Carl Safina

When I was writing my book “Voyage of the Turtle,” my focus was on the sumo wrestler among sea turtles, the gigantic Leatherback that can weigh a ton. But through my travels, concern about another species, the Loggerhead Turtle, also kept recurring.

Two recent publications merit attention: 1) a new five-year global review of the Loggerhead Turtle by the U.S. government, and 2) a new paper about incidental catch of Loggerheads in Pacific Baja, Mexico, by Hoyt Peckham and several academic colleagues. [see: www.fws.gov/northflorida/SeaTurtles/2007-Reviews/2007-Loggerhead-turtle-5-year-review-final.pdf AND www.plosone.org Search there for: S. Hoyt Peckham, David Maldonado Diaz, Andreas Walli, Georgita Ruiz, L.B. Crowder, and Wallace J. Nichols, Small-scale fisheries bycatch jeopardizes endangered Pacific Loggerhead turtles. PLoS ONE]

When I started going offshore frequently off Long Island in the 1980s, Loggerhead Turtles were in decline. But in the 1990s, their nesting numbers rose considerably on U.S. east coast beaches. In South Florida, for example, Loggerhead nesting populations had grown about 4 percent per year in the 1990s.

Loggerhead populations worldwide have serious problems from fisheries and beach development. The Southeast U.S., from Texas to the Carolinas and especially Florida, has one of the two largest Loggerhead nesting populations in the world. (Oman, on the Arabian peninsula, has the other major nesting area.) The U.S. population has become the most important globally because it probably has the highest remaining population and the best chance for good future management. Yet recent figures show that the Loggerhead population is declining by about 4 percent each year, erasing the gains of the 1990s. Elsewhere on the U.S. coast they’re dropping between 2 and 7 percent annually.

But does that decline really mean much? I used to think not. But now I’m getting concerned.

When I visited the Southeast U.S. in 2004, I saw plenty of Loggerheads. They were near their recent nesting peak and had just started the downturn that everyone is now talking about. In the water, in the right places, juveniles not yet old enough to breed abounded.

The analysis then was that adults were declining because their numbers reflected conditions 25 years or so earlier—when they were hatched. During those bad old days, beach protections were so poor and fisheries mortality were high for so many years that few Loggerheads survived to adulthood. This left a “hole” in the population, leading to a predictable decline in nesting numbers. According to this analysis, the problem wasn’t so much that older turtles were dying, but more that there were so few young ones from decades earlier to mature and replace them. So, the population was dropping.

But because of increased protections for nests and from fisheries, the number of juveniles in the water skyrocketed in the ‘90s. And because fisheries and beach protections were still improving in 2004, there didn’t seem much to worry about. Mandatory turtle escape (or excluder) devices were largely successful in shrimp nets.

Even where fishing boats must use turtle escape devices, shrimp nets catch and waste many unwanted fishes

Surviving juvenile turtles that were benefiting would begin maturing in ten to twenty years, filling in the ‘hole’ in the declining adult population.

Researchers release a juvenile Loggerhead off South Carolina

At least, that was the hope. I shared that hope and still do. Shrimp and longline fisheries now kill far fewer turtles than they did, and many beaches do have better protection than in the past.

Loggerhead Turtle in researcher’s net. Many still drown in some fisheries.

But what if that’s wrong? There’s at least one other possibility: the number of juveniles reflects better protection of beaches and nests, but the falling number of adult nesters indicates that the fisheries kills remain too high for the population to absorb. In other words, yes, there are a lot of juveniles, but they’re not surviving long enough to reproduce and increase the species’ population.

If that’s the case, we’ve got a problem. And what might that problem be? The federal report called fisheries the “most significant man-made factor affecting the conservation and recovery of the Loggerhead.” So, while we make sure the beaches remain as secure as possible, the hole we have to fix is the old fishing hole. All fisheries, not just some, should be required to use the modified nets and modified hooks proven to avoid most incidental catch of turtles.

It’s not easy being a sea turtle. Loggerheads take about 25 years to mature. Then females come out on certain beaches to lay eggs. The eggs must survive undisturbed for two months or so, and then enough of the cookie-sized hatchlings must survive every appetite and hazard of the natural ocean, plus nets, fishing lines, plastics and pollutants for another quarter century before big females in their 200-pound prime come back to do it all again—if the beach is still there and not overrun by hotels, condos, and arcades.

Now let’s skip to the Pacific side of Mexico. Baja, to be specific. The new study by Peckham and his co-workers highlights something long suspected, never well studied. It’s the tip of many icebergs.

Their study looked at two small fishing villages and their turtle catch—mostly Loggerheads. I was there briefly a few years ago and got a first-hand look at the boats, fishermen, and gear. They use narrow open boats about 22 feet long with an outboard motor. They have no GPS, no radios. They set and pull their gillnets by hand. It’s hard, hazardous work, and no guarantee of long life.

