www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE
Restoring the living ocean: The time is now
The first part of this two-part essay looks at the destruction that industrial fishing has Eileen Crist unleashed on the global ocean. Human beings have forgotten the living abundance that the seas once harboured. A conglomerate of anthropocentric concepts, mega machines, About the author international fishing fleets and consumerist oblivion has laid waste to that abundance, and Eileen has been teaching brought extinction, death and suffering to marine beings. The subject matter of part two at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and is deep-sea mining, which is under preparation for commercial launching. Like industrial Technology in Society since fishing, it must be stopped. What is at stake at this historic moment is not only the fate of 1997. She has written and the living ocean, but who we are and who we choose to be as humanity on this planet. co-edited numerous papers and books, with her work Part 1: Sweet delight as if massively destroying ecosystems focusing on biodiversity were the most normal thing ever devised. loss and destruction of wild places, along with pathways and endless night The global fishing industry operates more to halt these trends. Eileen vessels than there are numbers of fish left to lives in Blacksburg, VA, USA. he global ocean is imperilled. be caught, while the incalculable numbers What remains of marine life of slaughtered bystanders are labelled ‘by- Citation abundance, a tiny fraction of catch’ as if they are killed by mistake. Crist E (2019) Restoring the T living ocean: The time is now. what once was, continues to be afflicted This onslaught on virtually the entire The Ecological Citizen 3(Suppl by industrial fishing, anthropogenic ocean rests on its presumed rightful A): 27–41. starvations and diseases, rapid climate conversion into an all-you-can-eat buffet change and acidification, and all manner of for global consumers, cushioned with Keywords pollution such as sewage, garbage, oil spills, nomenclature like fisheries, fish stock, Biodiversity; human and fertilizer and pesticide runoff(Danson, seafood and by-catch to moor the normality supremacy; protected 2011). Persistent organic pollutants have of that buffet in the human mind. Industrial areas; sixth mass extinction; water infiltrated the ocean so that the bodies of fishing additionally depends on rezoning some top predators meet the definition of the ocean’s places as either nation-owned toxic waste (Whitty, 2011: 118). And what to (economic exclusive zones) or humanity’s say of the spectre of gigantic amounts of commonwealth (the high seas [also known plastic, decomposing but not biodegrading, as ‘the Area’]), thus institutionalizing killing millions of marine animals every human ownership of the ocean – and year, and entering the worldwide food web? further befuddling the human mind. (Law and Thompson, 2014; Mooney, 2014). Industrial fishing also relies on a plunder- Of the multiple threats to the ocean, enabling international regime of ‘maximum industrial fishing has caused and continues sustainable yields’, flags of convenience, to cause the greatest devastation. In the odd government subsidies, developing nations 150 years of its history, and especially since (corrupt and non-corrupt) selling fishing 1950, industrial fishing by an international rights to developed nations (unscrupulous cadre has perpetrated an egregious assault and not), and lax-to-non-existent law on fish – indeed, on all marine life and enforcement against illegal fishing practices habitats. Along with industrial agriculture, by both authorized and poaching vessels. industrial fishing constitutes Exhibit A of What suffers is not only the living ocean the human-supremacist mode of operation: whose very existence in the cosmos is as both exercise biome-scale appropriation and close to the miraculous as human beings extraction, with blithe matter-of-factness, can experience. What suffers is the human –
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human identity – degraded to user, usurper submarines and cables. A ‘serviceable’ big and petty criminal in the community of life. body of water, in other words. Ignorance about both the ecological history and current state of the ocean is Abundance rampant. The seas have become destitute Which is exactly what the ocean is not. of “their once great abundance of whales, Everything about the ocean – including walruses, sea cows, seals, dolphins, sea its delicious scent, which is also fading turtles, sharks, rays, and large fish” (Upton, 2013) – flows from its polyphony (Jackson, 2005: 29). The immense shoals of of life. The ocean is a life-creating and small fish – known as prey or forage fish life-proliferating crucible, the place where because they feed a diverse and large cast of life itself likely emerged, and whose deep “Ignorance about predators – are also in precipitous decline. past lingers in our intimate fluids of sweat, both the ecological It strains the imagination to countenance blood, and tears (Helmreich, 2010). Until history and current the destruction of marine life that has recently, the seas teemed with beings state of the ocean occurred: to learn from archaeological data, from the microscopic phytoplankton eyewitness and first-hand accounts e.g. ( and zooplankton (the bottom of the food is rampant. ” fishing or whaling logbooks), and historical web, now threatened) to billions of prey marine ecology about the cornucopia fish, billions of carnivorous big fish, and of marine life, most especially prior to millions of whales whose carcasses and when industrial fishing commenced on a dung returned to marine life – including to global scale (Schrope, 2006; Roberts, 2007). the abyssal biota – food to feed them. As true Marine biologist Callum Roberts writes of the ocean as it is of the land, “the world is that “before 20th century industrial fishing the sphere of superabundance. Heaven and took off, European seas seethed with life” Earth contrive to drip sweet dew. Contrary (2007: 128); these were seas that had already to the command of man, it drips evenly been long assailed by fishing – we might over all species” (Cafard, 2017: 70). try to imagine what that life-seething Abundance fed abundance and bred was like in places more untouched. On a abundance, and fish often graced with long global scale today, in the words of marine lives grew to be really big. (Fish typically researchers Ransom Myers and Boris continue to grow as they become older. Worm, “everywhere you go, in every ocean Bigger fish lay more eggs, so bigness is basin, hotspots of life are only relics of what a vital source of marine abundance.) In was once there” (Myers and Worm, 2005). The Unnatural History of the Seas,1 Callum Without willingness to open to the Roberts reports that 30-foot great white understanding of what has been lost, sharks were compared to whales and 20- humanity will remain incapable of aspiring foot sharks (rare these days) were common to the restoration of life-filled seas. when, for example, the Europeans arrived Instead, people will settle for the large- at the islands, shores and seas of the New scale replacement of wild fish with factory- World (Roberts, 2007). Erstwhile numbers farmed fish, while seas suffer bulldozed and sizes of all fish are legendary – not continental shelves and seamounts, massive only the cod who fed people for centuries, defaunation and extinctions, offshore but also the tuna, marlin, sturgeon, salmon and deep-sea mining, jellyfish population and swordfish to name some others. explosions, and the disappearance of coral Cod could reach three feet, and their reefs and coastal wetlands. Humanity is extravagant numbers were compared with in danger of capitulating to the human grains of sand; imagine the numbers of takeover of the ocean that is leading to the fish they fed on. The average swordfish its ontological reduction into a ‘protein’ today has dropped to less than half the size factory, a desalinizing solution to the it was 100 years ago (Danson, 2011: 104), freshwater crisis, a fossil-fuel and mineral meaning that swordfish live under the extraction domain, and a global transit perpetual shadow of being hunted so their zone for container ships, nuclear-armed odds of living long are slim.
