http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a2.2MZbFjs8Y
Consuming Blue Fin Tuna Is Like Barbecuing Pandas: Interview
Interview by Zinta Lundborg
May 18 (Bloomberg) — “We take 100 million tons of sea creatures out of
the ocean every year and replace them with 100 million tons of garbage,”
says Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer and the National Geographic Society’s
Explorer-in-Residence.
In her new book, ‘The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are
One,” Earle explains how close we are to a tipping point.
She founded Mission Blue to create a network of marine protected areas, or
“hope spots,” large enough to restore the ocean’s biodiversity. Last year,
the TED Foundation awarded her the $100,000 “One Wish to Change the World”
prize.
We met during her recent trip to New York.
Lundborg: Does the Gulf oil spill make you angry?
Earle: I consider it a big two-by-four to the head. We’d slipped into a
kind of complacency about drilling.
Lundborg: Don’t the containment efforts so far seem lame? “Top hat?” “Junk
shot?”
Earle: Working in water this deep highlights the inadequacy of our
technologies.
Unless you’re prepared to deal with the chance that it could go haywire,
you shouldn’t do it. This spill should make everyone question what we’re
allowing to happen with our eyes wide open – - nothing has been hidden.
The Impact
Lundborg: What’s the worst thing about this spill?
Earle: The ocean is being poisoned. It’s not just the oil itself but also
the dispersants that are complicating and magnifying the impact of the
harm.
Lundborg: Which areas are most affected?
Earle: One critical area is near the surface, where the dolphins and sea
turtles come up into the slick, breathe the toxic air and get chemicals on
their skin. Birds land unwittingly and get their feathers and lungs
affected.
But the little guys drive the system as a whole, and that’s the area of
greatest concern.
Lundborg: How long-term is the damage?
Earle: Toxins that get in the food chain will be there for some time to
come. Oil from the Exxon Valdez still lingers in the beaches. It’s in the
rocks and it’s still written in the depressed numbers of otters and the
changes in the populations of birds. Plus we don’t even have the ability
to calculate the impact on fish and other creatures in the sea.
Lundborg: The Gulf is one of Mission Blue’s hope spots, so what happens now?
Earle: Even if an area has been totally ravaged, if we can take actions
that help turn things around, there’s still hope.
You can go too far, though. We destroyed the last of the monk seals in
1952. There’s no hope for them, but there are still a few grouper and tuna
that should be left alone and given the chance to recover.
Garbage Everywhere
Lundborg: You write that you haven’t been on a dive in the past 30 years
without seeing garbage. That’s shocking.
Earle: Even in submersibles, going 2 1/2 miles beneath the surface in the
Nankai Trough many miles offshore, I’ve seen evidence of what we’re
dumping into the sea.
Lundborg: We’ve taken out 90 percent of the big fish?
Earle: And a lot of the small ones too, the menhaden, anchovies and
herring. We’re seeing an accelerated decline now.
Look at the photos of Ernest Hemingway and the giant trophy fish he
caught. We have miniature versions today – 2 feet instead of 10 feet long.
It’s appalling.
Lundborg: Whales are still being slaughtered for fertilizer, ivory
trinkets and cat food?
Earle: Japan, Norway and Iceland are killing large whales and they’re rich
countries. Denmark is killing smaller pilot whales in a horrible way and
other countries are also hunting.
Role of Subsidies
Lundborg: The whaling industry is subsidized so why can’t it be stopped?
Earle: So is the fishing industry. We’re paying billions of dollars so
commercial fisherman can destroy the ocean.
People don’t know the real cost of the shrimp that are on their plates.
Trawling for shrimp is like bulldozing a forest to catch songbirds and
squirrels. You throw away the forest and all the other creatures and shake
out a few pounds of protein.
Lundborg: People should stop eating sushi now?
Earle: For every pound of sushi that goes to market, 10 to 100 pounds are
thrown away as by-catch. There are also the problems with mercury, fire
retardant and pesticide contamination. Yum, yum.
Eating Pandas
Lundborg: You say that consuming blue fin tuna is like eating snow
leopards and pandas, so no one should eat tuna anymore?
Earle: Blue fins are the most at risk partly because they are the most
desired. Yellow fins and others aren’t as depressed, but it doesn’t mean
they’re not in trouble.
Lundborg: So what can we eat?
Earle: Think about the economics. To make a pound of chicken, it takes
about two pounds of plants, sunlight and 7 months.
Tuna is at the top of the food chain so it takes 10 to 100,000 pounds of
plants for a pound of tuna. That’s not a good deal.
Farmed catfish, tilapia, carp and certain mollusks are the best choices.
Lundborg: People still think the ocean is free for us to exploit, so how
can that change?
Earle: The most valuable resource that we’re obtaining from the ocean is
life itself: It’s the air we breathe, it’s the carbon dioxide that’s
grabbed by the ocean, the thermo- regulation, the services that we have a
hard time putting a number on.
What’s your life worth?
To buy this book in North America, click here. For more information:
http://mission-blue.orghttp://www.iucn.orghttp://www.protectplanetocean.orghttp://www.ted.com
(Zinta Lundborg is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
her own. This interview was adapted from a longer conversation.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Zinta Lundborg in New York
zlundborg@bloomberg.net.