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From: Thomas Goreau <goreau@bestweb.net> Subject: Restoring the oceans SIR - "Troubled Waters" (January 3d) outlined escalating problems of the oceans covering nearly 3/4 of the planet mistakenly called "Earth", but fell short on solutions. The global fisheries crisis owes as much to destruction of fish habitat through global warming, pollution, direct physical destruction, and global changes in ocean circulation as to overfishing. Better swapping of quotas, as you urge, amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Marine protected areas can't work if habitats have lost capacity to provide fish food and shelter, as in reefs whose corals are killed by weedy algae, or if there are too few fish left to breed, like cod fisheries of the North Atlantic. Large-scale mono-species (often monoclonal) mariculture relying on heavy external food and energy inputs spreads genetic impoverishment, disease, parasites, and pollution. About half the mangrove fish, lobster, and oyster nurseries destroyed for shrimp farming (often paid by World Bank loans) have been abandoned because diseases killed all the shrimp and fish, while surrounding fisheries that relied on these ecosystems have been devastated. Active restoration of healthy diverse habitats such as coral reefs and mangroves is the best solution. Subsistence fishermen in developing countries know they are destroying their children's future, and would gladly adopt more productive and less destructive techniques, but lack training, technology, and investment freely given to industrial fishing fleets. Because the sea is free to all, they will catch fish simply because they know if they don't, the next person will. In Indonesia, home to the world's largest and most diverse coral reefs, 70% of protein comes from the sea but 95% of the reefs have ecologically collapsed. With Indonesian community-based coastal zone management groups, we are growing nearly half the coral species in the world, using low voltage electricity to grow solid limestone reefs that locally reverse ocean acidification and increase coral growth rates 2-6 times, with 16-50 times higher survival from the heatstroke that has laid waste to the world's reefs. These attract huge numbers of juvenile fish, quickly growing back brightly coloured corals and fish in devastated areas where no natural recovery has taken place, restoring fisheries and creating economically valuable ecotourism. By growing reefs to baffle ocean waves we have turned severely eroding beaches in the Maldives into growing ones in a few years. Lush reefs swarming with fish can be quickly grown using previously untapped sustainable wave and tidal current energy, as well as solar and wind energy, even protecting whole islands from global sea level rise. The French group Ecocean has pioneered methods for capturing post-larval juvenile fish from the open ocean and raising them to maturity, preserving their full genetic diversity. By combining these new methods, the predation that wipes out some 99.9% of baby fish before they can find shelter can be short circuited, growing highly diverse fish stocks and habitats without adding food. Long-term solutions lie in reversing global warming, sea level rise, pollution, and overharvesting, but in the short term we can nurse back devastated ecosystems into economically productive habitats. Proven restoration techniques are not being used because policymakers and funders won't support new methods, preferring massive subsidies to industrial fishing fleets to rape the oceans rather than investing in poor fishing communities. If these perverse subsidies were turned over to subsistence fishermen in coastal communities to restore fisheries habitats, there could be plenty of fish for future generations, but they must change from big game hunters to farmers, bringing the Neolithic revolution to the oceans 10,000 years later. The future of the oceans depends on it. Thomas J. Goreau, PhD |
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