World Ocean's Day

As we celebrate the first ever World Oceans Day on June 8th 2009, I find myself doing so with some pretty mixed emotions.

Without a doubt it is time the oceans got the recognition they deserve - they are stunning, full of incredible diversity and immeasurable beauty. As a child I grew up by the ocean, on the oceans, and whenever possible in the oceans, and they are a fundamental part of my life. So much so that they have shaped my dreams, plans and career, and I feel very blessed that I now get go to work every day and work to save the oceans.

We need your help to protect Sierra Leone from pirate fishing

And there is no doubt that they need saving. Globally we need to face up to some pretty sobering facts. It’s become very clear that the oceans, that for so long seemed so vast, are far from infinite. We are putting them under incredible pressures, and the impacts of pollution, acidification and climate change are adding up fast. That we are also completely over-fishing our oceans is also now very clear, so starkly demonstrated by ‘the End of the Line’.

I don’t know about you, but I find the fact that 80% of global fish stocks are fully exploited or depleted, and the prediction that we’ll run out of fish by 2048 pretty scary.

I realise though that for many people these figures seem far from home. Not for me. My job as an oceans campaigner has taken me all over the world to investigate illegal fishing, which is both a cause and effect of over-fishing. I’ve seen the jagged holes left in coral reefs after they’ve been dynamited, and been appalled as a still-alive shark has had its fins cut off for the soup trade, and then been dumped over the side still desperately trying to swim. I’ve photographed illegal trawlers hauling in nets full of literally thousands of organisms scraped off the seabed. And I’ve then documented the fishermen sorting through this catch for the species that we in the developed world want to eat, and dumping everything else, sometimes three quarters of the total, over the side dead.

Around the world I’ve experienced first-hand how we are destroying the marine environment, and the species that live in it.

Incredibly though this is not what sticks most in my mind. For every illegal industrial fishing vessel in regions like West Africa, there are literally hundreds of local communities on shore that completely depend on fish for their survival. The pirate trawlers are stealing directly from some of the poorest people in the world, and I‘ve heard their stories. How fishers have lost their nets to trawlers that have deliberately run through them, and been attacked with boiling water. I’ve listened as mothers explain how their children cannot go to school because without fish there is no income, and spoken to family members who have lost loved ones to easily healed injuries and diseases because they cannot afford medicines.

The first time I ever went to Sierra Leone, I arrived in one town at the same moment as a traditional dugout canoe. In the bottom was a hugely pregnant woman who had been in labour for 18 hours, the last five of them lying there in 3 inches of water as she was paddled to the hospital. Because the trawlers had caught too many fish, her husband had not been able to afford petrol for the village outboard engine. I found out later she and the baby survived; she was lucky, one in eight mothers die there in childbirth.

Perhaps most seriously of all though are the people I’ve met who are desperately hungry. The food security issues associated with overfishing are not being publicised enough, but I can tell you that the stark truth is that millions of people are facing starvation. Consider this. In the UK we eat about one and a half portions of fish a week. If we run out of fish we would miss it, but we could probably adapt. Compare this Sierra Leone, where an incredible 80% of animal protein comes from the ocean.

Fish is the basis of a diet where there are essentially no other options. Coastal communities have a few fruit trees, and fish. They sell extra fish to be able to buy other staples, like rice. No fish, no food. I’ve met kids who have eaten nothing but mangoes for a week, and fishermen who have described how the only way they can feed their families is by following the trawlers and picking up the fish that are dumped.

It’s a pretty sobering experience to sit on a beach with a Sierra Leonean fisherman as a pirate trawler fishes half a mile in front of you. You can see it in his eyes that he is wondering how he is going to feed his family, not just today, but next week and next year.

Every day that I am in West Africa I am approached by individuals asking me if there is anything I can do to help their families, often in a painstakingly written letter. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s not just Sierra Leone. All around the world one third of the world's 6 billion people rely on fish and other aquatic products for at some of their annual protein intake, and developing states in particular are facing plunging fish stocks, poverty and a looming food security crisis. The challenges to overcome this situation are only going to become greater as the world population grows by half, and as more evidence emerges that climate change is going to have a negative impact on fisheries.

These are massive challenges, but there are solutions. So let’s celebrate World Oceans Day, the oceans deserve it. Then, as a global community, I’d ask that we please start to work together to make the changes that are needed to ensure that all the world, but especially those in the developing world who depend most on the oceans, are always going to be able to celebrate.