| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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california futures Sylvia Earle
California Wild: What is the Sustainable Seas Project? Sylvia Earle: Sustainable Seas focuses on the twelve National Marine Sanctuaries in U.S. waters as the young but promising counterpart to the National Park System. There isn't much sanctuary yet in the sanctuaries, but they're a good beginning just like the early days of the national parks. The establishment of the marine sanctuaries is a giant step in the right direction. They were initiated in 1972, which was a landmark year for environmental policies. They embrace 18,000 square miles, but that's less than two percent of the oceans encompassed by the nation. s so-called exclusive economic zone. And, of course, we're talking three dimensions. CW: What are the most serious threats you see affecting the health of the ocean? SE: One is, very simply, what we. re putting into the sea. Taking care of the ocean starts in our backyards and on fields and farms and golf courses and even the tops of mountains. We deliberately treat the ocean as the ultimate sewer, where we put things we don't want, in the belief that it's the safest, best place. It's an illusion, of course. It's like putting poison into our bloodstream. The other threat is what we take out of the ocean. That is having a profound impact on the stability of a system that evolved over hundreds of millions of years. It would be hard to imagine how we could more seriously damage the nature of the oceans if we deliberately set out to destroy them than what we're doing in the name of everyday practices that we think are okay. CW: Do you think that international agreements, especially around fishing, will be strengthened in the near future? SE: I'm modestly encouraged. But part of what is motivating action is a lot of bad news, a wake-up call from nature: The collapse of so many commercially exploited species that all turned out to be devastated by our ability to develop clever new means to capture them. Now we understand that there are limits, and we have far exceeded them. Yet, worldwide, including here in the United States, we subsidize the commercial fishing industry to the tune of $54 billion a year. Terminating that would be one of the most important steps we could take. CW: Do you see this country changing direction? SE: No, I don't. We're very protective of fishermen. We're not at all protective of fish. If we were truly looking out for the fate of the fishermen, we would be spending far more attention on what it takes to keep fish populations healthy. As it is, even the modest proposals that have been made towards conservation have largely been ignored. We, the general public, are part of the problem. We provide a market for swordfish, salmon, cod, tuna--all top-of-the-line predators that really cannot tolerate a large take. Bocaccio, a rockfish, is now down to less than two percent of what it was 30 years ago. CW: Will aquaculture help? SE: Aquaculture is the only answer to our appetite for marine and freshwater species. That doesn. t mean that we must look to a future where there is an absolute ban on taking wild fish. We still take a small number of ducks, geese, quail, wild turkey, deer, and a few other wild species. We must be careful about how many of what kind and when, and take pains to protect the ecosystems. The trouble is that with most fish species we don't even know what that means. There are a couple of promising cultivatable aquatic species: catfish and tilapia. There's a species of blue green algae [cyanobacteria] that is cultivated in large quantities, mostly for the healthfood industry, but it's economically very attractive. But, to date, with a world of organisms to choose from, we have chosen precisely the most economically implausible ones. By and large, we're attempting to cultivate carnivores, and we're surprised our success rate is not good. It would be the last thing a farmer would choose to raise to feed large numbers of people. We do not raise carnivores, we raise herbivores, and only a handful out of thousands of species. We have an opportunity to capitalize on 10,000 years of experience, especially the last century, about what works and what does not with agriculture and to make a quantum leap towards successful aquaculture. It is possible to cultivate shrimp efficiently and, I think, to do it in an environmentally sound way. We. re not doing it for the most part, but there are shining examples of responsible, effective cultivation of these arthropods. They're the counterparts of grasshoppers. They will eat vegetable matter or just about anything. They also will eat protein; they're scavengers. The trouble is we haven't really focused on closing the loop with their life histories. We still take gravid female shrimp out of the ocean and raise their eggs instead of doing what we do with pigs and cows. We cultivate shrimp that come from wild caught mama shrimp loaded with eggs, and we go back to the source year after year. CW: Can you look 20 years ahead? SE: If we took the pressures off, totally, right now, we'd still be in trouble. But I'm driven by the vision of my grandchildren and of the children of the world looking at me, and the people of my generation who are making these decisions and saying, "Why didn't you do something when you had a chance? You saw blue whales but why didn't you save them for me to see, too? You knew what a great white shark was all about from personal experience but I can never have that experience." We do have a chance. That's the best news. But it's dependent on whether we seize the opportunity. Writing, speaking, using film, taking kids to the beach, taking kids to the Steinhart Aquarium, investing your life, your whole heart, in knowing that this is a crucial time as never before. We have a chance that's flying by. |
Winter 2000
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