The following is a sample of my work for Geography 211 – The State of the Earth

I was tasked with assessing one area of concern in the current state of the Earth’s environment. This assignment was intend to familiarize us with the interplay between the environment, economy, and society.

 

Marine Fish and Biodiversity – Overfishing

 

Drivers

 

It would be inaccurate to assume that current negative environmental activities are the result of completely malicious intent pointed at the Earth. Very often, with some introspection, the human role in the state of the Earth is found to be the manifestation of multiple factors, namely money. It seems that current events shared by media outlets want to establish an agenda-driven idea of what environmental damage looks like; they appear to do this by imprinting images of toxic spills and industrial decisions blinded by greed-depicting corporations as entities that exist solely to take advantage of all the ecosystem services that the Earth offers. Seldom is the spotlight turned onto simply the mismanagement of resources. This tendency is because an admittance of this reality would force the admittance of an error in the direction of commerce and trade. Western societies do not want to entertain the thought that their current money-making and spending tendencies are what may be damaging the Earth the most. The “American Dream” is no longer only available to those who reside in the United States of America; an increasing number of people are embracing the capitalistic dream of anybody being able to have anything he or she wants if enough determination and work is put toward those ends. The capitalistic limitations brought on by factors other than “not working hard enough” is still a foreign concept to the Western mind.

A quick Google search will reveal that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, with oceans holding about 96.5% of world’s water supply. As such, it would be tempting to assume that, being the largest habitat, the marine environment would experience relatively mild negative consequences of human behavior. This is far from the truth. It is estimated that most of the current fish stocks are now nearing significant depletion. The main driver for this phenomenon is essentially the demand that has been created, with “growing world populations [that] have led to the demand for seafood more than doubling in the last 30 years” (Petersen, 2013). This scale of increased need for a product is always proceeded by an economic response. In the global fishing industry, there was subsequent employment opportunities to “[sustain] coastal communities… by providing a valuable source of protein for local communities” (Petersen, 2013). This increased demand, coupled with general globalization trends, accounts for major changes in the physical, biological, and ecosystem state changes in the world’s oceans.

 

Pressures

 

Perhaps this examination of the marine environment can be viewed as a snapshot of Donald Wright’s Progress Trap. This resource-management predicament closely parallels the agricultural collapse of the Ancient Sumerians. By the year 3,000 BC, populations in southern Iraq grew, so the intensity of agricultural production subsequently increased to such a point that “the quality of land began to deteriorate: the concentration of salts in the land due to over-irrigation, evaporation, and poor drainage led to the degradation of the land until it was no longer arable” (Brown).

As the market for seafood increases, so do the technological advances in the fishing industry. Two of the most common methods of industrial fishing are benthic trawling and dredging. Some current commercial trawlers are “capable of landing over 250 million tons of fish” (Petersen, 2013). Furthermore, beyond the physical removal of biomass from the marine ecosystem, “powerful vessels and robust gear allow heavy trawls and dredges to not only fish over reef habitats but to remove or break those reefs” (Hiscock, 2014). There are additional concerns regarding the fishing equipment used in many regions, as it is becoming apparent that there are also chemical concerns regarding the anti-fouling agents used on the hulls of commercial fishing boats (Hiscock, 2014). Even the controlled methods of obtaining supplies of seafood are not free of damage to the ecosystem as fish farms can also negatively impact the marine environment, with the increase of fecal matter and waste food from farming “encourag[ing] dense algal growth in both plankton and benthos,” which can quickly smother life in surrounding habitats (Hiscock, 2014).

 

State

 

Human interactions with the marine environment has left noticeable damage in its physical, chemical, and biological states. Coastal development of land and human restructuring of marine environments has consequently led to physical remodeling of the ocean floor. These destructive effects are intentional results of human interactions. Commercial fishing tends to have less intentional, yet just as destructive collateral damage on the seabed. As previously mentioned, the benthic trawling and dredging methods employed by commercial fishermen today is largely effective, but can also damage the habitat of benthic marine organisms. Heavy equipment often breaks reefs and disturbs the underlying sediment. Some journals document that “structurally complex habitats that harbor high biodiversity are reduced to rubble” through the intervention of these fishing vessels (Hiscock, 2014). A mound of sediment is often carried in front of dredge bars and deposited around the sides of the tools in distinct ridges. This causes sediment plumes to be created, and leads to the formation of tracks on the seabed. The extent to the disturbances can degrade spaces completely, as “sediment can be reduced and sediments [can] become more anoxic after dredging” (Hiscock, 2014).

