Holy Macaroni (and I don't mean tuna noodle casserole)--this blog is one year old today! On April 8th last year, Randy Olson moved the Shifting Baselines blog to Scienceblogs and, for its launch, we staged a debate on whether or not to eat seafood. One year later, our seafood debate is still raging and relevant so I thought I would re-post our thoughts (but don't miss out on the original comments here).
SHOULD WE CONTINUE TO EAT SEAFOOD?
YES, SAYS RANDY OLSON: Until There Is Effective Leadership, There Is Little Point in Making Sacrifices
I say we should not be expected to stop eating seafood until there is a clear strategy that will make use of individual efforts -- namely boycotts. Asking people to make sacrifices in the absence of organized efforts is asking them to make gestures that are more symbolic than real. That, in my opinion, is essentially religious behavior.
Let me describe a similar situation. I support in general the idea of a reasonably high tax burden in our society with the intention of funding an effective and well meaning government. But at the same time, if taxes are lowered, I'm not about to go ahead and pay a higher rate just because I believe in it, knowing it will make no difference. That's what I feel it's like to not eat shrimp when you see everyone else in our society doing it. At some level these large scale issues are a matter of government. As politically incorrect as it might be to tell consumers this, sometimes they and their meager "buying power" are meaningless if they aren't being organized into a major force.
At our Hollywood Ocean Night in 2004 we handed out the Blue Ocean Institute's Seafood Mini-guide. Many of my friends left that night, much better informed about the impending seafood problems, and ready to put their seafood cards to work. But by a year later they had thrown their cards away. They said that if they had heard any signals in the mass media that they were taking part in a nationwide effort that was making progress, they would have hung in there. But they didn't.
What are you supposed to tell them when you turn on the television and there's Red Lobster promoting its latest Shrimp Feast as if the oceans have endless supplies. And there is absolutely no opposing voice to be heard. I'm sure they are left with a certain amount of skepticism for the next time they are asked to make sacrifices for seafood.
The answer to this dilemma is exactly what our Shifting Baselines project was founded upon. We are today a mass media society. There are ways to use mass media to inform and alert the public of major problems. In the same way that the government attempts to preface any major political move (like starting a war) with a mass communications campaign intended to motivate the populace, environmental efforts ought to be accompanied by similar powerful mass communication.
But at this point I honestly don't know what to say to the world of ocean conservation when I look around and see all the "positive messaging," going on--specifically the Thank You Oceans PSA produced in California last fall that features beautiful shots of pristine oceans, and the Keep Oceans Clean campaign from NOAA, NMFS, Environmental Defense, Disney and the Ad Council that produces movie posters of the Little Mermaid characters smiling and looking healthy. These campaigns are using visual media to send messages, and the messages they are sending are that the oceans are a fun, happy, healthy place today, which doesn't quite square with the thousands of beach closure days around the country.
It's like having your house on fire and instead of telling the people in your living room about the fire, you tell them how beautiful your house is in hopes they will want to see more of the house and discover the fire themselves on their own (believing that if they do this they will feel more personally connected to the issue of your house being on fire and want to fight it more aggressively).
There is a common belief that, "if you make people love a resource they will fight to defend it." Well... some of us witnessed how Jacques Cousteau in the 1960's made the entire world fall in love with the oceans. But that was the same ocean-loving world that brought the oceans to where they are today.
There are ways to communicate to the public that our oceans are in a terrible tailspin of decline. Bad news can be tempered with sincerity (the crying Native American PSA of the 70's) or even entertainment (our Jack Black PSA that scored over $10 million in free air time). But to present only images of happy, healthy, clean oceans? I don't get it. Nor do a lot of people who have sent me e-mails about these campaigns asking the same questions.
There are serious problems in the oceans. There exist ways to address them. The public is ready to take part. But they need to be led in a way that will build their trust. Asking them to stop eating Chilean Seabass (the only species I could offer up in 2004 when people asked about the "one thing" they could do), only to learn there is no national boycott campaign in the works, and then to have the MSC certify the South Georgian Chilean Seabass fishery as they did that year, and then see one of the top gourmet magazines pick Chilean Seabass as their Dish of the Year, and then to even today still see it for sale in my local supermarket...
Come on. Don't lie to the public. They're smarter than that.
NO, SAYS JENNIFER JACQUET: It's Time for a Global Strike from Seafood
When we talk about overfishing, we are really talking about overeating. More than 99% of fish extracted from the ocean is eaten (by humans or the animals we eat). Of pork, seafood, chicken, beef, and mutton--SEAFOOD ACCOUNTS FOR THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF FLESH EATEN GLOBALLY. The human appetite, a combination of population growth, sashimi, tuna noodle casserole, and shrimp gumbo, is at the root of the global fisheries crisis. It's time to go on a global diet.