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Indeed marine animals do not get to live towards former and not that distant Edens as long, eat as heartily and grow as big as of the seas is not some nostalgic pastime: It they did when the seas overflowed with is about nurturing a yearning towards who life, and feeding was not a competition or a we need to become to restore and inhabit struggle with scarcity, but an extravaganza that rich lifeworld again. of more-than-plenty to go around. Coastal The food web of the ocean belied the seas were bursting with enormous diversity classic pyramid structure of profusion and numbers of beings, and wildlife of microorganisms, followed by prolific spectacles could be witnessed from shore plant life and small critters, topped by (Roberts, 2007). What beauty there was to lesser numbers of mid-sized predators, bruise the eyes when the Caribbean was and finally capped by few large predators graced with coral reefs, forested with sea at the web’s apex. Rather than being meadows, and dwelled in by innumerable triangular, the ocean’s food web displayed groupers, reef sharks, moray eels, rays, abundance at every trophic tier (Jackson, parrotfish, seals, sea turtles, and rainbows 2005). The plankton and krill; prey fish like of all sorts and sizes of tropical fish herring, sand eels, sardines, menhaden (Figure 1). Only ten per cent of the original and anchovetas; the larger fish such as coral-reef Caribbean habitat remains today. mackerel, cod, haddock, pollock and Imagining the Mediterranean in the early sturgeon; the even bigger ones, like sharks, Holocene is nearly impossible, for it is a sea swordfish and tuna; the sea turtles and that has been subject to human exploitation the seabirds; the mammals, such as seals, for millennia. To grope in the mind’s eye manatees, dolphins, porpoises and whales;
Figure 1. A sea turtle photographed off Curaçao in the Caribbean Sea in 2012 (photo: Laszlo Ilyes [CC BY 2.0;https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]).
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and the habitat-building oysters, mussels, the awesomeness of the living world; it sponges, clams and reefs. Numbers of is the real ground to build human life and species, population masses, extravagant inhabitation. sizes and marine wildlife spectacles were Experiencing the numinous quality of as unbounded as the seas are wide and deep. non-human awareness is blissful. That An intimate and rich conversation some might dismiss such a statement as primordially bonds marine and terrestrial romantic does not undo the fact that a clear life. Clouds forming over the seas with the human being encountering the numinous help of oceanic microorganisms bring rain quality of non-human awareness feels to the land, and rain loosens nutrients from bliss – subtle or elating, commonplace or rocks that flow back to the sea via rivers. The sublime. Indigenous peoples, who were ocean’s bounty was also brought inland by conscious of the nexus of perceiving- anadromous fish (Waldman, 2010; Jackson the-numinous and experiencing-bliss, et al., 2011). Rivers of fish might be pursued participated in the living world’s creativity, inland by their predators, like porpoises abundance, multiplicity and reciprocity. swimming up Britain’s Thames and sharks Along with bears, eagles and trees, they into North America’s James River. The also welcomed and ate the migrating fish. salmon, shad, whitefish, sturgeon and And the fish always returned, in numbers others brought nutrients to the terrestrial that “stretched capacity to believe,” animals, trees and soil. Eels went the other surging onward, seeming to reverse the way, bringing gifts of the land to the seas. river’s flow, spawning prodigiously, more Thus is the natural world knit into a higher- than enough to sustain the forest and its order pattern of intelligence through life’s beings, more than enough to recreate their strivings, sensory pleasures, evolved own abundance (Roberts, 2007: 49; Vickers interfaces, whole-weaving multiplicities and McClenachan, 2011: 128). “For millennia, and mutual feasts. Western civilization Stories of fish-filled seas and rivers, and Wetiko endeavoured to keep of fecund ecotones where ocean and land More than enough to keep the First People meet, teach us that our life-science ideas in gratitude (House, 1999). Not so for itself in the dark about ‘cooperation versus competition’ and members of a culture raised on a credo of about non-human ‘mutualism versus struggle for survival’, Homo sapiens’ superlative stature. As Native minds, for they while exhibiting some limited erudition, American writer Jack Forbes expounds have represented a do not hold a candle to life’s phenomena about the Wetiko psychosis, supremacist themselves, which are creative, fecund, individuals and societies destroy in order cardinal threat to myriad and relational, including relations to devour the life of those considered human arrogance.” between different species of mind. beneath them, whether non-human or For millennia, Western civilization human (Forbes, 2008). The belief of being endeavoured to keep itself in the dark exceptional – ensouled, rational, self- about non-human minds, for they have aware, technological or what-have-you – represented a cardinal threat to human makes it easy to turn others into just trees, arrogance. When we awaken (as is dawning just fish, just rivers, just meat, or, until not today) to the pervasiveness of forms of too long ago, just savages. awareness on this planet, we surface into The fish runs of Europe were wrecked by awe. When we awaken, we see ourselves fishing, dams and industry in the medieval seen from non-human standpoints – and period, all but silencing one of the planet’s recognize that we have always been seen. sea–land conversations (Roberts, 2007). We acknowledge that we do not want to be Europeans turned to their fish-abounding seen as tyrant-zombies to be feared and coasts, and, after overfishing them, avoided, but rather as mindful, curious continued fishing further and further beings who might even evoke awe in them. afield. Eventually, they came to the New Awe is not epiphenomenal sentimentality. World for its fish – and for its whales, It is a state of grounded being that reflects walruses, seals, seabirds, sea turtles and