There are also significant chemical considerations to the increased presence of commercial fishing vessels in the oceans. Often the hulls of fishing vessels are painted with a layer of Tributyltin (TBT), which is also used “to soak nets and timber to resist colonization” by unwanted barnacles and organisms (Hiscock, 2014). When documentation of thinning oyster shells began to surface, laboratory experiments commenced in hopes of understanding the impact of TBT on marine biodiversity. One study focused on a species of carp and found that, in the presence of TBT in the environment, “there is an ‘adaptive stage’ (15 days), in which all physiological indices remained at control values due to protective responses [in the carps’ physiology]. With prolonged exposure, TBT-induced stress led to functional damage in the brains of the fish” (Li, 2015). TBT, a substance intended to merely protect fishing equipment from degradation, was simultaneously used by humans to unknowingly harm marine life. This raises a much larger concern regarding whether humans are ignorantly employing certain practices or methods that may also be detrimental to the prospective well-being of sea-faring creatures.

The most direct impact of overfishing occurs to the deceptively sensitive ecosystem that is at play in the world’s oceans. Per the journal Science, a study conducted in 2006 concluded that “if fishing rates continue at the current rate, all fish stocks will collapse by 2048” (Petersen, 2013). Meanwhile, the millennium ecosystem assessment established “overfishing as the main driver of biodiversity loss in the sea, as opposed to habitat change for most terrestrial systems” (Emanuelsson, 2014). As things currently stand, the world is trending toward a catastrophic end when it comes to overusing the resources in marine environments. As technologies and demand increase parallel to one another, the global population appears to be inching closer and closer to a progress trap: the depletion of seafood.

 

Impact

 

The physical disturbance and destruction of coral reefs due to benthic trawling and dredging has dire consequences to the ecosystem. Coral reefs play a large role in the marine ecosystem, as they find themselves in various roles in the complex ocean environment. Coral reefs “provide a home, food, and shelter for a wide range of animals: for marine worms, sea-urchins, sponges, sea-fans, molluscs, crabs, shrimps, and other crustaceans, sea anemones, and not least, many types of fish” (Hovland, 2008). As seen in this example, the damage done to a colony of coral extends beyond just the physical disappearance of these organisms, but also has ripple effects on the surrounding fauna. Current dredging practices have brought further unintentional effects on the ecosystems found on the seabed, the nature of which are difficult to label as inherently positive or negative, but are undeniably a testament to the disruptive nature of human interaction. In the wake of dredging, “predatory fish, whelks, hermit crabs, scavenging starfish and brittlestars are attracted to the [dredging] track to feed on damaged and exposed animals” (Hiscock, 2014). This attraction has led to an observation of increased numbers in scavenging species at these sites, which in turn leads to an imbalance in the trophic structure of the dredged region. The immense demand for seafood has led these physical effects to reach unprecedented breadths, as “fishing fleets have expanded toward deeper and more remote fishing locations” (Emanuelsson, 2014). The partnership of this physical reach and the fishing industry’s involvement in the chemical and ecological state of the ocean, there are considerable concerns to be analyzed.

The fishing practices employed today are having chemical effects on the environment that are still not fully understood. For many years “scientists failed to realise… that TBT was having a widespread and disastrous impact on benthic biodiversity with a large number of species adversely affected, especially at their larval stage” (Hiscock, 2014). In an effort to veer away from the harmful effects of TBT-covered fishing equipment, many vessels began to apply less toxic antifouling paints, whose high copper content gave rise to a different concern. It was observed that, where these types of copper-infused antifouling agents were used, “copper in sediment had exceeded a threshold for ‘self defence’ mechanisms; and microbenthic communities were not only less diverse but also their total biomass and body size were reduced compared to sites with lower copper concentrations” (Hiscock, 2014). Once the toxicity of one substance was verified, the fishing community attempted to direct itself toward a more environmentally conscious alternative, but this well-intentioned transition continued to inflict damage toward marine life. This highlights the reality that methods and practices are being approved without sufficient understanding of the potential unseen-often chemical-degradation it causes for the world’s oceans.

In the pursuit of finding increasing amounts of biomass to sell on the fish market, fishermen have been venturing physically further and deeper into marine territories, and have foregone traditional boundaries of the aquatic food chain. The “low availability of traditional fish stocks and the decline of major predators such as Bluefin tuna and Chilean sea bass have forced fishermen to fish further down the food chain, often in deeper waters, depriving other marine animals such as seabirds and seals of a regular source of food” (Petersen, 2013). This interference in the food chain directly presents specific species with the difficulty of having to compete with fishermen for their food supply, but also affects the trophic structure at various other stages too. A fantastic demonstration of the effects of trophic disruption was seen in the 1990s, in the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. In the 1930s, Yellowstone wolves were hunted by humans to the point of near extinction. The extraction of wolves from the Yellowstone ecosystem allowed the population of elk to explode, which in turn decimated the abundance of the elk’s main source of food: the willow, aspen, and cotton wood plants. This decimation then dented the population of the beavers found in the National Park, as they also depended on the willow for food and shelter-they were outcompeted by the massive elk population. Yellowstone reached carrying capacity, leading to declining numbers in elk, and forests of unhealthy willow. According to the Yellowstone Park Website, with the reintroduction of wolves, the population of elk multiplied three times, and the willow stands strong today because the threat of wolves force the elk to live more nomadic lives. This example shows that the altering of trophic conditions “is like kicking a pebble down a mountain slope where conditions [are] just right that a falling pebble could trigger an avalanche of change” (Farquhar). To fully grasp the fishing industry’s influence on the marine ecosystem, there needs to be an understanding that the greatest threat presented by overfishing is not in the removal of those specific fish from the sea, but it is in the potentially irreversible destruction of delicate trophic balances. In other words, “severe overfishing drives species to ecological extinction because over-fished populations no longer interact significantly with other species in the community,” not because they are all physically being removed from the sea (Hiscock, 2014).

