How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 051: Driftnets Killing Marine Wildlife Along California Coasts
Driftnets are killing 83% bycatch in a fishery targeting 2 species, according to Todd Steiner in a guest commentary in the Monterey Herald. The state government allows the use of driftnets because the pressure from the commercial fishing industry won't let them stop.
Listen to the podcast to find out the details and how many species are being killed that aren't the 2 targeted species.
Shop for the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/shop
10 Ocean Tips to Conserve the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/wordpress/sufb_optinpdf
Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session51
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, Session 51. Today I'm going to talk about one of the biggest killers off the coast of California. Stay tuned for this episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast to find out what that is. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he thinks that Vaquita is the most adorable mammal on the planet, Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder of Speak Up For Blue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. That's right, everything I do in this business, in my life as an entrepreneur, I do it for the ocean. I raise money for the ocean, I support organizations for the ocean, and I partner with organizations to help them do their job in supporting their ocean, or complete their job in supporting the ocean. There's a lot of collaborations here in the ocean conservation industry. Today I've got an interesting episode, it's Monday, first of all, Happy Monday, I hope you had a great weekend. I had a wonderful weekend, took the kids to the Santa Claus Parade, which is always fun. It's been a tradition in my life, ever since I was a kid, and we continue to do that with my kids, I bring them into Toronto, we stay over at my parents' house, have a great weekend, and today was a beautiful day for that parade. Anyway, the one of the bad things that actually happened on the weekend is my fantasy pool sucked. My fantasy football pool sucked, as usual, I can't pick them. The ones that I do pick, they just end up not turning out the day that I want them to turn out. Anyway, I digress. An interesting episode for you today, I just came across this article off the Monterey Herald. It was an article that's a guest commentary by Todd Steiner, who is the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. Pretty big, well, it's a huge organization, but they do a lot of great work in the Monterey Bay area, as well as in Central America, and helping restore sea turtle habitat and continue and persist their populations. He had an interesting article about drift nets, and we're going to talk about that today. First, I just kind of want to have an ad that we have for Speak Up for Blue. I'm going to start bringing in ads. If you've been listening to the podcast before, I haven't really brought ads in. This is our own ad for Speak Up for Blue, and it goes a little something like this. Have you ever felt that overwhelming feeling when you first get into ocean conservation, and you wonder, what can I do to help improve the ocean, help make a better ocean, help live for a better ocean, and you hear about all the issues that are hitting the ocean, you hear about climate change, you hear about ocean acidification, you hear about plastic pollution, you hear about sea level rise, all these different things over fishing, all these different aspects and issues that are hitting the ocean, and you think, "Oh my gosh, this is too overwhelming. I can't deal with it all. Where do I begin?" Well, this is what Speak Up for Blue is all about. We tell you where you can begin, but we also have one mechanism, a tool in our tool about that will help you and us help others, our partners, save the ocean and protect the ocean through their way. We've partnered with sea turtles forever. It's a great organization, a very small organization that helps protect sea turtles by protecting their nest down in Central America from poachers. Also works with local communities to help improve ecotourism and help establish ecotourism activities down there because they actually found that ecotourism activities are more sustainable for the local community, plus they help protect sea turtles. They also have a really innovative tool that helps clean up microplastics from beaches, and microplastics can get into sea turtles' mouths, kill them, they can get into a lot of marine mammals, a lot of fish, all sorts of different animals, seabirds and kill them, and they're actually responsible for killing over 100,000 species a year. So they have a very innovative tool to grab those, filter them out in a beach cleanup, and it's so innovative and so great and it works so well that state governments are starting to implement them in their beach cleanup. So we're helping them financially through this tool that we've created to expand their reach around the world and help them do more and more things through their organization. So what we've done is we've established some merchandise. We've established a store, I should say, that we sell some merch. Right? You always have to have merchandise. You have to profess that you want to protect the ocean. You can do so by buying our merch on our online store at speakupforblue.com/shop. All you do is you just go on this on this shop. You buy the shirt and all the revenue after cost goes towards sea turtles forever. I write a check at the end of every month and we provide that to this great ocean conservation. Mark Ward is the head and president of this organization I've known for a few years and I was really happy when he accepted that we partner together so that we can do some great work together. So all the proceeds of everything that's bought on the shop will go towards our partner sea turtles forever. You can get more information on our partners page, speakupforblue.com/partners. But really go to the shop, buy your items, it's almost Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving. It's almost Christmas time, buy it for your friends, buy it for your family members, buy it for yourself. Show that you are ready