the importance of conservation
Over a decade ago I found myself in Vero Beach, Florida at an Ocean Symposium hosted by The Aspen Institute. There, in the privileged private clubhouse of the gated Windsor Estate, surrounded by journalists and scientists and environmentalists, and some curious Windsor residents who were hopefully would-be philanthropists too, I listened to talks from the great and the good. Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan on overfishing, David de Rothschild, who had just sailed his recycled plastic catamaran The Plastiki across the South Seas, on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Dr. Caroline Hermans from the Clinton Global Initiative on ocean health and resiliency. It was stirring stuff, highlighting the challenges that lay ahead in the campaign to protect the marine ecosystem.
Fast forward to Cop28 in Dubai, December 2023. Conservationist, Natural Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, executive director of the Pristine Seas project and, to many, the godfather of ocean conservation, Enric Sala took a video and posted it on Instagram. “As you can see,” he says, “there aren’t many people here because we are at the Nature Pavilion. The world is not giving enough importance to nature as a solution to climate change. Ocean protection is key as a climate solution.” It seems that in the more than ten years that had passed, the problem was not just the sheer scale of physical protection needed by the oceans; it was awareness, too—from the ground up.
George Duffield, co-founder of Blue Marine Foundation, chimes in. “The Nature Pavilion was at the end of a corridor, a complete dead end, next to the toilet block. It was literally tucked away, out of sight, out of mind, which means that there is still a major issue in the understanding of how nature can help resolve climate change.” Getting this powerful message across is a full-blown endeavour. The traditional global warming solutions of reducing fossil fuel emissions, tackling deforestation and rethinking agricultural processes are already well known, taught in schools and part of the cultural narrative. They hit the headlines and grab attention, and that is great.
Paul Watson, the controversial activist who founded non-profit marine conservation organisation Sea Shepherd, put it succinctly: “If you want to address climate change, the first thing you do is protect the ocean. And the solution to that is very simple: leave it alone.”
Children of the 1980s grew up with images of bloody whaling in Japan and Greenpeace activism. Working your way into people’s consciousness is a different process now. It’s less about being the lead story on the 10:00 o’clock news and more about becoming part of the cultural conversation via entertainment. When the award-winning feature documentary The End of The Line, produced by Duffield, was released on DVD in 2009, it made unprecedented waves. It’s not an understatement to suggest that the film kick-started the global race to create marine protected areas (MPAs). Within six months of the film coming out, the UK government had created the Chagos MPA in the Indian Ocean, the largest no-take fishing zone on the planet. “640,000 square kilometres, larger than the United Kingdom, with no fishing at all!” exclaims Duffield.
When Seaspiracy hit Netflix in 2021, it had its own wide-reaching ripple effect, hammering home the hugely damaging effects of commercial fishing and trawling with a shock-tactic sucker punch. It documented the campaigns of Sea Shepherd with their warrior-like painted boats and impassioned battle cries and showed a young and impressionable new audience that they had the power to make a difference and spread awareness. Chasing the Thunder, the story of the longest maritime pursuit, 110 days of tailing a notorious illegal fishing ship from Antarctica to São Tomé and Príncipe until the captain of the vessel became so desperate that he sank his own ship, followed shortly after on Amazon. Are both films dramatising environmental activism for ratings? It probably doesn’t really matter, so long as they make the viewers think or, even better, act.
Blue Marine Foundation and Sea Shepherd are tackling the same issue but with different approaches. Blue is laser-focused on the dual intents of creating marine reserves and sustainable fishing models. The global target to see at least 30% of the world’s ocean under effective protection by 2030, known as '30x30', is a snappy, tangible initiative, one that people should be able to hitch onto as a concept. For Blue, it’s crucial to also be sharply aware of sustainably managing the other 70% in a responsible way. “Protecting 30 and trashing 70, that's not going to do enough. Our thing at Blue is, first and foremost, save what's good and then regenerate” Duffield states. “If your business is rainforests, the most important thing to do is to stop them being cut down.”