Until this study, virtually all the fishing-related mortality that had been documented was in industrial-scale trawl (dragged-net) and longline (miles-long line with thousands of hooks) fisheries. Hundreds of thousands of turtles are caught this way, and many of them are killed (see: Lewison, R. L, S. A. Freeman and L. B. Crowder. 2004. Quantifying the effects of fisheries on threatened species: the impact of pelagic longlines on Loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles. Ecology Letters 7: 221–231.)

But Peckham’s team notes that small-scale fisheries employ 99% of the world’s 51 million fishers, and their activities go largely unmonitored and unregulated.

Peckham and Co.’s main finding was that the two fishing villages they studied fished in areas also preferred by Loggerheads, and caught at least 1,000 Loggerheads yearly. Their catch rates rival those of industrial-scale boats.

Small-scale nets like these also tangle turtles in Baja

And those two Mexican villages help threaten the entire Pacific Loggerhead population for the following reason: all the Loggerheads off Mexico come from Japan—their only North Pacific breeding area—where the breeding population has dropped 90 percent in the last several decades. About a thousand breeding females remain. Juveniles concentrate in a couple of places in the North Pacific, but many cross all the way to Mexico, then stay for a couple of decades until they mature and head back to Japan. Everywhere they go, they meet nets and lines. Sometimes, they meet their death.

A Loggerhead drowned in a fishing net washes ashore in Baja.

Off Baja, a fisherman working a couple of nets from a small boat sometimes drowns more than a dozen turtles a day. Discarded turtles then wash ashore, and the local beach, as I described in “Voyage of the Turtle,” is a carnival of carcasses.

A Loggerhead mummified by the blowing salt and sand of Baja

The good news? Because the scientists worked cooperatively with the fishermen and spent years building trust, a consortium of local people are working to eliminate their catch of turtles, and to establish a national Loggerhead refuge. Bravo.

—Carl Safina

To read the scientific report: http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0001041
For more information, contact these authors of the paper:
Lead author Hoyt Peckham: hoyt@BIOLOGY.UCSC.EDU
Regarding turtle conservation in general – J Nichols: jnichols@oceanconservancy.org
For inquiries about graduate studies in turtle research and the Duke Marine Lab, Dr. Larry Crowder: lcrowder@duke.edu

I’ve just returned from perhaps the most unusual trip of my life. I was part of a small delegation of scientists and leading Christian evangelicals traveling to Alaska to gain, together, first-hand looks at the ongoing effects and implications of climate change (see footnotes for more background on how these people of faith and science came together).

Our group featured some A-team all-stars, including Nobel Prize winner Eric Chivian (he founded the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School), Jim McCarthy (he is president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), famed botanist Peter Raven, and National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson and vice-president Richard Cizik, among others. Rev. Anderson put the trip’s rationale this way for the evangelicals: “Our theology has been in place for 2,000 years, and we’re connecting it to 21st Century science.” Dr. Chivian said, “Both scientists and evangelicals see life on Earth as sacred and share the same deep sense of responsibility about protecting it.” And while some hardliners in the Christian Right are afraid that concerns about nature will undermine their agenda, Cizik told us that more than 60 percent of American evangelicals surveyed actually said they are “concerned” or “very concerned” about global warming. (For a full list of the delegates and more details, see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829120500.htm.)

Our group traveled to Seward, Homer, and Shishmaref.
The Kenai Peninsula; Seward and Homer
Seward and Homer are in the southern part of the state, on Alaska’s stunning Kenai coast.

Perhaps most emblematic of climate change is that nearly all the world’s glaciers are melting. We walked to, or viewed, or flew over, glaciers that have shrunk miles and thinned considerably in recent years, at accelerated rates. In some parts of the world this has serious implications for cities founded to take advantage of snowmelt and glacier melt. Such cities’ water supplies are threatened. Here on the Kenai, we found implications for Alaskan wildlife.

Sockeye and Chum Salmon had migrated upstream and were spawning.

But in some streams, they’re now having trouble with low water levels and temperatures that stress them, their eggs, and their young.

Low water also means lost wetlands, and many of Alaska’s wetlands and small lakes are shrinking, drying, and becoming forested land. We saw that too, with trees growing on former bogs where we were shown sediment cores indicating these places never had trees before.

Further, insects such as the Spruce Bark Beetle, which formerly couldn’t survive the cold of most winters, are now thriving. They’re infesting and killing trees.

Where we were, all the large old spruces were dead, and from the air about half the forest consisted of dead trees.

Next, these dried-out trees become susceptible to wildfires. We saw many burned acres. Before they burn, if possible, people cut the trees off large areas of land. You might have lived in house in the forest and suddenly find yourself with a view of the ocean. With logging roads in, and trees out, the next stage is development. Real estate agents, infesting the place like the beetles they’re replacing, aggressively advertise “emerging view” properties.

This is clearly bad for wildlife, and for landscapes that people identify with, including lands full of forests, cold hard-flowing streams, and bountiful runs of salmon. But is a little warming really a problem for people in a state once dubbed Seward’s Icebox?

