Category: Collaborative Project Development

Response to “A Four-Century Retrospective of Marine Fauna and Fisheries Around New York City”

The article introduces and analyzes the situation of marine lives in New York Harbor during centuries. As a human who grows in inland area, I am not familiar with all the fish names that have been mentioned in the article, and I was quite surprised that the seafood industry was so well developed back in to 1800s. However, this kind of development is at a cost of decreasing population sizes and mean size of individuals (15), and millions of fishes and other ocean lives become dishes on the menu, the ecological balance is gradually losing. From my opinion, we can’t blame ourselves from eating fishes, however, the real problem here is how much we should consume them. People can make a fortune from selling seafood, but that might easily lead to over-hunting. So the crucial point here is to have no more than what we really need, and it’s really necessary to give special care to those species whose size have declined seriously.

Response to Ainu Success: the Political and Cultural Achievements of Japan’s Indigenous Minority

This article mainly talks about the status of Ainu people in their country Japan, and it focus on Ainu people’s movement and Japanese government responses in the decades. The part that most interests me is the attitude of Japanese government.They claimed and believed that they are no-minority country in 1986 (3), arguing that there were no “pure Ainu people” anymore, and they were “born almost as Japanese” (3). It seems hilarious to me because clearly, Japan wanted to get rid of this group of people with such quick and unprecise conclusion, and I wonder why. Later, with the visit of the chairwoman of the UNWGIP to Japan, the Japanese government “quickly recognize the Ainu as a ‘minority group’” (5). All those perfunctory attitude shows that the government was not dealing with the issue seriously, and they want to keep their nation entire one. My country has more than 50 minority groups, so I know it might be difficult for government to operate with too many different groups and there might be concerns. However, I don’t understand why can’t Japan accept one single other group, no to mention that this group has such huge historical values and deserve their own place in Japan.

Response to Wildlife Conservation Society

The seascape program offers great chances to establish contact with human and marine wildlife, enhance understanding and provide different kind of help for marine lives, which seems so nice to me that it allows us to contribute to the real issues in the oceans. And it gives me a basic idea what WCS does and how it does them.

“A Four-Century Retrospective of Marine Fauna and Fisheries Around New York City” provided a lot of data on the consumption trends and the diversity of species in the waters surrounding New York, from the harbor to the tips of Long Island. It still amazes me that there are dolphins that migrate offshore through the harbor between feeding and breeding grounds. It was strange to also learn that what is now a rich man’s food — i.e. oyster and lobster was once a poor man’s diet.

“The Ainu: Beyond the Politics of Cultural Coexistence” covered the historical background of the Ainu people and the struggle that they have faced as Japan has modernized. The takeaway from this article is to understand the marriage between ‘reconciliation’ and ‘coexistence’. The Ainu want their culture to be understood, to be appreciated alongside with the popular culture of Japan, but they do not want to to be boiled down as people of primitive culture.

The WCS information sheet provided an introduction to the projects they are currently working on in addition to the communities they serve. There are a lot of data points to work with. My greatest appreciation for the WCS is their dedication to teaching the youth about conservation and the opportunities they offer for free access to locations such as the Bronx Zoo.

“Ainu Ceremonial Music and Dance” by Renner studies the Ainu music and dance performance at the Ainu Culture Festival. He thinks that the “text-like formality of music” (Renner 226) enables Ainu traditional music and dance to be re-performed, re-contextualized and reinterpreted in different historical periods. He studies how the Team Nikaop combined on-stage performance and media and finds that slight adjustments made to the ancestors’ performance conveyed a message of Ainu people’s indigenous identity, rights and freedom, while in last century, videos of Ainu performances were used to negatively show their primitivity. This article is helpful in enhancing our understanding of Ainu ceremonial performance as well as its culture in the modern context.I recall a less successful Naxi ancient music performance by indigenous people in Yunan as a tourist attraction. The performance also took a serious form with adjustments to this ancient music style, but it didn’t restore the context of ancient rituals for audience to understand its root. It is especially interesting that the Ainu Culture Festival not only engages non-Ainu Japanese in enjoying Ainu music and dance, but successfully evokes appreciation instead of turning the performance into a tourist attraction. This approach shows us what to seek for and what to avoid in our project development.

“WCS Informational Sheets” provides a brief introduction to WCS’s missions and goals. WCS’s focuses of environmental protection range from marine animals to education and ethics, connecting animals, humans and habitats. Every individual subject is related to other subjects even though there might seem to be no connections. For example river connectivity can threat local marine animals. I think data is important for both research and educational purposes, and different kinds of presentation of data can be used to serve different purposes. I think it might also be helpful to look for connections between different categories of data.

“A Four-Century Retrospective of Marine Fauna and Fisheries Around New York City” by Hall and Camhi provides a detailed insight into the situation of marine animals around New York City. I am amazed at the richness of marine biodiversity around New York. This article gives detailed studies on data of human consumption trends and marine lives. It is interesting that humans’ food preferences can influence fishing industry and thus greatly impact populations of species as well as the habitats. It strikes me that these “invisible” marine lives are closely linked to human activities but are likely to escape public awareness. 

A link to my Communications Lab final project: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jz2915/commlab/in-a-grove/home/index.html

WCS information sheet – 

Before reading the WCS information sheet and looking at the MARCOS data I didn’t really know just how much wildlife lived in the New York Bight. Everything I ever heard about was always how polluted and gross it was which made me think that nothing could really live there. The WCS lists a bunch of things they are working on to improve conservation of the area, but the basic fact they don’t really start with is that there are actually a lot of animals there and people need to encourage conservation to save them. From the reading is seems like the WCS is also really dedicated to working with kids, so to combine this with the MARCOS data I think it might be fun to create an interactive map aimed at kids, with graphics more accessible to them, to display all the different types of wildlife in  the New York bight.

WCS Tegner Report – 

It’s amazing to me how seafood used to be so abundant that things like lobsters and oysters were considered poor people food, that would be unthinkable now. One of their conclusions that surprises me the most is that species composition has remained mostly constant over the past 4 centuries. Even if the population sizes have decreased, this means there is still an opportunity for us to restore the populations rather than some species being extinct or driven out of the area. It’s also important for more people to know about the 380 species, I never would have guessed there would be that many.

The Ainu: Beyond The Politics of Cultural Coexistence –

The Ainu have a similar colonization story to many other indigenous groups and yet compared to Native Americans or Aboriginal Australians, their story seems far less publicized. One part of this article that really stuck with me was looking at the phrasing of the “former aborigines protection law”. Former aborigines singled out the Ainu instead of integrating them and rather than protecting them and their culture the law just tried to assimilate them. The words we use really make a difference and the Japanese government needs to work with the Ainu to use words that represent them in a way they want to be represented. I’m really excited to see the Ainu perform if they’re able to come to NYU Shanghai and actually get to hear from and discuss with them.

THE AINU: BEYOND THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL COEXISTENCE:

This was a good introductory article to some of the main political background of the Ainu. I couldn’t help but think about how similar or different this story is from the Okinawans’ story. The article mentioned them once when talking about ethnic minorities, but their story goes deeper than that, just like the Ainus’. This is an article that forces the conversation of intangible heritage in the reader’s face. Definitions are hard to pin down and what may have been once solid lines are now blurred (or at least questioned). This article made me understand why the Ainu group we will be working with clearly stated that they don’t want to cute or be associated with a primitive viewpoint.

WCS INFORMATIONAL SHEETS:

These sheets convey WCS’s dedication not only to the wildlife they are saving but to the communities they are serving. It gives good introductory information about the extensive variety of programs WCS has to offer, plus a little call to action at the end, making the reader want to join in their cause. I expect that this is what WCS will want from a project in this class: information, then a call to action / audience participation. I think that’s something special they can continue to use. 

A FOUR-CENTURY RETROSPECTIVE OF MARINE FAUNA AND FISHERIES AROUND NEW YORK CITY (2012): 

This piece is much more in-depth than the previous two articles. That’s partly because it’s covering 400 years worth of information and history. It’s a very thorough look into the fisheries and marine life around New York City, even taking into account the human population growth and how that may be influencing the fish population.  With so much data, they were able to look at trends that occurred, are occurring, and possibly will occur. I appreciated the graphs and charts in their sources sections. I like visuals, so those helped me with the stats a bit better. Because of the amount of data in this one paper, several projects could come out of this.

Project Ideas:

When reading the WCS info sheets and the Fisheries paper, I started getting ideas similar to the MARCOS map. I really enjoy interactive maps and this one has such a wealth of information, it’s kind of overwhelming. The WCS sheets made me think of a live map of all the sharks in the area, so kids could learn about a particular kind of shark, maybe even one shark in particular, and then track its movements in the water. Of course, this only works if WCS has trackers on the specific sharks (or other marine life). I’m wondering if there could be some sort of trivia game made for some of this information. A small picture could be on the screen with a few facts about it, then the user would have to guess where in the local waters it most likely could be found. Maybe something about fish (or other marine life) migrational pattern(s) and the user could guess time lengths for each area or what outside influencer would be the biggest hindrance to that migration.