Earth Day Fish & Water Sampler Platter

by: JayinPortland

Wed Apr 22, 2009 at 13:59:55 PM PDT

• The American pharmaceutical industry is still dumping hundreds of millions of pounds of drug residues into our water supplies.

• Two California-based environmentalists and researchers are cycling 2,000 miles down the Pacific Coast to raise awareness about the massive plastic soup in the North Pacific.  I can't even come up with the words to describe how angry the picture with this article makes me - an adult turtle who was grossly deformed by crawling into a plastic ring while young, and whose body grew around it.  

• And also (we all saw this one coming), the plastic-bag industry and the American Chemistry Council are kicking up the greenwashing a few notches.

• An article from Canada looks at the ongoing attempts at sustainability in sushi restaurants.

• A commonly used home garden pesticide, carbaryl, which is sold under the brand name "Sevin" (which has also been classified by EPA as a likely human carcinogen and is banned in the UK, Germany and several other countries...), has been identified as a threat to salmon and steelhead populations throughout the Northwest.

• The National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking our input as to how to form the rules protecting the now-endangered Cook Inlet (Alaska) beluga whales.

• A new study finds that the world's major rivers are drying up, and the Christian Science Monitor takes a look at how things might play out along the Colorado River for the Southwestern United States and Mexico.

• The European Union on Wednesday called for major cuts in the European commercial fishing fleet, and is cracking down on illegal fishing, to help overfished stocks recover.  88% of EU stocks are overfished, according to the commission.