Shishmaref

The village of Shishmaref lies on a small barrier island just off the Seward Peninsula and almost on the Arctic Circle. On its ocean side it confronts the Chukchi Sea. Its Inupiat Eskimo natives have lived here at least several centuries, and some say the place has been continually occupied for as long as 4,000 years. This site is ideal because it is a small island with two easy inlets to the ocean for seal-hunting and netting salmon, and access to a broad shallow bay where they can reach hunting and gathering sites on the mainland. A visitor might see them as in the middle of nowhere. They see themselves as living at the center of their food supplies.

Kids now splash and swim in the ocean. They couldn’t do that before. Fun. But climate change now threatens their homes, island, and self-identity. Several things are happing. Sea ice is melting earlier, exposing the island to severe winter storm waves. Battering winds can take away up to 30 feet of land in one storm. Nearly two-dozen houses have been lost. Unusually high tides with no wind, called “silent storms,” also create erosion.

A few feet below the surface of the ground, the soil has for thousands of years been permanently frozen. But this “permafrost” is melting, leaving bluffs more vulnerable to erosion by waves. Melting permafrost is a problem with food storage too, because the natives used to dig to the permafrost to put staples like seal meat into summer cold-storage.

As ice melts earlier, the whole marine ecosystem is changing. Rich spring plankton blooms used to happen when ice melted around April. At that time there was enough sunlight for photosynthesis by single-celled plant plankton (phytoplankton) but it was too cold for tiny animal “zooplankton.” The plant-plankton bloomed and sank, taking nutrients to the bottom, creating rich seafloor populations of shrimp-like amphipods and shellfish that were heavily relied on by Gray Whales, Walruses, diving ducks, and others.

But now the sea ice melts when there’s not enough light for the plant-plankton, so the nutrients that were in the ice just dissipate. Later in the spring, warm and stable surface water allows a bloom but it’s less intense, and it comes at a time when the water’s warm enough for zooplankton to live in. The zooplankton graze the plant plankton before it can sink. It’s also warm enough for fish to move in to take advantage of the new zooplankton populations. So the whole food chain shifts away from links favoring whales and ducks to a chain favoring fish such as Pollock that are expanding northward.(To see how this ties to Gray Whales arriving skinny at their Mexican breeding grounds, see: http://www.ocregister.com/science-technology/whales-gray-ocean-1836844-water-whale

Seals and Walrus—staple foods for Shishmaref’s 600 people—are less available as ice melts earlier and moves farther away. And the animals themselves are suffering. Walruses are coastal animals that forage for shellfish on the continental shelf. As sea ice shrinks away from the coastlines, Walruses must commute farther between ice and foraging areas. Recently, as commutes have gotten too long, they’ve begun abandoning their pups. Diving ducks of certain species are crashing in numbers. Seals of species that give birth on sea ice are facing hard times. And Polar Bears, which depend on ice for hunting seals, are also having difficulty as ice disappears. Drowned Polar Bears have been reported as distances between ice increase dramatically (the bears can swim tens of miles, but not hundreds). Skinny bears, too thin to raise cubs, indicate major problems for these animals.

And for people. Like Polar Bears, Eskimo hunters can no longer rely on the stability or even presence of sea ice. And additional snow cover (warming air is actually making more snow) makes ice hard to read. When an Eskimo snowmobile crashes through thin ice that experience tells them should have been about six feet thick, and a person drowns—as has happened several times in Shishmaref—it means global warming is killing people, too.

So with their way of life washing, melting, and moving away from under them, the people of Shishmaref voted to move. They want to lift their homes and the nice school off the ground, and move them over the ice about ten miles to an unoccupied site on the mainland, a familiar place they’ve long used for picking berries in summer. That will take an estimated $180 million dollars. Since they voted in 2002 to move, they don’t seem any closer to figuring out where that money will come from. Meanwhile, they have gotten money to armor their beach with large boulders sent from Nome. That will buy some time.

Shishmaref is a messy place with no paved streets, full of abandoned snowmobiles and mechanical junk, beset by problems from the influx of Western food (kids constantly eat candy and drink soda, and even many grade-schoolers have rotten teeth).

Yet community bonds are stronger here than perhaps anywhere I’ve ever been. No one seems to consider simply moving away. The problem facing them is how to move their community, so that they remain together. This commitment to their place and to each other deeply touched me. And I found that, yes, it seemed critical to save it. The place seemed touched by magic when, on our last night, we were outside stargazing at about one a.m. with sundown still blushing the western sky, green curtains of the Northern Lights snaking through the heavens, and a full lunar eclipse—all together at once. Truly awesome.

Ultimately, warming and sea level rise will take the sandy island of Shishmaref. As I pondered their ponderous plight and the difficulties of moving 600 people 10 miles to an unoccupied site, several thoughts suddenly struck me: One, I am them. The arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world, so their plight is headed my way; my house, which I also occupy because of easy access to food from the sea, is just a few sandy feet above sea level. Last winter, our neighborhood lost several yards of beach. Much more importantly, I thought this: “If these 600 people are having so much trouble with a short move to an unoccupied site, what happens when it comes time to move millions of people from a sea-flooded Bangladesh?

The night before we left Alaska we enjoyed a meal of salmon and crab legs, part of Alaska’s unparalleled, precious—I might say sacred—ocean bounty. For desert, fittingly, we were served “baked Alaska.”

