by Metiria Turei
Today is World Oceans Day.
A staggering 80 percent of all the life on Earth is hidden beneath the waves. The ocean is the planet’s heart. Its pulsating currents and tides drive the natural forces which maintain life on our planet. It controls our weather, cleans our atmosphere, and is the original source of life-giving freshwater too.
The ocean is full of extraordinary diversity. Scientists don’t really know how many marine species there are: estimates range from 500,000 to 100 million. Some are beautiful, some weird, some delicious and some scary; but they are all incredibly important.
And they nourish us, providing us with food. Fish species that we eat provide 3 billion people with at least 15 per cent of their average per capita animal protein intake. In many places, fish is the most important source of animal protein.
But our ocean faces many threats, some growing by the tide.
Scientists tell us our oceans are acidifying. The ocean is absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere because of our growing emissions. The resulting increase in acidity makes it harder for corals and shellfish to create skeletons and shells. This will be devastating: the UN reports that 80% of the world’s coral reefs may die within decades. New Zealand’s Royal Society has warned that our marine life will also be severely affected within decades, impacting on our food supply and jobs.
Overfishing is still taking its toll. Technology has made it easier to find and catch fish: nets can be city-block sized and lines tens of kilometres long, and modern fishing boats are the size of freighters not yachts – in fact, they are mobile fish factories. Unfortunately, our rules to ensure we fish sustainably have not kept pace. This situation is made worse by illegal fishing and under-reporting.
Orange roughy, a deep sea fish living to over 100, have been reduced to just 11% of their original numbers in most areas, and are in long-term decline. Hoki, one of our largest fisheries, are also struggling and are heading the same way as Orange roughy. Despite this, Hoki are certified as sustainable under the international Marine Stewardship Council. Pretending Hoki are sustainable will not serve the fish or the fishing industry well – continued decline will have massive economic and ecological impacts on New Zealand. Some supermarkets refuse to stock our Orange roughy.
You know an industry is hiding something when they produce fancy TV ads to promote their image – as the seafood industry has recently. They are wasting money on greenwash propaganda – money that would be much better spent on research and sustainable practices to ensure their industry remains viable long-term. The industry is gambling with our economy, our jobs, and our food.
Our Fisheries Act is not sustainable because it does not require sustainability, does not apply precaution in the face of uncertainty, relies on unreliable voluntary reporting, and lets the industry challenge every sustainable move in court. Even essential measures to protect our remaining Hectors and Maui dolphins from extinction have been met with court action.
But it is not just the fish we eat under threat. It is also the species and ecosystems that get destroyed in the process of commercial fishing. Techniques like bottom trawling and dredging destroy the seabed in some of the ocean’s most sensitive places. Greenpeace reports that commercial fishing leads to the ‘accidental’ killing of more than 20 million tonnes of marine life like albatrosses, sharks, fur seals and turtles, each year; and nets kill up to 300,000 of the world’s whales, dolphins and porpoises. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Our Fisheries Act fails here too, with the Minister increasing the past season’s sea lion slaughter to 113 animals (many of which will be pregnant mums or mums with hungry pups waiting for them) even when the population of sea lions is known to be in decline.
New Zealand’s ocean area is in better state than many other places, but we must do more if we are to avoid a continued decline in ocean health in our part of the world, and the cost of that to our economy and jobs. Despite our ocean area being more than 15 times larger than our land area, New Zealand’s ocean laws are our weakest environmental protection rules. Activity line mining of seamounts in our outer ocean isn’t protected by any law at all. We have no marine reserves there, and the Bill that would allow this has been blocked by successive Governments.
Sustainability is not a luxury – it is essential to ensure we have a healthy ocean, fish for food, and jobs in the long term. Overfishing now destroys the economy of the future. Killing marine mammals and seabirds unnecessarily puts our ‘clean green brand’ at risk. Nature Magazine assessed New Zealand against the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries – we scored just 56%. It’s not good enough.
Our ocean is not “out of sight, out of mind”; it is the backyard, the pantry and a source of pride for all New Zealanders. It is not too late to reverse the decline, and it makes economic sense to do so now. Let’s mark World Oceans Day by committing to strong action on climate change, a good Oceans Policy, and making the Fisheries Act sustainable.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Metiria Turei on Mon, June 8th, 2009
Tags: fisheries, world oceans day
More posts by Metiria Turei | more about Metiria Turei
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
a Marine scientist told me at the weekend, that we are destroying life forms we didn’t even know existed! An appalling thought….