“The 70% is where the forgotten battle is. Overfishing is the number one issue the sea faces. At Blue, we sit down and figure out how to fish sustainably with local fishermen, managing the sea for all users, including the fish.” Duffield describes it all as “fundamentally simple. Catch less. Let the sea recover and the fish levels increase each year. Then, in the long run, you can fish more.” But of course actively persuading fishermen of this logic takes time. “This is about working closely with these communities.” As for illegal fishing, “we have to show that you make far more money taking tourists to see whales and sharks than killing them. A shark alive could create a million-dollar business. The value of a shark dead is 100 bucks.”
Duffield is also committed to showing the ocean as a hugely valuable resource. “The one thing I think people will align on is that if we store carbon in the ocean, then we've got a chance.” He has two crucial points. First, the importance of ocean fish stocks. “Fish are swimming carbon life forms. So, a healthy fish stock is an underwater forest. Their excretions are alkaline, which means they offset the acidification of the ocean. So, the more fish you have, the better.” Secondly, the protection of the ocean floor. “When you trawl the seabed, scientists believe that you release carbon, which is remineralised in the water and then released into the atmosphere. Apparently trawlers off the Scottish coast could be releasing more carbon and do more damage to the atmosphere, let alone the ecosystem, than all of the lorries on the road in Scotland.” This is where the connection between disturbing the seabed and carbon and global warming and overfishing all comes together for the first time. It’s a sobering reality but also extremely hopeful.
Sea Shepherd is known for a slightly more maverick approach with its Jolly Roger skull and crossbones flag and no-holds-barred approach when something needs doing. “We go to the places where others either can’t or won’t,” declares its most recent documentary, The Return to Antarctica. That is where the focus is right now. “In fact, my first campaign with Sea Shepherd was also here in 2002,” reminisces Captain Alex Cornelissen, who has risen from ship cook to campaign director to Global CEO over the past 20 years. He lives, eats and breathes his missions. “We shut down Japanese whaling, then took on the Patagonian tooth-fishing fleet down there. And what we're seeing now in Antarctica is an even greater threat, something that we have not previously paid attention to but which could effectively take out the entire ecosystem: krill fishing.”
Norwegian crews are hauling enormous nets into their huge super trawlers. The number of krill they are taking out is mind blowing. The krill are used for omega-three supplements, for pet food in China, for fish feed to turn farmed salmon pink. Cornelissen despairs, “every creature in the Antarctic water is directly or indirectly dependent on krill. The whales are having to compete with the trawlers ploughing through pods and taking out their food source. If we don't stop the krill fishing, then all our previous work down there is going to be in vain.” At the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources forum this coming July, they're going to be discussing the creation of more MPAs. “The one area that we think should be top of the list for MPAs (and no-take zones) is Antarctica. There should be zero activity down there,” Cornelissen states emphatically.
Amongst many other projects Sea Shepherd is patrolling the water against illegal fishing in eight African nations, including Liberia, Gabon and Benin. Its German ship is out searching for and rescuing ghost nets that have been dumped overboard in the Baltic Sea. Blue Marine Foundation is fighting on the front line in campaigns all around the world, from a transformative project to protect Mexico's extraordinary Sea of Cortez to restoring the great kelp forests along the south coast of England.
It’s not possible to distill the magnitude and complexity of their work into a few hundred words. Nor is it easy to capture the problems and the solutions to marine conservation in a soundbite. But there is certainly a grain of hope, small but growing, that there is a joined-up plan of action that will turn the tide on the ocean’s environmental fate.
Issy von Simson
Still strongly tethered to her hometown London, Issy certainly knows what’s groovy in the UK capital. But, lucky for us, her knowledge extends far beyond the reaches of Zone 6. Perpetually drawn to the coast – the brinier the better when it comes to the air – Issy is our go-to for seaside getaways. Opinionated and organised, she’s pretty much our ideal travel companion; you know you’re going to get a perfectly planned trip when Issy’s in charge. So, follow her tips and do as Issy does. You’ll end up in the most gloriously unexpected of places.
