March/April 2006 Issue

The Last Days of the Ocean

We’re Pushing Our Seas to the Brink. Can They be Saved? A <i>Mother Jones</i> special report.

Illustration By: Yuko Shimizu

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The Fate of the Ocean

By Julia Whitty

Assaulted by pollution, overfishing, climate change, trash, and noise, our oceans are approaching a point of no return. The health of the world they feed and protect won’t be far behind.

P L U S :

arrowWhales hit the beaches

arrowPolar bears face extinction

The Catch

By Michael W. Robbins

If America’s fisheries are regulated, how can they be overfished? Because the regulators and the fishermen are one and the same.
P L U S :

arrowThe ocean’s top enemies

arrowA field guide to failing fish

Net Losses

By H. Bruce Franklin

How a football tycoon took George H. W. Bush’s oil company and used it to declare war on the fish that built America.

Navigating the Catch of the Day

By Daniel Duane

Overfishing…mercury…but they taste so good! How to eat fish without fear

Online Exlusives

M O R E    S T O R I E S

I’ll Take Menhaden

Should this threatened fish be an essential part of your healthy diet?

The Dolphin Defender

Filmmaker and conservationist Hardy Jones on reasons for hope in a sea of troubles.

Saving the Ocean: It’s a Question of Leadership

Two “ocean champions” say the problems of the ocean are fundamentally political–and so are the solutions.

“We All Want More Fish”

The editor of Sport Fishing magazine says many recreational fishers are conservationists at heart.

(Still) Big in Japan

Thought whale hunting was a thing of the past? Think again.

I Cover the Waterfront

A science journalist evaluates media coverage of the oceans beat.

Toxic Fish and Poor Communities

A Bay Area activist raises awareness about contaminated seafood.

Pesticide in the Water

The EPA is supposed to protect our rivers and oceans. However, …

A Guide to Environmental Non-Profits

How to distinguish groups doing good from ones that just sound good.

T H E    I S S U E S    E X P L A I N E D

L E A R N   M O R E

A C T   N O W

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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