The importance of the oceans, their wildlife and ecosystems

I sat down to watch Seaspiracy on Netflix and do a review today after I read remarks from fisheries scientists on social media, describing it as ‘vegan propaganda‘ and remarking that it was ‘addressed in a shallow, chaotic, confusing and emotional manner‘.

The reaction from marine scientists is baffling since the film is likely to create a big ground swell of support for more stringent and meaningful control over commercial fishing.

The main objection that fisheries scientists seem to be having however, is the film’s call to action, to stop eating fish. But this is not what the film-maker Ali Tabrizi says.

He concludes the film by saying this:

‘I realised the single best thing I could do every single day to protect the ocean and the marine life I love, was to simply not eat them’.

It makes me wonder whether many of the comments are made by scientists who even bothered to watch it all the way through. What worries me more, is the poor level of understanding that these most vocal of marine fisheries representatives seem to have for the underlying ecosystem collapse that’s being caused by over-consumption at a time when oceans are under severe stress.

So, having seen this backlash, I was somewhat surprised to reach the end of the film and find little or nothing that surprised me, except for a candid and lucid portrayal of the intensity and scale of ecological threat that modern-day fishing poses to humanity.

If you haven’t made up your mind whether or not eating fish is a good thing for the planet, this film will give you pause for thought. But it remains your personal choice.

The ‘vegan propagandists’ referred to include Dr Sylvia Earle, possibly one of the most awarded, reputable and outstanding ocean scientists from our generation. The story, far from being chaotic, makes perfect sense. It begins with the film-maker wanting to do something about the effects of marine plastic but there is a segue into fishing, when his research discovers that 46% of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing net [1] (see evidence check, below).

One Twitter user described it as a ’17-year-old YouTuber production’ but you can’t miss the point that it involved some very significant journalists and a simplified narrative of the film-makers ‘research and discovery’ for dramatic effect. This works, because for the majority of viewers, they would be joining him on the same journey.

To be honest, the reaction of marine fisheries scientists is nothing short of ill-informed and I fear, many may have done their reputations far more harm, than the film itself.

This is because the producer Kip Anderson make no bones of identifying clear conflicts of interests between some of the groups representing ocean health and their role in accrediting fisheries as sustainable. Everyone knows these are complex problems but that’s not the point. Blinding people with science is one of the reasons why we have collapsing ocean ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More and doesn’t allow the general public to make their own decisions.

Two particular representatives willingly admitted that absolute sustainability cannot be proved and answered honestly, coming across very well.

Maria José Cornax from Oceana said there was no definition of sustainability as a whole for fisheries and that it is absolutely confusing for consumers to be told to eat sustainable fish. Mark Palmer at Dolphin Safe Tuna admitted that it was not possible to be 100% certain dolphins weren’t being killed by boats fishing tuna and it largely came down to the honesty of vessel captains reporting in their logbooks.

Read Oceana’s statement about their work here.

These individuals came across as compassionate advocates for conservation–the type of people I would want representing this, because they are working in a difficult system and they understand its limitations and the need to continually improve.

Other advocates for the fishing industry were less forthcoming and those that got angry when asked simple and obvious questions, may regret their behaviour. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) did not apparently make themselves available for comment to the film-makers. MSC was co-founded by WWF about 20 years ago but has long since been independent. In recent years, WWF has put MSC under scrutiny for its failure to adopt more stringent measures of control.

Years ago I worked as a consultant for a big name-brand oil company and I regret to admit that I once made a derogatory comment in a meeting about Greenpeace. It wasn’t a terrible thing to say as I have a great deal of respect for the organisation but I felt my opinion on one particular issue, was worth more then theirs.

A senior executive who had been with the company for about 50 years pulled me to one side and told me that I overstepped. He said that despite long battles, their level of sustainability and commerciality would never have been possible unless Greenpeace had kept them honest. He would not have a bad word said against them.

Sadly, that level of wisdom and respect is earned over years because when organisations and their scientists become too confident in their own opinions, it endangers the integrity not only of the environment but of the very industries they represent.

