Save Eco Destinations

(This is part one of a two-part series on a report regarding the dismal state of our oceans. Part two of the series tackles the situation’s repercussions on humans and what we can do to help our oceans recover.)

A team of marine experts announced this week a new summary report arguing that climate change and other man-made factors will spur colossal levels of extinction in the world’s oceans. The catastrophe is forecasted to be “unprecedented in human history.”

The proverbial excrement, it seems, is about to hit the fan.

Not surprisingly, it appears that changes in our atmosphere, ecosystems, and habitats across the planet are accelerating too quickly for many species to adapt and be able to survive.

Dr. Alex Rogers. Photo from the University of Oxford.

“The speed of change, particularly related to climate change, is so great there simply isn’t time for marine life to adapt to these new conditions,” said Alex Rogers, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Oxford.

He explained that mass extinctions have been tied to considerable changes in the oceans’ carbon systems in the past.

“That’s what we’re bringing about through our own actions today,” he noted, reports ABC News.

Rogers and a team of 26 other researchers from various countries met earlier this year for a three-day workshop in England to study ocean stressors. Their full report is set to be published in the near future.

Ocean stressors at play

Ocean acidification is one key factor. Here’s what it’s about: carbon dioxide (CO2) (along with methane and other gasses) plays a huge role in heating up our planet and thereby causing climate change, which includes melting polar ice caps and rising ocean levels. Okay. What you might not know is that one-third of the planet’s CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, and that the more CO2 the ocean absorbs, the greater the waters’ acidity. This phenomenon is called ocean acidification and it’s noxious to our planet for many reasons. For example, rising acidity levels in our oceans have been found to:

• Impair fish hearing and smell, putting their survival in danger
• Kill off endangered species such as northern abalone
• Threaten the survival of krill, itself the basic food source of nearly all animals in the ocean

Coral reef in Papua New Guinea. By Mila Zinkova via Wikimedia Commons

Apart from ocean acidification, rising water temperatures, overfishing, pollution, and even tourism are all exacerbating the rapid decline of species such as reef-forming coral. (Go here, here, and here for more on the state of coral reefs.)

Sharks and other species may be next, warned Rogers, lead author of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) report.

Further, he said that, in many cases, the impacts of ocean stressors were found to have a greater overall effect than any single effect when taken together. For example, the decline of coral reef ecosystems due to overfishing and reef bleaching, plus the acidification that causes bleaching, will eradicate “the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet.”

Chilling.

“As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the ocean, the implications became far worse than we had individually realized,” Rogers said. “This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level.”

Stay tuned for part two of this 2-part series.

These days, many seafood species are in decline and numerous stocks have already been depleted by overfishing. Various types of tuna and the Fraser sockeye salmon stocks in British Columbia, Canada, are all species under severe threat.

Part of the problem is fraud – and when eco-certifications are awarded without due consideration, without being truly warranted, everyone suffers (that is, the fish and those of us who care for the planet).

The London-based Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) offers eco-certification to fisheries across the globe. It has never refused the certification to any fishery that has completed the certification process. Fishy, isn’t it? And we’re not the only ones who think so. But I’ll talk more about the MSC when I discuss the sockeye salmon stocks below.

Atlantic bluefin tuna

Tuna

I’ve already blogged about the plight of tuna – bigeye, bluefin, and others – and the efforts of environmental groups like Greenpeace as well as those of entire countries who have called for an international ban on the tuna trade, focusing on bluefin tuna in particular. This call, by the way, has been futile. Some blame Japan and say officials from that country threatened representatives of poor African and Asia-Pacific nations at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) meeting in Qatar last March, which was a complete failure. Whatever the case, tuna thus remains without official protection.

Fraser sockeye salmon - photo from TreeHugger

Fraser sockeye salmon

This time I want to discuss the plight of the Fraser sockeye salmon stocks in British Columbia on Canada’s Pacific coast.

The MSC has just has just certified three Canadian salmon fisheries as sustainable. As consumer awareness about seafood sustainability is growing worldwide, lots of companies are coveting and applying for the MSC label, which makes their seafood gain popularity in the market. You, Save Eco Destinations reader, may be one of the people who makes efforts to purchase environmentally grown or harvested foods. And you should be aware that the MSC is trying to fool you.

