Seaspiracy Highlights - Part 3

THE LARGEST TRAWL NETS ARE SO BIG THAT THEY CAN SWALLOW WHOLE CATHEDRALS OR UP TO 13 JUMBO JETS

EVERY YEAR 25 MILLION ACRES OF FOREST ARE LOST, EQUIVALENT TO LOSING ABOUT 27 SOCCER FIELDS PER MINUTE

BOTTOM TRAWLERS WIPE OUT 3.9 BILLION ACRES PER YEAR, EQUIVALENT TO LOSING 4,316 SOCCER FIELDS PER MINUTE OR THE LAND AREA OF...

Dr. Les Watling & Dr. Elliott Norse calculated that each year, worldwide, bottom trawlers drag an area equivalent to twice the lower 48 states of the U.S.
​
United States lower 48 states = 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2)

x2 = 6239769.38 square miles or 16160928.6 km2
 
Equivalent to: 3,993,452,426.567 ACRES (3.9 Billion Acres)

Also equivalent to the land area of:

UK: 59921819.5 acres,                    

France, 159086692 acres,

Spain: 125032852 acres

Germany: 88221810.4 acres

Italy:  74462241.4 acres

Sweden:  110563596 acres

Finland: 83626391.6 acres

Norway: 95185734.3 acres

Portugal : 22786081 acres

Denmark: 10648759 acres

Iceland: 25451854.3 acres

Japan: 93398915.2 acres

Greenland: 535230256.3 acres

Mexico:  485314969.2 acres

Thailand : 126794713 acres

Australia : 1900734594 acres

1 soccer field = approx. 1.76 acres

Minutes in a year: 525,600

Therefore, 3,993,452,426 divided by 525,600 (mins per year) = 7597.89274353 acres per minute.

Then, divide that by 1.76 acres (soccer field size) =

4,316.98 Soccer fields per min

MANY RESEARCHERS BELIEVE WE SHOULD BE PROTECTING 30% OF OUR OCEAN

ONLY 5% OF THE OCEAN ARE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS

90% OF THE 5% OF MARINE PROTECTED AREAS STILL ALLOW FISHING

SIERRA CLUB DIDN'T WANT TO COME OUT AGAINST HUNTING ETC. BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY WOULD LOSE MEMBERSHIP SUPPORT IF THEY DID

OVER 80% OF THE INCOME OF THE MSC COMES FROM LICENSING THEIR "SUSTAINABLE" LABELS

IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA 18 FISHERIES OBSERVERS WENT MISSING WITHIN LESS THAN FIVE YEARS

THE FISHING INDUSTRY RECEIVES $35 BILLION IN SUBSIDIES.

COMPARATIVELY IT WOULD ONLY COST $30 BILLION TO COMBAT WORLD HUNGER.
​
IN THE UNITED STATES ONE IN THREE WILD CAUGHT FISH IMPORTED IS CAUGHT ILLEGALLY

APPROX. 24,000 FISHERIES WORKERS DIE EVERY YEAR IN FISHERY RELATED JOBS
 
WEST AFRICAN CANOE FISHERMEN HAVE THE HIGHEST MORTALITY RATES OF ANY FISHERIES JOB ON EARTH

FOREIGN SUBSIDIZED FISHING IN WEST AFRICA CONTRIBUTED TO THE CAUSE OF THE EBOLA EPIDEMIC

THE INDUSTRY CLAIM ONLY 1.2KG OF FEED IS NEEDED TO PRODUCE 1KG OF FARMED SALMON. HOWEVER THE FEED IS MADE UP OF DRIED FISH MEAL AND PROCESSED OIL WHICH HIDE THE TRUE WEIGHT OF FISH BEING USED.

