You may have been lucky enough to see the superb National Geographic programme Mission To Save The Ocean last Saturday. If not, don’t worry, I’ll give you the rundown here.
The programme went across the globe to West Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, following Greenpeace campaigners tackling the root causes of overfishing.
Introducing the program was Richard Branson; cue some really snazzy shots of him kite surfing, then relaxing/presenting on a beach in his own private island in the Caribbean.
And back to the fish. Overfishing is one of the largest threats to our oceans, stocks of many large predatory fish have been pushed to the edge, changing and damaging whole marine ecosystems.
Overfishing doesn’t only threaten the fish species we target for food, but other species such as sharks, turtles, dolphins and seabirds, caught incidentally in fishing gear and killed.
In the Pacific the programme tracked the team on board our ship the Esperanza on its mission to investigate and expose illegal fishing. The team came across one boat from the Philippines fishing far from home, owned by a large fishing company operating hundreds of similar vessels. Typical of a global problem, dwindling fish stocks meant this boat was fishing further and further afield. One fisherman on the boat, when asked why he was so far from home, said, ‘there’s not enough fish there, I’m sad that we have to go this far.’
Policing and punishing illegal fishing activity is a real challenge. The programme showed the President of Palau, a Western Pacific island nation, admitting that he wanted to do more to protect his natural resources and welcomed our help. Cue the dream team – Palau authorities paired with campaigners on the Esperanza, given official license to patrol Palau waters in pursuit of piracy.
The team tracked down and destroyed a highly destructive fishing device called a FAD (fish aggregating device), planted there by a fishing vessel most likely fishing for tuna. FADs are floating objects which attract fish, then the marine life feeding on the fish, until you have a whole host of different species gathered around.
In one easy scoop a net around a FAD will take everything, much of it unwanted with no commercial value, doomed to be thrown overboard dead or dying. It’s a deeply untargeted way to harvest our marine resources, and has detrimental effects to the health of an ecosystem. Here in the UK and in Australia we've won battles to get all their brands and supermarkets to stop using FADs, and other victories continue worldwide.
Over in Senegal we saw the human cost of overfishing. Fishing boats from Europe and Asia, not content with plundering the seas of their home countries, come to the West coast of Africa to hoover up the fish stocks there. These boats aren’t necessarily fishing illegally, our governments negotiate with West African governments for access to their fish.
Around 1.5 million artisanal fishermen fish along these coasts, and depend directly on fish as a source of protein to feed their families and communities. They fish from small boats, or pirogues close to the shore. These handpainted, colourful boats are positively dwarfed by the industrial sized ships ripping the fish away from these fishermen, leaving them struggling to feed themselves.
The lack of fish forces local fishermen to fish further and further off shore in their small boats. There are plenty of tragic stories, including one in which a local fisherman's eldest son, fishing far from the shore in rough weather, was lost at sea.
In Senegal though, this story has a happy ending. Campaigner Raoul Monsembula visited the incoming President Macky Sall and told him about the plunder of these foreign vessels, and the direct impact this was having on coastal communities and fishermen. In 2012, in a dramatic move, he cancelled all fishing licenses to foreign vessels. Only two months later, campaigner Raoul tells us that the fishermen were ‘dancing’ because their catch increased.
In Taiwan the focus of the team was on the overfishing of tuna. To try and halt the overexploitation of tuna species, the Taiwanese fishing agency agreed to stick to global fishing limits so that tuna stocks could recover. Yet they sidestepped the rules by allowing ship yards to build oversized vessels, capable of catching and storing far more fish than previous boats, directly undermining efforts to rescue tuna populations.
To expose the problem, the brave team lead by campaigner Yu Fen Kao undertook the first ever climbing action in Taiwan, hanging a banner displaying the words “Overfishing Starts Here” at the largest shipyard in Taiwan.
In all three cases the source of the problem lies in the commercial interests of just a few fishing companies forcing fish stocks to the brink. Unselective fishing gear combined with technological advancement means fish stocks are plundered wholesale, and entire ecosystems suffer with them. We all rely on the oceans, in coastal states the impact is felt keenly as foreign fishing vessels steal the livelihoods and protein from communities.
I’ll leave you with the words of the oceanographer Sylvia Earle featured in the program as one of the Oceans Elders:
''A few companies, a few nations are profiting, taking, from something that all of us own if anybody owns it. All of us have a vested interest, and this is that magic point in time when we know that we can take action, before it’s too late.''
The program was funded by United Postcode Lotteries to raise awareness about the state of our oceans.