 

Response

 

The economy of the fishing industry had been identified as the main driver of the threat to marine biodiversity. For the sake of the preservation of marine biodiversity, there needs to be an alteration of direction in which humans are heading-one that corporations can support. Currently the main motive behind the industry’s behavior has been economic, so it can be assumed that the solution will need to prove to be even more financially strategic.

Although often costly in research, development, and implementation, alternatives to present methods and practices of fishing prove to have tangible benefits to marine life. In the upper Crouch estuary in Essex, during the “ten years following the banning of use of TBT on small vessels, the number of seabed species present doubled” (Hiscock, 2014). An abundance of seabed species bodes well for the fishing industry, and as such it is in the industry’s best interest to invest in preserving the chemical well-being of the marine environment. According to the Encyclopedia of Crisis Management, “restoring fish stocks in the [European Union] has been valued at 2.7 billion pounds a year and would result in the creation of more than 100,000 jobs,” as it would tackle peripheral issues such as illegal fishing as well (Petersen, 2013). There are also semi-privatized environmental initiatives, such as the Mote Marine Laboratory Coral Restoration Project, that gathers funds to research and restore coral reefs in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean coasts. The Laboratory has allocated an estimated $16 million to coral research, and has awarded 130 grants totaling $3 million dollars toward the goal of revitalizing the coral reefs in the Americas. With such numbers, it is evident that there are considerable economic incentives to pursuing the restoration of the marine ecosystem.

There have also been multiple legal responses to these growing concerns in the role of the fishing community in the global marine environment. Governments and environmental organizations have attempted to accomplish increased sustainability by “limiting/reducing landing quotas, equipment restrictions, no-fish zones, protect[ing] breeding hot spots, expan[ding] marine reserves, local community management, and consumer pressure and awareness” (Petersen, 2013). China has enforced a no-fishing law in the South China Sea during the summer months and in 2010, “the Pacific nations imposed a two-year ban on commercial tuna fishing in the Pacific high seas” (Petersen, 2013). The oceans have recently been opened to trawlers with strict limitations to keep the fish stocks at a sustainable level. These strict organizational regulations are slowly allowing for a redirection of the trends in the fishing community, as factors other than wealth are factoring into decisions.

The earlier example of Yellowstone National Park demonstrates that nature is inclined to follow the same trend toward which humans appear to gravitate. In the 1930s, the Yellowstone elk population took full advantage of their ability to take over the trophic landscape of the Park. Perhaps humans are to the Earth what elk were to the National Park-mankind is simply taking full advantage of a resource that has suddenly been made available to it due to external circumstances. For the elk, such circumstance was the overhunting of the wolf population, whereas for humans, it was the various advancements in technology. This greatly increased the efficiency of the fishing industry as a whole. We are faced, then with the question of whether we should achieve to transcend the natural precedent set before us in breaking free from the innate inclinations that seem to tempt those in our position.

 

Works Cited

 

Brodie, J. (2016, November 25). Facilitation and Predation – What determines the number of species in a community? Lecture presented at Bio 230 in University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Brown, L. (2016, November 30). A Short History of Progress – History of the world in two weeks. Lecture presented at GEOG 211 101 in University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Emanuelsson, A., Ziegler, F., Pihl, L., Sköld, M., & Sonesson, U. (2014). Accounting for overfishing in life cycle assessment: New impact categories for biotic resource use. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 19(5), 1156-1168. doi:10.1007/s11367-013-0684-z

Farquhar, B. Wolf Reintroduction Changes Ecosystem. (2016). Retrieved November 26, 2016, from http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/

Hovland, M. (2008). Coral reefs. Deep-water coral reefs: Unique biodiversity hot-spots. Dordrecht: Springer.

Li, Z., Li, P., & Shi, Z. (2015). Chronic Exposure to Tributyltin Induces Brain Functional Damage in Juvenile Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio). Plos One, 10(4). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0123091

Mote Marine Laboratory Scientists Attacking Coral Decline on Many Fronts | News & Press. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2016, from https://mote.org/news/article/mote-marine-laboratory-scientists-attacking-coral-decline-on-many-fronts

Penuel, K. B., Statler, M., & Hagen, R. (2013). Overfishing. Encyclopedia of crisis management. Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.