Photo courtesy The Lilac Breasted Roller, via Flickr

According to a recent press release that came across my desk, a group of ocean activists recently gave Discovery Channel executives an earful about the channel’s annual “Shark Week” ratings blitz. The activists, concerned about dwindling populations of these animals, pressed the company to revisit how they depict sharks and specifically objected to vocabulary, such as “man-eaters, monsters, mindless killing machines and other like terms.”

As you might imagine, I think these activists are right on target asking the corporate suits to change their language. It matters what the company calls these animals. After all, far more citizens will experience sharks through “Shark Week” than in person while snorkeling or scuba diving.

But what really caught my eye was this: Who do you think these activists were who managed to secure four hours on the schedule of some mighty busy corporate suits to harangue them about the words they use? Was it Greenpeace? Oceana? Oceans Conservancy? The Pew Oceans Commission? Seafood Watch? Any of the other high-profile groups that stand up for sharks and other cuddly critters?

Nope. It was The Shark Group, who describe themselves as “an International Internet discussion forum, whose members live on all continents.” That’s code for a plain old Google group. Group members, who hail from around the globe, got themselves sufficiently organized to put themselves on Discovery’s radar, and secure the commitment from its execs to review the groups proposals for a different flavor of programming. An impressive accomplishment.

If you’re inspired by The Shark Group’s example and want to start your own Google Group to organize your fellow citizens, I say go for it! I have a few tips for you in this report I released last year: A Network of Networks.

Congratulations, Shark Group! Go get ‘em.

Well, I can’t figure out how to keep my animated tuna fish out of the fishing nets, but I guess that’s the point of Ocean Survivor, a new videogame from the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy (COOL) coalition.

I think it’s really great that the groups are trying to get their message out this way. It’s a valiant effort to reach out to a younger generation. The piece closes by telling players what they can do — sign a petition to somebody.

Now I’ll pick on the group. The name is weak. They give up too much for the COOL acronym. That’s because “legacy” is not a water word that works. Americans are profoundly unresponsive to messages that mix history and nature protection. They nod and listen politely while we tell our stories of legacies, heritage, traditions, and other nostalgia for yesteryear, and then they go back to their usual business. 

If you really want people’s attention, talk about the future.  When will there be no more tuna? When will it be too late to do something about this?

If COOL simply must have a memorable acronym, they could call themselves  something like “A Living Ocean Future Trust.” (ALOFT).

Hat tip to M.C. for spotting the game.

I don’t know about you, but Oceana’s latest subway billboard leaves me scratching my head. What’s a “Doha Round?” And if a college-educated current-affairs-following eco-geek like myself doesn’t know, how many other people waiting for the train will know?

Mark over Blogfish has an interesting post about a seafood chef who has decided to revisit the definition of the term “sustainable seafood.”

 Which seems like a good opportunity for me to call attention to a report released just last year:

… just over half (54%) of consumers claim any familiarity at all with the term “sustainability” and most of these consumers cannot define it appropriately upon probing.

Source: Hartman Group, 2007

Of course, “sustainability” is a true and worthy goal, and it is perfectly appropriate for fisheries professionals to debate what makes a “sustainable” harvest. But problems arrise when scientists and policy professionals debate it so long they lose sight of the fact that the term carries little weight in the consumer market. The term ”sustainable” simply won’t move many consumers to buy one fish over another, at least until somebody pours hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting the term, a la “organic.”

But why bother? I can think of much more urgent things to do with hundreds of millions of dollars. So here’s a better idea — let’s call “sustainable seafood”… drumroll please…
“Responsible Seafood”