Welcome to the speaker for Lupach session 144. What's up everybody? Happy Monday. Today, we are going to be covering enforcing the oceans a hot topic in the ocean conservation world because it's so difficult to enforce all the rules we set in place that we talk about. You know, we want to protect species. We want to protect habitats through MPAs and species at risk acts and all this stuff. And it's really difficult to enforce them. So we're going to talk about all the ways that we can enforce, what people are doing to enforce them, how people are getting around some of the laws, some of the organizations that are taking a more aggressive approach to it, and we're going to cover all of it. So stay tuned for this episode of The Speaker for Blue Podcast. Welcome to The Speaker for Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care. Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of The Speaker for Blue Podcast, your voice for the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, speakoutforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean entrepreneur, and today, we are going to be talking about enforcing the oceans. And it's always a topic that I love to discuss because it's such a challenging thing to do in the oceans. If you think about it, the oceans cover over 70% of our planet. And it's so difficult to enforce everything that goes around. The oceans are a bit of a wild, wild west. And today, we're going to talk about all the things that happen and what we can do to protect them and what we can do to enforce them and how we can get better technology, or how our technology, better technology has helped us to enforce them a little bit more. But really, it comes down to really catching people in the act and obeying the laws. And some countries are taking a very aggressive approach lately at enforcing the laws. And others are just sort of taking a lackadaisical approach because they can't catch people. And it's very difficult to do that and prove it in a court of law. So this happens in the high seas. And what I mean by high seas is more of areas that are not really governed by a specific country. So every country has an economic zone. And that's the EEZ. And it's usually 200 nautical miles from shore. So it ranges for different countries. But it tells you how, like, how hard, even within the 200 nautical mile range, it's very difficult to enforce specific laws, specific marine protected areas, the boundaries and such, because you can't always be out there and to enforce them. And we're going to talk about who does a lot of the enforcing in the western countries that I know of and who is responsible for that kind of thing. And some other organizations are taking it to a little bit of a higher level, especially in the international zones, I guess you would say, the high sea zones. And other countries are taking it really aggressively. And so we're going to talk all about that today. But before we do, I just want to make a quick announcement. Speak up for Blue TV, the YouTube channel that we have at www.youtube.com/speakupforblue. All one word is active again. I relaunched it. It's April, and it's vlog every day in April. And although I can't meet the needs of vlogging every day in April, I've been trying my best. And what I've been doing is trying to take video, like ocean news, and maybe some tips and tricks every once in a while, but ocean news and some hot topics of issues, and try and put in, like, a two to five minute clip and just talk about it through video. And I'm hoping that my videos will get better and better with, you know, adding images and really getting into more of a new show and editorial show, but it's on YouTube. And we put all of our video podcasts on YouTube. I'm going to be making those active as well. So you can catch all of that. There's a link in the show notes today at Speak up for Blue TV or sorry, speakupforblue.com/session144. You can go there. And if you're on a podcast app, like iTunes podcast app, you can just click on that link that I have in the show notes. So check it out, you know, subscribe to it so you don't miss it. YouTube got really good on notifications so that you don't miss any of the shows. They're going to probably be put out five days a week normally in the future. I'm going to try for every day in April, just as a way to try and get comfortable in front of the camera again and hopefully provide you with some interesting content. So let me know interesting stories. So let me know what you think of those in the comments on the show notes, which is Speakupforblue.com/session 144. But let's get into today's show enforcement. It's really one of the things that's, you know, in the ocean conservation world, it's a hot topic, but it's not discussed a lot because we haven't, a lot of times we haven't really gotten to that place yet. We talk about protecting the ocean and I always talk about protecting the ocean and conserving the ocean, how we can live for a better ocean. And once we're having challenges, getting things protected, getting MPAs in place, coming up with better regulations to regulate water quality. So pollution, water pollution, sediment pollution from coastal development, all that stuff goes in and can really detract our environment, nutrient overloads and so forth. So a lot of countries have regulations with that sort of thing in mind. So we have marine protected areas to protect fisheries, protect biodiversity, allow for specific things to happen in each managed zone and excluding certain things for happening in each managed zone. And then we have regulations for water quality and making sure that species that are at risk from going extinction to going extinct are protected as well. All that said and done, once they're implemented, we have to enforce it because they're really, it's really no good to implement protections when you can't enforce it. But enforcing things that happen in land are difficult enough. We have problems in Africa where you have rhinos who are like the last individual other species and they have to have four armed guards at national parks that are protecting these rhinos because poachers are trying to kill it. And they will kill the people who are protecting it if they have a chance. That's how serious it is on land. Imagine how hard and that's where we can control. We can actually have people, you know, always monitoring them. We can have people on land, you know, it's easier to maneuver. You can have trucks and jeeps and things like that to get to these places. They're easier to be accessed than somewhere in the ocean where you can't access