As scientists, we have scientific authority. But for moral authority, people look to religious leaders. Scientists develop information about how the world is changing. Religions formulate responses to the changing world. These two most powerful forces in society need each other if we are to chart a path of survival into the future.

If you’d like to see more on this trip, note that the PBS TV program “NOW,” hosted by David Brancaccio, sent a crew to travel with us; they plan to feature our trip on the show sometime in October (see: http://www.pbs.org/now/

- Carl Safina

FOOTNOTES: A while back I envisioned creating a dialogue between leading scientists and leading evangelical Christians to help blunt the culture wars and enlist broader support for scientific findings, especially regarding matters of conservation, the natural environment, and its implications for humanity’s well-being. This dialogue has become reality, spearheaded by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (I’m on their board), and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). In my opinion, this would not have been possible without the courage of NAE vice president Richard Cizik, whose public statements about his changed conscience on climate change sparked in me the idea of seeking dialogue. Cizik has been steadfast throughout. The Center for Health and the Global Environment has been likewise pivotal in convening this dialogue. For one brief description of this initiative, see http://chge.med.harvard.edu/media/releases/jan_17.html]

The initiative has stirred some controversy among evangelicals, some of whom are still actively debating the source and severity of current climate change (see: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070118/25243_’Latte-Sippers,_Bible-Thumpers’_Tackle_Climate_Change.htm).

[Among scientists there is near-universal consensus that Earth’s current accelerated warming is human-caused and potentially dangerous to agriculture, water supplies, global peace and security, low-lying countries and coastal cities, natural habitats, and other species. While literally thousands of scientists and hundreds of peer-reviewed published papers have developed and continue to deepen this consensus, approximately five credentialed climatologists have expressed opposing views.] For the state of the science as vetted by thousands of researchers and the governments of dozens of countries, visit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at http://www.ipcc.ch/.

- C.S.

______________

Spirit of Friendship

On my way to Alaska I stopped in Ohio for a one-day workshop. It was the first of an initiative we are calling The Friendship Project, whose goal is to simply foster broad new, ongoing dialogues between many Christian evangelicals and various practicing scientists on the topics of biodiversity, the environment, and global warming. The evangelicals wrap concern for nature and the planet’s life-support systems nicely within the graceful term “Creation care.”

As evangelicals (especially younger ones looking for involvement in worthy causes) become less driven by “wedge issues” and increasingly drawn to matters of wider social relevance like poverty, justice, human trafficking, and the like, Creation care is gaining attention, and the relationship between matters of environment, human health, and justice are becoming increasingly seen as matters of religious concern. My role is to help open lines of communication and convey some of the scientific understanding. This workshop was convened by professor Stephen Weeks of the University of Akron, Rev. Ken Wilson of the Vineyard Churches, and myself. For further details see: http://www.uakron.edu/news/articles/uamain_1839.php
— Carl Safina

On August 10th, The California Coastal Commission unanimously rejected a proposal to grant one fishing company a short-term permit to use longlines to target swordfish off the U.S. West Coast from Santa Barbara north into Oregon.

Longline fishing (using a line tens of miles long with thousands of baited hooks) has been banned off California in U.S. waters out to 200 miles for 30 years. The National Marine Fisheries Service (the federal agency whose job it is to manage fisheries) recommended granting the permit as an experiment to determine economic feasibility. The Commission found the proposal inconsistent with the California Coastal Act’s mandate to protect ocean wildlife and habitats; about half or more of the catch would be unwanted, incidentally killed animals, including sea turtles, marine mammals, seabirds, and fishes (see http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2007/8/F4e-8-2007.pdf)

Note that both management bodies were looking at two totally different questions: economic viability on the one hand, sustainable use and values like waste on the other. Yes, longlining is economically viable, especially if only one boat is doing it. And yes, it can be unacceptably wasteful, especially if a critically endangered species is involved.

How much waste is too much, is open to question. But how much economic viability is enough is also open to question. In the Atlantic, long-lining has destroyed or is destroying the economic viability of most of its own fisheries because too many boats got involved. And world-wide many longline operations appear to lose money (according to an unpublished 2002 analysis by C. Dumas: “The Economics of Pelagic Longline Fishing in the U.S. and Canada: a Brief Overview.” dumasc@unc.edu). Plus, the feds were proposing that taxpayers fund observers on each trip, raising the question of how much taxpayers should subsidize fishing, And then there’s the paradox of putting endangered species at higher risk while the U.S. governement has a mandate to protect endangered species.

One main player who did not testify was Leatherback Turtle, a thousand-pound monster that is critically endangered in the Pacific. One of the biggest controversies about the federal proposal is that the permit would have allowed fishing within a federally designated “Leatherback Turtle Conservation Zone.” Leatherback populations in the Pacific have fallen a catastrophic 95 percent or so since the early 1980s. Incredibly, Leatherback Turtles that breed in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands come all the way to the U. S. West Coast to feed on their equally incredible preferred prey: stinging jellyfish. Speaking on the Leatherback’s behalf were various environmental groups (e.g. Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife and Turtle Island Restoration Network and others). Listening to what this turtle’s silent decline tells us about the ocean is the subject of my book, “Voyage of the Turtle.”