TODAY 50% OF THE WORLD'S SEAFOOD IS FARM-RAISED

EACH SALMON FARM IN SCOTLAND PRODUCES AS MUCH ORGANIC WASTE EQUIVALENT TO A TOWN OF BETWEEN 10 AND 20,000 PEOPLE EACH YEAR

UP TO 50% OF FARMED SALMON DIE FROM EGG TO PLATE

FARMED FISH CAN GET ANEMIA, LICE INFESTATIONS, INFECTIOUS DISEASES, CHLAMYDIA AND HEART DISEASE

FARMED SALMON HAVE COLOR ADDED THROUGH FEED (ASTAXANTHIN) TO MAKE THEIR FLESH ORANGE/PINK

38% OF THE MANGROVE DEFORESTATION WORLDWIDE IS CAUSED BY SHRIMP FARMING

SOMEWHERE IN THE REGION OF 51,000+ FISHING BOATS OPERATE IN THAI WATERS

FISH HAVE THE CAPACITY TO EXPERIENCE PAIN AND FEAR

HERRINGS COMMUNICATE BY FLATULENCE

FISH CONTAIN HEAVY METALS, MERCURY, DIOXINS, PLASTIC COMPOUNDS, HEXACHLOROBENZENES AND PCB'S

THE CONTAMINANTS IN FISH OFTEN OUTWEIGH THE BENEFITS OF OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS

FISH DON'T MAKE OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS, ALGAE DO

THE RUN-OFF FROM TRADITIONAL ANIMAL AGRICULTURE IMPACTS THE OCEAN BY CREATING DEAD ZONES

So those are all of the highlights from the documentary, in my next blog I will give the response from Greenpeace and what we can all do next!

It is a very good and interesting documentary, for me the bottom line is that commercial fishing is out of control in many ways and something needs to be done to slow down the effects.  As a family we have decided to not eat tuna fish anymore. There is so much information available and it is very confusing, so we decided to think logically and one thing that we can do is no more tuna.  

If everyone does their bit then change can happen, we need to hit these large corporations where it hurts, their bank balance.  Unfortunately at the moment money rules even more than it ever has.

The blog song for today is"Do you remember the first time?" by Pulp

TTFN

Seaspiracy - Highlights Part 2

 And now on to Part 2

THE FISHING INDUSTRY KILLS MORE ANIMALS IN A DAY THAN THE DEEP WATER HORIZON OIL SPILL DID IN MONTHS

Professor Callum Roberts: "I've looked at various papers, and it seems like as many as 600,000 seabirds might have been killed by the oil spill and 5000 marine mammals. Fish are more resilient as they are not air breathers, but oil is toxic to them so there was a potential downturn in some populations. However, fishing is a massive source of mortality. The total landings of all fish from the Gulf for 2009, the last full year before the blowout, was 651,000 tonnes. That is 1783 tonnes per day. If the average weight of a fish killed in that catch was a conservative 0.5 kg (and lots of it is shrimp, which are much smaller), then that would make 1,783,000 x 2 = 3,566,000 animals caught per day. Shrimp fisheries kill about 5 times more catch by weight than they land, so the figure for animals killed but not landed is very much higher. Trawls also kill many animals on the seabed that don't make it to the boat, so you could double that higher figure again, conservatively. So we are looking at a number of animals killed by fishing every day which has got to be far far in excess of the numbers killed by oil."

SCIENTISTS PREDICT THAT 90% OF THE WORLDS CORAL REEFS WILL DIE BY 2050

FISH ARE VITAL IN KEEPING CORAL REEFS ALIVE

WHEN FISH EXCRETE INTO THE WATER THEY FEED THE REEFS

FISHING HAS BECOME A MAJOR THREAT TO CORAL REEFS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO THE CARIBBEAN, WHERE 90%
OF LARGE FISH HAVE DISAPPEARED

IN THE 1830'S A TYPICAL FISHING BOAT CAUGHT 1-2 TONS OF HALIBUT PER DAY, BUT TODAY THE ENTIRE FISHING FLEET CATCHES 1-2 TONS ACROSS THE ENTIRE YEAR

2.7 TRILLION FISH ARE CAUGHT EVERY YEAR, OR UP TO 5 MILLION CAUGHT EVERY MINUTE

FISH POPULATIONS ARE IN DECLINE TO NEAR EXTINCTION

VIRTUALLY EMPTY OCEANS BY 2048
​
The claim that we could see virtually empty oceans by 2048 was sourced from a projection contained in the paper: ‘Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services’ author Boris Worm (a marine conservation biologist) et al (reference below). This projected that all the world’s commercially exploited fish species would have experienced collapse by 2048 (based on the extrapolation of regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048), i.e., that to continue to commercially exploit these populations would become impossible by 2048.