where you can't always be. To be in the ocean, even on a vessel, to get from one point to another could take several hours, several days, just to get from one place to another, right? A lot of places along the coast are governed by their coast guard. So Canada has a coast guard, the U.S. has a coast guard. I mentioned in Canada because that's where I'm from, but, you know, it's very similar in terms of how things are managed between the U.S. with the U.S. and Canada. The coast guards are what sort of govern the interior, the economic zone, okay? The exclusion of economic zone, the EEZ, the 200 nautical mile border that is essentially ours, right? We manage the, Canada manage the U.S. manage that every other country has their own border that they manage and they can enforce certain things. So we have coast guards that go in and they monitor those areas, but our coast guards have other priorities as well, including, you know, security of the country. So it's not just enforcing marine protected area protections or water quality protections, but also enforcing, you know, security questions and security features and security priorities. You know, making sure nobody's coming in with illegal people, that happens. Making sure people are coming in legally, the ships are legal, they're not coming here to do us harm, right? That's essentially what there's. They have a lot of priorities, right? And unfortunately, environmental priorities are not necessarily first on their list. So when they do have a problem to get to that place, they're not always monitoring, they're not always in a marine protected area. That would be wonderful if they could be, but they're not always there. So they can't get there quickly. And that makes it difficult to govern, right, to enforce because there could be a ship that goes through a marine protected area and say they're not allowed to fish, but they do because nobody's there. Nobody's there to tell them otherwise, right? So today we're going to talk all about the different ways that places are monitored, how there's different protections for different MPAs, and then how those are monitored, how ships are monitored around the world, and then how different organizations, different countries enforce their laws very differently. And I talk about aggressiveness, I guess, in terms of how they do it. And some of the acts, some of the popular acts in U.S. and Canada, to really, as tools to put in place to enforce these types of areas, these types of, I guess, infractions. So let's start off with talking about what needs enforcing, what kind of places need enforcing. We're first going to talk about marine protected areas. The marine protected areas, the idea of a marine protected area is really to plan the ocean, okay? So ideally, if you look at the Great Barrier Reef, which is one of the iconic and one of the wonders of the world, type of places, the largest barrier reef in the world. Beautiful place. I've never been there, but I've heard many, many great things. Using documentaries, to be honest, as a marine ecologist, it's like, that's on your bucket list. If you can do any kind of research or visit that place, you are like a marine biologist. That's what you want to do. I remember, I've said this before on this program, but I remember doing a job interview for a job in Australia, they asked me to do field work, and they asked me if I wouldn't mind doing field work, or if I'd be feel comfortable doing field work. And I responded by saying, "You're asking a Canadian marine biologist whether he wants to get paid to dive in the Great Barrier Reef." And they laughed on the other side, basically saying, "Yes, absolutely I want to be because that is what I am." So, putting in context, the Great Barrier Reef is amazing. And it is huge, it is massive. If you think about it, it's the same for the people who don't really understand the distance, because I didn't at first, the distance of the Great Barrier Reef, the length of the Great Barrier Reef, it is a similar distance to, for the people in the western world in North America, which is most of our audience here, is the same distance as the beginning of Washington State, the top northern part of Washington State down to the end of California, the bottom of California. Okay, so it's a massive place, right? And it needs to be protected as a wonder of the world, as a United Nations heritage site, a huge economic tool for Australia, especially for the eastern part of Australia where it's found. It's just monumental. For fishing, for ecotourism, for diving, just for swimming, snorkeling, boating, you know, it's just, that's where you go, that's the place you do it. And you, and it's very popular for this. There are many people who want to do this. So it's a huge economic sort of tool for Australia, and it needs to be protected in the '70s, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was put into place. And essentially what this was, was a park that was zoned differently in different places. So you had zones where you could fish, you had zones where you couldn't fish, you had zones where you could dive, you had zones where you couldn't dive, you had zones where you couldn't snorkel, you had zones where you couldn't snorkel, you had zones where you can do scientific research, and there are zones where you couldn't do scientific research. And there are also zones where we call reserves that you couldn't do anything at all. It just had to be left in place because it was special in a specific area, or for a special reason, whether it be a spawning site, a nursery site, whatever that may be, you couldn't go in at all. Scientists couldn't go in, park people couldn't go in, commercial fishermen or recreational fishermen couldn't go in. It was just zoned as a no take, no place area, okay? So you had this plan of the Barrier Reef, and this plan was to be used going forward. So if you wanted to do fisheries in a specific area, you had to look up that zone and say see if it was allowed, if you can actually fish in there, if you can't, then you can't fish. It was very similar to what we have on land. A lot of cities, municipalities, counties, whatever you want to call it, have zones where you can do certain things. You have zoning for businesses, you have zoning for private residences, you have zoning for green spaces, you have zoning for commercial spaces, and parking lots, and all that kind of stuff. So it's a plan to make sure that you keep a certain percentage of green space, you keep a certain percentage of business, you have potential to grow economically, you need places to reside where