Of course, some feared that if the experiment was to prove economic viability, and the permitted fishing operation made money, then the only rational response to the success of the experiment would be (if you’re a fisheries agency) to allow more fishing, more boats, more gear in the water, more death and waste. And gearing up for long-lining costs tens of thousands of dollars. Would a fishing business that invested the money in an experiment want to give up just because they killed some sea lions, turtles, or birds?

To me, the proposal to allow the fishing “experiment” seemed like too much public trouble and expense for too little public benefit—and perhaps even too little private benefit, for that matter. I feel bad thinking about the frustration of the commercial fishermen involved; they’re good people and they’re looking for new ways to make money like most businesses. They’re being squeezed by regulations, catch rates—and thousands of foreign competitors who don’t care about either turtles or regulations. Billions of baited hooks go into the ocean annually to put seafood on people’s plates, and turning down this one permit application won’t solve all the ocean’s problems.

None of this is easy. But considering the details, I think the Commission made the right call to deny the permit.

Sources:
San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/11/BAGO0RH4GC.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/09/BA49RFALQ.DTL

This is a fishing report with no limits.

One evening recently I went out in my boat with two friends to hunt the biggest brand of Striped Bass. We intended to stay out under the moon until the tide slacked, ‘round midnight. For heavy-shouldered stripers, you go where the tide runs like wild horses over sunken hills studded with boulders. You can see the surface roiling. You drop your bait to the bottom and drift through the roiled current. At the end of the hill, where the water calms, pick up your bait. Repeat. Continue for hours.

We’d gotten out while it was still quite early. I assumed we’d have a long wait before the nocturnally feeding bass got active. But, with an hour and a half until sundown, we decided to just get started and see what might happen. On our first drift we caught a small bass. Though it was below the legal limit of 28 inches, I took it as a good sign that there were some fish here, with at least the smaller ones willing to bite even before sundown. On the very next pass over the boulders I hooked an out-of-control fish that nearly emptied my small reel before I turned it. Just before we could get a glimpse of it, the hook pulled out. A couple of drifts later, I hooked another large, very rambunctious fish. But this time I landed a beauty whose poundage would land somewhere in the mid-30s. A drift or two later, one of my friends caught its twin, then another pressing 30 pounds, moments before my other friend had a fish in the mid-20s alongside.

In the midst of this fantastic fishing, an uncomfortable question arose: shall we continue?

We had two fish over 40 inches on board, and we were each entitled— if that’s the right word—to take one over 40 inches and one between 28 and 40 inches; six fish total. The fish now alongside was legal to take. My friends had driven hours to get here and they love eating fish. These fish freeze well; there would be no waste. And one of my friends had been talking of finding his trophy of a lifetime tonight. (A spearfisherman recently shot a fish here weighing over 59 pounds.)

Striped bass had been deeply depleted by the mid-1980s. Their phenomenal recovery was engineered by protecting young females into adulthood with gradually increasing minimum sizes. It worked exceptionally well and this beautiful, active, delicious fish is now abundant.

All large striped bass are female; they’re good for laying a lot of eggs. I was uncomfortable with the idea of taking more than one each, or the idea of keeping a very large “trophy” fish if we caught one. I was also uncomfortable with continuing to catch and release fish; I didn’t want to risk injuring one by gut-hooking, or having one die from exhaustion, as very large fish in warm water occasionally do.

I asked that we keep the three we had and release the one alongside. My friends immediately said they were “perfectly OK” with calling it an evening. (That’s why they’re my friends.)

We intended to fish well into the night but now we were heading in before it was fully dark. The moon hadn’t yet appeared. Bottom line: abundance pays. We did not take our limit because the fish were so big.

A couple of days later I took a family fishing for Summer Flounder, called Fluke in these parts. We had non-stop action. It was some of the best Fluke fishing I’ve experienced—except for one problem. We only caught one fish big enough to keep. When I was a kid the minimum size was 14 inches, and many we were now catching measured 17 to 19 inches. These would all have been “nice fish.”

But this fishery has long suffered from chronic depletion. Recent increases in Fluke minimum sizes, and reductions in daily limits, have gone in baby steps that have only prolonged the depletion. Fishers and managers can’t agree to back off and just let Fluke recover (as was accomplished with Striped Bass, for which fishing had been totally banned for a short time, followed by very strict regulations that lasted for years). This year the minimum size is 19.5 inches. That’s why all those “nice fish” we were catching and releasing were still in the water. Partly, the fish are still growing up toward the minimum size. And partly, most fish over 19.5 inches are quickly caught by the dozens of boats in the area.*

I’ve long said the Fluke minimum size should be 20 inches. That would allow plenty of spawning and would really boost the population. Hopefully we’re getting close to that, and in the next few years we’ll see more responsible restrictions—and more fish.

