save the ocean theater

I suppose we've all done "save the planet" things that are well-intentioned but ineffective. Ian Bicking complains about this type of "environmental theater." I think we see a lot of "save the ocean" theater, especially the idea that not eating something will save it.

I think "don't eat" campaigns can help save fish, if done right. However, most "don't eat" admonitions we see these days are ad hoc and disconnected from real efforts to save fish.

In this vein, I've been complaining to Craig lately at the awesome blog Deep-Sea News. Craig and his team are great bloggers, and they deserve praise for starting a "just one thing" challenge that asks people to get off their asses and do something to save our oceans. But a recent challenge is to pester Trader Joe's to stop seeling orange roughy. This seems like a nothing burger to me. Who thinks orange roughy will be helped if Trader Joe's stops selling it?

Getting Trader Joe's to change is not the goal. Enlisting businesses like Trader Joe's in a real campaign to save orange roughy would be a big deal, but this ain't it. Pestering Trader Joe's will not get them on board for saving fish.

I admire what you're doing Craig, but if you want to come out of the realm of science and into saving the ocean, let's make it count.

If you want details on how to save fish through seafood, check out Ocean Conservancy's sustainable seafood page.

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How does a science geek change the world?

If you're a professor and you want to change the world, what do you do? In 1993--quit and become an activist. In 2007--start a blog.

Or so it seems. PZ Myers blogging at Pharyngula is probably doing more for evolution than PZ Myers publishing papers in scientific journals. Is that true PZ?

Does that mean I blew it when I quite my job as an Assistant Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Connecticut in 1993, and became a full-time environmental advocate? Could I have done more to save the ocean as a blogging professor?

Things were different in 1993. My Dept. Chair was fond of saying "I'm an ecologist, not an environmentalist" and directing me to follow his model. Scientists were not supposed to be advocates, and "conservation biology" was new. The pioneering AIDs activists of ACT UP had changed scientific research forever, but the changes had not spread very far. Big tobacco still reigned supreme. Nirvana was hot and Frank Zappa died. And who had heard of blogging? I was an early adopter of this strange thing called email. Who knew that regular professors with the gift of blog would be charismatic media stars?

Fast forward to 2007, and the age of democratic micro-media. Anyone can take a turn at bat, and grad students mostly outshine professors in the blogosphere. A professor with an itchy activist streak can have his/her cake and eat it too, tenure and a public soapbox. Damn, once again I got off the train before it really got started. Like when I quit my first real job after college in 1980, working for a modest tech company called Intel (no kidding). Back when a chip with 64k of RAM was a big deal.

I could look back and moan for missing the boat. But then I wouldn't have blogfish, and who knows, I might be a boring rich guy with high blood pressure and a mansion because of my Intel stock.

The best lesson from looking back is that clearly I'm a good predictor of what's about to get big. Just watch what I stop doing and go there. But it's gonna cost you, this time I'll be smart and charge for the advice. For $100 I'll tell you what I'm getting out of this year. It's my only chance of making it big.

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The well-defended fortresses of denial

They’re everywhere, you’ve seen them. They guard outdated power structures, revealed truths, and other things that can’t stand on their own—like the sad ruin of our oceans.

You can find these fortresses wherever people use money and power to protect privilege. Each time a challenge arises, a new fortress is built to overwhelm with superior force. Even if the victory is not assured by merit, building a large fortress of denial can do the job…for a while…

Venture near these denial fortresses at your peril. Challenge a hallowed claim, even obliquely, and you get your reward of reactionary zeal, attacking your character. Undermine established practice and expect to enjoy an old-style fraternity hazing by the guardians of jewels.

Of course there are limits to these attempts to arrest interlopers and freeze change. The bluster won’t work forever. They may drive off some critiques, but the weakness will eventually show. Good vision clarifies the situation and what looked like an impenetrable wall resolves as just a few feeble defenses in a vast field.

Case in point: the stunning paper by Myers and Worm in 2003, concluding that 90% of the world’s big ocean fish are gone. The well-defended fortresses of denial roared, launched invective, waxed lyrical and satirical, belched outrage and otherwise challenged Myers and Worm for methodological heresy and faulty ritual. Once the heat and noise settled, the leading critique by Sibert, Hampton, Kleiber, and Maunder amounted to a rather overblown nitpick.

Sibert & Co. conceded an 80% decline of the largest fish. But they used this to strongly critique the 90% claimed by Myers and Worm and they added the "fact" that fish depletion is what happens when you catch fish. The planned fish decline is what managers euphemistically call “fishing down” a fish population. Depletion defined as a Goal. The well defended fortress of denial says that fish declines are not a problem, it’s just The Good Depletion, the cost of doing business in fish.

Even according to their most vehement critics, Myers and Worm had uncovered something true. Large-scale fishing has removed most of the largest fish out of the ocean. Any differences were mere details. The vision of Myers and Worm saw through the sad status quo of ocean fish depletion and spoke the truth. Of course they were rewarded with the expected hazing. It was unpleasant agreement to receive from Sibert & Co., but conceding 80% decline really amounted to agreement.

The Myers and Worm example is one among many, as fishery managers and their scientific defenders struggle to protect their over-exploitation of ocean fish. But bluster can’t work forever.

The well-defended fortresses of denial may look imposing, but they’re little more than the windmills of Don Quixote.

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Slow motion revolution in ocean conservation

I see good things ahead for oceans. I know it’s popular to talk doom, but that’s mostly the curse of the specialist talking. Those that know the most find disaster everywhere, but their problem is that they can’t see outside the frame. In every situation I know of, big change looks impossible until after it happens, and then it looks like it was inevitable.

Tell me you saw the Berlin wall falling in 1984--yet 5 short years later, it was gone and now everyone says of course. I grew up in Oregon where trees were for cutting and nobody would have guessed that soon forest health would be more important than timber jobs.

Of course, surprising changes can work both ways. Everyone would have laughed 20 years ago if someone predicted that Oregon’s coho salmon would be a threatened species. And who knew that those abalone that littered the California coast would be soon be gone?

So what’s positive for oceans?

In 2005, I was nervous about a big foundation proposal with the goal of ending overfishing in US waters by 2012. I thought my colleagues would laugh at me. They did laugh, but I think we’ll get there with the new Magnuson-Stevens Act—or damn close—and maybe even a year or two early.

Fishing interests have held an exclusive franchise on fish for generations, but that is changing. MPAs are advancing, in Florida, in Hawaii, in California, and beyond. Fishing interests are resisting, because they see their franchise slipping away. But until they truly embrace conservation—and most don’t—they’ll keep losing influence.

Seafood buyers are worrying about sustainability, for business reasons or because their customers care. Now Wal-mart is bringing you sustainable seafood. When America’s store gets on board, the train is moving.

This is not to say that the problems are solved, they’re not. Overdevelopment of coasts is a serious threat, and the coming global changes will stress ocean ecosystems. Invasive species will displace natives, and fishing is not going to go away so long as people like to eat. So what will we do?

We’ll beat the problems, just like we solved the devastating disease crisis caused by dumping shit out the windows of our houses a few centuries ago. We beat that one with the radical and unworkable solution of sewers.

Most of the crisis in ocean conservation is a crisis of vision and courage. People see oceans decline and they can’t see the way out. The toughest part of conservation is seeing a good opportunity for change and going after it with everything. Give yourself the gift of optimism and start seeing the way out.

There you have it, the ocean world according to blogfish. More to come if you’re interested.

Mark Powell

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