Marine fisheries scientists are not the right people to be making judgements about how people should and should not behave and what they eat. Neither does it serve them well to argue the evidential detail –the documentary is accurate enough that the general gist of the argument remains unchanged, regardless of specifics.

I wrote just the other day, that my renewed understanding of ecosystems and how they work, was thanks to ordinary people and non-scientists, who have spent time with me in the wild. Their perspectives are often unique, pure and valuable. Science has tried to describe the way the ocean works, to create complex mathematical models but has still failed abysmally, to convince politicians to look after our ocean health and fish stocks.

The only thing that will make a difference now, is a change in human values and scientists can’t do that. Science has never been able to motivate the world to make a difference when faced with existential problems, a point raised by –Wiesner and York in National Security and the Nuclear-Test Ban [2] referring to the threat of nuclear war.

“Both sides in the arms race are …confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.”

–Wiesner and York, National Security and the Nuclear-Test Ban [2]

Creating a change in human values takes story-tellers and people like you, who vote by making individual choices. You are the difference between a habitable world and one that us dominated by commercial interests.

I was particularly pleased to see a section of the film devoted to how commercial fishing has destroyed the traditional fishing livelihoods of poverty-stricken communities all over the world and it was news to me, that Sea Shepherd is involved in hunting down illegal fishing in dangerous regions off West Africa, to help address this.

If you want to know what a small-scale fishery looks like, where an entire village earns little more than USD3,000 a year, this is it:

So, contrary to what you might hear, Seaspiracy does not tell anyone they can’t eat fish (the word vegan never appears in the film) and it represents a candid and oftentimes brutal representation of a powerful industry where you can be killed for reporting the truth.

It presents evidence of ecological and humanitarian atrocities that have been in the press for many years already and does this in 90 minutes of careful story-telling. It asks simple and honest questions that are often the hardest to answer and the failure, if anything, is by the scientists who either refuse or cannot answer them. If we cannot trust science to admit things are failing overall, then we can at least make our own choice what to do.

Seaspiracy is well worth watching and the story has a long way yet to unfold.

Some interesting statements

For anyone to continue to argue that fish stocks are declining around the world and will be largely gone within decades is to deny a gigantic body of science. 

– Ray Hilborn

Then this:

• Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 2019 “despite significant successes the proportion of marine fish stocks fished within biologically sustainable levels continues to decline” (see graph below)
• World Wide Fund for Nature (2008) “The best solution to the problem of declining fisheries is to rebuild overexploited stocks and ecosystems through relieving fishing pressure, improving gear selectivity and fishing exploitation patterns, protecting habitat and making a wise and generous use of protected areas and no-take zones.”
• NINTH MEETING OF THE INTER-AGENCY AND EXPERT GROUP ON THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL INDICATORS (2019) “Internationally agreed definition of “sustainable fisheries” not available / Difficulty in operationalizing the definition => focus on environmental (biological) sustainability of fishery resources”
• Hilborn et al (2015) When is a fishery sustainable? “The sustainability of seafood production depends not on the abundance of a fish stock, but on the ability of the fishery management system to adjust fishing pressure to appropriate levels.”
• WWF (via Reuters), (2016) “The amount of fish in the oceans has halved since 1970, in a plunge to the “brink of collapse” caused by over-fishing and other threats, the WWF conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More group said on Wednesday.”
• Link & Watson (2019) Global ecosystem overfishing: Clear delineation within real limits to production “The well-documented value of marine fisheries is threatened by overfishing. Management typically focuses on target populations but lacks effective tools to document or restrain overexploitation of marine ecosystems.”
• World Ocean Review (2013) “no reliable data exists for many of the world’s fish stocks. Moreover, fisheries biologists are even unable to confirm how many fish stocks there actually are. If any data is available, it applies only to commercially exploited species”
• WWF (2018) “The MSC standard must strengthen the safeguards around bycatch, including the cumulative impacts of fisheries on bycatch (retained and discarded), and make it mandatory for MSC-certified fisheries to minimize unwanted bycatch and discard”
• Watson et al (2013) “for the equivalent fishing power expended, landings from global fisheries are now half what they were a half-century ago, indicating profound changes to supporting marine environments.”
• Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on BiodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More and Ecosystem Services. The global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, summary for policymakers. “Since 1970, trends in agricultural production, fish harvest, bioenergy production and harvest of materials have increased, but 14 of the 18 categories of contributions of nature that were assessed, mostly regulating and non-material contributions, have declined” and “In marine ecosystems, direct exploitation of organisms (mainly fishing) has had the largest relative impact, followed by land-/ sea-use change”.
• Pauly & Zeller (2017) “data assembled by FAO from submissions by countries suggest a “stable” trend mainly because the declining catches of a number of countries with reliable statistics is compensated for by unreliable statistics from countries where reporting increasing catches may be politically expedient … This suggests a degradation of marine fisheries, and, if trends continue, a crisis by mid-century”