you don't want businesses in because it's, you know, you want places peacefulness, you want places where schools can be zoned, all this kind of thing, right? And you have rules and regulations to put into place. Same thing with a marine protected area. You know, without a marine protected area or a set of marine protected areas that are managed differently in zones, you cannot, it's like the wild, wild west, you can do anything. And that's what we've been working with for the last hundred or for the last, you know, few centuries and beyond. You need to have places where things are regulated. You need to have a plan, like a business plan for the ocean. It makes everything easier to manage. Okay. In Canada, oil and gas is a huge thing. You're not so much anymore, but it's a huge thing. And you have to have certain areas where it's zoned. The entire Atlantic coast is not necessarily zoned for different activities. They have fishing zones, right? For quotas to be set and fishermen are allocated to those zones, but they don't have zones where you can't fish. They don't really have a lot of zones where you can't develop oil and gas. What they do have, they have leasing lots for oil and gas and they're found all along the Atlantic coast, but there's nothing really out there to regulate where they can and cannot go. So now to put in a marine protected area, a network of marine protected areas that are zoned differently is very difficult because fishermen are used to certain, are used to certain privileges. And the fact is, is it's harder to fish, even though the technology is better, it's hard to fish and make a living. So fishermen see restrictions of a marine protected area even worse. So it's more difficult to put in an MPa oil and gas industry. They've leased a bunch of lots along the East coast. So they come in and they're saying, "Oh, now you're putting in a marine protected area where we've leased it." But we've leased it. We actually own the rights to drilling there, but you say we can't now. So it's difficult to put in an MPa when you know when you got to deal with stakeholders and whatnot. It'll happen eventually because that's the priority of this government to do this. However, it's going to be more difficult. What happens is before, people were used to doing whatever they wanted, and the government would basically take the money from the leasing lots, take the money from the quotas, and use that in however they felt was right. And so now it's changing the game because the governments are all around the world are realizing that you can't just treat each individual sector individually. You have to treat them as a unit that's affecting the ocean together. And you have to manage them as units and in zones. You have to basically allocate. You have to come up with a plan saying you can drill here, you can fish here, but you got to stay away from this area to preserve biodiversity, to preserve fisheries, to make sure that you can fish in the long term. The moratorium on cod in the East coast in Newfoundland especially was the biggest driver for realizing that you need to manage these fisheries better to make sure that not only can you continue to fish sustainably and make sure that the social culture, the local communities can actually thrive economically. But you also have to protect the species to make sure that they're still there. And that's what didn't happen in 1992, and all the way up until then, when they had to put in the moratorium. Now the cod is coming back. And you'll see that in one of the speaker from Blue TV's by the way, so check it out. But the cod is coming back. So now you're saying, "Okay, well now that the moratorium happened, the cod is starting to come back a little bit. Okay, now we're going to put in the fisheries, but you got to make sure it's sustainable." So this is where the MPAs would come into place, finding the areas that are important to the cod fishery and other species that help the cod survive and the communities that they live in so that they can actually survive. So they can be sustainable, and you can fish them sustainably. So now many of you may not agree that fishing is sustainable the way we do, and I agree with you. We haven't really, there hasn't really been evidence that we could fish sustainably that many times, especially at that level. And I believe that if we do go back to fishing cod, it has to be at specific quotas and they have to be agreed upon. There's going to be illegal fishing, there's no doubt about that. So we have to set those quotas even lower to almost ensure that this species will be sustainable. The population will be sustainable. But with that said, you need to enforce these rules. These protected areas, once they're implemented, you need to enforce those rules. If you don't, then you're going to be in trouble because it's just not going to work. Now, before you do the enforcement and lay down the law and put the tools in place to lay down the law, and we talk all about that, once you implement or as you create and develop these marine protected area plans, one thing that's really come to light as for planners, for ocean planners, the people who put in or sort of configure the network of marine protected areas, they realize very quickly that you need the stakeholders, the people, the users, the ocean users, the people who use the ocean, the people who it's important to them to use the ocean, the fishermen, the natural resource users, it's important to bring them in on the process early. You have to include them in the process because what was happening in the past when marine protected areas really started to get a movement going and get some traction is scientists and organizations and governments would come up with ways to configure a network of marine protected areas with really the only key is to let's protect the environment and let's build a plan and say here's the plan for protection and then they present it to the stakeholders, they present it to the ocean users and then the ocean users would be like what is this, this is on my fishing area, my favorite fishing area, this is here, this is there, I don't like it because they came out saying it's the environmentalist and the government telling us what to do and where to fish and where to drill but we don't like it because we've been able to fish and drill wherever we want so we're just not going to listen to them and it happened on every scale, it happened on large federal scales and it also happened on lower local scales not only in Canada but around the world and in the US, around the world because once if you don't get