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Figure 2. Plastic pollution on a beach in Ghana in 2018 (photo: Muntaka Chasant [CC BY-SA 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/4.0/]). sea otters. Thus, ‘civilized’ rapaciousness of the human spirit – is key to redeeming towards the natural world kept rehearsing that history through the liberation of all itself, except that the destruction of the Earthlings from the physical cruelty and New World was more horrific because of mental decay of supremacist creeds. its speed, scale and brutality. By the early By the end of the 19th century, whaling modern period, Wetiko markets targeting was a global business. Today, even with a oblivious consumers were devouring the moratorium, the vast majority of whales marine life of the New World as flesh, eggs, are gone. Where once they sought us, now oils, pelts, fur and feather commodities many humans seek to be near them. We (Mowat, 1996). must restore a world in which they thrive Over the course of centuries and again and we can mutually meet. Every life accelerating in the 18th through the 20th, meeting is a meeting of minds, and in the the whale people – called “fisheries” – meeting of minds lies one of the greatest were serially decimated, population after joys of being alive. Therefore, still-whaling population, place after place, and species nations must stand down today. The whales after species. Wherever seafarers found are experiencing suffering enough – what unexploited whale pods, the numbers with anthropogenic starvations and were staggering. The whales came to see disease, ship collisions, entanglements those seafarers, crowding around the ship in fishing gear, noise pollution and the vessels; they were slaughtered in response. scourge of plastic waste (Figure 2). One Yet those whalers were not murderers – hundred thousand small whales, dolphins, they were brainwashed by a sociocultural and porpoises are deliberately slaughtered setup of human supremacy, and thus every year, by an international cast of stripped of the desire (the human birthright) offenders, for meat, bait or body parts to see, be seen by and communicate with (Altherr and Hodgins, 2018). Whales are non-humans. To learn this missive from washing up emaciated and with their history – of the internal connection stomachs full of plastic and garbage. In between the devastation of the non- one example, a sperm whale beached in human realm and the pitiable contraction 2012 was found to have in their stomach
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30 square metres of tarpaulin, 4.5 metres of the industrial-fishing complex (Golden et long hose, a 9-metre plastic rope and two al., 2016). Along with other marine beings, flower pots.2 Yet a few centuries ago, sperm fish are being exterminated at every whales were a million strong and schools ecological tier of the ocean, with shoddy of them numbered 600 to 700 (Whitty, accountability on that (legal, shady and 2011: 167; Roberts, 2007: 93). Now, with illegal) appropriation (Pauly and Zeller, just a fraction of sperm whales left, and 2016). The majority of ‘fish stock’ and behemoth-sized males scarce, if a family of ‘fisheries’ – jargon that warps living seas females and their children run into hungry into human warehouses – are so exploited killer whales – themselves suffering that the trend in biomass across species is “From an from toxic pollutants, food insecurity, sliding downhill (Gjerde et al., 2013: 540). exuberance of and starvations – there may follow an Only 10 percent of the historical populations life the ocean has agonizing ripping of flesh: the protection of big fish remain (Myers and Worm, 2005). that numbers and sizes of sperm whales All the entitled taking is emptying the become unsafe for offered against killer-whale predation are seas of the livelihood of marine animals. its residents, yet gone (Whitty, 2011). Vacuuming the herring, menhaden, the public seems The standard answer to industrial fishing anchovies, sardines and other small fish buffered from decimations of “fish stocks” has been to is taking its toll on seabirds, sea lions, “‘move on’ down the food web, toward penguins, dolphins and whales, among that knowledge, deeper waters, and to other areas or regions others. On California’s coast, sea lions and society keeps up the of the world” (Sumaila and Pauly, 2011: 25). their pups have recently experienced famine pretense of seafood That historical pattern continues, even as (Steinmetz, 2014). Arctic terns, puffins, as ‘health food’, and global fish catch peaked over two decades albatrosses, and other seabirds are taking the mainstream ago. Today, industrial fishing fleets from nosedives in their numbers (van Dooren, China, European nation-states, Chile, 2014: chapter 1). Seabird populations have observes silence Indonesia, Canada, the US, India, Thailand, declined by 70% overall since 1970. With about the plight of South Korea and Vietnam, to name some krill opined a ‘sustainable fishery’ – for such the sea’s beings.” players, are rushing to extract the fish consumer niceties as aquaculture feed and of their own seas, of the high seas, of health supplements – how can whales find Africa’s coasts, of any places fish are left sufficient sustenance to make a comeback? to extract. The fishing methods – trawling (Since the 1970s, krill populations have (super-trawlers can reach the length of 1.5 declined by 80% [Taylor, 2018].) Plastic American football fields), long-line fishing bags strangle the digestive tracts of sea (with thousands of baited hooks), and turtles who mistake them for jellyfish. All purse-seine netting (which can be more species of sea turtles are endangered from than 6000 feet in length and 600 feet in multiple pressures (see Crist [2019: 137–9]). depth) – are expedient at mass killing. One Over a million seabirds, 100,000 marine fishing tactic exploits the predilection of mammals and uncountable fish die yearly fish and other marine creatures to gather in the North Pacific from eating plastic or around floating objects in the open sea. getting ensnared in it (Casey, 2010). From Buoys called ‘fish aggregating devices’ an exuberance of life the ocean has become (FADs), often equipped with sonar and unsafe for its residents, yet the public seems GPS, are strewn across the ocean to lure buffered from that knowledge, society fish into their vicinity before the fishing keeps up the pretense of seafood as ‘health vessels arrive. In the western and central food’, and the mainstream observes silence Pacific Ocean alone, there are more than about the plight of the sea’s beings, thus 50,000 FADs legally sited (Urbina, 2019: 65). breathing new meaning into the adage All around, the industrial-fishing machine Silence = Death. has become ‘High-Tech Wetiko’. People of developing nations, who rely Reality versus normality on fish from artisanal fishers, are robbed It is amazing to watch how Dr Seuss of both livelihood and nourishment by captivates the minds of children with so
