September 19th, 2016 — What is the future for billions of people around the world who depend on seafood for nutrition? Many experts will tell you that wild fisheries collapse is on the rise, and that fishermen are trying to get more from the oceans today, leaving a lot less for the future. If nothing changes more than 80% of fisheries will be in need of recovery by 2030. But this dismal scenario doesn’t need to be our future, and in fact, fishermen and women are our best hope for healthy, abundant oceans that can feed a lot more people.
I understand that for a conservationist like me to say that the primary user group of a natural resource can be the key to its recovery is rather surprising. But my personal and professional experiences have shown me why it’s true.
Growing up on the water and at the beach in Massachusetts, I became an oceans advocate from an early age. My grandfather taught me how to skipper a boat, fish “stripers”, and dig for quahogs. He’d take the family whale-watching, and once, when we were miles offshore, I got to swim with humpbacks. I was hooked. But I struggled to reconcile my passion for the wildlife of the oceans with my concern for the people who harvested them. Even my ancestors fished for food and livelihoods.
The crux of the challenge became clear to me as a graduate student studying the collapse of the green sea urchin in coastal Maine. Sea urchin roe, or uni, is a common food in sushi. The fishery boomed in the early 1990s—called “green gold” locally, but by the time I arrived in 1999, it had already gone bust. Urchin harvesters were part of my dive research team. During our long days on the water I’d ask them why they didn’t just stop fishing when it was clear that the fishery was being wiped out. What I heard repeatedly was “If I don’t take the last urchin, someone else will.” What a deeply unsettling answer: the urchin harvester knew he was killing his own job, but he also knew that he could not change the final outcome even if he tried. This is the epitome of hopelessness, and unfortunately is a story repeated the world over.