So this is a story of no-limits. From the abundant fish, we didn’t need or want our limit. From depleted species, we can’t get enough for a decent lunch. When we are good stewards, where nature is abundant, we get what we want and we can leave broad margins and cash in the bank. When we are stingy, something ironic happens: greed prevents us from getting what we need. If we would let nature recover, if we would leave some for another day, we would have enough.

As I often say, it’s OK to use nature; It’s not OK to use it up. As Robert Frost wrote:
May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan.”

To take what one needs, rather than all one can take, means an end of neediness and the fulfillment of future desires.

*(Technical note for fisher(wo)men: I’m using circle hooks for Striped Bass and Fluke and did not have a single fish hooked in the throat or gut; Of about 30 fish caught last week, all were released quickly. I removed the hook without touching the fish, and mostly without lifting them from the water, with the aid of a J-style de-hooker.http://www.dehooker4arc.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=D&Category_Code=JD)

The San Francisco Chronicle’s online SFGate recently (Friday, July 20, 2007) carried an article titled: “Please Never Find A Giant Squid,” by Mark Morford (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/07/20/notes072007.DTL)

His thesis: “We haven’t really captured a live one yet… [He means healthy, but let him go on] Can we right now put out a… meek and humble supplication to the gods of nature and time and science and human endeavor? Can we make it a juicy and spiritually-charged appeal that runs in direct opposition to the mad and never-ending human need to find and grab and trap and kill every gorgeous messy squishy mystery we ever encounter so as to study it and quantify it and force-fit it into our rather narrow worldview, a very specific offering that says please, oh please, let us never, ever capture and understand and fully comprehend a live 50-foot, 2-ton colossal deep-sea squid? Please?”

He does go on, but you get his drift: mystery equals appreciation, and mystery dies when we learn something, and when mystery dies, our human spirits are diminished. I’m paraphrasing but that’s what I got out of it. I’ve heard this argument many times. I feel the opposite. For me, learning deepens and broadens the experience of being alive, and it deepens the mysteries. The worldview, narrow only in ignorance, expands.

By the way, the Giant Squid and Colossal Squid are two different species, so if he wants to stay ignorantly mystery-struck, he’s off to a good start.

And that’s basically my point. The more you know, the richer the world is. I mean, right here, we either have one huge type of squid or two. I’d rather know there are two. That’s twice as amazing. How do we know? Because scientists study them. That’s why I love science.

People hostile to facts about nature seem to think the more you know the more you will fail to see beauty. How tragically wrong. The more we learn the more we can appreciate. And still the surface beauty remains—more so in fact because we can see the differences, and thus increase the topography and surface texture of the world. Flat versus varied. Vive le difference!

The people I know who most love and delight in natural beauty are all scientifically inclined. They see much more than people who don’t really know—and don’t want to know—what they’re looking at. Their understanding takes them deep. If we have an open mind, and are not averse to facts, we learn details and richness that goes beneath the surface.

The more we hold the world at arm’s length and beat the curiosity out of ourselves, the more we lose the romantic view that motivates scientists and artists and explorers. And then, ironically, those who profess to love mystery seem to turn their backs on the mystery.

What’s left if we leave the squids and every other mystery “alone” and savor our ignorance? While scientists are out in boats sucking the marrow out of life, everyone else is in their cubicles or going to the supermarket or paying bills. The forces of destruction go to work anyway; they don’t stop overfishing or cutting down forests because a few people who fear learning want to leave the “mystery” in place.

Intellectual understanding enhances romance rather than masks it. One squid or two? I’ll take two. (Actually there are nearly 800 species of squids and their close relatives; if you want to be blown away by the mystery and richness of a world so populated with living diversity of just this one group of astonishing animals—cephalopod mollusks—see cephbase.org).

People who love the thought of mystery for its own sake, who aren’t interested in learning, who don’t burn with curiosity and the insatiable hunger to just inhale life—strike me as sad, and usually rather dull. That laziness that wants to preserve the mystery is just the other side of the same coin that makes people merely blasé.

The article says “the human soul craves mystery.” Certainly. But let’s not confuse craving mystery with craving ignorance. If you crave mystery, learn everything you possibly can, and the mystery of existence will so rapidly expand it will be like a supernova in your brain. It will leave you gasping for breath.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, except fear itself.

— Carl Safina

We’re headed in.

Several of us stayed up until midnight last night, chumming for sharks and jigging for Humboldt Squid, and we caught exactly one of the former (a small Blue) and two of the latter.

That might seem slow but the night was lovely and lots of small fish and a few smallish squid, and one small diving bird (a small auk of some kind) enlivened the water within our halo of lights.

This morning’s set brought several small Blue Sharks and one hefty Mako who left us with a satellite tag.

The trip has been perfect in many ways—interesting, great people, terrific animals around us, and great weather.

I hope that a few decades from now the youngest on our crew—16-year-old Matt Ramon—and the students working with us, will still be going on research cruises, still opening the wonders of new understanding, and still be able to say they saw at least as much as we have this week.

And now my attention shifts, again, homeward. It’s with equal anticipation that I return as that I came. And that is saying something.

