WiLD Blog

A study released says that coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean are dying faster than previously though. In the past two decades 20 percent of coral has disappeared from the Pacific Ocean. More than 600 square miles of coral reefs has disappeared since the 60’s. Losses in well-protected areas such as the Great Barrier Reef were just as bad as losses in poorly managed areas like the Philippines. The United Nations estimates that nearly a third of all coral has been lost and by 2030 an estimated 60 percent of coral cover will be gone.

There are many reasons behind the decline of coral reefs. Global climate change, storm damage, agricultural runoff, predators and diseases are the main factors influencing this rapid decline. Warming waters cause coral to “bleach” and lose their color, often resulting in death or reduced reproduction. In addition the ocean absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, which causes the ocean to become more acidic and thus dissolving the coral’s calcium skeleton. Agricultural runoff dumps massive amounts of nutrients into the ocean, fueling massive algae blooms that block out light for coral. Overfishing has exacerbated this problem, since no predators are left to feed on algal blooms.

Coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate around the world.

It’s so hard to describe how disheartening this news is to me.

Coral reefs are a source of life for people. Ecotourism and fishing provide money for families to make a living. Coral reef islands are homes for people as they have been for hundred of years. They’re homes to an amazingly diverse group of animals and plants. They’re also a source of amazement and joy to the people that visit them.

I stayed on a coral reef island for a few days when I studied abroad, and I will never forget the amazing things I saw. I was gathering algae for a research project during high tide on the reef and when I looked up I saw a sea turtle hovering in front of me, quietly contemplating me as I slowly reached out and scratched it shell (I’ve been told that sea turtles enjoy having the algae scratched off their shells by divers). I’ve seen eagle rays jump six feet out of the water and silently watched female sea turtles digging nests on the beach. I’ve seen a 600-pound grouper hunting at night and swam beside a five-foot shark. I’ve seen a giant clam the size of a small child and dove through a school of simmering fish. Just floating above the reef and watching the sheer abundance of life weave their way around you as they go about living is indescribable.

I’m unable to do justice to all the crazy things I saw. I’m just telling stories. There are so many things I can’t convey in words. It’s the difference between seeing it on the TV screen and actually experiencing the realness of it. I think there was a point where I just stopped and thought, “This is real”. Before, all I’ve ever seen of the reef was in National Geographic and nature shows I watched as a kid. It’s unbelievable to think that someday, the only things left of coral reefs will be stories, pictures, movies and memories. One day, people won’t be able to go out and see all these things anymore, simply because the reefs will one day cease to exist. They’re already on their way there.

I’ve read too many reports and seen too many news stories on disappearing reefs. Whenever I see another one, all I can think to myself is, “This is unreal.”

Calvin Lee

There is a crisis that needs to be urgently addressed. This crisis is not in regards to human rights nor about political unrest. This crisis affects every nation in the world, every sushi eater, every seafood lover. It affects those who fish for fun and those who fish to live, it affects divers and snorkelers. This is the crisis we’re calling the Global Fisheries Crisis.

Reading about the significant and dangerous decline of our fisheries sent chills down my spine, imagining what life would be like when we have ultimately fished out our seas. Because of the explosive burst in human population, added to the inconsiderate and utterly ruthless methods of fishing, plus a sprinkle of pollution from agricultural and waste runoffs, we have caused a decline in almost all fish stocks we once imagined were endless. Species we thought would bounce back never did. The seas that we imagined would surpass all challenges and ultimately bring about balance once again have failed to prove our theories correct.

For nations like Japan and Spain, while seafood is an important part of their culture and diet, in the end when there’s nothing left, they have the financial and geographical means to import other goods. However, for nations like Nigeria and many of the small islands in the Pacific, the compromise becomes more than a cultural one. Not only is fish is a large part of their diet, for some supplying the only source of protein available, fish is also a way to provide income for families that otherwise are not trained to work. In other words, fish is a necessity. When that is taken away from them due to lack of supply, the aftermath in a country like Nigeria is as shocking to the economy as it is to the people – frozen fish is for the first time being imported into the nation to satisfy their need for fish.

Fishermen who use destructive methods to fish or fish significantly more than they are allowed to are simply selfish. These methods of self-interest fishing satisfy temporary needs for supply, but rather quickly the put a dent in fish availability for the years to come. While they are selfish and only look out for their own interests, even then it’s as if they haven’t quite thought it through – what will they fish when there’s nothing left? In some towns, as little as 10% of fisherman remain in the profession and for the first time sons and daughters are left with no choice but to explore other means of income. There are simply “too many boats chasing too few fish.”

I love fish. I never ate other seafood but I really love fish. After enlightening myself with a little bit of information, I couldn’t help but decide that it might be time for me to make an example of myself and significantly reduce my fish consumption. For me it’s not a tragic change, it’s simply a lifestyle I have chosen to do my part in conserving one of our most precious resources.