buy-in from the people who are using the ocean then you are not getting anybody, you're not enforcing is going to be impossible because everybody is just going to do whatever they want and they'll pay the fines, sometimes the fines and the consequences aren't enough to deter the users. I've been sitting in court, one time I was sitting in court for a speeding ticket when I was in university, not my best moment, it wasn't that bad though, anyway but I remember seeing these two fishermen walk up they had a court case against them, they were being charged for illegally fishing scallops and it's like they had a small fine and I know these fishermen probably weren't like huge commercial fishermen, you know they were just sort of the average fishermen and not to say that fishermen are average but sort of just the regular fishermen that you see and they were caught poaching scallops or fishing them illegally and they got a fine, I think it was like a thousand dollar fine and that was it but that was nothing to them and it doesn't mean they won't do it again so the consequences have to be enough but you also have to, before you even put in the consequences, you have to make sure that you get the stakeholder buy-in, the ocean users need to buy into these marine protected areas and any other kind of regulation. If you put in a regulation to reduce pollution and you don't talk to the people who actually put in, like you know have effluent or discharge pollution into the water and you talk to them and you tell them this is the, you know this is the water, you have to meet these water quality needs so for instance your phosphorus can't be more than a certain mallegrams per leader and so forth and they can't, they physically can't do it because technology won't allow them. They're not going to listen, they're just going to get fined the whole time or it might put them out of business, you might destroy the local economy, you got to be careful but if you include them in the process and you say let's work with this and let's reduce it and reduce it and reduce it and if they work cooperatively then you can do things like that, you can work together and I think that's important. Getting the stakeholders involved, now of course it's not always going to work and sometimes you say no you need to put, we know the technology is out there and you need to put your phosphorus at this specific level because in this area you know we have a high phosphorus level and we get a lot of algae because of it. So it could be, you know sometimes you have to lay down a lot and other times you don't, you know a lot of times you can say hey let's you know let's talk and sometimes a lot of the times stakeholders will be cooperative and say if you bring them in soon and you say this is what the government's up to, you know we want to put in marine protected areas in this area but we want you guys to be a part of the process and we want to find the best spots here, the best spot scientifically, what scientists have found are the best spots to put in the configuration but there's many different configurations that you can put together. Let's work together to figure out what's the best for fishermen, oil and gas on all the other stakeholders, recreational stakeholders and everything else, okay. So that's what we look at and we look at conflicts between people and it's interesting too because it's not just to protect the environment but it's to protect the ocean users and a great example of this is the Gulf of Mexico and the deep horizon spill or leak or whatever you want to call it, that disastrous oil and gas, oil spill that happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2011 was probably one of the most disastrous things to ever happen and what happened was it just didn't affect the environment, it continually affects the environment but it affects the people who use the ocean so people who fished in that area, that specific area where the oil went and where the dispersants were poured into. They can't fish there anymore, right? Like I said before, fisheries areas are zoned for different quotas and fishermen have to go in those areas, they can't fish there anymore, who's going to eat shrimp that comes from there, who's going to eat snapper that comes from there, right? Nobody's going to want to eat it. So how are those fishermen supposed to survive when that's all they, that's the only only place they can go? So the government has to figure that out. So the need for enforcing specific measures and is not only just to help protect the environments to help protect other ocean users, nobody's going to swim on a beach where you get these big tar balls coming in, who wants to do that, right? So that example really showed how ocean users can be conflicted and how one ocean user can affect the other if they're not doing the proper things. Now the Deepwater Horizon fiasco was a problem with maintenance and the fact is the government didn't put the measures in place to make sure that the Deepwater Horizon inspected their deep water, I don't even know what it was called, but the mechanism that allowed for this leak to happen, it was really faulty and it needed to be inspected often and it needed to be fixed and they didn't fix it and that was the big problem. So what do you do? Now you've affected all these other ocean users, recreational, fishermen, the environment, and you come away with a slap on the wrist or how do you find them? Do you find them just based on the environmental damage or do you find them based on all the damage for all the fishermen and all the other users that lose money, the tourism community, the fishing community, how do you sort of help them out because they're out of business for the while and we don't know the effects of how long these effects will last. It's already been five years and we're still finding effects, these different effects that come up and then people say it could be 10 to 20 years before the effects were off. That's just with one spill. So the need for enforcement, the need for planning is necessary. It's a huge part of the process and without it, it really doesn't count but you need stakeholders to get together and chat and talk about all the risks that they take, all the things that they want to be aware of and all the things that they want the network or bring and protect areas to have. So specific zones are zoned properly to protect their rights as much as the environments. So once we have those in place, once the marine protect areas come in place, once the regulations for species at risk and the protections for species at risk come