–Carl Safina

Makos in the north, baby Blue Sharks in the South. That’s part of the pattern we’re seeing.

Yesterday morning, our first set—in 900 meters of water only about 15 miles from Santa Monica Bay—garnered a Shortfin Mako of about 200 pounds and a five-foot Blue Shark.

The Mako—a tough customer—got outfitted with the two kinds of electronic tags, as I described earlier in the trip. The combined price of the two tags is $5,500 per shark. It’s a commitment to science that must not be wasted when it comes time to use the information to manage fisheries.

More of the Makos are bearing wounds from Humboldt Squid, and one of the Blue Sharks coughed up a couple of squid beaks. It’s a violent world in every dimension.

This morning’s breathless dawn found us in a slick molten-looking sea 40 miles off San Diego. The overcast that had broken yesterday returned; turning the water slate gray under a dense ceiling.

Whales and dolphins have kept us in good company all week. While we were setting this morning a pod of big, blunt-headed, high-finned Risso’s Dolphins followed a Minke Whale’s appearance. The afternoon brought Short-beaked Common Dolphins.

We’ve moved south of most Makos and are into water where swim the tiniest Blue Sharks I’ve ever seen. Many of our hooks came back bare or with bait bitten in half, apparently from sharks too small to get hooked. The 21 sharks we caught were mainly less than three feet. And though we lost the largest Blue of the trip—nearly nine feet long—we also caught perhaps the smallest Blue Shark of this tagging project: less than two feet from nose to tip of tail—virtually newborn.

In all we tagged 21 Blue Sharks today.

Carl Safina

We’re now off Anacapa Island, under the first blue sky all week. Mainland mountains are just visible in the haze.

Last night we spent a couple of hours jigging for Humboldt Squid and caught two “small” ones that were the largest squid I’ve ever seen alive. Today, no fewer than three of the Makos we caught had squid sucker marks on them. Because the marks were concentrated on or around the head, it appears the sharks are attacking the squid and not vice versa.

The seas have built during the day, with a 5-foot breaking swell coming from the west, yet no wind. It’s still comfortable; the crests are far apart.

This area is alive with dolphins, and several times today we were treated to the sight of Common Dolphins in schools of dozens, ripping through the surface like tuna, followed by flocks of gulls, pelicans, and Sooty Shearwaters trying to get in on whatever small prey fish the dolphins were chasing.

The morning set garnered two sizeable Blue Sharks in the 6 to 7 foot range, and 5 Shortfin Makos around 4 to 5 feet. The afternoon haul brought five Makos and another Pelagic Ray.

The morning’s last Mako must have just been hooked when we hauled it; it was not tired, not mellow, and not at all pleased. It did not go easy into the cradle, thrashing and slamming so wildly four people had to hold it down before Erick got the blanket over its eyes.

The afternoon swell caused the ship to pitch sufficiently that the cradle and platform were frequently plunged underwater, soaking the scientists working on their knees and bellies, reminding us that the ocean is, foremost, a wet place.

— Carl Safina

DAY FOUR

Just a few miles away, the high-rising shoulders of Catalina lost themselves in low-hanging overcast. The dawn sea looked pewter—moody and lovely.

Fishing was excellent but catching was slow, to paraphrase an old joke. Our morning haul-back brought just two small Blue Sharks. We did see an Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) and glimpsed the swift fin of a Minke Whale (rhymes with kinky) and a big Risso’s Dolphin, and later a pod of Common Dolphins came streaking through the waves, shadowed by a retinue of Elegant Terns. In other words, non-stop grace and wonderment, as usual.

On the afternoon haul, something simultaneously auspicious and ominous: one of the braided cable leaders came up chewed through. I would not have thought that possible. It’s hard to imagine something capable of doing that and still being interested in sucking in one of our 10-inch mackerel, rather than, say, eating a sea lion, but odd stuff happens at sea. The set brought two Mako pups. Suzie invited me to do the tagging, which I duly did for the pups.

Then on one of the last hooks hung a larger Mako, about six feet long and about 170 pounds. The larger animal would get the two kinds of electronic tags, and because applying these takes some practice, Suzie took over again. She led the animal toward us with the leader, and as the cradle dipped into the sea she pulled it over the perforated metal and yelled, “Up!” The water drained away and the Mako began thrashing, but we pounced on it as Erick Oñate-González put the thick blanket over its big black eyes, pulled up its pointy nose, and into the jaws of death inserted the ventilator hose. Quite a job description.

One of the electronic tags bolts to the dorsal fin and transmits its presence to satellites when the shark is traveling at the sea surface, thus tracking its cross-ocean travels.

The other tag looks a little like a cigar on a stalk that is anchored into the muscle; it records temperature and depth, then releases itself at a pre-programed time (about eight months from now), floats to the surface, and tells satellites the story of the shark’s vertical travels between the surface and the dark, cold depths. It’s incredible technology, revolutionizing our understanding of how animals use the ocean. Turns out that though Makos frequent the surface, they often dive to a thousand feet, rarely twice that.

