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The Silent Damage Behind Your Canned Tuna · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Somewhere in the open ocean right now,
• 0:02
  there is a raft about
• 0:03
  the size of a small table,
• 0:05
  drifting on the current.
• 0:06
  It has a GPS beacon on top and a long
• 0:09
  tail of netting hanging underneath.
• 0:12
  Nobody is steering it.
• 0:13
  And there's a decent chance it's drifting
• 0:15
  toward one of the places we've set
• 0:17
  aside to protect.
• 0:19
  I want to tell you about that raft today
• 0:21
  because a new study just put out a
• 0:23
  number on how far these things travel.
• 0:25
  And the number is
• 0:26
  genuinely hard to shake.
• 0:28
  The raft is called a
• 0:29
  fish aggregating device.
• 0:31
  In the tuna industry, people say FADs.
• 0:35
  The idea behind it is
• 0:36
  simple, almost clever.
• 0:39
  Fish are drawn to anything
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  floating in the open water.
• 0:42
  Put out a raft, wait, and a whole
• 0:45
  community shows up underneath it,
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  including tuna.
• 0:48
  The GPS beacon tells the fleet exactly
• 0:51
  where the raft is and roughly how much
• 0:54
  life has gathered below.
• 0:56
  When it's worth the trip, a boat comes
• 0:58
  out and scoops the whole thing.
• 1:01
  Thousands of these are released into the
• 1:03
  ocean and left to drift.
• 1:05
  And that's where the trouble starts
• 1:06
  because a drifting raft goes where the
• 1:09
  current takes it.
• 1:10
  The study published in the journal of
• 1:12
  science advances in June tracked the
• 1:15
  public data on these devices.
• 1:17
  Researchers found that they've likely
• 1:18
  drifted through more than half of the
• 1:20
  world's marine
• 1:21
  protected areas by total area.
• 1:24
  Not half of one region, half of the
• 1:27
  protected ocean worldwide.
• 1:30
  The team has also counted the times these
• 1:32
  rafts actually washed up or got stuck and
• 1:36
  came back with more than 6,000 strandings
• 1:39
  across 174 protected areas in 53
• 1:44
  different countries and territories.
• 1:47
  So here's the obvious question.
• 1:49
  A raft drifts into a protected zone.
• 1:51
  Why does that matter?
• 1:53
  It matters because a protected area is
• 1:55
  meant to be the ocean safe room.
• 1:57
  It's the stretch where you fence off.
• 2:00
  It's on paper so that coral
• 2:01
  turtles and fish can recover.
• 2:04
  And these devices don't read the signs.
• 2:08
  When one washes onto a reef, the netting
• 2:10
  underneath snags and breaks the coral.
• 2:12
  When it starts falling apart, it becomes
• 2:15
  plastic pollution in
• 2:16
  the exact place where
• 2:17
  we're trying to keep it clean.
• 2:19
  And that hanging that keeps fishing even
• 2:23
  after nobody's watching.
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  It entangles sea turtles and sharks long
• 2:28
  after any Tuda were ever caught.
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  The study found nearly 500 at risk
• 2:32
  species living inside the
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  protected areas where these
• 2:34
  strandings happen and the
• 2:36
  damage clusters in a few hotspots.
• 2:39
  The Central Pacific, the Western Indian
• 2:41
  Ocean and the Caribbean.
• 2:44
  Here's the part that
• 2:45
  stuck with me though.
• 2:46
  These devices come from
• 2:47
  large industrial fleets.
• 2:49
  But when they wash ashore, the cleanup
• 2:51
  usually lands on
• 2:52
  small island communities.
• 2:53
  The people who often see none of the
• 2:55
  profit from that Tuna end up hauling the
• 2:57
  equipment right off their beaches.
• 3:00
  One of the studies co-authors and
• 3:02
  economists from the University of Hawaii,
• 3:03
  Manoa, put the core problem plainly.
• 3:06
  Protected areas are drawn to guard
• 3:08
  specific places, but drifting gear
• 3:10
  doesn't recognize those boundaries.
• 3:13
  Now, I don't want to leave you sitting in
• 3:15
  the bad news because
• 3:16
  there's real movement here.
• 3:19
  The industry has started to change.
• 3:21
  Some fleets are switching to devices that
• 3:23
  are less harmful and more biodegradable
• 3:25
  so that a lost raft breaks down instead
• 3:28
  of choking a reef more for years.
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  That's genuine progress.
• 3:32
  But the researchers are clear that it
• 3:34
  isn't enough on its own.
• 3:36
  They're calling for three things.
• 3:38
  Stronger rules on how these devices get
• 3:39
  used, better tracking so a lost raft can
• 3:42
  be traced back to whoever put it in the
• 3:44
  water and real systems to go out and
• 3:46
  retrieve them before
• 3:48
  they turn into debris.
• 3:50
  That's the policy side and that matters.
• 3:53
  But you probably can't pass fishing
• 3:55
  regulation this afternoon.
• 3:57
  It's not going to happen anytime soon.
• 3:59
  So let me give you the
• 4:00
  lever you actually have.
• 4:03
  This whole problem traces back to one
• 4:05
  style of tuna fishing.
• 4:06
  The drifting device method and you weigh
• 4:09
  in on that every time
• 4:10
  you buy a can of tuna.
• 4:12
  Next time you're at the store, flip the
• 4:14
  can over and look for two phrases.
• 4:17
  Pull in line caught or FAD free.
• 4:20
  That's tuna caught without these rafts.
• 4:22
  If the can doesn't say it,
• 4:24
  that's usually your answer.
• 4:25
  It takes about 10 seconds to look.
• 4:28
  And if you want to check a specific
• 4:29
  brand, a free seafood guide like seafood
• 4:32
  will rate it for you in
• 4:33
  about the same amount of time.
• 4:35
  You're not going to clean a reef halfway
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  across the world from your kitchen.
• 4:38
  I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but
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  demand is the reason these devices are in
• 4:43
  the water in the first place.
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  Choose the tuna caught the harder,
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  cleaner way and chip away at the reason
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  to drift another raft
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  into a protected zone.
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  Because in the end, a protected area only
• 4:55
  protects what stays inside the lines.
• 4:57
  When the harm drifts in on its own
• 4:59
  protection needs help from the outside.
• 5:02
  Sometimes that help is better rules and
• 5:04
  better tracking and sometimes just a
• 5:05
  better choice made quietly at the shelf.
• 5:10
  That's it for today's episode on this
• 5:12
  episode of how to
• 5:13
  protect the ocean podcast.
• 5:14
  Trying something new, trying more of a
• 5:15
  little bit of a story base and less kind
• 5:17
  of functional and less robotic.
• 5:19
  But I hope you enjoyed it.
• 5:20
  I hope it got what you wanted.
• 5:21
  I'd love to hear your feedback on it.
• 5:23
  You can hit me up.
• 5:24
  DM me on Instagram, on TikTok, on
• 5:26
  Facebook, if you'd like.
• 5:28
  You can also support the show by going to
• 5:31
  speak up for blue.com forward slash
• 5:33
  Patreon that speak up
• 5:35
  for blue.com forward slash.
• 5:37
  I want to thank you for listening to this
• 5:38
  episode of the how to
• 5:39
  protect the ocean podcast.
• 5:41
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 5:42
  Have a great day.
• 5:42
  We'll talk to you next
• 5:43
  time and happy conservation.