Critics of the film have said that this projection date was corrected in the 2009 paper ‘Rebuilding Global Fisheries’ (reference below), authored by Worm and others, including fisheries scientists (who analyse marine populations from a business perspective using measurements such as maximum yield from fisheries rather than markers of species conservation by marine conservationists). The 2009 paper does not correct, but rather cites the earlier paper, showing that some rates of decline had slowed since 2006 (in ‘5 out of 10 ecosystems‘) but that 63% of assessed fish ‘stocks’ worldwide ‘required rebuilding’. Furthermore, fish populations in places with little management capacity – mainly the developing world and constituting a majority of fish landed – are faring much worse than those with better resources for management.

In summary, the 2006 study has not been corrected or retracted, and has been cited over 3,000 times. Many of its critics are industry-funded, including the most quoted author Professor Ray Hilborn, who, according to his own website, receives funding from the fishing industry. (according to Greenpeace) over $3.5 million:

In 2016 Boris Worm in his paper ‘Averting a Global Fisheries Disaster’ again found the outlook very poor, summarising that population health had in fact declined since his original study, and that 88% of ‘stocks’ would be overfished and well below their target biomass by 2050.

Further, in 2018, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD (Mukhisa Kituyi) and the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean and Co-Chair, Peter Thomson reported that nearly 90% of typical fish stocks in the oceans will be gone by 2050 (link below), saying global subsidies for large commercial fishing must stop.

Lastly, in 2020, an FAO report used figures up to 2018 which show that 59.6% of fish stocks are "maximally sustainably fished" and 34.2% of stocks are "fished at biologically unsustainable levels". In summary, 93.8% of fish stocks are either biologically unsustainable or at their maximum level of exploitation.

There is a problem of moving goalposts that is unacknowledged in most of the above assessments: the target stock size at which a fishery is considered to be sustainable has been lowered over the last couple of decades by fisheries scientists. This means that without any improvement in management, more fish stocks are considered sustainable today than they were three decades ago

The outcome of this altered approach –which lacks a sound basis in ecological science – is that fishing is more risky, with a greater probability of causing population collapse, has more impacts on the environment and ocean health, and reduces resilience of ocean ecosystems to global change.


THE POWER OF ANIMALS MOVING UP AND DOWN THE WATER COLUMN IN TERMS OF MIXING IS AS GREAT AS THE WIND, WAVES, TIDES AND CURRENTS COMBINED

OCEANS ABSORB ALMOST ALL OF THE EARTHS EXCESS HEAT

FISH CARBON STABILISES OUR CLIMATE

THE OCEAN IS THE BIGGEST CARBON SINK ON THE PLANET

PER ACRE, MARINE PLANTS CAN STORE UP TO 20x MORE CARBON THAN FORESTS ON LAND

93% OF ALL CO2 IS STORED IN THE OCEAN

LOSING JUST 1% OF THE OCEANS CARBON STORES IS THE EQUIVALENT TO RELEASING THE EMISSIONS OF 97 MILLION CARS

Keep an eye out for the last part over the next few days, afterwards I will give some information and feedback from Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

The blog song for today is: "Wild West Hero" by ELO

TTFN

 

The documentary everyone is talking about Seaspiracy- here are the highlighted points - Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the information below has been copied directly from the Seaspiracy official webpage (https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts)

THE OCEANS ARE HOME FOR UP TO 80% OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH 

