The Ocean of Life

by Callum Roberts

  Aldo Leopold, one of the fathers of America’s environmental movement, said, “To keep every cog and wheel is the first rule of intelligent tinkering.” It is a phrase often quoted and for good reason. Even if there are some seemingly redundant parts in the mechanism of nature, we don’t know which ones they are. Nature’s variety is one of its great assets when it comes to coping with change, and therefore it is one of ours. The portfolio effect I spoke of in fisheries applies much more widely. If an investor holds a diverse portfolio of assets, they can be pretty sure that it will continue to yield dividends no matter what the future brings. At any particular time some investments will do well while others languish. A species that is rare today and seems unimportant may be common tomorrow. Under different conditions, it could become the lynchpin of some vital ecological process. We have little or no capacity to predict which species that might be from the thousands around us.

  In 2001 European environment ministers set themselves an ambitious goal: to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. To many people, and probably most of the politicians who set the target, this simply means preventing any more species from going extinct. Although that is important, halting biodiversity loss implies much more. It means stopping further loss of natural habitats, turning around population declines, and ending the piece by piece dismantling of food webs. Europe failed to achieve its goal, of course. Halting the collapse of biodiversity without tackling the drivers of loss is impossible. I would no more have expected a bon viveur with a cellar full of fine wine to give up drinking. Stopping biodiversity loss will take far more than bold words. At the global level, the European target was watered down to “achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss.” We failed even to achieve that.3 While those targets were welcome, they must be met with a complete change in our attitude to nature. Otherwise we will never achieve them.

  Some people are preparing for the worst by stockpiling frozen stores of seeds or genetic material of plants, corals, and other animals. These gene banks are a little too science fiction for me. They could work for plants, and maybe corals, but the approach has great limitations for most animals. Captive-bred animals struggle to cope when released into the wild, even after being raised by nurturing parents. Imagine how difficult it would be to resurrect a species from a tissue sample. There are dreamers out there who yearn to stitch mammoths back together from fragments of DNA deep frozen in the Siberian tundra, but these frozen libraries will do nothing to keep our planetary environment running. I think there are better ways to create arks in which species might tough it out until humanity gets to grips with the climatic convulsion we have set loose.

  One approach is to identify the places where habitats and their species are most likely to survive, and then give them powerful protection. During past ice ages, the deterioration in climate forced many species from large parts of their ranges. In some places, conditions remained more clement. They formed refuges where animals and plants hung on. When the ice melted, the survivors spread forth to reclaim lands they had lost. Some people are searching for a modern equivalent of these refuges, especially for embattled habitats like tropical coral reefs. Rod Salm is one such hunter. He works for the Nature Conservancy and heads up its coral program. For the last decade Salm has been on a quest to find places where coral reefs are most likely to weather the warming and increased ocean acidity ahead. Some of the most likely places, it turns out, are ones that have few human inhabitants. George W. Bush protected several of them in the Pacific Ocean in an uncharacteristic frenzy of environmentalism at the tail end of his presidency. Rose Atoll, Palmyra and Kingman Reefs, the Northwest Hawaiian Islands—all these places support more vibrant and intact reefs than almost any that fringe inhabited lands.

  The UK created the largest marine reserve in the world in 2010 when it placed the Chagos Archipelago off limits to all fishing. This British Territory rises like a vision of paradise from the middle of the Indian Ocean with its white sand beaches, swaying palms, and vivid turquoise lagoons. It seems an ideal refuge from which reefs around the Indian Ocean rim could be replenished with life in some more agreeable future. Aside from a U.S. military base—actually because of it—the Chagos are uninhabited.4 Its reefs were badly hit by the 1998 global mass coral bleaching event which killed nine tenths of its coral. But they have since bounced back better than any others in the Indian Ocean.5 The near absence of any other stresses like pollution, construction or significant exploitation enabled the corals to cope. The Chagos and places like it offer evidence that local efforts to reduce the cocktail of human stresses can make a difference.

  One organization that championed the protection of the Chagos was the Alaska-based Pew Global Ocean Legacy program. Their aim is to see some of the world’s most intact and iconic marine ecosystems given the highest level of protection. The goal is bold, not least because the places on their target list are vast and protection at this scale has never been attempted before. But they have notched up several successes (with the help of George W. Bush and the UK) and have set their sights on Australia’s Coral Sea and New Zealand’s Kermadec Islands.6

  Blue Marine Foundation, a UK-based environmental group, secured the financing for the first five years of protection of the Chagos. Blue plans to mobilize private capital to protect extraordinary and important places at sea wherever they may be. Possibilities include South Georgia and Gough Island in the South Atlantic. Gough is a windswept speck of heath and rock that is inhabited only by albatross, penguin, and a handful of other hardy wildlife (and some monster mice that have tripled in size and taken to a diet of seabird chicks since whalers dropped them off in the nineteenth century). It was discovered by the Portuguese in 1505 and was claimed by the UK in 1938. Gough came with nearly 50,000 square miles of ocean around the island. Imagine what value it would have to wild nature if it were protected. Gough has been described as one of the most important seabird colonies on Earth, and its waters are home to numerous whales, dolphins, fish, and invertebrates.7 Though our world is crowded, there are still many opportunities to safeguard wild places and create a lasting legacy for future generations.