While Suzie applied the tags, Erick held the head, kept its eyes covered, and kept the ventilator in place. That job takes nerve and concentration; you can’t get distracted or be caught by surprise if a shark this size suddenly thrashes. I helped “control” the tail, but in fact the shark stayed passive most of the time. I had the distinct sensual pleasure of having my hands on that beautiful sleek, cobalt skin, with its fine-sandy texture, and the strong, thick keel at the tailstock’s base. An exquisite, living sculpture; evolutionary art.

At one point as we rolled the shark slightly to check sex (male, indicated by its two penis-like misnamed “claspers”) the Mako started squirming and was working itself up to some violent thrashing. Anyone who has caught them on rod and reel knows Makos are capable of literally spinning out of control. I noticed that the blanket had slipped off its left eye, and when Eric quickly flapped it back on, the shark’s whole body instantly relaxed, its muscular tension utterly dissipating.

When Suzie yelled “Down!” and the cradle entered the water and we shoved that Mako forward, it took off like a shot.

And where do the sharks we’re catching in these relatively protected waters go? The tracking affirms that these sharks range widely up and down the California Current, west to waters north of Hawaii, down off Mexico, and generally becoming vulnerable to fishing boats from other countries in the open ocean. No sea is an island.

In the early 1990s there had been a small commercial fishery for sharks here. It had a temporary permit, and the permit was not renewed because the area proved to be a shark nursery. Thus this survey was born. Would that such wisdom prevailed world-wide.

In the last two decades the number of sharks killed has skyrocketed, draining the sea of many of its most compelling predators. I’ve seen the difference; the numbers of sharks we used to see in the 1980s was much greater than now. Everyone I know who has a history at sea says the same, as do a series of recent scientific studies.

Tens of millions of sharks have been killed annually, mainly for fins used as a thickener in soup, mainly since the mid-1980s. The number killed is almost certain to decline, not because international fisheries management—still dysfunctional over vast swaths of the planet—is likely get its ass in gear anytime soon for the benefit of sharks, but because the sharks will grow progressively scarcer.

In the present survey, there’s some evidence of decline in this population, but the trend is unclear. Year-to-year variability, based in part on weather and water quality (for instance, blooms of toxic red tides) affects numbers of sharks caught. So uncertainty remains about this shark community’s trajectory. More time is likely to clear the picture. But slow declines can be hard to detect for years, until real problems accumulate. That’s a problem in itself, because it delays action.

For example, many populations of albatrosses have been declining at rates of around just 1% per year (coincidentally, mainly because of incidental drowning in poorly regulated long-line fisheries.) It took too long for scientists to determine the declines were real, sustained, and significant. But over the course of just one working career for the scientists who were monitoring albatrosses, declines of 1% annually became population emergencies threatening some albatrosses with extinction. And yet in the last decade some real progress has been made in reducing albatross deaths. Bright spots include Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand, the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and the Southern Ocean. That progress matters; it may yet save threatened albatrosses.

It also suggests that despite the history of most fisheries management worldwide, there remains hope for sharks. Certainly, these sharks we’re catching, many of them quite young, constitute hope with a mischievous grin.

— Carl Safina

The day dawned on a calm and overcast morning, my favorite sea weather, easier on the eyes than a million shards of sunlight shining like broken glass up from the water.

We’ve moved to a spot about eight miles southeast of Catalina. Where we fish is pre-determined by a sampling regime, not necessarily because we’re looking for the best spot to catch the most. So our catch rate varies.

The air was cool, in the 60s as we made the morning set. I baited about half the hooks and handed them to the clipper-person. Someone put a lineup of “late” Beatles classics in the PA system. All you need is love, 200 hooks, and several tubs of thawed mackerel, and the work goes smooth.

We caught a few sharks in the morning but the afternoon set was our most active yet, with a baker’s dozen comprised of Blue Sharks and one Mako. I remain impressed by the crew’s skill in sliding sharks into the cradle and then gaining control by grabbing them just behind the head.

It’s a bit hair-raising, and the phrase “If he hollers, let ‘im go!” popped into my head. The males are particularly rambunctious—a bad personality trait when combined with several rows of daggers in a vice. And while the Blues often blink to protect their own eyes when being bossed around, the Makos often swivel their eyes to watch who’s doing what. So far I haven’t seen a shark attempt to defend itself orally, but of course the risk exists; one bite would be too many.

The afternoon’s Mako, a sleek nearly-five-footer, had something I have never seen before, or even heard of: wounds from a Humboldt Squid. The Mako’s sides carried marks from rows of suckers, and slashes seemingly from the squid’s beak!

Suzie Kohin says such wounds just started showing up here for the first time last year. The big squid, which can weigh 75 pounds, have been expanding their range northward, invading California waters as they’ve warmed in recent years. Even in their more traditional range, the squid are more abundant because the fish that prey on them as juveniles—such as sharks and tunas—are overfished.

Who attacked whom? Dunno. The squid are notoriously aggressive—but so is the Mako, which regularly eats squid. My guess is the Mako attacked, and the squid defended itself. Either way, the encounter was violent, with intent to kill—like many in the ocean.

— Carl Safina