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many interdimensional flower-animal- wonders they have taken to vandalizing: beings in enchanted landscapes filled its mountains. with colourful structures that protrude, Earth’s seamounts jut out of ocean intrude and levitate. We inhabit a world depths forming majestic peaks, gorges and that makes Dr Seuss’s creativity a dreamy valleys. Life has set up house on them, of plagiarism of its creatures, their antics, course. Deep-sea coral lives there, some of their peregrinations and their makings it hundreds and even thousands of years of worlds. We are members of a living old. Fish who have evolved abilities to planet that also enchants children, before withstand extreme conditions of pressure they grow into the brainwash that Earth and cold also live there. Trans-oceanic is human property composed of natural travellers like tuna, sharks and sea turtles resources, providing maximum yields of, make stopovers. These are places dwelled among other things, cheap seafood. Cheap in by some of Earth’s strangest, most long- seafood that can be eaten by the global lived children. They are oases of gorgeous consumer class – which recently passed life. Here come the trawlers with their the half point of the global population military gear and yawning steel mouths (Kharas and Hamel, 2018) – in any amount, to desecrate the mounts, extract the fish at any time, and with much enthusiasm for and discard the by-catch. It is horror-genre “Trawlers all its ostensible micronutrients. Yet the material turned into a reality show in the should have been counsel deserves stating that the days when ongoing staging of human supremacy decommissioned eating fish was good for human fitness on Earth. are receding in the rearview mirror, while The people who eat the fish live ‘light- long ago, their the currently unknown repercussions of years’ away from the continental shelves, parts recycled into ingesting microplastics are undergoing a high seas and seamounts and know little something useful.” mammoth ‘experimental trial’. about them. Certainly not about the sea Where submerged continents extend out mounts’ Seuss-like corals, sea fans and fish towards ocean depths, they form once-life- who are older than their grandmothers. prolific continental shelves: In rampages Nor any of the cool science stories about of demolitions, industrial trawlers have those habitats and their endemism, or gouged out marine beings and shattered evolutionary tales from coruscating their three-dimensional, life-created stardust to the magic of creatures who habitats. Rolling hills filled with fish, make their own light. The fish suddenly mussels, oysters, crabs, anemones, appear in the supermarket. Some of them tubeworms and sponges, among others, living near Australia and New Zealand have been smashed and levelled, while used to be called ‘slime heads’, but were leafy glades and sea forests have been renamed ‘orange roughy’ for better turned to muddy flats. “Today,” writes marketing appeal (Kurlansk y, 2011). Some Roberts, “there is hardly a scrap of suitable of them dwelling in the Southern Ocean, bottom in the world that has not felt the called ‘toothfish’, were renamed ‘Chilean scrape of a trawl.” As a result, where there sea bass’ for its exotic ring (Urbina, 2019). once were “rich, complex, and productive Having suffered the fleeting reduction habitats,” what predominates is “gravel, into being-flesh,3 and predictable ‘fishery sand, and mud” (Roberts, 2007: 156). “Each collapses’, what fragment of real life of our year,” writes Ted Danson, “the world’s fleet slime head and toothfish cousins remains, of bottom trawlers disturbs a seabed area and of so many others who have suffered twice the size of the contiguous United and are suffering the same fate (Dreifus, States” (2011: 82). Trawlers should have 2002; Victorero et al., 2018)? been decommissioned long ago, their parts It is not necessary to Question Reality in recycled into something useful. Quite whose cosmic play we are enmeshed, even to the contrary, however, having fished as we are denied metaphysical knowledge of out the relatively accessible waters of what lies beyond it. Questioning Normality, continental shelves, there are other ocean however, is good. For example, the octopus
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on the menu. If you give an octopus in an be treated unjustly. A resource does not aquarium a ball, she will bounce it against create exquisite worlds nor look you in the the walls to pass the time. It is good also eye. It can be ‘harvested unsustainably’ to question the mass-produced shrimp, or, unwanted, thrown overboard like spooned into one another on the mass- trash. A resource can be ‘depleted’ and produced plastic cocktail trays. For every may even ‘collapse’. When such things pound of shrimp, 10 pounds of sea life are happen to the resource, earnest calls thrown overboard dead and dying (by- entreat more sustainable harvesting (or catch); tens of thousands of sea turtles farming). The problem with this ostensible are killed yearly by commercial shrimp corrective to the serial depletion of fish is trawls in the Gulf of Mexico (by-catch); that, as a solution, it will never retrieve and mangrove ecologies are deforested the primordial condition of free seas of for shrimp aquaculture (Danson, 2011; abundant, creative and ocean-churning “The industrial- Keledjian et al., 2014). Let’s question the life. The intent of ‘fisheries