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Metiria,
I see the Environmental Defence Society has released its view on what it envisages the proposed new Environmental Protection Agency’s role should be. In brief it should:
1) Strengthening environmental planning and decision-making (this will get the Anti-Planner going again(:-))
2) Integrating coastal and marine management
http://www.eds.org.nz/
On (2) they say:
“The EPA is to ensure effective and integrated environmental management of the coastal environment, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf beyond. It could achieve this, primarily, by ensuring that a robust and consistent framework of policies and rules is in place to effectively manage the impacts of activities on the coastal and marine environment.”
They point out that environmental standards to address the environmental impacts of fishing has been slow, with no environmental protection standards yet in place and only one (for seabirds) under development.
Their document was presented in Auckland last week at Simpson Grierson with Nick Smith in attendance, he was non-commital in his response to it, but it makes interesting reading.
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The ocean is alkaline.
The ocean is massively buffered.
So how can it possibly be “acidifying”? If there is a topic to be discussed it is actually “reducing ocean alkalinity” but I guess that is not as scary as “ocean acidification”.
Also ocean alkalinity varies from point to point, and place to place. And from depth to depth.
We do not have enough data points to even begin to calculate a global average.
YOu might like to search these claims to see if they volunteer a global average alkalinity.
So what measurements are telling us we are reducing global alkalinity.
The answer is “none”.
This is speculation based on simple minded theory masquerading as science.
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Agree entirely Owen – and is the suggestion of ‘acidity’ a cover for some other untold poison. Remember the days when it was accptable to drop nuclear waste in the oceans?
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This made me sad to read
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Xavier – have a look at Met’s post on the killing of Albatross’ in our fishing industry – breaks my heart to think we have world famous Royal Albatross Colonies, and are bumping them off at the same time. Met’s knowledge on this, has a rare (for nz) international viewpoint.
Unusual to find an wholistic view in the House hey?
Better late than never perhaps….
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http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/rate-of-iceland-sea-acidification-from-time-series-measurements/
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2009/04/fieldwork2.html
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/oa/description/oaps_intro_oa.html
Owen… just because YOU DON’T KNOW doesn’t mean it ain’t so.
Sorry
BJ
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Three data points.
Only one with a time series.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090201124553.htm
Just more masqueraders Owen…
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Yep. chasing the money.
You must know that the atmosphere has contained much higher levels of CO2 in the past and yet life has carried on.
Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, far above our current level of about 380 ppm.
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Johan, thanksfor the heads up about the EDS view of the EPA, i hadnt seen that.
And also to BJ for the links.
In NZ there is research underway on the increase in CO2 and acidification and i look forward to it coming out. It appears from some preliminary reports that the impacts are worse in colder climes which is problematic for us.
My big worry over the last few years has been the impact on and change of species predominance. New Scientist, about a month ago, had a report on the increasing dominance of jelly fish in some areas, as a result of fish stock decline and changes in marine habitat. More and more science is showing that this is a serious issue for the biodiversity of the oceans but also for subsistance fishing and the fishing industry. Denial will be extremely costly.
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I’ve been reading back copies of New Scientist, thanks to sharing from a flatmate’s rellies who pass bundles of literature on to re-use.
It’s very sobering to follow the output in this magazine of stories which report on research done in many oceans, all coming to the same conclusions – coral reef decay, deep-sea species’ extinctions, and ocean acidification occurring in every ocean & sea studied.
Those dumped concrete containers of nuclear waste are still down there, BTW, Xavier. We’re just not adding to them (well, I should say they’re not .. as most of it was USA/UK/Europe/Japan post-generation waste from nuclear power stations.)
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Owen McShane wrote: “So how can it possibly be “acidifying”? If there is a topic to be discussed it is actually “reducing ocean alkalinity” but I guess that is not as scary as “ocean acidification”. ”
This is daft. You are trying to find a scare tactic when the term is just the normal language of chemistry. When CO2 dissolves in water Carbonic acid is formed. Hence acidification. The concentration of hydrogen ions increases. Hence acidification. [H+] is a measure of acidity, not alkalinity. Hence acidification. Any process that increases the concentration of hydrogen ions is referred to as acidification.
Yes the ocean is buffered so the decrease in pH appears small, but the increase in hydrogen ion concentration is considerable (as pH is a logarithmic scale). The corolllary of buffering is that marine organisms are adapted to only minor changes in pH, so any changes are likely to have considerable effects on biota.
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And McShane claims “We do not have enough data points to even begin to calculate a global average…”
More rubbish. The GLODAP project produced maps of ocean alkalinity based on around 10 000 sampling stations worldwide. How many data points do you want? We have a pretty good understanding of both the global average and – which is more meaningful – the global variation.
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