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What Happens When We Fish the Ocean's Food Supply? · How To Protect The Ocean

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  One of the biggest problem in ocean fishing isn't just overfishing
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  predators, but removing the food those predators need to survive.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update.
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  If you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, hit
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  that follow button right now so you do not miss tomorrow's episode.
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  And this week, we're gonna be talking about forage fish, and today in
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  particular, we're gonna be talking about a question that's becoming more
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  important in marine conservation.
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  What happens when humans start heavily fishing the base of the ocean food web?
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  I'm not talking about plankton.
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  I'm talking about the things that feed on plankton, and that's
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  forage fish because that's exactly what's happening with forage fish.
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  These are species like sardines, anchovies, herring, and capelin.
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  Small fish, right?
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  Huge importance and incredibly massive industrial value.
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  A surprising amount of forage fish caught globally does not go
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  directly to human dinner plates.
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  Instead, many are processed into fish meal and fish oils.
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  You know, the fish oils that everybody tells you to get omega fatty acids?
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  It's a great way to get that, but how much of these fish are being taken out
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  compared to what's being left to run the actual ecosystem and keep things
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  stable and allow for fisheries of those predators to be sustainable as well.
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  The products that are created are then used for aquaculture, livestock feed,
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  pet food, and dietary supplements.
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  That means that tiny fish that naturally feed whales, tuna, salmon, sea birds,
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  and cod are increasingly being redirected into industrial supply chains.
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  This type of fishing is often called reduction fishing because the
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  fish are reduced into ingredients.
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  Now, fisheries managers do set quotas and catch limits, but critics
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  argue that traditional fisheries management sometimes focuses too
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  heavily on the target species itself.
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  In other words, fisheries managers are asking, "Can this fish population
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  survive fishing pressure?" Instead of asking, " Can the ecosystem
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  survive losing this much food?
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  And that distinction actually matters quite a bit.
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  Marine ecosystems are deeply interconnected.
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  You can't remove a major food source without consequences.
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  One major example is seabirds.
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  We talked a little bit about them yesterday.
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  But researchers have documented breeding failures in some seabirds
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  populations during periods of low forage fish abundance.
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  The parents of these seabirds literally could not find enough
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  food to bring back to their chicks.
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  Another example involves Atlantic cod.
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  Historically, cod populations depended heavily on forage fish.
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  When those food webs become disrupted, recovery becomes much harder.
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  And this is one reason some scientists argue we should stop viewing
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  fisheries as isolated industries.
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  The ocean is not a collection of separate compartments.
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  You can't just have salmon over here, cod over here, tuna over here.
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  It's a connected energy system.
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  And forage fish sit near the center of that system.
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  There's also an efficiency question here.
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  Think about it this way.
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  We catch wild fish, they turn them into feed.
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  We feed them to farm fish or livestock, then humans eat the final product.
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  That can become a little bit of an inefficient use of ocean protein,
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  especially when ecosystems are already under stress from warming
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  oceans, habitat loss, and pollution.
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  And climate change, of course, adds another layer of risk, like
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  probably the biggest layer of risk, making everything else even worse.
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  Marine heatwaves can reduce plankton production, and that affects forage
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  fish because that's their primary food, which affects predators
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  higher up in the food chain.
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  So pressure compounds quite quickly.
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  Now, one thing that I find really interesting, we're gonna cover it
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  in the later episodes, is the fact that we don't communicate this a lot.
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  Forage fish are not on the topics of everybody in
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  fisheries or anybody in oceans.
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  We often think of it, if you're a scientist, you think of them, yeah,
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  they're an important part of the food web, and they need to be managed appropriately.
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  But a lot of times they don't get managed appropriately, and there's
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  not a lot of pressure on governments from the people who vote them in
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  there, vote these representatives in there to do that because
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  there's not a lot of communication.
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  And communication is really important in science and conservation in
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  general, and we don't do enough science communication and because it's hard.
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  And we're not incentivized to do it.
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  We're not paid extra to do it.
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  A lot of scientists have other things that they have to do.
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  They have to publish in journals that are hidden behind paywalls,
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  but it can't get out to the public.