in place, once we have the proper tools to manage fisheries, the proper tools to manage water quality come into place, then we are set. Right? Wrong. Now we got to enforce it because now we got to make sure that people are taking this seriously. It is very difficult on the oceans to manage boundaries because these boundaries are invisible when you are out on the ocean. When you are in a marine protected area, unless you know the location of that marine protected area, you don't know you are in it. Right? Of course with GPS and everything like that, once you know the boundaries, you can tell whether you are in a marine protected area or not. So you have to act accordingly. So how do you monitor that? How do you monitor who enters a marine protected area, who doesn't? Now you can have coast guards go out or coast guard type ships go out and monitor that marine protected area every once in a while, but you can't do it all the time. Just the coast guards aren't built for that. A ship, a coast guard ship costs a lot of money whether in the US, Canada, it doesn't matter where you are. They cost a lot of money and you need to make sure that you have enough boats for other things, like I said, at the beginning of the show, there are other priorities for coast guard. So you can't be there all the time. So you have to monitor ships somehow and you can't just monitor your own ships, you got to monitor ships from other places that are coming in because now with the way globalization is, you are getting ships that are importing products and other materials and you need to make sure that you know where they are from and you have to identify them and they come in and out. So you have this thing now called the automatic identification system, it's the AIS and it's not mandatory, it's volunteer, I think they try to make it mandatory, but a lot of ships have it, it's an AIS, so it's basically a number that gets pinned with a GPS signal. So it tells you the name of the ship, the AIS number, the AIS number, the information has where they were, where they were, what do you call it, where they're from essentially, where they were registered, where, and where they were at that time that got pinned. So the latin longitudes, so the position of where they are in the globe. And you get that every so often, whatever interval it is. And I've worked with data like this to manage where ships go and where the major traffic routes are to look at, you know, based on NPA's. And you know, it's great because there's a lot of ships, there's a lot of data for it and there's a lot of ships that do that. So you can track where these ships are going. So if there's a marine protected area somewhere and you see a bunch of ships going there, not only can you track where they're going, but you can track the speed at which they're going. So you can see if they go a certain, you know, you can basically track it by because there's a time stamp on each ping so that there's a location and a time stamp. So from the two locations, you can essentially estimate the speed at which they were going to reach the location from another location. So when they enter a marine protected area, and if they slow down, usually slowing down means they're fishing or they're doing something, either fishing or they're trying to transfer cargo from one boat to another. You can tell when they slow down. So if they're in a marine protected area and they slow down, you can kind of track it. You can kind of think that, oh, wait, we should go look and we should go see what they're doing. Maybe they have gear in the water and they're fishing in this area. You know, in Canada, there was a huge problem back in the '90s, I believe. And maybe even early 2000s where they had Portuguese fishing boats coming into our economics zone, into Canada's economics zone to fish for cod. And this was, there was a moratorium on cod. So the coast guard had to go out every once in a while and really, you know, back them down because they kept fishing in there. And that was a big problem. It became a big international problem with, you know, with Portugal between Canada and Portugal, because the Portuguese ships kept coming over. Now these weren't government ships, but they were fishing vessels. So it was a big problem. But it was because of that satellite information, because of that AIS, that we actually were able to track them where they were. But fortunately, it doesn't necessarily happen in real time, or it could happen, but we, you know, the enforcement people for the fishing do not have access to that real-time data. So it's always in the past, so the damage is already done before the ship is actually caught. And maybe the ship doesn't come into Canadian port, maybe it goes to a different port and you can't catch them. So that makes it difficult. Great monitoring makes it difficult because of that, it's not necessarily real-time data. So you can't see it actually happening, you can't send a Coast Guard vessel. Even if you do, by the time you get out there, it's very difficult to do so, right? It's very difficult to get out there in time to catch that vessel in the act. It doesn't mean they can't catch them with the cargo, right? But they can't catch them, right? They can't get out there in time. So they may be gone by the time they get out there. It's not easy to get out there quickly, especially when you're talking about, you know, the Grand Banks, you know, where it could be rough sometimes, you know, and off the coast of Newfoundland, and you get rough and it's hard to get out there fast. You know, don't get me wrong, the Coast Guard boats can really get out there, and helicopters can get out there, but it's very difficult. So enforcement is not easy. It can be very difficult. And that's the big challenge of enforcing something, especially in the ocean, is getting out there and being there to witness these things. Some other countries have taken it to the next level, you know, instead of kind of putting their hands up and saying, okay, you know, we can't get out there in time, we can't catch them. Indonesia are blowing the boats up simply just blowing the boats up. They are sending a missile from land or from one of their ships. I'm not sure exactly how and they're just essentially blowing these ships up. They see boats come in illegally to Indonesian waters. I guess they ask them what they're doing, the ship doesn't respond, they give them a warning and boom, ships blown up and gone because these fishermen keep coming in illegally fishing and going away, right? And then of course, the Indonesian fishermen pay the price because