Sockeye salmon fished from the Skeena and Nass Rivers and from Barkley sound on Canada’s Pacific coast will now be sold with MSC’s coveted eco-label worldwide. But Dr Craig Orr, executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, believes this is, to put it bluntly, crap. He thus vowed that his organization will be supervising the fisheries to make sure MSC standards are being followed.

“The MSC has just granted eco-certification to three fisheries that routinely overharvest threatened and endangered salmon stocks,” said Orr. “As disturbing as this is, the MSC has placed several conditions for improvement on these fisheries, and we will be watching closely to see if these conditions are enforced.”

Earlier this year, his organization plus two other conservation groups from BC – the David Suzuki Foundation and SkeenaWild Conservation Trust — filed a notice of objection to the MSC’s intent to give the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery eco-certification.

The certification was thus put temporarily on hold pending the verdict of an independent adjudicator, whose decision is expected by Saturday, July 10.

“We objected to the Fraser River certification because we believe it does not meet the MSC’s own minimum standards for certification, and that the management of the fishery is so dysfunctional that the conditions of certification are very unlikely to be met within reasonable timelines,” explained Greg Knox, executive director of SkeenaWild conservation trust. “Overfishing is a serious concern in the Skeena, Nass, and Barkley Sound fisheries, but the situation is not as dire there as it is on the Fraser,” he noted.

Under the MSC’s third-party certification process, firms hired by fishing industry “clients” decide if a fishery meets the MSC’s criteria for eco-certification. Again, I would like to note that no fishery has ever been refused certification after having finished the MSC assessment process and no objection to a certification has ever been upheld.

The three Canadian sockeye salmon fisheries were assessed by the independent organization Moody Marine Ltd, reported CBC News.

Some Fraser River sockeye stocks harvested in the fishery that is about to be MSC certified are classified as “endangered” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, and “critically endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, whose scientists consider overfishing a key threat.

A commission of inquiry by the Canadian Government recently targeted the Fraser fishery because of a major collapse of the fishery and prevalent concerns over mismanagement.

“Eco-certification can provide a powerful incentive for improvement in the way we manage our fisheries,” declared Aaron Hill of Ecologist Watershed Watch, “but it becomes meaningless when you set the bar too low, and certify unsustainable and mismanaged fisheries. It becomes fraud.”

The assessment for Fraser River began in 2009, when only 1.4 million sockeye salmon returned despite the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ (DFO) forecast of up to 10.6 million, reported Vancouver Sun.

“It was a catastrophe,” said Sto: lo First Nation fisheries adviser Ernie Crey. “No one knows what happened to those ‘missing’ fish.”

MSC-certified seafood

Why the MSC’s certification means nothing

The MSC eco-label isn’t even good enough to meet the sustainability policies of some supermarket chains. Really. Retailer Waitrose refuses to carry MSC-certified hoki from New Zealand.

“The fact that the sustainability policy of one of the UK’s largest food retailers could not be met by fish carrying the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) eco-label proves the council’s ineffectuality,” Greenpeace said last year.

Supermarket chains in the U.S. and Europe have refused to carry New Zealand’s orange roughy, a species that is MSC-certified even though it is endangered. This fish is harvested by bottom trawling, which is bad news for seabed communities and is one of the most environmentally destructive fishing methods in existence.

“This shows that even MSC certification is no guarantee of sustainability,” said Greenpeace New Zealand’s oceans campaigner Karli Thomas.

Greenpeace also believes Friend of the Sea (FOS), another eco-certification scheme, is unreliable. FOS even offers eco-certification for farmed fish. Imagine that! I won’t even get into how wrong that is (in this post).

Greenpeace believes that no certification system for sustainable seafood currently exists that is 100% reliable.

Further, Professor Daniel Pauly at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia and the principal investigator of its Sea Around Us Project accused the MSC last year of acquiescing to pressure from the Walton Family Foundation and Wal-Mart and being complicit to a scam.

“At first, the MSC certified only small-scale fisheries, but lately, it has given its seal of approval to large, controversial companies. Indeed, it has begun to measure its success by the percentage of the world catch that it certifies. Encouraged by a Walton Foundation grant and Wal-Mart’s goal of selling only certified fish, the MSC is actually considering certifying reduction fisheries, with the consequence that Wal-Mart, for example, will be able to sell farmed salmon shining with the ersatz glow of sustainability. (Given the devastating pollution, diseases, and parasite infestations that have plagued salmon farms in Chile, Canada, and other countries, this ‘Wal-Mart strategy’ will, in the long term, make the MSC complicit to a giant scam),” he wrote.

FYI, here are other fisheries hit by the MSC

“The Atlanto Scandian herring fishery is PFA’s third fishery to achieve MSC certification: its North Sea herring and its North East Atlantic mackerel fisheries were certified in 2006 and in 2009.” – FIS reported on July 8.

Others include Alaska flatfish, Eastern Canada swordfish, Norwegian cod and haddock, North Pacific albacore tuna, and the Aker BioMarine krill (Euphausia superba) fishery has been in the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean.

So what can you do?

Here are some neat recommendations (except for the MSC one).

Keep up the fight!

Dolphins in the Pacific Ocean

The United Nations (UN) is celebrating World Ocean Day on Tuesday, June 8^th with the theme ‘Our oceans: opportunities and challenges.’

The celebration was instituted just last year and since then has been commemorated annually by conservation groups, schools, businesses and governments everywhere.

Check out this year’s events here and find more info on World Ocean Day at The Ocean Project.

Reasons to celebrate World Ocean Day

Given the recent and very-much-ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s an especially wonderful time to raise awareness about the oceans’ plights and learn how we can “make a difference” (or a phrase that doesn’t make you gag).

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moo said the ocean’s main three challenges right now are overfishing, climate change and pollution.

World Ocean Day allows us to:

• Change perspective: encourage others to consider what the ocean represents to them and our planet, which hopefully will get more people interested in respecting and working to preserve it for generations to come.
• Learn: read about and watch documentaries on marine life and the richness of life in our oceans, visit the beach, etc., – whatever you feel will allow you to bond with our planet’s natural bodies of water.
• Make adjustments: educate yourself about endangered marine species (e.g., bluefin and other types of tuna, swordfish, skates and rays, marlin, Atlantic cod and orange roughy) so you can cross that seafood off your shopping list – and remember to tell others why you’re switching! (Check out Greenpeace’s Seafood Red List here.) You can also read up on which supermarkets shun unsustainable seafood (so you can shop there), biodegradable pesticides and fertilizers for your backyard, wear biodegradable sunscreen, etc.
• Celebrate: take part in the day’s festivities! For instance, write a letter to BP about the catastrophe it’s caused in the Gulf of Mexico and take part in demonstrations and sign petitions against oil drilling.

Atlantic cod is an endangered species

The UN resolution

The UN resolution calls on user States and States bordering straits utilized for international navigation to keep working together to resolve issues regarding navigation safety, e.g., aids to navigation safety and the prevention, reduction and control of pollution generated by ships and other vessels.

Countries are being urged to consider becoming members of the International Hydrographic Organization, and to cooperate with that organization to boost the coverage of hydrographic information across the planet.

These orders are meant to strengthen technical assistance and promote navigation safety, particularly in areas of international navigation, ports and vulnerable or protected marine zones.

“The oceans play a fundamental role in our daily lives. They are an integral part of sustainable development and an important frontier for research. As scientists explore the oceans to increasing depths, they continue to discover new forms of marine life,” said Ki-moo.

“These investigations have great potential with regards to the improvement of human welfare. But if we are to benefit fully from what the oceans have to offer, we must address the harmful effects of human activities. The diversity of life in the oceans is under increasing pressure,” he added.

Ki-moo said marine ecosystems are being threatened by three major phenomena:

• The overexploitation of living marine resources;
• Climate change;
• Pollution from activities involving materials and hazards.

“The same applies to the increase in criminal activities, including piracy, which have serious implications for safety of navigation and the protection of seafarers,” he noted.

There is more good news, so I wanted to share:

In the last post, I discussed the international bluefin tuna trade ban proposed by Monaco, the UK,  and France—which is awesome.

I also mentioned how UK supermarket chains like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s have quit selling endangered seafood—yay!

