Sea Control - Sea Control 452 - The Ocean and Us with Farah Obaidullah and Rebecca Hubbard

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Links1. The Ocean and Us, edited by Farah Obaidullah, Springer Cham, 2023.2. Sea Control 294 - EU Fisheries Governance with Dr. Alin Kadfak and Dr. Anna Antonova, by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, November 18, 2021.3. Sea Control 225 - IUU Fishing and the Evolution of Sea Shepherd with Dr. Claude Berube, by Walker Mills, CIMSEC, January 31, 2021.4. Sea Control 192 - IUU Fishing and Fishing Policy in the South China Sea, by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, August 2, 2020.5. Farah Obaidullah’s Twitter.6. Rebecca Hubbard’s Twitter.

Hello and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today I speak with Farah Obaidullah and Rebecca Hubbard. We discuss their edited volume, The Ocean and Us. It is a wide-ranging primer on a plethora of ocean topics. I edited and produced this episode. Here at SimSec, we are approaching our 300th episode since our relaunch, and we would like to have a show dedicated to answering your questions. If you would like to submit a question, please email us at ccontrol at simsec.org. I would like to pause here to highlight our local chapters. Whether you are in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a local SimSec chapter near you. you can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website

at simsec.org so if you are interested please reach out finally i want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the simsec podcast network the bilge pumps you can find alex jamie drack and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts and with that kimber's men Hello and welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, my guests are Farah Obaidullah and Rebecca Hubbard. We're discussing their edited volume, The Ocean and Us. Farah, Rebecca, welcome aboard. Farah, could you start by telling our listeners a little bit about your background? Sure. Thank you, Nathan, for having us here today. So my background is actually in, well, I have a degree in biology focused on marine ecology and also environmental technology,

again, focused on the ocean. And I've spent the past 20 years more or less campaigning for ocean health on a full range of issues from overfishing and fish crimes to marine protected areas and the imminent, right now, the imminent threat of deep sea mining and trying to stop that from happening. So yeah, I have a solid background in trying to understand the ocean and everything that it means to us. Rebecca, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hi Nathan, yeah sure. and so i'm australian and i have just transitioned into a new role which is also working on protection of the ocean the in for the high seas alliance but generally i have been working on ocean conservation for almost 20 years now i got a degree in environmental science and then

started working in environmental advocacy and campaigning and activism when I was in my early 20s and then I guess at some point was exposed to the extreme stress that we're putting the oceans under and decided at that point early in my career just to dedicate my time to ocean conservation so I've been working specifically on ocean conservation and sustainable fisheries for around 20 years now. And as a reminder to the listeners, all opinions here are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So getting into it, Farah, as the editor of the book, can you tell us a little bit about the origin? It's a unique book. And I was also curious as far as what the thesis of the book

and kind of who the audience is right okay yeah so um i i run a platform called women for oceans and this is a a sort of an advocate ocean advocacy group and what we try to do is is uh take on some of the pressures that the ocean is facing from overfishing to climate change and now as i mentioned the threat of deep sea mining but we try to put in the bring in the feminine lens um to how how we manage and govern the ocean and why is this important because you know over generations across the world we have successfully suppressed one half of what it means to be human and all of us possess a feminine side but that feminine side is not inserted into the way that we manage and govern the world whether it's in our judicial system our financial or political systems so

um and and setting up women for oceans was also a reaction to what i was seeing around the world in terms of representation and in terms of gender equality and so this platform was created and it has over 5 000 women in the network and over 500 professional ocean women and over the years i have received many requests from people from a whole range of backgrounds actually from nursing to people already working in the ocean space but but only aware of the area of work that they are engaged in but questions around where they can learn more about the ocean because over the past 10 years we've seen increasing communications around the ocean media coverage around the ocean but it has mostly focused on issues such as plastic pollution and while that is great that

that that that issue is really sort of accelerating a change in you know behavior it it only scratches the surface of all the issues that are facing our ocean. And I've always struggled to come up with a single resource or to point to a single resource that explains in non-technical language all the ways that our lives interact with the ocean. And so I, you know, rather than just list off a bunch of websites or NGOs or scientific publications, I thought, well, you know, with this incredible network of ocean specialists around the world, why don't I produce a book that serves as a one-stop shop on all the ways

that our lives impact the ocean and interact with the ocean. And so that's kind of the background to how The Ocean and Us came to be. And now I'm very proud and happy to see that this book is out there in the world. And I hope it serves as a useful resource to many. yeah i have to say i was uh blown away by the uh plethora of topics covered uh in the book and i found that it is a great primer on a lot of the challenges that the ocean faces you know right now and and moving forward as well so i mean it's you know as i was saying um it's not just plastic pollution you know there's the typical issues that we we think about now are climate change, overfishing, which I think we'll be discussing in more detail, and pollution.