they can't fish as much because of all the illegal fishing. It hurts their local economy for fishing, which I'm sure in Indonesia is a huge thing. So they're blowing them up. Now do I agree with it? No. It kind of, I don't agree with any kind of violence or trying to hurt anybody doing this kind of stuff, but if they're not listening and it's a law, you know, different countries act different ways and it's very important and the fisheries are very important in Indonesia. So you know, they're going to act accordingly. So it's, you know, it's kind of different when, you know, when you go to that level, that's more of an extreme level. But sometimes you have to do that. Maybe setting that example, those ships are blown up as an example, maybe they'll deter people from coming back and trying to fish there. Right? I don't know. I'm not sure. I hope it does because I hope not, I hope like you'd be pretty dumb if you were a fisherman now and go into and fish illegally in Indonesian waters, whether you're Indonesian or not. You know, that's not a smart idea because you're basically going to get blown out of the water by their navy or by their, their, whatever it is, their military. Now on the high seas where there's no real regulation for any kind of countries, you have some organizations that are kind of making aggressive moves. Sea Shepherd is one of them. You know, they definitely deter the Japanese from their whale hunt, their annual whale hunt, and they reduce the amount of whales, whether you like the way they do it, they ram boats. They try and get in their way. They get in between their heart, the boat and the whale when they, when the Japanese are hunting down a whale with a harpoon. And they essentially, some, some years they've been able to really reduce the amount of catch. And then other years they haven't been, but they're an organization out there and hell bent on stopping the Japanese from doing, from, from getting any more whales. And to be honest, they're one of the only type of organizations that are doing that. There are others out there. However, they're really leading the way. You know, they had a TV show on, they were very popularized because of it. And you know, you wonder, you know, at first you hear about it, and you're like, ah, sea shepherd, you know, they're, they ram boats, and they're, they're kind of like the cowboys of the sea. And are they really doing some great things, they're using violence, which I don't agree with this map, but then all of a sudden the Japanese turn tail and run when they, they say, well, you know, sea seperate are making it too difficult for us to, to hunt whales. And they're causing problems and it's unsafe for our people to be out there. So we're going to bring them back without catching the quota that we wanted to. And then as a brain biologist and conservation, secretly like, yay, you know, but, you know, you still don't agree with the methods that they do it, but they're effective. And now they're turning and I, and I'm not saying now that they're turning because they, you know, they might have been doing it in the past, but they're getting more recognition for catching and hunting down illegal fishing boats. And then what they do is they don't ram them necessarily, but they track them down and then there was a one story where they tracked them down, they followed them, and then they named the boat. And then when the boat got to the closest port, they called that country, sea shepherd called that country and told them that boat was coming in with the legal cargo and they got, they got, they got, you know, they got arrested or, you know, unfortunate was able to be put in. So you have this organization that's out there monitoring the high seas, which is expensive because they've got these ships that can handle the high seas, which is not an easy place to be, ask any, any person that's been in its seat. And they're out there almost a year long, you know, running shifts, trying to, trying to enforce all the laws that have been, the international laws that have been enforced. And I'll tell you, they pay for it. You know, a lot of people hate them. And a lot of people, a lot of countries hate them because they're paying their butt, but they're effective. Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with some of their methods, but God damn, they're effective. You know, and you just kind of like secretly again, you're like, you know, you did it. You know, and because nobody else is, and it's very difficult from the, from like a United Nations point of view, which are supposed to be that international body, the body that's made up of a number of countries that are supposed to get together and really handle these international policies, because not really laws because nobody can enforce them. You know, you have probably like, they can't enforce these laws because they're really governed by nobody and United Nations don't really have that kind of traction to persecute somebody unless you've done something really bad and I'm talking about war crimes and things like that. So it's difficult to enforce that, you know, and this organization is this, it's not a huge organization. So they can only be in certain places at a time like the Sea Shepherd Society is small compared to looking at the entire ocean. They can't be everywhere at once. They have a lot of volunteers and yes, they are very dedicated. And if you talk bad about Sea Shepherd, you are going to get smacked down or they're going to try anyway. They're going to come back with the rebuttals. They're very passionate about Sea Shepherd, but they can't be everywhere at once. And that makes it very challenging for other organizations and for countries that are trying to implement these things. You know, gill nets being left places and, you know, of course, entanglement being a huge problem in the world, let alone the US, you know, but what's good is that you have tools now like the Magnus and Stevenson Act in the United States, which is the Fisheries Act. You have Fisheries Act in Canada, which of course is the Fisheries Act to protect fishing and fisheries and fishermen and the environment. And what it does, both all of them really kind, especially the Magnus and Stevens Act, really brings things towards the commercial fisheries towards more sustainability and they're slowly bringing that within their borders. So these tools make it better to focus on, you know, these tools allow fishing to hopefully become better within the area, but that has to be enforced. So if you're caught illegally fishing, you know, you got to be enforced. There was