Are We Paying to Damage the Ocean?

0:00 What if one of the most common fishing methods costs more than it actually makes? That's what we're gonna talk about on today's episode, because this is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, where we talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly in this situation of what's happening in the ocean. If you wanna find out more and you wanna learn more about the ocean and you wanna hear this podcast talk about it five days a week, you can follow. Hit that follow button on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss next week's episodes. Monday to Friday, we're gonna have an interview on Friday, four solo episodes to prepare you for that interview. It's a full themed week. I can't wait to introduce that to you, that theme next week. So stay tuned for Monday, but hit that follow button to listen to more of these episodes.

0:45 It's kind of interesting 'cause the question for today is, are we funding an industry that is damaging the ocean more than it actually benefits us? And I think sometimes you look at the idea of fishing. A lot of times when you see fishing, it's usually one or two people go out on a boat. They take fishing nets, or they'll take a rod and reel, and they'll just kind of pull and reel, and they'll just kinda put their fishing line in, and they take the fish out and they put it in a bucket. And they just continue to do that until their bucket's full or the boat's full, and then they go in and they sell it, and they can feed their families and so forth. But then when you start to think about the industrial fishing fleet, that's where it gets dangerous and a little kinda nasty and destructive. And when you start to see the damage some of these tools that are used to fish can cause, and they're not used in the proper way, or they're overused, they can really cause a lot of damage.

1:33 And that's what we're gonna be talking about today, 'cause we're gonna be talking about a recent study that was covered on the site that I love the most this week, phys.org. It examined bottom trawling in Europe. And you've probably saw a lot about bottom trawling in the movie Oceans, that was narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and it was released last year. In advancement of the Nice Conference of the Ocean Decade, they talked about this fishing method where heavy nets are used to drag across the sea floor. And what it is, it's basically two doors, a lot of the times with a chain that goes along the bottom, and there's a net that goes behind that. And it's attached to a boat. And that boat releases the net, and it goes underwater, and it usually drags along the bottom. They have some that are in the water column, but mostly it's, drags along the bottom.

2:15 And that net will go across, and that chain and the doors will go across the ocean floor. And it'll just destroy everything in its path. It'll go for a couple of kilometers, and it'll pick up the net. It'll take the net and just open it on the deck. And then the fishermen go through and they say, "I wanna keep this fish. I'm not gonna keep this fish. I'm gonna throw it overboard." And there's all this stuff. There's a lot of bycatch, meaning there are fish that are not targeted that are caught. Other seafood like invertebrates and stuff like that, if they're targeting fish that are not the target species that are caught. There are certain net sizes, mesh sizes that allow certain species to go through and not allow other species to go through. There are sea turtle exclusion devices which allow sea turtles to get out of the nest so they don't get stuck, they don't get caught. But you've seen a lot of videos where you've seen great white sharks that are caught in the net, whale sharks that are caught in the net, manta rays that are caught in the net, other sharks that are caught that are not the target species that could die, dolphins, some small whales, pilot whales and so forth that have been caught.

3:09 The nets can be various lengths and sizes that can catch a certain amount of species. Some of those, like, high seas trawlers are massive, and their nets are just gigantic, and they catch so much, so much seafood. And not all of it is the target species. Many of it is not the target species. And so we're gonna be talking about that fishing method today, because it's important. Because a study found that while the industry generates profit, the total societal cost is far higher. And in some cases, up to 90 times higher. We're gonna talk about what that actually means, because a lot of times we're hearing trawlers, "Well, the fish it brings in, it probably makes a profit out of it." But what else do we have to consider when we are talking about trawling, when we're talking about this fishing method?

3:51 Because most of that cost that is 90 times higher comes from carbon. Yes, carbon. We talked about carbon earlier this week, about how there are certain environments that will store carbon better than environments on land. And we know that these areas can store, like, up to four to 10 times of the carbon that trees on land can. And so the sea floor that stores large amounts of this carbon is really important. But of course, trawling disturbs that. It just kinda scrapes all those animals out, and it destroys the bottom, like the first layer of that bottom part of the ocean, that will release all of that carbon back into the system. And that's where we start to see where, all, like, the mitigation and everything that's done and all these productive habitats, 'cause, habitat really ends up protecting the ocean, protecting the fish that are in the ocean, the crabs, the lobsters, the invertebrates.