But there's a whole host of other issues, you know, from marine animal welfare, which is an emerging science, to oceans and human health, how our health is actually impacted by what goes on in the ocean and our well-being, but also the blue economy, you know, as our population increases and our demands on this planet increase, we are seeing a shift, an increasing shift into the ocean space in terms of developing industries and so there's a lot to explore and it isn't just the the sort of you know the primary kind of reasons of getting our food from the ocean or buffering the worst of the climate crisis through a healthy ocean but there's so many issues and you know there are 32 chapters in this book all written by incredible

ocean specialists from around the world. You both wrote chapters on the impact of fishing but Rebecca in your chapter your first section was fishing the biggest pressure on the ocean kind of like what I had just mentioned I found that a bit surprising because of the plethora of issues you know there's just a staggering number of things discussed in this book. Rebecca why do you see that it's the biggest threat? Sure it's a good question and it is surprising for lots of people but I think if you just I guess go back to the beginning essentially humans have been fishing for almost as long as we've been walking around on land so we have been exploiting this resource or using this resource for a very long time

but the way that we do it has really changed and back in 20th century really we started utilizing some really serious technology that had been used even in wars to actually help increase our ability to find fish, to capture them, to process them, and then to bring them back to shore. And so we've really, the way that we fish has really changed and the impact of that has massively increased over time and I guess the reason why it is still considered the biggest impact on marine biodiversity is that as well it happens everywhere nearly everywhere across the planet there is fishing and even though we might imagine when we think of a fisher person as an individual in a boat or a small group of people in a small boat, the reality is that some of these

vessels are really enormous. Some of them are big factory vessels. Some of them can catch 200 ton of fish a day. It's really quite a diverse industry. And it's not just us and NGOs or individuals saying, oh, it's the biggest impact. It's literally the world's expert scientists who study the ocean and marine biodiversity that have said it is at this point still still such a thorough and important impact that we need to manage given how many people are depending on fishing and fish for food source around the world and also looking at where we are with, as you said, the massive industry that's in place, where do you see a path forward for the industry? How would you like them to go from here? Well, there's a couple of ways that we can

move forward. I mean, there are plenty of options for improving how we manage our fisheries. So that's not a problem. And that's really hopeful. And it's one of the reasons why I still get up in the morning every day and go to work to improve the way that we manage fisheries and protect the ocean. So what industries can do is they can adapt or adjust or improve the way they fish so they can use more selective fishing gear that doesn't catch non-target species like dolphins or sharks um or even other non-target fish for example so bottom trawling is one of the most destructive

forms of fishing and that really requires or involves nets being dragged along the seafloor which collects a whole bunch of other fish that are not wanted and also obviously impacts on the seabed so for example we can stop bottom trawling and that would really eliminate a lot of bycatch of those unwanted fish as well as protecting the seabed and the habitats which are really really critical actually for even breeding and feeding areas for those fish so there's the opportunity to transition to lower impact fishing gear there's also an opportunity for the fishing industry because everybody as you say we're not everybody but a large proportion of the of the population want to eat fish some have to eat fish for their protein and that's that's

really fair right and we want to make sure that the industry operates and provides fish to people that they feel comfortable proud you know happy to eat so the industry can improve their kind of social license by not only improving the methods with which they fish but by also being more transparent about how they fish and what they catch there's all kinds of monitoring that they can put on board their fishing vessels which you know happens in a lot of other factory environments and other a lot of other industry environments and fishing vessels can do that as well and that's really helpful in terms of just making really clear that they're operating sustainably transparently and responsibly because there has also been an unfortunate and i'm sure farah will talk to this

more or can do you know um misuse of of human labor in the fishing industry as well so improving transparency around their their management practices would be really helpful in terms of improving their social license as well as delivering results for the for the ocean ecosystems and for the communities so there's and there's they can also get involved in co-management practices and support marine the establishment of marine protected areas so areas that are protected off limits from extraction and can just be there to restore populations protect different kinds of species and vulnerable or different types of habitats, because that has benefits for the whole ocean ecosystem health, but also for the sustainability of fisheries and fish populations

as well. In the book, at the end of your chapter, you have a list of things that people can do as individuals to help see some of these changes come into action. What were some of those that you found or that you find most impactful for the everyday consumer yeah that's a great question and it's really important that you know we all have an opportunity to make choices and that you can make a difference as well so some people choose not to eat seafood or to choose less seafood you can also seek out local NGOs or like you know charitable groups conservation groups that work on on fisheries or marine conservation programs and in many places possibly where your readers or listeners are at least there are often local sustainable seafood guides that people can access