a story that I covered a long time ago where a fisherman was out and I believe it was in New England area, so I'm going to say North US, so that's the Western Atlantic. And he was out, you know, trawling, midwater, trawling, and he caught a massive tuna, wasn't trying to catch the tuna, but the tuna got entangled in the net. When they brought it up, you know, it was entangled in that net and they brought it aboard and they brought it towards the docks saying, well, you know, we caught it in our trawle, but they're not allowed to. You can only catch tuna if you have a license and if you catch it by rod and reel and or I think yeah, there's specific areas and I'm sure it was what rod and reel, but you couldn't catch it through a net. So when he got to the to the dock, you know, a fisheries officer heard about this came by and find them and took possession of the tuna because you weren't allowed to catch it. And there's a big issue in the news saying, well, you know, I caught it in my net, I should be able to, you know, bring up a board and bring it home, but no, you couldn't now tuna goes for these massive, this was a big tuna, you know, 700 pound tuna and they go for like it can go for $100,000. So this is a big catch for this fisherman, but he wasn't allowed to because he didn't do it properly, you know, and so when it comes to the dock, there's our, there are fisheries officers that are enforcing those laws when they bring back to the dock. Now, this guy wasn't necessarily trying to do something illegal. He was trying to just make do with what he caught. He's saying, look, this fish was dead, I'm trying to bring it a board and I'm going to bring it home and I'm going to sell it because what's the, what's the other point? But now if you put it back in the water, the tuna is dead, yes, but it also provides food for other fish and other marine animals. So if that tuna died naturally or for whatever reason in the ocean, it would have provided food and maybe habitats for a lot of different parts of the food web. So you have to think about nap kind of case as well. You feel bad for the fisherman because maybe his neck got destroyed or his day was done, but that was the rules and the fisheries officers on those docks were able to enforce those rules and that's what their whole point is and there are there all the time. Now another way of enforcement are fisheries observers and marine mammal observers as well. Now fisheries observers are there, these are scientists that are put aboard based, you know, basically they represent the government regulators when they're put aboard and they take information on each catch that the fisheries boat do. So they put on fishing boats of the fleets and they go out and the fleets fish and these fisheries officers take measurements and they track the species and the weight and all this and the length and everything and then they report on any illegal activity. Now of course most of the time everything is fine, but this could put the fisheries observer in a very, very shady predicament and in fact one, we covered a story earlier this year where one fisherman was, or one fisheries observer went missing at sea in South America and that was, you know, for the conservation community, that's a huge loss because what is that saying about fisheries observers? What is that saying about, you know, what is that saying about the protection of those fisheries observers aboard a fishing boat? You know, I think it's one of those things, you know, where it's a little dangerous, but they're there to enforce, you know, this thing, they're there to enforce, you know, the fact that there could be illegal fishing. So if you put him on there, Keith Davis, probably, by the way, I just looked up, Keith Davis was his name and he was 41 years old and he was reported missing and essentially presumed dead at sea, but he was, you know, a very seasoned fisheries observer. But I mean, you know, what it does when you put fisheries observer on the boat and they were supposed to report illegal fishing or take down nodes for science and allow, you know, I don't know if this is part of the Magnuson Stevens Act, but I think it is, but they allow essentially scientific monitoring of any kind of commercial fisheries population and any kind of bycatch. And so then, you know, you have this person on board that's actually making sure you're not going to illegally fish, so it reduces the amount of illegal fishing that happens in coastal waters in the US coastal waters. So you have fisheries observers, you have fisheries officers that are government employees that are along the docks when they come back when the fishermen come home. So you have these areas that are actually regulated. So that's another way of enforcement is from land and things like that. Other ways of enforcement for pollution are when there's coastal development happening or any kind of development happening, especially near rivers and streams and, of course, the ocean. There's going to be there's going to be a potential for sediment or any kind of soil or anything that to be put into these streams more than usual and that goes into the streams and ends up being going into the ocean or a lake that can really disrupt the coastal habitats. If you if there's in the air, say on the ocean along the coast, there is a seagrass bed that's a nursery habitat for a lot of small juvenile fish and invertebrates. And all of a sudden you have upstream, you have in the rivers, you have a coastal development that's happening. And then a bunch of sediment gets put into that area into that river and it ends up depositing over that seagrass bed, killing everything, killing the seagrasses, killing that habitat, fish won't go there anymore. That could affect the fisheries out in the ocean, you know, that could affect just the diversity of that area, that could be a prime nursery habitat. So you have to protect that. So there are fisheries officers, a lot of times there are consultants or they're actually, you know, they're, depending on the government and depending on the country, there's actually different bodies that are allowed to govern this or regulate this. So they'll be sent out to these sites, these construction sites, and they're going to monitor the preventative measures that are taken by, or that were agreed upon before the project was put in by the construction company. And they'll be fines put out if they're not, they're not doing anything about it. Or if they're putting, or if they're legally dumping materials and chemicals into the water. So these are the different ways that the oceans are kind