management’ fishing regime has parade of fish species featured in lines is not to restore such living waters, but like Filet-O-Fish and look into the labour to make maximal taking from the ocean remodelled the ocean conditions that deliver cheap fish (Urbina, pantry sustainable. “The goal of fisheries into a scrumptious 2019). And: Do you really want to eat the management,” in official speak, “is to food jar from which factory-farmed, dyed-pink, wild-fish-fed, optimize society’s total benefit from the to extract cheap habitat-polluting, soon-to-be-GM salmon? use of natural resources” (Nielsen, 1976: 15). “Think about that slab of tuna in the deli A telling exercise would be to deconstruct fish for the global case as bushmeat,’’ urges marine biologist virtually every word in this sentence to consumer class. Sylvia Earle (2003). More to the point, think discern how the real is denatured into the This regime will be about that slab of tuna as a crime.4 Question normal. allowed to destroy the restaurant grouper that may well not From living artwork composed by a 5 the living ocean as be a grouper – or worse, actually is. The plenum of beings and phenomena – with swordfish steak: Can we not let them be? The dramatic, life-sustaining reverberations long as we continue tasty scallops? Along with half of the total throughout the whole Earth system to think, without fish catch, they come from trawling, which (including, notably, the air we breathe) explicitly thinking it, (it bears repeating) is among the most base – the industrial-fishing regime has that industrial fishing assaults on nature ever orchestrated. With remodelled the ocean into a scrumptious undiscriminating violence, in a matter food jar from which to extract cheap fish is normal. ” of hours, trawlers devastate what it took for the global consumer class. This regime the natural world hundreds or thousands will be allowed to destroy the living ocean of years to create. (The silt clouds that as long as we continue to think, without trawlers stir underwater can show up on explicitly thinking it, that industrial satellite images.) What about the lobsters? fishing is normal. They are still plentiful, because their predators have been decimated. Lobsters Cosmic wealth were once so beneath polite-society food, We can choose the real over the normal by they were fed to convicts and slaves and giving the ocean back its freedom, thus used for fertilizer. Lobsters have had a enabling the restitution of its abundant status ‘upgrade’ because in certain places life. Despite a frequent incrimination of they are all that is left. When lobsters lived climate change as cause of sea-life trouble, out their natural lifespans, they might industrial fishing is the chief driver of grow to 20 pounds. marine biodiversity destruction (Pitcher It is good to Question Normality for all the and Cheung, 2013: 510; McCauley et al., above reasons. It is especially important 2015). To underscore this, consider coral to question the normality of calling sea reefs, which are directly imperilled by life ‘marine resources for harvesting’. climate change and acidification. Yet today, A resource does not feel, think or know coral reef areas that are strictly protected pleasure. It cannot die, starve, suffer or from fishing (and pollution) are faring
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better than those not so protected (Roberts plastic production and use. “What we are et al., 2017). This means that in order to witnessing in the global ocean,” states have a shot at preserving the world’s coral scientist Marcus Eriksen, “is a growing reefs, we must strictly protect them right threat of toxin-laden microplastics cycling now. Indeed, restoring oceanic life requires through the entire marine ecosystem” bold action. Captain Paul Watson calls for (quoted in Mooney [2014]). Ending a 50-year moratorium on all commercial ocean pollution also means embracing fishing “to give the ocean time to repair agroecological food production and phasing itself” (Watson, 2018: 152). Given the out industrial agriculture with its estuary- In order to have a devastated condition of marine life, and killing fertilizer and pesticide run-off, and “ an ocean heading towards mass extinction its hefty contribution to climate upheaval. shot at preserving and decimations of wild fish, this is a self- In the medium-to-longer term, we the world’s coral evidently rational proposal. Is it too much must work towards humanely lowering reefs, we must to hope that some leaders might have our global population considerably in strictly protect them sufficient clarity to hear it, and sufficient order to support the substantial lowering courage to attempt its implementation? of fish consumption and to enable the right now.” At the very least, we must immediately deindustrialization of all food production establish a vast ocean-wide network of (Crist, 2019). Even as it is an ecocentric marine protected areas. This can begin imperative today, in a downsized future with an international agreement to stop people can also opt for eating fish sparingly, all fishing in the high seas. By prohibiting so that the cosmic wealth of marine life is legal fishing in the high seas, illegal preserved. The choice of eating no fish is fishing vessels would become more readily also prudent – especially where people are detectable, making law enforcement easier. not dependent on fish for basic nourishment Along with networked protected areas – to avoid the infliction of unnecessary along the world’s coasts, estuaries and suffering. As author Jonathan Safran Foer islands, full high-seas protection would states (2009: 193): “No fish gets a good enable the renewal of marine life: research death. Not a single one. You never have reveals that ecological revival follows in to wonder if the fish on your plate had to strictly protected marine areas (Warne, suffer. It did.” 2007: Roberts et al., 2017). In a world of globally trading billions, the We must end the mass extermination mass consumption of fish equals the mass enterprise of industrial fishing with its extermination of beings and ecologies that collateral slaying of whales, dolphins, we, and our descendants, might explore and sharks, sea turtles and seabirds, among witness instead