THE VAST MAJORITY OF OUR SEAS ARE STILL UNEXPLORED 

GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH IS 1.6 MILLION SQ KM 

THE EQUIVALENT OF A GARBAGE TRUCK LOAD OF PLASTIC IS DUMPED INTHE SEA 

EVERY SINGLE MINUTE THERE IS OVER 150 MILLION TONS OF PLASTIC ALREADY FLOATING IN THE SEA 

PLASTIC BREAKS DOWN INTO SMALLER PIECES KNOWN AS MICROPLASTICS, WHICH OUTNUMBER THE STARS IN THE MILKY WAY BY 500x 

700+ DOLPHINS AND WHALES ARE KILLED EVERY YEAR IN TAIJI 

THE TAIJI DOLPHIN DRIVES ARE FUNDED BY THE MARINE PARK ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY 

A TRAINED DOLPHIN IS WORTH UP TO $100,000 

BETWEEN 2000-2015, FOR EVERY 1 DOLPHIN CAPTURED AT LEAST 12 MORE WERE KILLED 

HIGHEST VALUE OF BLUEFIN TUNA: $3,100,000  CONSERVATION STATUS: ENDANGERED 

TODAY ONLY 3% OF PACIFIC BLUEFIN TUNA REMAIN

OVERFISHING PUTS $42 BILLION TUNA INDUSTRY AT RISK OF COLLAPSE 

A MITSUBISHI SUBSIDIARY CONTROLS 40% OF THE WORLDS BLUE FIN TUNA 

THE SHARK FINNING INDUSTRY IS A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY AND SHARKFINS ARE MAINLY SHIPPED TO CHINA 

THE SHARK FINNING INDUSTRY IS OFTEN CRIMINALLY INVOLVED 

SHARK FIN SOUP IS WORTH UP TO $100 A BOWL 

SHARKS KEEP THE OCEANS HEALTHY 

FOR THE FIRST TIME SHARKS ARE GOING EXTINCT BECAUSE OF US

SPECIES LIKE THRESHER, BULL AND HAMMERHEAD SHARKS HAVE LOST UP TO 80-99% OF THEIR POPULATIONS IN THE LAST TWO DECADES 

SEABIRD POPULATIONS HAVE DECLINED BY 70% SINCE THE 1950'S 

SHARKS KILL 10 PEOPLE PER YEAR. COMPARATIVELY, PEOPLE KILL 11,000-30,000 SHARKS ARE KILLED PER HOUR 

APPROX. 50 MILLION SHARKS ARE KILLED EVERY YEAR AS BYCATCH 

STUDIES ESTIMATE THAT UP TO 40% OF ALL MARINE LIFE CAUGHT IS THROWN OVERBOARD AS BYCATCH

AN ICELAND FISHERY IN ONE MONTH KILLED APPROX. 269 HARBOR PORPOISES, 900 SEALS OF FOUR DIFFERENT SPECIES AND 5000 SEABIRDS 

THE ICELAND FISHERY WAS AWARDEDTHE BLUE TICK BY THE MSC 

THERE ARE OVER 100 DIFFERENT FISHING REGULATIONS ON PAPER FOR REDUCING BYCATCH 

THERE ARE 4,600,000 COMMERCIAL FISHING VESSELS IN THE WORLD 

SEA SHEPHERD HAVE SUNK 13 WHALING AND ILLEGAL FISHING SHIPS AND RAMMED A FURTHER FIVE 

10,000+ DOLPHINS ARE KILLED AS BYCATCH OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE EVERY YEAR 

OVER 300,000 WHALES, DOLPHINS AND PORPOISES ARE KILLED AS BYCATCH EVERY YEAR 

46% OF THE PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH IS FISHING NET

THERE IS ENOUGH LONG LINE SET EVERY DAY TO WRAP AROUND THE PLANET 500x 

SIX OUT OF SEVEN SPECIES OF SEA TURTLES ARE EITHER THREATENED OR ENDANGERED DUE TO FISHING

1,000 SEA TURTLES DIE EVERY YEAR FROM PLASTIC GLOBALLY. IN THE USA, 250,000 SEA TURTLES ARE CAPTURED, INJURED OR KILLED EVERY YEAR BY FISHING (UPDATE: We appear to have repeated an original mistake made on the Sea Turtle Conservancy white paper which revealed that the near-global figure was misattributed to the United States alone. However, this has given us the opportunity to learn new; that the most current worldwide analysis estimates the bycatch of at least 8.5 Million sea turtles in a seventeen-year period - meaning, a shocking ∼500,000 sea turtles every year:) 

OCEAN PLASTIC COMING FROM STRAWS IS 0.03% OF ALL PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN

Just by reading these points it is not difficult to see that if we don´t do something soon we will have nothing left.

The blog song for today is: "Money, that´s what I want"by the Flying Lizards

TTFN