of enforced. And yes, there are challenges, they're getting better as we probably implement them more. There's a lot of now local communities that are self-governing themselves. So you have leaders of the community that are going out and ensuring that, you know, people aren't doing what they're not supposed to be doing, especially like small island communities, you know, where they teach people to essentially become officers and monitor the area for illegal fishing or people doing what they're not supposed to be doing based on the protected area. And some of these small island communities, I've heard that it's not necessarily the law that protects them, but essentially, if you don't do it, you know, you're a small community. People know who you are. And you know, sometimes it gets violent and sometimes you get shunned. So there's more of an incentive to abide by those rules and making sure that you don't have to be worried about being enforced because you don't want to be. Other places, a lot of developed places, larger places will sit down fines, will sit down laws, sometimes imprisonment, very little time imprisonment, if at all. But the laws in place that happen, they'll take away quotas, they'll take away licenses, take away boats, you know, which is, you know, for fishermen, if they're living, oil and gas will be heavily fined, of course, BP oil got heavily fined, whether they paid it at all, I don't know yet, but I believe it was four and a half billion at the beginning of what they're fine was they tried to get it reduced, but they didn't. You know, so there's a lot of, you know, there are tools in place to ensure that enforcement is done. You know, it's difficult to tell, and of course, we've talked about today, we've talked about all the different challenges that are going on, and it just, it's very difficult, very difficult to enforce these challenges. Now of course, a lot of these laws have really allowed a lot of populations to bounce back. The Marine Mammal Protection Act has really bounced back when we had Chris Lowe from the shark lab come on, he was talking about how all these various Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Fish, the Magnets and Stevens Act, all these other little tools that have come into place, allowed the sea lions population to really bounce back after a real low in the 1920s. Now they've bounced back where they're just everywhere and it's allowed the shark, great white shark population, to increase because there's more food availability. So the shark population is doing better. So all of these have, you know, a cascading effect, so these tools, and as long as they can be enforced, some are easier to enforce than others, as long as they can be enforced, then, you know, you're doing right by the ocean. So anyway, that's our show today. That's how I'm going to end it, because once you put the tools in place and you're able to enforce them, and like I said, some are easier to enforce than others, that's really where it counts. That's really where it counts. And I want to put this episode together to give you an idea of the challenges that regulators and that the government's face, and that ocean practitioners face, and the frustrations that we feel as marine ecologists, and scientists, and conservationists, when we can't enforce something, or people get away with murder, you know, disappearing fisheries observers, not illegal fishing acts, and so forth, it's very frustrating because they get away with it, and of course, what pays are the people who are trying to protect it, and of course, the people who are trying to, you know, do right by the ocean and protect the ocean, right? So you get very frustrating at times, but I want to give you guys an idea of where we are with enforcement. And of course, there's probably a lot of different ways we can enforce, and people are coming up with innovative ideas by the day, especially as technology increases to our benefit, and more access is given to satellite imagery, more real-time data is being used by governments, and we're getting better and better drone capabilities as well, can help monitor the coast and everything like that. So we have a bunch of links for you at the show notes that you can read, a lot of different organizations, a lot of papers that have been written. I urge you to go to those show notes at SpeakUpForBlue.com/session144 to go see these links, read them, do the research, contact your local regulator authority, NOAA, National Marine, sanctuaries, all those places will give you an idea of what they're going through, and what kind of systems they have in place for enforcement. Sea turtles get enforced with the US Fisheries and Wildlife. Once you find a sea turtle nest, you report it, and they come and they protect it, and it's actually very heavily regulated and enforced, because it's on beaches that it's a lot easier to enforce. And if you mess up with those nests or you try and post those eggs, especially in the US, you will get, you will get fine, heavily fine, right, maybe you see some jail time. So you know, like I said, land-based things are a little easier to enforce, high seas and ocean-based things are a little harder. These are the challenges we face people, and the more you know now, the better it is in the future. So thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. Like I said, go to the show notes. Check out the links. You can check out also the Speak Up For Blue TV channel on YouTube. I've relaunched it. I'll be putting out -- I've got six episodes that I'm about to edit. They're not wonderful, and I apologize for it. I just hope they're entertaining. I hope they're informational. I'm going to try and do my best to improve. And shoot me up, hit us up on the contacts on our website, SpeakUpForBlue.com. Let me know what I can do better, your thoughts. I'm always up for criticism and taking some constructive criticism to see how I can better the channel. But anyway, that's it for us today. Thank you very much for listening. You've been listening to Speak Up For Blue -- sorry, I'll start that again. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Speak Up For Blue podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Monday. Happy week. And we'll see you on Wednesday. We have an interview with some researchers who have put together a sea turtle app to monitor sea turtles for citizen science. It's going to be really cool. That's going to come out Wednesday. But thank you very much for listening. We'll talk to you on Wednesday. Thank you for everything. Happy Monday and happy conservation. [music] (upbeat music)
