turning the nearby Animas River bright orange and prompting criticism from environmental groups over the government's lackluster response to the accident.
EPA officials confirmed on Thursday that the leak was caused by employees. They had been using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the abandoned Gold King Mine north of Silverton.
The agency said impacts on wildlife and the environment in the area would likely be minimal, in part due to the river's "longstanding" low water quality. However, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) responded that such reasoning "offers no comfort to concerns about pollution impacts farther downstream."
"Endangered species downstream of this spill are already afflicted by [the] same toxic compounds like mercury and selenium that may be in this waste," said CBD's Taylor McKinnon. "These species are hanging by a thread, and every new bit of toxic exposure worsens a bad situation. EPA's downplaying of potential impacts is troubling and raises deeper questions about the thoroughness of its mine-reclamation efforts."
Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Todd Hartman told the Denver Post on Thursday that the Gold King Mine last operated more than a century ago. According to Durango utility manager Steve Salka, the wastewater spilled into Cement Creek, which feeds the Animas River, reportedly contains zinc, iron, copper, and other heavy metals—relics of old-fashioned mines that eventually went out of use.
"The most important thing is what's in it. I need to know," Salka told the Post. "Back in the 1800s, mining used things that aren't allowed anymore."
According to a statement from the San Juan County Health Department, the waste contains "high levels" of toxic materials. The EPA had stored it behind "unconsolidated debris near an abandoned mine portal."
Officials on Wednesday warned farmers to shut off water intakes along the Animas while law enforcement closed the river to fishers, swimmers, and kayakers. Water supply to nearby colleges and golf courses was also suspended. On shores and bridges, residents stood watching as the emerald-green waters turned thick and mustardy with the discharge.
Health and environmental officials are evaluating the Animas River as it flows its 126-mile course through San Juan and La Plata counties. However, they cautioned that it is unknown whether the spill will impact human health. Colorado Parks and Wildlife placed cages with fish in the river to monitor how the fish react to the contaminated water and expects to have results by Friday.
Elizabeth Holley, an assistant professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, said the spill was "significant."
The EPA called it "unexpected."
"This toxic spill into the Animas is a disturbing incident that just underscores how vulnerable our rivers, streams, and fisheries are to abandoned hardrock mine pollution," Steve Kandell of the conservation group Trout Unlimited told Colorado Public Radio on Thursday. "The health of our community and recreation-based economy depends heavily on water quality."
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As Ocean Warms, 'Extensive and Unprecedented' Toxic Algae Blooms
'What we can say is that this is the type of condition we would expect to see more often with climate change,' said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher
Jun 18, 2015
A gigantic, toxic algal bloom extending from southern California to Alaska has forced numerous fisheries along the West Coast to shutter. This unprecedented development, which scientists warn could portend what's to come as the world's oceans continue warming due to climate change, has caused numerous fisheries to close.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said this week it is mobilizing scientists to gather more data on the bloom, which it called "extensive" and "harmful."
"While localized blooms of marine algae that naturally produce domoic acid are common in spring, the bloom that began earlier this year has grown into the largest and most severe in more than a decade," warned the agency. "Sardines, anchovy, and other fish that feed on the algae and other microorganisms known as plankton can accumulate the toxin, in turn poisoning birds and sea lions that feed on them."
As The Seattle Times explained this week, "Scientists suspect this year's unseasonably high temperatures are playing a role, along with 'the blob'--a vast pool of unusually warm water that blossomed in the northeastern Pacific late last year. The blob has morphed since then, but offshore waters are still about two degrees warmer than normal, said University of Washington climate scientist Nick Bond, who coined the blob nickname."
NOAA documented at least one incident last month where a sea lion had a seizure on Long Beach, Washington (warning: video may be disturbing).
"For this type of algae, we believe this is certainly the biggest bloom we've seen on the West Coast and perhaps anywhere ever," Michael Milstein of NOAA Fisheries told Common Dreams. "It's extensive and unprecedented in terms of geographic scope and severity of bloom, particularly in hot spots along the coasts."
Milstein said there could be a link between the giant algal bloom and global warming. "What we can say is that this is the type of condition we would expect to see more often with climate change."
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