where local NGOs based on the well-known science and the fisheries records of the governments and management systems give a rating on what fish are sustainable and are recommended to eat and which fish are considered overfished or at risk and therefore better to avoid so if if people can find a local sustainable seafood guide or a local NGO to support then I think that's a really great and easy solution um where you can't find one of those people can actually just do a little bit of their own research and it doesn't really it's not really that difficult and even sometimes just asking questions prompts and encourages local suppliers or fishing companies or seafood suppliers to actually at least know that customers are concerned about these issues so people can ask

you know which fish are sustainably managed and which are used a court using low impact gears or gears that don't catch other protected species like often that's like seabirds or or sharks and specifically you know the kinds of fishing as I said trying to avoid fish that are caught with bottom trawlers which have quite a broad ecosystem impact and and can really impact the whole um food web so i think they're like really simple methods and then i guess the other one is catch your own fish but that's only if you like to catch fish um yeah and follow the rules if you do absolutely so far in this book you also in addition to editing uh you also wrote a chapter on IUU fishing. Most of our listeners are going to be familiar with what IUU fishing is, but could

you explain for us exactly how IUU fishing differs from state-sanctioned fishing, especially in the picture of this pressure that fishing is putting on the ocean? Sure, yeah. I mean, so as you said, as Rebecca was saying, state-sanctioned fishing is already putting enormous pressure on the ocean. we're taking out way too much biodiversity taking out more biomass than the ocean can replenish um and that's what we know about right that's what we can thought what we can follow what we can what scientists can can can understand but on top of that there is iou fishing illegal unreported and unregulated fishing that is happening all over the world's oceans as well and this is it's basically fish that is is not being reported anywhere it's by definition it's

illegal or unreported or it's unregulated so it's not in the books so it's estimated that this i i use the word fish crimes just uh just for simplicity but that that fish crimes account for up to yeah 25 million dollars a year and most people don't realize that one in five fish caught is doomed to be caught through iuu through either illegal unregulated or unreported methods So this is a huge extra burden on the ocean, and it is likely to be an underestimate, because again, we don't know how much fish is being taken out of the ocean, but through sampling, we know that it's about one in five fish. And why is this a problem? Apart from the added pressure on fish stocks, it also means that it undermines existing management rules and conservation practices. So even while some governments and institutions are trying to protect and manage and conserve the world's oceans, IUU fishing really undermines that. It also undermines communities. Rebecca was talking about that as well, about the importance of fisheries to communities. billions of people around the world rely on fish for their protein for their income and then you

have these iou fishers which basically come in and undercut all that and steal fish essentially from communities but there's also a very dark and sinister side to iou fishing and and that is that it it often well fishing by definition happens out of sight right it happens out in the open ocean away from the eyes and ears that you might have on land but this also makes it an ideal playground if you like for criminals to operate and it's not just the fish that is caught illegally that we have to be concerned about but it's all the practices around it if you're going to be a criminal in terms of fishing you are likely going to be a criminal in terms of all the other ways your your your ship operates and that means discharging an oil or other pollutants

at sea discharging your rubbish at sea it means um labor abuse sometimes slavery at sea this is a huge problem which again is is very uh under stated we have more slaves today than at any point in our history and i think this comes as a surprise for many people and more than 30 million people live in slavery today and again the ocean is the perfect place to keep slaves because they have nowhere to go once they're on a vessel they are stuck on that vessel and they can be out at sea for months if not years at a time without being able to communicate back to their families or to their you know agents or friends or whoever that that uh you know that either put them there or that know that they have disappeared they cannot communicate they often cannot communicate

with the people that they that they uh with the crew the senior crew on their vessels because They're often from another other country than the ship owners and ship crew. So there's so many problems associated with IUU fishing that goes beyond the fact that fish are being taken out of the ocean illegally, again, undercutting management efforts. um with these issues uh slavery as well as overfishing and operating outside of the bounds of of regulation i found that transshipment and as spoofing is kind of at the core of what enables these practices in in your view how does transshipment play a role and what are some things that we could be doing to address it? Well transshipment really is one of the key drivers of IUU fishing because and for those that don't know what that is it's basically when a vessel

a catcher vessel transfers their catch onto a refrigerated cargo vessel or reefer and that's known as transshipment and this enables a ship a catcher vessel to stay out at sea. Normally it's Historically, a fishing vessel, once their hold is full of fish, they'll have to come back to port and offload it from port. But what transshipping allows is for ships to stay out at sea because they can just transfer their catch onto these reefer vessels. And then they also get resupplied by supply vessels in terms of fuel and food and fresh water and so on. But this really enables ships to stay out at sea, like I said, for sometimes years at a time. And again, this facilitates bad practice at sea and labor abuse and slavery at sea because there's no way for those unfortunate crew members to escape. So transshipment is a huge issue also because, and this comes back to the unregulated part of IUU fishing, a lot of the unregulated fishing happens on the high seas.