  Other organizations are concentrating on protecting hot spots where a rich and distinctive variety of plants and other creatures can be found, which they believe will be of disproportionately high value in extinction prevention. Conservation International, a powerful U.S.-based group, has identified hot spots on land, such as the Atlantic forests of Brazil, California (for its flowers), Madagascar, and the wonderfully named Succulent Karoo of Southern Africa. They are pouring money into these places to save species before it is too late, with considerable success. Similar places exist at sea, although they have only been mapped for a few habitats and species groups, such as coral reefs and open ocean predators, and a systematic catalog of ocean life is still years away.8 Other organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund, are targeting more diffuse areas for conservation known as “priority” ecoregions. Their thinking is that life operates at large scales that protection efforts should encompass. Such ecoregions include the Gulf of Alaska, the North Sea, the South Kuroshio Current off Japan, and the Adriatic Sea.

  Protecting remote, intact areas like the Chagos will give us a sporting chance of saving life’s variety as the globe changes. I’m all for it. But nature at arm’s length will do little to satisfy our aesthetic or spiritual needs. Places usually remain intact because they are hard to get to. It is lovely to know wild polar bears stalk seals on distant ice floes. It comforts me to think that there are isolated coral reefs that remain virtually as they were two hundred years ago, like Kingman Reef in the mid-Pacific where sharks patrol in almost unthinkable numbers and thick shoals of fish like burly emperors and sweetlips wait for nightfall to fan out and dig for prey. But we need places nearby too.

  Nature close at hand is almost priceless; look at any city park if you doubt the truth. New York’s Central Park opens like a green oasis hemmed in by cliffs of stone, concrete, and glass,
a place of tranquility and beauty away from the dust and din of traffic-snarled streets. A song thrush that sings from your own rooftop is lovelier by far than the unheard call of a loon on some distant northern lake. Nature nearby is what matters when it comes to benefits like clean and healthy water and air. I saw a study by a worthy group of scientists not long ago that suggested we could enhance the protection of biodiversity if we decommissioned the least cost-effective protected areas, sold off the land and bought up a far greater area of cheaper, more effective land instead.9 It sounds sensible and at face value the figures add up. There is just one drawback—the places deemed most likely to offer poor value for money were parks close to cities, where land values were sky high. To me those are the places where nature is highly valuable, where it is most accessible for us to enjoy. To decommission them in favor of more distant patches of habitat would amount to withdrawal of the lifeblood of human experience. I once flew into São Paolo in Brazil. On the descent we passed a near endless sprawl of high-rises, apartment buildings, and shanties. The buildings seethed up and over the sides of the low hills like mold. Hardly a breath of open space or green leaf broke a man-made vista that stretched to the horizon and beyond. It was one of the most depressing things I have seen.

  In the race to save species, conservationists usually home in on the best remaining fragments of habitat. This is understandable in a world where money is tight. Such areas offer a way to maximize species protected per dollar spent. But in doing so, conservation neglects places less rich and remarkable. Sometimes this is because they are more degraded, but often it is because environment and evolution have not bestowed on them the variety gifted to other places. But society has a stake in low-diversity regions too. In fact, these places are likely to be much more susceptible to loss of important ecosystem services than the highly diverse sites seen as conservation priorities. Caribbean coral reefs possess a handful of coral species that do the heavy lifting of reef construction; West Pacific reefs have dozens. Disease epidemics in the Caribbean have knocked out two of the main reef builders and are now hacking away at the third. As a result, growth of reefs in the Caribbean at best has juddered to a halt, and in most places is in reverse as erosion takes hold. It is easy to see the results underwater. Where bright coral turrets garlanded in multi-hued fish once rose, all too often there is a low, hummocky panorama of green weed pockmarked with sponge and sea fan. The results are visible above water too, as resort beaches wash away and condos fall into the ocean. Local conservation efforts matter, even in places that would add little to the catalog of species protected.

  We tend to be skeptical of government promises and targets. But I have been impressed by how great a motivator targets for marine conservation have been. Delegates at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa agreed to set aside more marine protected areas and to restore fish stocks to more productive and safer levels by 2015.10 The latter target will not be met in full; indeed it cannot be, because some fish populations grow too slowly to rebuild in the three years left. Like Europe’s plan to halt biodiversity loss, I doubt whether the people who agreed to the targets thought they could ever be achieved by the deadlines set. What these goals have done is to set the hares running, and in their wake there has been an unprecedented burst of effort to protect the oceans. Marine protected areas are proliferating. George W. Bush made a huge splash with his Pacific protected areas and single-handedly added over 30 percent to the total area under protection in the world oceans. That makes him one of the world’s greatest marine conservationists! That expression might stick in some people’s throats given his rather less glorious environmental record on land. Whatever your feelings about Bush, he left a wonderful legacy in the sea.

