YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND BRIAN SKERRY GOODPLANET FOUNDATION FROM ABOVE AND BELOW MAN AND THE SEA

Transcription

1 YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND BRIAN SKERRY GOODPLANET FOUNDATION FROM ABOVE AND BELOW MAN AND THE SEA

2 THE END OF THE GREAT PREDATORS Between 50 and 100 million sharks are killed each year. Often, they are caught by fishermen, their fins are cut off, and they are thrown back in the sea alive... where they slowly die. This massacre is being met with stunning indifference, if you consider that most of us would deem it unacceptable to cut off a cow s four legs without anesthetic, then throwing its still living body in a mass grave. Like fish in general, sharks do not howl when they suffer. Nor do they cry. But for those who can imagine their suffering, it is a terrible sight. There is no denying that these are great predators, carnivores who can kill men. But this is also true of tigers and lions, among many others, and these two felines enjoy far greater public sympathy: Children have stuffed animals that look like them and cartoons feature them as heroes. As for sharks, they suffer from a horrible reputation partially due, no doubt, to Steven Spielberg s film Jaws (1975). Yet lions are far more dangerous than sharks. Each year they kill about 250 people, while large fish only kill a dozen (twelve dead and seventy-five attacks in 2011, according to the International Shark Attack File, which is more than the previous years, with an average of 4.3 dead per year over the decade). OPPOSITE: Shark caught in a fishing net, San Marco Island, Gulf of California, Mexico Between 50 and 100 million sharks are killed each year. Often, their fins are cut off by knife onboard ship, then the sharks are thrown back in the sea dead or dying. Many animal rights activists protest this practice. macabre list No shark species is found on the list of the ten most dangerous animals for man. In this macabre and somewhat vague ranking, the human race s top enemy is... the mosquito. By transmitting various deadly diseases, such as malaria and dengue, mosquitoes are responsible for 2 million human deaths a year! They are followed by snakes, which kill close to 100,000 people a year; scorpions (5,000); crocodiles (2,000); elephants (500); bees; lions; rhinoceroses; jellyfish; and tigers. Sharks only appear eleventh in the ranking! On Wikipedia, one can even find this surprising, though hard to verify, figure: In the United States, ten deaths were attributed to sharks from 2001 to 2010, versus 263 caused by dog bites. Despite their scary appearance, sharks are extremely vulnerable. They develop slowly, reproduce late, and females only have one or two pups per litter, after an often long gestation. Current catches are therefore exerting great pressure on the populations. A study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) showed that in 2009, 32 percent of high-seas sharks were threatened with extinction. Figures vary, as do situations: There are approximately 490 shark species, all very different, ranging from the whale shark, which can be up to 65 feet (20 meters) long and only feeds on krill, to the dwarf lanternshark (Etmopterus perryi), which is less than 8 inches (20 centimeters) long and lives in depths of 650 to 1,640 feet (200 to 500 meters), without mentioning skates, which are related to sharks. Additionally, the situation varies according to geographic zones: In the Mediterranean, for instance, 42 percent of species are threatened. 490 species of sharks from the smallest to the biggest There are about 490 species of sharks, of which only five are considered dangerous to man. Their size varies from a length of 8 inches (20 centimeters) (dwarf lanternshark) to 65 feet (20 meters) (whale shark). Most are predators, but some, such as the whale shark, feed on plankton by filtering seawater. Some are found in freshwater. threatened predators Overall, the number of sharks around the world has dropped by 70 percent to 80 percent in a few decades. Yet few species are still protected probably because of their image problem, 184

3

4 OVERFISHING: THE THREAT OF COLLAPSE LEFT, TOP AND BOTTOM: Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Honshu, Japan (35 27' N, ' E) The Tsukiji market is the biggest fish market in the world: Each year, more than 5.5 billion dollars of sea products change hands here. It employs sixty thousand people. Several thousand tunas can be sold in a single day. They are marked with a brush, then auctioned in the din of the auctioneers and buyers calls. tuna Tuna accounts for 5 percent of global annual sea fish catches or 4.2 million tons. Seven species are principally fished. Skipjack tuna, which is primarily used for canned tuna, accounts for 59.1 percent of catches. Yellowfin tuna comes next, with 24 percent of catches, followed by bigeye tuna (10 percent), and albacore (5.4 percent). The three bluefin tunas (Southern, Northern, and Pacific) make up the remaining 1.5 percent. Bluefin tuna are the biggest and most sought-after. These seven species are divided in twenty-three stocks, of which three stocks are exposed to the most significant overfishing: East Atlantic and Mediterranean, West Atlantic, and Southern stocks. These stocks may never be renewed if we do not take measures to reduce captures. in combination with other plants. Organic fish farms are beginning to appear, as well as various initiatives to optimize the use of resources. In Asia, extensive fish farming in rice paddies, which uses the fish excrement as fertilizer for the plants, seems promising. Some producers are also combining fish farming at sea with breeding oysters, with the oysters filtering particles not consumed by the fish out of the water. The future will tell whether these different approaches will allow aquaculture to meet soaring global demand. Let s hope the answer comes quickly. With every passing year, the oceans situation becomes worse and we draw closer to a catastrophic collapse. OPPOSITE: Tuna on a Japanese ship, Japan Despite the existence of international institutions to regulate tuna fishing, such as ICCAT (the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas), overfishing continues to imperil stocks of the species. In 2010, some countries and NGOs acted to save tuna by suggesting bluefin tuna be added to the CITES list (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), but the initiative was blocked by the countries that most heavily fish and consume tuna, starting with Japan. For more information on this subject and a relevant excerpt from the film Planet Ocean, go to surpeche/?lang=en 142

5 ARTHUS-BERTRAND SKERRY A WORLD TO DISCOVER THE ESSENTIAL MOVEMENT OF THE OCEANS AN ABUNDANT WORLD COASTS: LIVING WITH THE SEA THE WORLD S GARBAGE DUMP OVERFISHING: THE THREAT OF COLLAPSE WHEN FISHING GOES OVERBOARD THE END OF THE GREAT PREDATORS GLOBAL HIGHWAYS THE BREAKDOWN OF THE CLIMATE REGULATOR TOWARD SUSTAINABLE OCEAN MANAGEMENT A NEED FOR GOVERNANCE This sales blad contains uncorrected proofs of sample pages in miniature. The full specification for the book itself is: MAN AND THE SEA FROM ABOVE AND BELOW Trimmed page size: 34.0 x 26.5 cm Casebound PLC with jacket 304 pages with 200 colour illustrations ISBN (price subject to change without notice) Thames & Hudson 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX