Yesterday I caught part of an MPR conversation with Helen Scales, author of the book, What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World's Ocean. Scales is a marine biologist, a writer and a storytelling ambassador for the Save Our Seas Foundation.
The blurb for the show says,
When faced with the realities of climate change, marine biologists must hold two competing thoughts simultaneously: The seas are warming, the fish are waning, the corals are bleaching. But that doesn’t mean the global ocean is doomed. After all, this is the planet’s largest ecosystem. It knows how to adapt.
The question is really: Will we enable it or hinder it?
The part of the discussion I heard first (around 15–20 minutes) focused on the part of the ocean called the mesophotic or middle light realm, which lies between 30/40 meters deep and 150 meters deep. Scales explained that because it's too deep for people using traditional scuba gear, but not so deep that it's interesting to the explorers with very expensive equipment for super-deep levels, it has been mostly overlooked. In some areas, it's less fished than the shallower areas, so exploration in recent years is finding that coral reefs at these depths are much healthier than the ones we all hear about.
Some species from the surface live there, but others only live in the mesophotic. So divers have been discovering coral reefs in much better condition than the ones near the surface, and many unknown species of fish and other life. At the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, twice as much reef has been found as was previously known. "Knock your fins off."
After that, around the 21:30 minute mark, they turned to talking about the terrible effect of long-line ocean fishing, and its effect particularly on shark species, which are one of Scales's specialties. I learned that these large industrial fishing vessels send out lines that average 28 miles, and then there are baited side lines off the main line. (Some lines are twice as long!) The intended catch is tuna and swordfish, but sharks are taken as well, and even if they are returned to the water, they are injured in the process. They need to be swimming to breathe, so while caught and up on deck they decline precipitously.
One observer on an Atlantic long-line ship saw that up to 54 white-tipped sharks were pulled in on each line — essentially each day. There are thousands of ships working at a time.
Multiple species of shark are now endangered. This is the part of the ocean where humans are generally not nearby: it's their part of the world, not ours. "Humans are putting themselves into the world of the sharks," she says. A third of these species of sharks and one of their close cousin genera are threatened with extinction now, and it's because of fishing: not habitat loss or plastics or something else.
A zero-quota on Atlantic white-tipped sharks has been imposed, so they cannot be legally fished, but the damage from catching and returning still exists from the way long-line fishing is done. Efficiency and lowest cost have trumped everything else. We wouldn't do this on land today, she says. (It's like the buffalo killing of the 19th century, I think to myself.)
The interviewer then says, it's all about entitlement. Scales agrees, but also says that we know how to get food sustainably — it's just not what we're doing now.
A recommended hour of radio.
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