Spotlight

Science versus fact and evidence

Seaspiracy does what scientists can’t do because the pursuit of science is about obtaining the unobtainable, that is … proof. Scientists pursuit of proof, however impossible this is, makes their work incredibly important because their evidence is continually improving. It also means that their narrative is inherently challenged and uncertain, and outside the corridors of scientific debate, can leads to public confusion (hence the intense debates about climate change).

Public policy decisions are made on balance of evidence, whether something is more or less likely to be the case and this is the mainstay of a democracy. Every day, there are hearings in court rooms, planning hearings and in the court of public opinion, that influence the direction of public policy so that we can have a more habitable and just planet.

What Seaspiracy does is tell a simple and important story that shows, on balance, that our oceans are facing an existential threat of overfishing and this is forecast to collapse human life support within a foreseeable time, if we don’t do something about it. On balance, the efforts of fisheries scientists are helping some fisheries be sustainable but 90% are still on the verge of collapse (see evidence check, below). No amount of scientific rebuttal can alter this. The references for every scientific paper ever published, can be critiqued but it doesn’t mean all science is misleading. Seaspiracy is not misleading in its main thesis that the oceans are over-fished and facing collapse and the veracity of current regulations are not sufficiently robust to reverse this. I don’t see how conservation scientists could be threatened by this.

Seaspiracy may have done more to change public opinion about ocean ecosystem collapse and over-fishing than any scientist or organisation has been able to achieve in years and it is a welcome addition to the narrative that ocean conservationists have been trying to tell.

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Transcript

Seaspiracy (2021) – Transcript

Evidence check

EVIDENCE CHECK: 

Collapse of fish populations by 2048

The film quotes the collapse of all fish populations by 2048. This appears to be sourced back to a paper by Worm et al, (2006) that scientists are now saying was 'debunked' but that's not entirely true. A revised assessment was done and the year was removed. Fisheries scientists agreed that the trend in depletion was continuing. In any case, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) believes 90% of fish stocks to be used up (see below for more on that statement) so while fisheries scientists are right in saying there are some sustainable fisheries, the picture for the ocean biosphere is one of impending catastrophe–and sustainable fisheries cannot exist in an ocean where ecosystems have collapsed. 

Ocean absorbing 93% of carbon

When the film refers to the ocean absorbing 93% of carbon, they meant "The ocean plays a central role in regulating the Earth’s climate. The Fifth Assessment Report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 revealed that it has thus far absorbed 93% of the extra energy from the enhanced greenhouse effect". The film has misquoted this but it's not a film about carbon and the ocean is responsible for the majority of excess carbon consumption. This is more worrying as we are approaching an ocean acidification tipping pointThe rapid move of an ecosystem from one steady state to another state. Ecosystems don’t rapidly move from one steady state to another steady state. Tipping points are typically reached when the amount of free energy is so significant, that there is total structural collapse and the new state, is simply one where most of the energy is contained at More, when all fish life will die and global land-based ecosystems will collapse.     