to wear a shirt or you're ready to drink a travel mug or a mug at home that says keep calm and conserve the ocean or protect sharks or protect whales and it really drives a conversation with other people of why you have those items and what you're trying to establish what you're trying to do in your life. So that is a great way to do so. But anyway, let's get back to the show. I really appreciate you guys listening in. I really do thank you. Thank you for all your reviews, all your ratings. I really appreciate we're moving up in the store, we're gaining a bigger reach and today we're going to talk about one of the biggest tools or one of the biggest things that are killing species in or off the coast of California, which are drift nets. So like I said before, I found this article in the Monterey Herald. So Monterey Bay, California, and this is by Todd Steiner, who's the executive director of the Seattle Island, or the Sea Turtle Island network, I think that's what it's called. Yeah, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, I'm sorry, Turtle Island Restoration Network. And he talks about how drift nets are destroying the ecosystem, the wildlife, they're killing the wildlife off the coast of California. It's a very interesting article talking about how the UN banned the use of gill nets, of drift nets, sorry, banned the use of drift nets back in 1994. And a lot of other states followed that from the US, Oregon and Washington state, which are on the west coast followed that. Florida followed it as well. And then in another country, even Russia, however, California never followed that. And to be honest, he says the reason why was there's a big fishing community in California and it has a strong lobby, and I guess the pressure from that lobby trying to keep this drift net fishery open was too much for the politicians to say, "Okay, no, we're going to, we are going to ban drift nets," which they didn't. So the big species that they're trying to catch are shark and swordfish, thresher shark to be more specific. Okay, so before we get into what the damage it really causes, let's talk about what a drift net is. Essentially, a drift net is about 200 foot wide net that is nearly invisible, and it has a specific mesh size to catch specific animals. So this one here probably have a fairly large mesh size because they're trying to catch thresher sharks and swordfish. It's a mile long, 200 foot wide net. So it's quite long, quite wide, and it can catch a lot of items. Now if you think about it, if you just place this, a lot of times what they call ghost nets because it's so thin, but it's also because they get left quite a bit or they get lost at sea and it just entangles animals. But if you think about this, it's just this one big net that is targeted to catch two species, but there are other species, many other species in the Pacific that are the same size as a thresher and a swordfish, they're very big fish. So you're going to get marine mammals that are caught there, you're going to get sea turtles that are caught there, and the damage is just immense. Drift nets, they also call them curtains of death. Like I said before, we're banned by the United Nations in 1994. Other states followed, even Russia followed with the ban. Of course, they're still used illegally at times, but when they're not in California, they weren't banned, so they're still allowed to be used. Now what the take is, this is just amazing. Over the last decade, there's been more than 500 whales, dolphins, and sea turtles that have been drowned after getting tangled in these meganets. And what happens is, they get tangled, whales, sea turtles, dolphins, they need to breathe air. If they get tangled in a net, they can't get to the surface to actually breathe in air. So they eventually just drowned, it's quite a horrible way to die. And they said, additionally, over 80,000 giant ocean sunfish and 8,000 blue sharks were caught and discarded during the last 10 years. So they were caught, they died, and they were discarded over the last 10 years. And they said an estimated 16 endangered sperm whales have been fatally injured over the last decade out of an estimated 300 individuals remaining in California waters. So you have 16 of 300 that are died because of these drift net. That's 16 animals that might have reproduced, 16 animals that could have made this population grow even more. But because they got entangled with these drift nets that are really targeted for two other species, these animals died, this population is even more endangered than it was before these drift nets were put in place. And the problem is, is more than 83% of the ocean life caught is neither swordfish nor thresher shark in these drift nets. So the targeted species is less than 20%, it's only 17% of the actual catch. So this is a very wasteful way of catching species. And to be honest, the fishery itself is actually not that economical, according to this article, it doesn't really go into the actual numbers, which I'm a little cautious to say that it's not very economical, but it doesn't really go into the, into detail into the article. There are fewer than 20, what it does say is there are fewer than 20 vessels remain in this archaic fishery providing few jobs and little income in comparison businesses like whale watching and diving companies create recreational opportunities for tens of thousands of Americans generating jobs and contributing to more contributing more than 10 times the value of this fishery to California's economy. And it says it kind of gives a little shot who comes to California to watch dead marine life. And it's got a point, we're finding a lot of things now, a lot of the extractive processes like fishing, poaching, these sort of things tend to be worth less money to the local community than something like whale watching, right? Or something kind of diving or some kind of ecotourism kind of way. It's a less invasive way of doing things, of course, more sustainable, obviously, but it also generates more money because you're having more animals around to view. And in California, it's a huge migration area for marine mammals. There's lots of seals, lots of sea lions, lots of gray whales, humpback whales, obviously sperm whales. So these animals are there and