And the high seas are those parts of the ocean that don't belong to any one nation. They are beyond national jurisdiction. And this accounts for almost half our planet, 64% of our ocean. So we're talking about a huge area. And in this huge, vast area, it's almost impossible to regulate activity. And then transshipments, and as you mentioned, AIS, you know, where ships turn off their AIS, which is the, I guess your audience knows, but it's a method of geolocating your vessel out in the ocean automatically. but by turning off the AIS and by transshipping at sea you're basically undetectable to any of national authorities to satellite technology and your catch basically gets as we as we call

you know we call it laundering it basically it's it's a way to launder fish catches because you can keep fishing within your quota because you're you're transferring that catch onto sometimes unnamed or unflagged or vessels which then with their AIS switched off can just disappear again and take that fish to ports of convenience where it can enter the global fish market without you know without being traced back to the origin. So there's a lot of issues with IUU fishing and a lot needs to be done to improve as Rebecca also mentioned the the transparency but also the traceability of fish back to to the vessel that catches it um so that we can really you know increase and improve our efforts of of managing uh fish stocks and at the

moment there are just too many loopholes that that companies exploit to get away with um catching fish illegally so far you mentioned uh deep sea mining uh so i'm curious do you think that fishing is going to continue to be the biggest pressure on the ocean or do you see that threat uh shifting somewhat well you know all these threats compound each other right they all come together and and you know put an enormous pressure on our ocean and i i at this point having worked in the ocean space for 20 years i i don't want to single out a single pressure uh that is larger than the other ones because climate change is affecting fish stocks too it's causing fish stocks to you know to migrate to uh yeah in some cases even to to reduce their size and their their their ability

to reproduce um but similarly with deep sea mining which you just mentioned that is a it's it's an imminent threat to the ocean it doesn't yet happen on the high seas uh but it could happen in as soon as this year actually and deep sea mining is going to be if allowed to go ahead another unregulated activity happening on the high seas again these areas belong to no single nation so it'll be almost impossible to regulate or hold countries and companies to account for the damage that they are inflicting to deep sea ecosystems and this will impact fisheries as well so this is why many fishing associations are calling on government not to allow deep sea mining to go ahead so just coming back to the point of all these pressures basically you know compound each other and and

deep sea mining is simply a threat we can't afford and i do believe it is going to be a major threat to the to the world's oceans just because of where it will happen if it if allowed to happen it will take place at four to six kilometers deep on the high seas uh this means that it will be impossible to regulate or to audit it will be impossible to hold as i said countries to account which country is going to take another country to court over damage done in an area that doesn't belong to them. We see that with fishing, and I just mentioned unregulated fishing on the high seas. It is allowed to happen because no single country is going to spend political capital on holding another country to account over something that

isn't happening in their waters. And so to me, deep sea mining is going to be the next threat to the ocean the next crisis facing our ocean because once one country starts mining then essentially you open the floodgate for every country to start mining and it will be the wild west so we'll have fishing we will have all these extractive practices of deep sea mining so to me yeah that's why right now the last two and a half years i've really focused on on campaigning to stop deep sea mining from from going ahead and also with a view to linking these threats to this very new treaty that we've just agreed as an international community which is the high seas treaty which is just concerned with the sustainable use and conservation of life wildlife biodiversity

on the high seas and that treaty has yet to be signed and ratified never mind you know implemented And before that takes effect, we are contemplating opening the deep sea to mining. And to me, that's just, it's a very unfortunate sign that we're still not willing to put people and planet before profit, before company interest. Well, I'm sorry, but that is all the time that we have for today. I would like to thank my guests. uh so far if um if you could what are you working on next uh deep sea mining and uh and where can we find you online thanks nathan so um you can find me online uh farah yasmin on twitter or at women for oceans on all the the social media channels you can also find me on linkedin i tend

to be very active there um and you can order the book at theoceanandus.com and where i will continue to work on deep sea mining but as i've said i've been working in the ocean space for 20 years and i will continue to fight uh for the ocean and uh rebecca uh what is up next for you and where can we find you online thanks nathan uh so people can find me on twitter at back underscore hubbard or and i'm also the next steps are as far as just discussing with protecting the high seas i'm the now the director of the high seas alliance so i'll be working really really hard to ensure that we get at least 60 countries to ratify that treaty by 2025 and get it into force so that we can protect that precious marine environment out there beyond countries

jurisdictions so i hope that people follow along and and support not just that but as far as said the um the campaign to stop deep sea mining and actually just actively engage in ocean conservation because there's definitely a lot to be done thank you again for joining us and to the listeners thank you for tuning in we'll see you next time There I met with Greciani, Poligliani Cimbonau. So help me, Boban Poligliani, way, hey, Poligliani. Help me, Boban Poligliani, Poligliani Cimbonau. A porter of a porter's gin, oh, way, hey, Poligliani.

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