It’s Blog Action Day for the environment today. With all the buzz about the climate, there’s always the risk that one or two other catastrophes will be forgotten. So what about, for example, the immense damage to the marine ecosystem that trawlers do? Biology professor John S. Gray has been talking about this for years to anyone that would listen. When I interviewed him in 1995 he pointed out that dramatic oil spills generate enormous media attention, but that other human activities are much more damaging to the marine environment: increasing population in coastal areas bring construction booms, coral reefs are destroyed, forests cut down and wetlands filled. The fishing industry contributes with its ever bigger and more efficient trawlers. It’s sad, but typical that a story from january this year where Gray is quoted is almost exactly, word by word, the same as my 12 years old story, (which probably wasn’t very original, either), and even published by the same news agency.

(Photo by Haakon Hansen, Creative Commons license ).