Johnny's Sea World
Johnny's Sea World
Translated by Els Derho
This is the translation of the news article in the link :
If we go on like this, all oceans will be dead in 30 years.
The design was worked on for a year by the Planet watch redaction. It is our most ambitious project so far. The idea for this series was when HLN.BE working in Montreal last year with David Suzuki. Suzuki... (74) is a Canadian geneticus, in the scientific understanding of the environment for his research into genetic mutations. He has 22 honorary doctor degrees behind his name. In 2001 he decided to go on pension and dedicate the rest of his life to the environment. His greatest talent is to create is comprehensible complex environmental issues for a non-scientific trained public.
In other words, the right man to ask what the major threats are to the survival of the human being. Suzuki was unable to think of a few, but what was at the top of his list, was somewhat surprising. "We must put an end to the plundering of the oceans. It is the most pressing problem: in just 50 years we managed to fish 90% of the edible stocks in our seas. "... Lees verder
Why is that?
Also according to Suzuki what made it the most pressing problem was the fact that, in comparison with other threats-man-made global warming to name but one-stop the systematic overfishing and pollution of the oceans, in fact, the most simple one to solve. "It is a challenge that we are perfectly able to cope with. It takes only a little political will and the courage. " In order to prove his point Suzuki gave a list of eight measures, which seemed feasible.
Simple?
Twelve months, thousands of pages of research, various missions and dozens of interviews at a later time, we are no longer so sure that everything is as simple as that.
Because we are land creatures , such as, for example, each recreational diver knows, are not created in order to survive in the sea, it is difficult for us to understand and to assess the importance of the health and biological diversity of the body of water that 71% of our planet consists of.
Add to that the fact that the plundering of the biodiversity goes on beyond our view. And, not to be underestimated, our tendency to view the article in the first instance, the fate of mammalian species, and preferably the ones which are not too aggressive. The whale, to name but one, would probably have been eradicated by now, were it not that just in time for the species there was mobilization to save them.
And then there is this, perhaps the single most important obstacle: it is a global problem, while we still like to see the relevance of our difficulties, in a familiar way to estimate at a local level. Sea animals, but also the industrial fisheries, care not for boundaries, Governments and other institutional formats. The recognition of global problems and finding a way to deal with them is the challenge of the twenty-first century. For the time being, we have made little progress, the outcome and the evolution of the climate conference in Copenhagen are a prime example of this.
What you may expect
However, there are solutions, and there is hope. We have done our best to that aspect of the series. But let’s not be naive: the problem is, and will not go away so easy. You will be given on the basis of examples, scientific findings and anecdotes, a State of affairs in the various seas. The North Sea and the Mediterranean are in it, but certainly not the head subject. Because what ends up on your plate is rarely out of the seas.
How healthy is the fish?
The series is also on something which you probably do not want to know: how healthy the fish on your plate is and why. That was not the intent, but we were faced frequently, especially during our investigation into farmed fish.
Our sharks
And finally, HLN.BE chose at the start of Planet Watch a project that we support, namely the establishment of a large marine reserve (600 000 km2) in the Coral Sea, between Australia and Papua New Guinea. We chose it because it is a feasible and specific project. The industrial fishing there is not as such that a ban is unachievable. And the Coral Sea is one of the few places on the planet where biodiversity is not extremely affected.
Our support reflects in a number of specific projects. For example, money raised by our sharks to give them computer chips. The data that they provide should give a better view of the behavior of these splendid animals, essential in the food pyramid of the ocean and, soon, likely to be killed or disappeared, because the ratio of 150 million a year by fishermen.
The data is also important to the legislature: policy is not conducted on the sea of stories and anecdotes. Politicians need figures. And it seems to be working. Australia is very close to the proclamation of the Coral Sea as protected area. When we were in Queensland in September, according to John Rumney and Richard Fitzpatrick, the founders of the project that supports HLN.BE we got a unique offer: "why don’t you come along to tag our sharks?" Three months later, it was happening. A week long we dove between the sharks in the Coral Sea, hundreds of kilometres away from the Mainland. A report of the expedition seemed to fit in this series