More good news:

A resolution by member countries and organisations of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) banning fish aggregating devices (FADs) catches between 1 August and 30 September was signed by the Philippines. – FIS

So all the countries that fish commercially with purse-seine fishing boats in the western and central Pacific Ocean will have to abide by the ban. (Bluefin tuna live far out in international waters.)

This is looking good.

Longline fishing - picture by www.globalresponse.org

While some fishing fleets will remain legally able to fish tuna –

1) they will make their catches with the long-line (a commercial fishing technique) and hand-line fishing methods, which are environmentally sound in comparison; and

2) local fleets will probably have to venture farther than out into the open sea than usual. Then,

3) their operation costs would rise. And thus

4) tuna prices would rise. And hopefully,

5) consumption will consequently fall.

Let’s hope so.

Because the tuna industry is not too fazed by the ban given that it will not apply to long-lining, which will help “bridge the supply gap.”

You know, except the coastal communities that depend on fishing for a source of income. But they don’t count.

What about the international ban?

The countries that sign the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora or CITES—which will probably soon include the U.S.—will meet in March 2010, according to The Economist.

2010? Why not now, right? And even if these countries could meet and get their asses in gear now, it could be too late.

Yet even if the trade in bluefin tuna were to be halted completely, there would be no guarantee that the species would recover. Experience with other fisheries, such as the collapse of the cod population of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in 1992, has shown that the dynamics of an ecosystem can change when a top predator is removed completely. Fifteen years later, the northern cod stock has not recovered. – The Economist

Woe.

Let’s hope for the best.

And stab anyone you see even thinking about eating tuna. With a spork.

To get some history on the bluefin tuna issue, I recommend this article in the Wall Street Journal written by Prince Albert of Monaco. (Monaco was the first, on June 5^th, to call for an international ban.)

"I killed a huge fish, I'm awesome" from fishingkites.co.nz

The dramatically endangered bluefin tuna species has something to smile about today: Britain, Monaco and France are calling for an international ban on its fishing.

Wow. Can you imagine?

I’ve been smiling about this all day! (Imagine the tuna!)

“Ours is the last generation with the ability to take action before it’s too late – we must protect marine resources now, in order to fish better in the future,” Sarkozy said at the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), according to Environment News Service.

“We owe this to fishermen, and we owe it to future generations,” he added.

Way cool. (Note to Sarkozy: you owe it to fisherwomen too, pal.)

So, first to raise the flag for the international ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna was the Principality of Monaco. The sovereign city-state launched a formal CITES consultation process earlier this week in hopes of gaining the support of other range States.

by Greenpeace

People—apart from environmentalists—gained awareness about the issue earlier this year in response to the Sundance Festival release of the documentary film “The End of the Line.” The movie describes the pace at which oceans are being overfished and the crime’s catastrophic consequences. It’s based on the book The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat by Charles Clover.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bedirwk95Oc&hl=en&fs=1&]

The film has inspired UK supermarket chains like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s to stop dealing endangered species or only sell sustainably caught fish, and inspired consumers to shop for their food mindfully.

And am I glad! Because even though Greenpeace protests indeed have achieved a whole lot throughout the years, it’s a whole lot easier and less painful to get the point across when you have governmental bodies to back you up. Right, Emma Briggs? Watch the video behind the link to read + watch for yourself.

It seems we need TV to tell us that if we don’t stop being assholes, there won’t be any sushi left by 2048—not to mention no more bluefin tuna by 2012! That’s less than three years.

Wait, scratch that.

“The Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery is collapsing and, unless we take immediate action, the breeding population will disappear by 2010,” said World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF-UK) Marine Programme Manager Sally Bailey.

“We’re urging the government to encourage other countries to follow this lead and ban international trade. It’s our last chance to save this iconic species,” she added.

Image by Sustainability Ninja

Jeepers!

But hey, if movies are what we need to reach people (apart from having protesters chain themselves to supermarket freezers) … then get to work, filmmakers!

(Yes, I know Australia’s successfully bred bluefin tuna in cages. It’s not the same.)

Seriously, it’s times like these that I am the most grateful for organizations like Greenpeace, WWF and even those crazy punks over at PETA!

THANK YOU!

From the tuna and from all of us…