Summary: Put down the fish sandwich! A new study released shows that governments are failing at protecting the ocean's fish. Also... too much supply and not enough demand for post-doc graduates. Researchers are finding themselves waiting for job offers that may or may not come in this tough economy. More…
Your fish sandwich gets a failing grade...
This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams in for Lester Graham.
There’s a new study out in the journal Nature. It’s grading how well the world’s governments are protecting ocean fish.
Even the top countries are not getting a passing grade. The U-S, Canada and Norway are doing the best job... but they come in at 60-percent. That’d be a D, maybe a D-plus if you’re not grading on a curve.
Tony Pitcher is the main author of the study. He’s at the University of British Columbia.
“Wasn’t very encouraging actually that even the top scoring countries were not really that good. So it wasn’t anything to write home about – we were at the top but it wasn’t a great field. At the bottom end some countries were just disastrous. More than half the countries didn’t even pass the 40%.”
Those are countries like Brazil, India and North Korea.
Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going on. There’s illegal fishing. And there’s a big problem with nets and traps getting lost. They can snare marine mammals, birds and fish.
Tony Pitcher says it’s not always easy to know where your fish came from. But he says you can look for a blue and white label when you’re shopping. It’ll say Marine Stewardship Council on it.
STING
This is the Environment Report.
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the U-S. Researchers today have access to new tools and techniques. And that’s taken the pace of discovery to new highs. Universities are graduating record numbers of PhD’s. But as Adam Allington (AL-ing-ton) reports... many young scientists are finding it hard to get a job:
Adam1: Briana Gross is in her second year of a post-doctoral fellowship at Washington University, she’s studying genetic adaptations of wild rice.
She’s been applying for faculty jobs for the past two years. This year she says she’s gone all-out.
[Gross-4] :10
I’ve applied for I think 36-38 jobs, 3-4 of those positions have been cancelled completely due to hiring freezes. I’ve had two interviews.
Adam2: These days there’s a glut of qualified talent. Between too many doctoral grads and cutbacks… it’s tough to find a position.
One recent job interview did little to bolster Gross’s confidence for the future.
[Gross-6] :13
“One of the financial administrators came by and kind of joked about how I couldn’t possibly be interviewing for a position because there was no money available to hire anyone at the university. So, if that’s happening this year, next year is going to be really rough.”
Adam3: So, how’d we end up with too many scientists for the jobs out there? Well, about 10 years ago President Clinton doubled the budget for the National Institutes of Health.
Over the years that congressional funding went flat, just as record numbers of PhD’s entered the job market.
[Kroll1] :12
“You know its like you push a bunch of people into the pipeline and then there’s been chocking off of the U.S. pipeline.
Adam4: Kristen Kroll is a professor of developmental biology at Washington University; she employs two post-docs in her lab.
[Kroll13] :07
“What we’ve done is we’ve convinced a whole generation of U.S. post-docs and graduate students not to go into academic science.”
Adam5: University administrators point that historically only about 30-percent of all post-docs land a faculty job, with the rest going into the private sector.
Jared Strasburg is a 4th-year post-doc from Indiana University, …
[Strasburg2] :16
“You know academia is long hours, it’s a lot of work and everyone knows that going in. But, I never felt like if I put in those hours and worked really hard that I wouldn’t be capable of getting a position and getting funding to do the work that I was interested in. Needless to say now that proposition looks a lot more tenuous.”
Adam7: As the number of unemployed post-graduates rises, some say the whole system for training scientists needs to be reshaped. They say it should not just serve the minority who become professors, but also the 70-percent who take other jobs.
Without that better training some scientists say we could fall behind China and India in making new discoveries.
That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.
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