But for those one billion people in this world who’s only source of protein is fish, the compromise on their health and well-being will surely not come so peacefully.

Fiona Teng

The ice floes where harp seal pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned.

Each year, the Canadian government allows the massive slaughter of hundreds of thousands of harp seals. Last year, approximately 325,000 harp seals were killed, about 6% of the total population. This massive killing only brings a revenue of $14.5 million dollars. That is, Canada only gets $40 per seal. Furthermore, after costs and indirect subsidies are taken into account (patrolling the hunt, upgrading plants, promoting the hunt, developing new markets for seal products and supporting research to find new products), Canadians would likely find that the hunt actually costs the Canadian taxpayer money. The hunt has become a cull, designed more to achieve short-term political objectives than those of a biologically sustainable hunt.

Last year, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) released a study by conservation biologist Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University, which shows that the quota levels in the seal hunts of Canada and Greenland “pose a threat to the very survival of the harp seal population.” When the seals that are struck and lost, that is wounded animals who escape and are not recovered, more than half of all the seal pups born each year are slaughtered, Harris said. “When such hunting pressure last occurred, the harp seal population declined rapidly by over 50 percent,” said Harris. “Given seals only reach breeding age at about five to six years old, it could be too late to intervene by the time the impacts of current hunting levels are understood.” The Harris report criticizes the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for failing to include environmental variables such as climate change in their Atlantic Seal Management Plan.

In 2007, the threat of climate change to harp seals is not a possibility anymore. The first stage of Canada’s controversial annual harp seal hunt is likely to be scrapped because the ice floes where pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned. Canada’s federal fisheries ministry, which oversees the hunt, said the pups had been born as usual this year but the ice floes had then been blown far out to sea and started to break up before the seals learned how to swim properly.

The first part of the hunt, which had been due to start on March 28, occurs in the Gulf of St Lawrence to the south of the Magdalen Islands on Canada’s East Coast. Hunters move across the ice floes, shooting and clubbing to death young seals.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen this in 25 years … for sure there is increased mortality,” fisheries spokesman Roger Simon said from the Magdalen Islands. There is ice (south of the islands) but there are no seals on that ice,” he added, saying the animals were now well out of the range of most of the hunters’ vessels.

In Cabot Strait, there is wide open water and almost no seals,” Internationl Fund for Animal Welfare researcher Sheryl Fink said. “I only saw a handful of adult harp seals and even fewer pups, where normally we should be seeing thousands and thousands of seals.”

The ignominious policy of the Canadian government and climate change may be a lethal combination, the road to the extinction of harp seals. The irony of harp seal hunting is that the Canadian government and isolated fishing communities insist they need the supplemental income from the hunt, since cod stocks have dwindled due to overfishing. I wonder what will be the supplemental income when harp seals dissapear due to overhunting and climate change.

What can you do? Boycott Canadian seafood

Seal hunting is an off-season activity conducted by fishers from Canada’s East Coast. They earn a small fraction of their incomes from sealing—primarily from the sale of seal pelts to European fashion markets. But the vast majority of the sealers’ incomes are from commercial fisheries. Canadian seafood exports to the United States contribute $3 billion annually to the Canadian economy—dwarfing the few million dollars provided by the seal hunt. The connection between the commercial fishing industry and the seal hunt in Canada gives consumers all over the world the power to end this cruel and brutal slaughter. Don’t consume Canadian seafood or eat in restaurants that buy Canadian seafood. You have the power to stop the harp seal slaughter.

Saul

This is why WiLDCOAST advocates for MPAs and marine reserves.   

Overfishing and pollution threaten accelerated loss of ocean species, ecosystems and humans’ food supplies, US and Canadian researchers reported in the November 3 issue of the US journal, Science.

 ”Our analyses suggest that ‘business as usual’ would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations,” the team of ecologists and economists wrote in the most exhaustive study to date of the subject.

  ”Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s oceans, we saw the same picture emerging,” said lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, in Canada. He said the disappearance of species from ocean ecosystems had been accelerating.

 ”Now we begin to see some of the consequences. If the trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime - by 2048,” Worm said. “In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems.

  At this point, 29 percent of currently fished species were considered “collapsed” in 2003 - that is, their catches had declined by 90 percent or more, he said. “It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating.”

 The study showed that the loss of one species accelerates the unravelling of the overall ecosystem, while conversely every species recovered adds significantly to its stability and ability to withstand stresses.

 Thus, the researchers determined, the problem is far greater than losing a key source of food.

 The effects of damage to the oceans included a decline in water quality by biological filtering and the protection of shorelines by marine species.

 The loss of marine diversity also appeared to increase the risks of coastal flooding, harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion and fish kills.

 ”The data show us it’s not too late,” he added. “We can turn this around.”

 The authors concluded that an ecosystem-based management approach towards restoring marine biodiversity - including integrated fisheries management, pollution control and creation of marine reserves - was essential. - Sapa-AFP