America now consumes five times more fish than it did one hundred years ago. But the problem does not reside only within the boundaries of the U.S. Globally, per capita fish consumption and the human population has doubled since the 1960s. Global fisheries production has risen from 20 million tons in 1950 to more than 140 million tons today (Figure 1). How can marine fisheries feed the global appetite? They simply cannot. What to do?
These days, it's easy to make a statement and much harder to make a difference. The media encourages us to do so many things: to take action, contribute to social consciousness, broadcast the latest news, and to create our own entertainment. From MySpace, to iTunes, to FaceBook it's me, me, me. Last year, Time magazine voted "You" (Me) as Person of the Year. But even with this heightened status, nothing I do seems to make a difference. All individual behavior is engulfed at the national and then again at the global level. On an Earth of 6.5 billion people, how can one person's actions possibly matter?
The simple answer, and the one I espouse most often, is: they can't. But this simple answer is simply how the conscience justifies acts of hedonism. Individual behavior is still where any strong argument begins. Which is why, as someone committed to doing something about overfishing, I do not eat seafood.
For better or worse, I have not yet committed to being environmentally righteous (for the record: I drive and fly obscene distances, I often won't recycle a container if I have to wash it first, I use regular laundry detergent). But I have made my own small efforts to try not to add to the quickly shifting baselines in the ocean.
There are many good reasons not to eat fish: the issue of overfishing, the ethical issues that fish are wildlife and they feel pain, and the health reasons that fish often have high levels of contaminants. But Elton John put my reason best when he sang, "It's no sacrifice, no sacrifice, no sacrifice at all". It's the low-hanging fruit argument. The truth is, I actually enjoy seafood-less cuisine. It is easy to abstain.
The word sacrifice has religious connotations and, as Elton mentioned, this is no sacrifice. It is not religious. It is purely scientific. Global consumption of fish is causing a global collapse of fisheries. This is not a complex problem involving methane, CFCs, carbon emissions and ice core samples. We eat too many fish and therefore we catch too many fish. It's easy. Cutting back on consumption or, better yet, eliminating it altogether is the simplest solution to the global fisheries crisis.
During WWII, boats and their crews went to war rather than fishing. In their absence, fish populations in the North Sea rebounded. If those of us who eat seafood as a luxury could go on a global strike, perhaps we would see the same ecosystem response. The motto is simple: Reduce. Refuse. Restock.
Daniel Pauly often cautions that voicing my belief in seafood abstinence could place me "outside of the discussion". "You will hit a wall," he says. "And then to whom are you speaking?" But I am speaking to you. YouTube, Googlezon, Time magazine's person of the year. Turns out, you are important. Turns out, the first step to abate overfishing begins with you.
- Log in to post comments
Excellent summary of your first year. I haven't gone as far as Jennifer but I have drastically reduced my consumption of seafood over the last year. Part of that decision is definitely due to the insightful and passionate reporting here at Shifting Baselines.
Thanks for the thoughtful commentary on a tough issue. For anyone who does choose to eat seafood, it's important to choose wisely, both for your own health and the health of the oceans.
Our seafood guide gives a quick list of the best and worst choices, plus detailed info on more than 200 fish: http://edf.org/seafood. And there's a mobile version so you can look up fish even when you're at a restaurant: m.edf.org/seafood.
Again, thanks for the in-depth discussion!
Yesterday evening, near the bottom of the tide, I took my kids, Sam (8) and Ursula (4), out in my friend's skiff. We had some rock crabs that'd we'd trapped that weekend under the boat dock and a few polychaete worms I'd caught while collecting mussels last week. Clear of any traffic, Sam took the helm for the first time more or less on his own, and steered us toward an old boat ways that offers a rare bit of structure here in Humboldt Bay, while I rigged a couple poles with a number 4 hook and a small weight on each. Ursula and I broke up one of the crabs, checking out the gill structure and marveling at the way the legs are articulated--there's nothing better for surf perch bait than crab backs! We gently brought the skiff up against a couple of old pilings where the current would hold us in place (slack tide wasn't for another half hour or so). In less time than it took for the ebb tide to cease, we'd caught 6 surf perch (half striped and half whites), and were headed for home, watching the geese fly low overhead and the harbor seals watch us. At home, we filleted our fish, saving the carcasses in the freezer for crab bait. I made fish tacos for dinner and fed the leftovers to the chickens.