of eating without restraint. innumerable others (Keledjian et al., 2014). “The great majority of sea species are badly Indeed, artisanal and subsistence fishers depleted,” Jackson rues. “But they still agitated for the abolition of trawling exist. If people actually went away, most almost as soon as it was invented (Roberts, could recover” (quoted in Weisman [2007: 2007: chapter 10). Calls to ban trawling 266]). We do not literally have to go away. have continued but been derailed by the Just lay the weapons down. In exchange, fishing industry (Rabesandratana, 2013). we will feast our eyes and minds with the At this eleventh hour, humanity must find pleasures of life’s marvels, encountering the wisdom and the mettle to dismantle all forms of awareness unlike our own, and industrial-fishing weapons, starting with bathing the fire of our sight in the colour trawling (Danson, 2011; Keledjian et al., and dance of diverse sea animals and plants. 2014; Rabesandratana, 2013). We will behold the living ocean, which For a life-filled ocean to return we must has the distinction, in all time and space, also stop polluting it at all point sources, of resembling nothing other than itself. and reverse, to the greatest extent possible, Creating a global culture that valorizes the pollution already plaguing it. This the arts of snorkelling and scuba diving requires, among other measures, ending (practised mindfully), as much as it values
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the gifts of education and healthcare for that ocean pollution is an extremely urgent all – that is a culture worthy of the highest problem is blind. A civilization incapable of aspirations of the human. choosing to be in love with the ocean does not deserve our respect. We must disidentify Coda human being from this civilization and Before this option can open to our collective evolve it to a higher octave. n consciousness the worldview of human distinction – and its nature-mutilating and mind-numbing framework of “natural Part 2: Leave it in the ocean! resources” – must be jettisoned. For now, that worldview and its idioms shape how Halt plans for deep-sea mining many people think, are conditioned to think, about the seas. Humanity’s entitlement over new chapter of Earth pillage is in Ours is the long- the Earth is distilled in language deployed the works: the commercial venture “ to reason with. For example: “Common- of deep-sea mining. The deep overdue time to put A pool fish stocks are often open-access, and sea, over 200 meters below sea level and down the warring fishing effort can push stock levels beyond comprising roughly 65% of Earth’s surface, weapons against maximum sustainable yield. In those cases, is being encroached on by nation-states Earth, scale back price increases lead to reduced seafood and industries slavering over “mind- production” (Smith et al., 2010: 784). boggling quantities of untapped resources” humanity’s presence, (Actually, price increases can fuel hunting (Mengerink et al., 2014: 696). cease our invasions down creatures to [regional, commercial into the natural world or global] extinction, as happened to The setup and withdraw from California’s sea otters and abalones and Deep-sea mining has gotten quietly under large-scale portions is happening today to bluefin tuna.) Back way since the turn of the century. The to the language: “Common-pool,” “fish International Seabed Authority (ISA), a of the ecosphere. ” stocks,” “open-access,” “fishing effort,” United-Nations-created body of 168 states, “stock levels,” “maximum sustainable has already conceded 29 exploratory mining yield,” “price increases,” “seafood contracts for the high seas covering over production” – none of this anthropocentric 1.2 million square miles (Wedding et al., babble has anything to do with marine life: 2015; IUCN, 2018). Additionally, nation- It is resource-contortionist vocabulary states and corporations have brokered deals twisting the ocean into a human manor. for mining national waters. For example, Before our eyes and under our watch Papua New Guinea has given permission stretches the endless night of marine to Canadian company Nautilus Minerals life decimations and extinctions, with to mine deep-sea sulphide deposits off its the global ocean turned into a natural- coast for copper and gold (Davidson and resources-for-harvesting and fish-factory- Doherty, 2017).6 farm domain, as well as garbage dump, There is no doubt about the obscenity mining frontier, ship lane terrain and of the unfolding enterprise of deep-sea ‘carbon sink’. Alternatively stretches the mining, nor about its significance. Ours sweet delight of a life-filled ocean we can is the long-overdue time to put down the restore, preserve, commune with, and warring weapons against Earth, scale back imbibe with body, senses and mind. humanity’s presence, cease our invasions A civilization that chooses endless night into the natural world and withdraw from over sweet delight slumbers. A civilization large-scale portions of the ecosphere. Yet that orchestrates the pretension that what do we see? A human-supremacist industrial fishing is normal, and that the coalition of nation-states and corporations abolition of industrial fishing is radical, preparing to deal out more death in lacks judgement. A civilization that treats exchange for ‘natural resources’. the seas like a human food pantry is a It’s never been a matter of whether deep- hungry ghost. A civilization that cannot see sea mining should proceed. Just a well-