it's great for wildlife viewing and ecotourism business, which is kind of follows into my, what I know about California, kind of follows their mantra, right? It's known as a more economic or eco-friendly state. So I'm very surprised that they allow drift, they still allow drift nets to be placed. And the other problem with drift nets, I kind of alluded to it earlier is some drift nets are never recovered. So they just, they just kind of hang there, you know, they're set at a specific depth and they just kind of hang there and, and then they eventually kill these species, but then nobody retrieves them. So they're killed for nothing, right, because these nets are either lost or they're floating around and they, and they can never be recovered because one, it's hard to see. And if it's off, if it goes off a mooring or it goes off a buoy that's set out to, to mark these, these nets, then the fishermen can't retrieve them. So that happens quite a bit, they get snagged on something, they get cut down or something like that. And they end up killing a lot more species in the long run. And then those species never get eaten, never get used for anything. It's almost just like a waste of life. Now I'm not necessarily pro commercial fishing in that corner away where it's like, Oh, well, at least we get to eat them. But I know it does sustain a lot of the population of the world. And we do require fish right now for many parts of the world as a protein source. I'm not saying everybody has to have fish, but many people in the world need to have fish, maybe not in developed countries, but other countries where fishing is abundant and a lot more artisanal, not necessarily commercial fishing. You know, sometimes you hear of commercial fishing, they're trying to gain as much as many fish as possible sell it to the markets and then gain as profit gain a profit where a lot of the people who eat fish are sometimes, most of the time just fish it themselves and then eat it themselves. So there's artisanal fishing and commercial fishing, which have obviously a big, big difference. So now there was last year a California assemblyman, Paul Fong, introduced legislation to phase out the California driftnet fishery, but it was an uphill battle. And due to strong influence from the commercial fishing industry, it didn't really go well. But now there's a coalition environmental organization that's pressing the Pacific Fisheries Marine Council, which is the council, sort of like a government body or a combination of a government body that's really trying to phase this fishery out. So we'll see what happens this Sunday coming out of this article was posted. Let's just see, I think it's this Sunday. Oh, maybe even it was, yeah, it was yesterday. So we'll see, I'll try to see if I can get what happened in that article, but this was posted on Saturday, November 14th. So we'll see if that actually, if that bill went through or if they had actually got put on the agenda or talked about it and see what the article, what the results are of the meeting. But we're hoping that they start to phase out this driftnet fishery. If you think about it, if it doesn't generate that much money into the economy and it kills a lot more species that does generate more into the economy, just based on the economy, it makes sense to take this driftnet fishery out. I mean, you can use a lot of those, and I'm not an expert in terms of environmental economy and whatnot. But a lot of times what's happened is fishermen have been trained, like when a fishery's taken out, fishermen have been trained to do other things like ecotourism or something else that will actually be an alternative source of revenue for their living so that they don't have to, they're not poor, they're not looking for things to do or looking for a different fishery to try and sustain their family, feed their families and sustain a living. So we're hoping that this does get phased out. We're hoping that the fishermen who right now, the fewer than 20 boats that actually go out and do this driftnet can actually get a new career or some sort of new revenue from this ban or whatever is generated from it. But really what we're looking to do on top of this is protect the fishery or just protect the wildlife and protect the ecosystem on the Pacific coast. There are enough things that are affecting habitats and wildlife in the ocean right now. We don't need to put in things that are not really giving a lot back. So these fisheries should just be taken out, in my opinion, anyway, in my professional opinion. And the people who are doing the fishery should be taken care of by being trained for some type of alternative business should they choose so. So that's it for me today. If you want to know more about what you can do for the ocean, you can go and you can shop on our shop. It's speakerforblue.com/shop, get some merch, support a great organization in the Sea Turtles Forever organization, they do some great work protecting sea turtles down south by protecting their nests. And they also do a great beach cleanup, they have some pretty innovative tools to clean up some microplastics that state governments are actually implementing in their beach cleanup process. So they're doing really great work, they are a small organization, they're always looking for funds and we as a community, as a company, as a social entrepreneur and a social enterprise and as a community that really wants to do something about the ocean, you can do so by going to speakerforblue.com/shop, buying some of our merchandise, making more people aware of whoever sees your shirts, your travel mugs, your iPhone cases, your home at home mugs, really strike up a conversation plus support a great organization in one of our partners. If you want to know more about our partners, you can go speak upforblue.com/partners and you can find out more about Sea Turtles Forever right there. So that's it for me today, I hope you have a great Monday, a great start to your week. Down with drift nets is what I have to say in final. We don't need them anymore, they're just a havoc on our ecosystem. But again, like I said, that's it for me today, I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. You've been listening to the speaker for Blue Podcast, happy conservation.