  Other leaders have emerged who are shaping the global agenda. In 2005, the President of the tiny Pacific state of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, launched the “Micronesia Challenge” in which he urged other states in the sprawling Micronesian archipelago to protect 30 percent of their marine environment and 20 percent of lands by 2020. Time magazine lauded him as an Environmental Hero in 2007. But Remengesau was a flawed leader, embroiled in corruption and with rather thin environmental credentials since he built his own house without a permit in the midst of a mangrove forest. Nonetheless, the Micronesia Challenge has gained the support of many of the island nations of the region and inspired countries further afield, like Indonesia and the Caribbean island of Grenada. Island nations have the most to lose from mismanagement of the sea, and their example is one that nations better endowed with land should all follow.

  There has been much head scratching over how big and how close protected areas need to be to function optimally.11 Based on how far animals and plants move and disperse, the consensus is that they should typically be about six to twelve miles across and no more than twenty-five to fifty miles apart. At its most risk prone—six-mile reserves fifty miles apart—such a network would cover one ninth of the sea. At its most risk averse—twelve-mile reserves twenty-five miles apart—it would cover a third. In network building, we would do well to heed the investors’ caveat that past performance is not always an indicator of future performance. In warmer seas, eggs and larvae will develop faster, which means they will spend less time swimming or drifting in the open sea before settling on a place to live and won’t travel as far as they do now.12 That means we would be wise to establish networks at the higher end of the protection range. Some nations and states have already started to act on these principles.

  In 1999 California started to build a network of coastal protected areas that, when complete, will cover some 20 percent of its seas. (Like all U.S. states, California has control over waters up to three nautical miles out to sea; the rest is managed by the federal government.) The English network I mentioned earlier is slated to cover a quarter of its seas, although not all will be highly protected. Some areas will permit less damaging kinds of fishing to continue, like lobster trapping. France has declared it will protect 20 percent of its waters by 2020 and half of those will exclude all fishing. In many countries, renewable energy may add to overall protection, since wind farms often prohibit fishing to protect cabling. Given the enthusiastic embrace of wind energy, the combined effect could secure 30 percent to 40 percent of coastal waters, which is where we need to be.

  Beyond the borders of these future protected areas, we need to scale back the intensity and destructiveness of fishing. This doesn’t mean forgoing catches in the long run, although there may be short-term costs. Re-inflating fish stocks from their present nadir will bring increased catches within five to ten years, taken at lower cost with less fuel burned. It does, however, mean phasing out or greatly limiting the footprint of the most damaging fishing gears, like trawls and dredges, and unselective longlines. That move is long overdue. The fourteenth-century English peasants who pleaded with their king to ban the newly invented trawl that “runs so heavily and hardly over the ground when fishing that it destroys the flowers of the land below water,”13 perfectly understood the dangers the method entailed. In the long run, those who decide to protect and treasure their natural assets are the ones who benefit most. Many of the gains that come from establishing protected areas and banning trawling are most apparent locally. Reinvigorating the sea isn’t an altruistic act of self-sacrifice; it makes sense on the grounds of self-interest too.

  There has been huge progress in the last fifteen years on some fronts and retreat in others. New high-level commitments to establish protected areas are encouraging and invigorating, and I see incredible energy being thrown behind implementing these initiatives. Protection is at last being extended to some places in international waters far from coasts where the foundations of a high seas reserve network are being laid. In Europe, it was finally acknowledged in 2011 that throwing away dead fish after you have caught them is madness. It is better still to let the ones you don’t want live on in the sea by fishing less in the first place and using more selective fishing methods. But again
st these gains, the tide of human pressure continues to swell. In October 2011, as I was completing this book, we passed the seven billion mark. And in this globalized world, the time between discovery and depletion of a new type of fish or shellfish, or new fishing ground, has shrunk from decades to the space of a few years. The urgency for decisive change is greater than ever before.

  EPILOGUE

  The Sea Ahead

  A few years ago, Inupiat hunters from the North Slope of Alaska caught a bowhead whale. When they cut up its carcass they found an iron harpoon point buried within its shoulder of a kind that had not been used for more than a hundred years. It turned out that this whale was 130 years old. Other older Bowheads have been caught with stone harpoon points in them which indicate that these animals can live 200 years. I wonder what a 200-year-old whale would make of the changes it has experienced in its lifetime.

  In the early nineteenth century, there were perhaps as many as a hundred thousand bowheads around the Bering Strait that separates North America from Asia. The sea would have resounded to their calls as they went about the noisy business of life. For more than half the year, much of their world was frozen. Then in 1848, a whaling boat penetrated these waters and slaughtered them like sheep. The bowhead is a docile creature and killing was easy. A year later, their southern grounds exhausted, more than one hundred and fifty other whaling vessels did the same. In the space of a couple of decades, bowhead numbers were slashed. For every hundred whales before, only one or two were left and the whale chorus fell silent. A hundred years on, those seas began to fill with the noise of ships and then in 1984 the world called off its commercial hunt. By then their seas were pierced with a new sound, the deafening thump of seismic exploration for oil and gas. Sea ice retreated and unfamiliar fish and plankton began to move north. Over long years, ever so slowly, the numbers of bowhead whales began to recover. Now there are over ten thousand in Alaskan waters and their lowing calls once again fill the seas, although this time in competition with the roar of ship engines.