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planned, technologically ready raid about is the outrage of a political-economic to be fast-tracked into business as usual. It human-supremacist posse that has the is blithely dubbed “the new gold rush” (e.g. gall, at this historical moment, to introduce The Economist, 2017), as though we don’t a new chapter of Earth desecration – in know how depraved the old one was. The the name of servicing a ‘green economy’ new venture is not only for gold but also to boot (Carrington, 2017; The Economist, for other metals and minerals like silver, 2017). copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese, zinc, rare earths and yttrium. Filching this stuff Humanity’s common heritage – not from Earth’s seas is deemed necessary In 1982, UNCLOS declared the seas beyond for making ever more cell phones, iPads, national jurisdiction – the high seas or PCs, Kindles, batteries, LED bulbs, flat- ‘the Area’ – “the common heritage of The destruction screen TVs, fuel cells, wind turbines and mankind.” Let’s bring that one up to speed “ so on, not to mention “essential parts with current language-use decorum. of life forms and of advanced military technology,” like UNCLOS surely meant “the common habitats that missile guidance, laser targeting and radar heritage of humankind,” as contemporary commercial deep- surveillance (Kato, 2017). reports are rectifying (see, e.g., Jaeckel sea mining will cause Piling on the cheap cliché of “the new et al. [2017]). That one raises virtually no will be enormous and gold rush,” the deep sea is being called eyebrows. On the contrary, it is avowed “the last resource frontier.” That “resource a principle – one “generally understood irreparable in human frontier” is neither. The deep sea is filled to require access and benefit-sharing timescales.” with beautiful life, amazing adaptations, arrangements, especially for developing abiding mystery, primordial being. There are [nation]-states” (Jaeckel et al., 2017: 150). millions of species in the deep sea, Earth’s The common heritage of humankind largest biome, yet we know next to nothing raises the dutiful mandate to ensure that about its biodiversity (University of Oxford, “financial and other economic benefits” 2017; www.savethehighseas.org). The places of deep-sea mining “will be equitably targeted for violation – hydrothermal vents shared among all states” (Kim, 2017: for sulphides, seamounts for cobalt and the 135). “UNCLOS recognizes,” as echoed in abyssal seabed for polymetallic nodules another anthropocentric skin-deep hoopla – are life-abundant and largely life- for justice, “the right of all states to access created (Vanreusel et al., 2016; Van Dover marine living resources in ABNJs [areas et al., 2018). All harbour a great diversity of beyond national jurisdiction]” (Danovaro endemic and mostly unknown species, yet et al., 2017: 453). they are currently being wrecked by mining How is it that calling the high seas “the machinery – even before commercial deep- common heritage of humankind” pulls sea mining ‘regulations’ are in place. the wool over so many eyes? An ancient The destruction of life forms and habitats living landscape, pre-existing Homo that commercial deep-sea mining will sapiens by millions of years – humanity’s cause will be enormous and irreparable common heritage? In response to the in human timescales (Koslow, 2007; Van species- and habitat-demolishing spectre Dover et al, 2017; Niner et al., 2018). Given of industrial-scale deep-sea mining, the extensive endemism of living beings well-meaning scientists and analysts in the targeted areas, exploratory mining engaged with this topic are scrambling for has almost certainly already caused damage control couched in environmental extinctions. Commercial deep-sea mining pleas: for ‘preservation reference zones’, will cause many more – the kind EO Wilson ‘remediation obligations’, ‘balancing trade- calls anonymous extinctions since most offs’, ‘environmental impact assessments’, deep-sea species are unknown (Wilson ‘mitigation strategies’, ‘baseline data’, 1999: 243). In addition to the outrage of ‘holistic management of deep-sea use’ this impending assault on life poised to and so on and so forth. The very political- quicken the sixth mass extinction, there economic establishment that is destroying
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the Earth and endangering so much of of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh (quoted in humanity seems to have successfully Waters [1972: 278]). whipped a host of experts into submission as it gears up for a united-front gold rush The ecocentric response on the last resource frontier. Not only must deep-sea mining and Indeed, that establishment is con- current projects be immediately halted, summately skilled at procuring near- but today’s crisis of life in the global ocean universal compliance to its ecosphere- calls for placing the high seas off limits to wrecking dictates by means of a two-tiered all extractive activity: for fish, fossil fuels, mode of operation: one discursive, the and metals and minerals. We must rename other operational. The discursive one is the Area ‘the common heritage of all life’ to the long-standing appropriation of planet reflect what it actually is. Human presence Earth as human property, enabling the in the high seas can be limited to the embezzlement of all geographical space lightest of touches, for the elevated purpose for human exploitation, use, control of witnessing, learning about and teaching and management. For the high seas, our children the marvels with whom we this indoctrination spins out in their share the ecosphere. With the high seas ‘declaration’ as the common heritage of designated a marine protected area (MPA), humankind. People hesitate to call out marine-life abundance will rebound and be such pompous drivel for fear of being able to cope (and help humanity cope) with dismissed as foolish, idealistic or radical. climatic upheaval and ocean acidification Most choose instead to defer to official (see Roberts et al. [2017]). Coastal seas and “Human presence in discourse, and do their best to make the continental shelves (critically endangered the high seas can be seemingly ‘inevitable’ deep-sea mining a and endangered, respectively [Jackson, limited to the lightest little less destructive. The second strategy 2008]) are also in urgent need of robust of touches, for the by which the human-supremacist regime MPA networks. Ocean protection levels can secures near-universal submission is thus achieve upwards of 80%. elevated purpose operational: Just do it. Exactly what has Along with setting vast areas of the of witnessing, been orchestrated with deep-sea mining: ocean free, we must turn the spotlight on learning about and it is underway; most states are already the high-tech industry – the one poised teaching our children involved (now or in principle) given the to most benefit (if profiteering counts ISA’s international composition; the as ‘benefit’) from