We talk about conservation and ecology a lot in our house, and marine issues are literally all around us, between the work that I do, our friends in marine science and in the fishing industry, and particularly given the place that we live. Frankly, I hear more about the impending demise of commercial fishing than I do about the state of the world's oceans, and, for that reason, I'm particularly grateful for blogs like this one. One's perspective is a direct reflection of your experience. Commercial fishing in northern California has been reduced to crabbing, plus a small handful of additional efforts (dragging for thornyheads, flatfish and sablefish; trapping hagfish and sablefish; live rockfish trucked down to the Bay area). Except for the rockfish, the remainder are largely for sale overseas, and that 'handful' employs very few. I don't think there's any need to mention salmon. I've a poor sense for the state of recreational fisheries locally, though between our generally miserable weather and the regulations, my assumption is that our local coastline is a pretty good place to be a fish. It's a poor place to be a commercial fisherman.
Perhaps this is all for the better and I apologize for the lengthy preamble, but the point I wish to make is this: There is more than one way to acquire and consume seafood. In many parts of the world it is a critical source of protein. I am no fan of dragging seamounts for orange roughy, shrimp at the Red Lobster or fish meal for poultry food (apart from the backyard variety!). I argue that it is as important to participate in 'your local ecosystem' (you cannot limit yourself to the role of observer) as it is to think globally about conservation. I think that it's possible to have commercial fisheries that provide a healthy source of food to local communities while maintaining a thriving marine community. Perhaps I'm wrong--certainly the challenges are substantial--but I feel that one powerful way to move towards this objective is to eat local seafood and support small, community-oriented businesses.
I have also concluded that eating fish is morally unacceptable, given the unsustainability of contemporary practices. It was an especially hard choice, given that they were among my favourite foods.
Also, the very real chance that tuna will be unavailable or absurdly expensive by the end of my life makes me quite regretful about never indulging in delicious sashimi.
Would someone please contact Carl Safina to see if he will post a new comment that would beat his comment from last year (#17 in last year's comments - the one that begins by saying my post was "just awful").
That was one of the best beat downs I've gotten in years, though was probably outdone this past Sunday when I gave an invited talk on science communication at the American Physiological Society meeting. The very first guy to speak in the Q&A was an old blowhard professor who began by saying, "The reason your talk here today was disappointing was ..." Never been dissed so soundly in front of 300 people in my life, though they all apologized for him and the moderator explained that this guy was the invited speaker two years ago and apparently didn't read the fine print that said you only get to give one lecture.
I'd like to say that Pete Nelson's comment above is one that I wish we could take to heart. Simply saying "seafood is undefensible" is painting the picture with a very broad brush and indeed there are sustainable practices that sustain not only the fish populatons but the community of people who know and care about their environment. It takes a degree of mindfullness that requires our attention to details which in turn requires that our attendion be occasionally deflected from professional sports, campaign rhetoric, and celebrity sex scandals, but you don't have to be the Dalai Lama to be a bit more aware of where one's food comes from, how it got to the table, whether it's seafood, or chicken, which is fed on unsustainably harvested fish meal. If you wish to indulge in a luxury, indulge oneself in knowing and acting accordingly, and don't be too hard on oneself when one fails to live up to some superior standard, but simply try to be a bit better than we have been.
And thanks for bringing our attention to this important and sometimes confusing issue
It's important that everyone be able to do something to be a part of a solution to the global crisis at hand. Whether it's recycling, using less, or eating differently, each person is going to have to make some sacrifices. What? You mean that I have to work hard at something and make sacrifices to reach a goal? Heaven forbid. Sarcasm aside, I think it's great that Jennifer is taking the stance that she is. That is her way of being a part of the solution. If that resonates with other people, then great. We all have a role to play. Why can't refraining from seafood be a part of recovering over-fished stocks?
Thanks for these inspiring comments. I understand that giving up seafood is likely to be an unrealistic goal in the near term (in the same way that Japan will not give up whale meat), particularly in regions of the world where communities are heavily dependent on fish for food security (which is NOT in the EU, US, or Japan). But at some point it must have seemed absurd to some people to give up eating manatees, whales, and bushmeat and yet this has largely happened. For any idea to be considered it should first be considered crazy, which in line with the views expressed by physicist Freeman Dyson about the theory of particles in Scientific American in 1958:
Jennifer, it has been a year since my first post on this debate, and I still haven't eaten any seafood.
I live in Coastal North Carolina, where it's easier to find a crab cake than a cheesecake! I figure if I made it a year living HERE, then I can thrive anywhere seafood-free. Regardless of our dietary choices, we should be mindful of the environmental consequences.
ı Love Fish
Well, this very nice and wonderful.
http://www.forumilla.org