4:40 That habitat provides a home. It's like a home. So imagine a tornado comes across and just destroys your home. And your home is gone. You gotta rebuild that home. But it's expensive to rebuild that home, and not everybody's gonna be able to rebuild that home. Well, the same thing is happening in the ocean, but even faster and more. And even in marine protected areas, like the UK just until recently allowed, I believe it's still until recently, I have to look up that, but they allowed trawling in their marine protected areas. Well, how can you protect fisheries if you're gonna allow trawling in marine protected areas? That's the whole point a lotta times of marine protected areas to do that, and we're not seeing that happen. So carbon gets released. Now, there's also another layer, the public subsidies that support the industry. So, society ends up paying for it twice.

5:22 So taxpayer dollars goes to subsidize the industry so that these fishers and fishing industry can actually make money. Once through the funding, and again in the environmental damage, we're looking at a lot of costs to society and it outweighs the cost by 90 times, the cost of the profit that's made from these. So at what point do we allow these subsidies to continue and the damage to the environment continue? You wanna support the local community, but is trawling the way? And is trawling in certain areas only the way, where we allow small areas where trawling can happen, and hopefully restoration can happen within that area. Or it's not the same areas all over and over again.

6:02 Now, there are clear options. Like I said, we can restrict trawling in certain areas, in the marine protected areas and other sensitive areas. But we should also reevaluate subsidies. Now, I've covered an episode or two on subsidies, and the World Bank has this new subsidy document that's out and policy that's out. And that's, when we can start to look at reevaluating subsidies and taking action on it and aligning policies with real costs, now we can really start to make a difference and really start to reduce those extra costs on the environment. So when you get a fish next time, you're getting seafood, and you know it's been caught by something that's been trawled, you now know the cost. It's not just you're paying for the fish, but the societal cost, the world cost of releasing all that carbon, destroying that habitat, and subsidizing with your money.

6:50 I'm not saying don't eat seafood, but maybe eat seafood from another method. Cause right now the system is misaligned, and we need to fix it. And until we fix it, it's always gonna be misaligned, obviously. I think I just reaffirmed myself. But anyway, regardless, it's something that's really important 'cause it's not just overfishing. It's a system where we pay to make the ocean worse. Think about that. We're actually hitting it 90 times worse than what we left it just for fish. I'm not saying seafood altogether is bad. What I'm saying is trawling may not be the way we're doing it, and the way we manage it right now is definitely not the way to do it, and it's making the ocean worse. So I would love to hear your comments on this. I would love to hear what you have to say, because this is the beginning of a conversation.

7:31 I started this podcast 11 years ago to continue that conversation to happen, and just to introduce you to all these different things that are happening in the ocean, and I would love to hear your thoughts on trawling and what we should do about it. If you wanna hit me up on my socials, just go in the show notes of your favorite podcast app that you're listening on this, listening to this podcast episode on. And of course, if you wanna give me feedback, you can do that at speakupforblue.com/feedback, all one word. speakupforblue.com/feedback. Leave me a voicemail, or you can put some text in and/or type in your answer or comment or question or whatever that might be, critique, whatever that might be, and I would love to hear from you on that. And of course, if you want to get an email every day, five days a week, you can do so by signing up to my newsletter, speakupforblue.com/newsletter.

8:15 I wanna thank you so much for joining me this week on these podcast episodes each and every day. It's so much fun to be able to do this. I'm looking forward to next week, getting back into the regular theme. I'll let you know what that is on Monday. And, yeah, I can't wait to hear from you, and I can't wait for you to hit that follow button, and share this episode with somebody you think will benefit from it. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. We'll talk to you next time. Have a great weekend, and happy conservation.