deep-sea mining. The the marvels with technologies are developed and being high-tech industry needs to change whom we share the tested; and the regulations to dress it all fundamentally and clean up its act, rather ecosphere.” up as ‘sustainable’ are being ironed out. than trying to buy another century’s worth The cognitive schema of Earth-ownership of time for its wasteful, dollar-hungry and the operational schema of Earth- workings. First, engineering, investing looting work together. Planetary ownership and public policy must focus resolutely authorizes getting an operational head- on recycling metals and minerals (Teske, start, which subsequently invites more: 2017). Even though recycling potential for after all, it has already begun, certain materials connected with deep-sea mining players are currently more involved than is high, actual recycled contents remain others, and, when it comes to politically low; for example, less that one per cent of correct Earth-ravaging, everyone in the rare earths are recycled (Kim, 2017: 135–6). posse needs to get a turn. To mirror the The focus of turning an extraction industry vulgarity of deep-sea mining and its into a recycling one will give Earth a rest, squalid creep: spitting into the soup is while forcing governments and industry the surest way to ensure you get to eat to quit dumping their e-waste on the it. How fitting for a species-killing and disempowered – human and non-human. habitat-destroying political-economic Second, the high-tech industry must global regime, which is “never contented put an end to the profligate production but always encroaching,” in the words of ever-more devices, to be replaced by
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ever-more new lines. (The same applies Notes for the production of other commodities 1 This is a must-read work about the history of like cars and appliances.) Instead, the human impact on the ocean. high-tech industry – calling here on any 2 See the video It’s a Plastic World, which is available at https://is.gd/xYe4Um. conscientious leadership therein – needs an immediate paradigm shift toward 3 For critical explorations of the reduction of animals to meat, see Plumwood (2013) and the durable: stuff must be made well, Calarco (2014). made to last, and made to use not flaunt 4 Something that Jeremy Jackson does (see, e.g., (McKibben, 2008). Devices can indeed be https://is.gd/qJY3SE). long-lasting, made to be repairable if they 5 Seafood fraud is apparently common (see Danson “One last response malfunction, and only upgraded when [2011]). to the spectre of hugely meaningful increases in efficiency, 6 Fortunately, that relationship has run into deep-sea mining is or changes in energy sourcing, warrant political and economic controversy, forestalling ‘new generations’. Finally, civil society or derailing mining plans, though Nautilus to raise a question: has to figure out how to create a culture of Minerals continues to hold the deep-sea mining If this planned Earth sharing this stuff. licence from the government of Papua New Guinea (The Economist, 2018; Heffernan, 2019). violation does not One last response to the spectre of deep- reveal the imperative sea mining is to raise a question: If this References planned Earth violation does not reveal to achieve a lower Altherr S and Hodgins N (2018) Small Cetaceans, Big the imperative to achieve a lower global Problems: A global review of the impacts of hunting on global population, population, what does? The global middle small whales, dolphins and porpoises. Available at what does?.” class – the clientele of high-tech products https://is.gd/b55M40 (accessed October 2019).
– is growing rapidly. The middle-class Cafard M (2017) Lightning Storm Mind: Pre-ancientist population is projected to reach 5 billion meditations. Autonomedia, Williamsburg, NY, USA. before mid-century (Kharas, 2017). All Calarco M (2014) Being toward meat: Anthropocentrism, these people are expected to want cell indistinction, and veganism. Dialectical Anthropology phones, PCs, flat-screen TVs, hybrid cars, 38: 415–29. solar panels and so on. Making materials Carrington D (2017) Is deep sea mining vital for a recyclable, durable and shareable is critical, greener future – even if it destroys ecosystems? The but it will only get us so far. Design changes Guardian, 4 June. Available at https://is.gd/D7h90r and behavioural shifts will not offset (accessed October 2019). the commodity-supply surges that the Casey S (2010) Garbage in, garbage out. Conservation growing global middle-class population Magazine 11: 13–19. portends. Therefore, we must ramp up Crist E, Mora C and Engelman R (2017) The interaction of without further delay the human-rights human population, food production, and biodiversity protection. Science 356: 260–4. campaigns – for women’s equality, state of the art family planning, and comprehensive Crist E (2019) Abundant Earth: Toward an ecological civilization. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, sexuality education for all – that will steer USA. the human population towards a ballpark figure of 2 billion (Engelman, 2016; Kaidbey Danovaro R, Aguzzi J, Fanelli E et al. (2017) An ecosystem-based deep-ocean strategy. Science 355: and Engelman, 2017; Crist et al., 2017: Crist, 452–4. 2019). Danson T (2011) Oceana: Our endangered ocean and what We cohabit living Earth with countless we can do to save it. Rodale, New York, NY, USA. Earthlings we know and more we have still Davidson H and Doherty B (2017) Troubled Papua to meet. Are we awake yet? n New Guinea deep-sea mine faces environmental challenge. The Guardian, 11 December. Available at Acknowledgements https://is.gd/1iTv8z (accessed October 2019). I would like to thank Richard Rich, Ian Whyte and Dreifus C (2002) A conversation with Callum Roberts: A Joe Gray for their helpful comments on an earlier biologist decries the ‘strip-mining’ of the deep sea. draft. A longer version of part two was published The New York Times, 5 March. on The Rewilding Institute’s blog in the summer of 2019, with the title “Something Wicked this Way Earle S (2003) Our Oceans, Ourselves (interview with Comes: the Menace of Deep-Sea Mining.” Sylvia Earle). Wild Earth 12: 23.
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