Half ocean plastic coming from fishing
 
When the film refers to half the plastic being from fishing vessels, it's quoting a paper in Nature that says: 'At least' 46% of the mass of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comprises fishing net but 94% of the total is microplastics, amounting to 8% by mass. Some might claim it is misleading to say almost half comes from fishing gear but microplastics are the product of the breakdown of larger plastic, so the film's statement is absolutely correct. Overall mass from fishing gear is a far higher proportion than any other source. Others have said this can't be extrapolated to the planet. True. However, the film is clear that it is talking about the garbage patch. Even if the overall figure is lower, the impact is still huge and justifies the focus on fisheries.          

90% of fisheries on verge of collapse

When the film says 90% of fisheries are on the verge of collapse, this statement is true when considered in the context of more than one piece of evidence. "Nearly 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited or depleted" Fisheries scientists argue that half of them are "sustainable" but this is the very point the film so eloquently makes. The definition of "sustainable" is not perfect ... a fact that more than one person confirmed on camera. A vocal critic of the film, Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, even admits that "Long term constant yield is the idea that undisturbed nature establishes a steady state that changes little over time. Properly done, fishing at up to maximum sustainable yield allows nature to adjust to a new steady state". However, if that new steady state is leading to overall ecosystem decline, then by definition, the fishery cannot be sustainable. The IUCN convened 80 scientists that confirmed the combination of overfishing and climate change combined, to put fish stocks all over the world on the verge of collapse. Fisheries scientists have been quick to say the film is peddling misinformation but overlook the fact that the very evidence they are putting forward, is the same evidence that the film is rejecting, because it is biased towards fish stocks and not more holistic ecosystem sustainability. 

40% of all marine life caught gets thrown right back overboard as bycatch   

This evidence has some fisheries scientists upset because under the 'official' definition, only 10% of fish are discarded as bycatch. Conservation groups have wanted this definition expanded, because the consequence, is about 40% unmanaged fisheries– some scientists rebutting this say that this is a ridiculous thing to conflate. Again, this is one of the film's points, that definitions being used by commercial fisheries may not be ecologically fit-for-purpose and why the public should be given fair warning to consider what they think is appropriate. WWF International has heavily criticised MSC for not expanding its definition, saying "The MSC standard must strengthen the safeguards around bycatch, including the cumulative impacts of fisheries on bycatch (retained and discarded), and make it mandatory for MSC-certified fisheries to minimize unwanted bycatch and discard".  

As BT.com says:
"The numbers and allegations will be debated by the fishing industry, but regardless, the film is a bold conversation starter about what we want the future for our oceans to be"

Response to Hakai Magazine “Seaspiracy Harms More Than It Educates” article.

On April 5, Hakai Magazine published an article about the film. This is my response, in the context of the content above.

I’m surprised by many of the statements in your article, “Seaspiracy Harms More Than It Educates.” 

The public have a far more nuanced interpretation of evidence than scientists often realise. The latter are equally prone to making imprecise presumptions about the film’s message and some of the worst rhetoric seems to be born from frustration and anger about being questioned.

I spent my life working on cases where I was constantly under pressure from the public. I appeared as an expert witness in court trials and large planning hearings, where I’d be cross-examined by barristers and constantly have to defend my work. Environmental justice is served by a continuum between science and public opinion. I’ve seen the damage to conservation that’s done when scientists try to silence public debate but more importantly, the immense importance and benefits that public policy and ‘court of public opinion’ outcomes have for the environment.

When fisheries researchers make emotionally-charged attacks on the film, they are not attacking the film-maker, they are attacking the viewing public who happen to believe that more needs to be done. All this does is undermine scientific credibility when we could be using this as a springboard to save the oceans.

Regards,

Simon.

1. Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F. et al. Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Sci Rep 8, 4666 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22939-w
2. Wiesner, J.B. and H.F. York, National Security and the Nuclear-Test Ban. Scientific American, 1964. 211(4): p. 27-35.