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  And it's difficult for them to do it 'cause they're so busy managing
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  students and everything like that.
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  And so what we do is we have people to do that for you, science
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  communicators, who have done a great job in doing it in the past.
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  And one of those people is a person that I work-- is, is a company that
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  I work for, Pisces Ocean, who's a sponsor of this episode, who we
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  value the fact that we need to talk more about fish like forage fish.
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  And then we value the fact that this is an important part of the ecosystem,
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  and we wanna make sure that people get that message out there quickly,
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  not just to their own constituents, but also broaden that message.
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  And we can do that at Pisces by either help you running campaigns,
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  strategize for those campaigns.
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  And it's okay, like I know a lot of nonprofits don't have a ton of money
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  to hire a consulting firm to do that.
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  We do have a program called Pisces Points where you can try and
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  get, like, if you want us to run a campaign, we can run a campaign.
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  If you would later on want us to run social media or make
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  some posts or something like that, we have that all for you.
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  We just require a strategy session before that and a wayfinder,
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  what we call a wayfinder.
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  So speaking of wayfinder, why don't you go to the website right now,
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  piscesoceans.ca for that wayfinder and be able to see what you need help
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  in, and we can help you in that area.
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  So go to piscesoceans.ca.
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  I'll put the link in the show notes, and you'll be able to get access to it.
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  Let's get back to the episode going back to what happens next in
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  terms of how do we manage this.
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  This is where ecosystem-based fisheries management plays a really important role.
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  Instead of managing fish species independently, scientists and policymakers
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  are increasingly trying to manage ecosystems as connected systems.
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  That means leaving enough forage fish in the water for those predators, not
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  just to sustain individual fisheries.
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  Some fisheries are beginning to adopt a precautionary approach, so
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  catch limits may be lowered when predator populations struggle.
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  Managers may close fisheries seasonally during sensitive feeding periods.
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  And researchers are improving ecosystem models to better predict ripple effects.
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  But this is still a difficult balance to act because forage fish fisheries
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  support jobs and industries too.
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  That means policymakers often face competing pressures between economic
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  interests and ecosystem health.
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  That's not something that you wanna have to balance.
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  And honestly, like, this debate is probably going to intensify over
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  the next decade because as climate stress increases, resilient
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  ecosystems become more valuable, and healthy oceans need redundancy.
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  They need that abundance.
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  They need functioning food webs.
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  They need diversity to just stabilize the system, and that starts with
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  protecting those foundational species.
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  Even when you talk about diversity in forage fish species, you still wanna
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  have a diversity of forage fish species in that particular habitat or ecosystem.
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  ' Cause if you don't, then if that species declines, your predatory
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  species are gonna decline right away.
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  But if you have a diversity of forage fish species, now you can
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  actually see, you know, if one falls off or declines a little bit, the
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  predators can switch to the others while the one population increases.
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  So if herring drops off, anchovies can go higher or what have you, right?
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  If they're in the same space.
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  Now, we may be catching the exact fish the ocean needs most, right?
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  We can forage fish.
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  And protecting predators means very little if we fail to protect the food
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  that keeps those predators alive.
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  I want you to understand how much of a fundamental shift
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  this is in terms of management.
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  Because even back when I was working for Department of Fisheries and Oceans, they
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  changed the Fisheries Act in Canada.
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  And when they changed it, they changed like, let's just
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  manage the fishing species.
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  So if there's been an industrialized fishing species or commercialized
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  fishing species or even an indigenous fishing species that has been
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  established for the last 30 years, we are going to manage that.
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  We're not going to manage their food source.
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  We're just going to manage those species.
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  Well, you can't just manage those fishery species being like,
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  can we catch enough of them?
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  That's great.
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  Are there enough that we can catch?
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  We don't care about the rest of the ecosystem.
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  That's what that policy essentially said.
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  And then when that government left and the other government came in to
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  say, hey, look, you know what?
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  We're going to rebuild the Fisheries Act to make it even stronger
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  and to remove that silly policy change and bring back the fish
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  habitat part of managing fisheries.
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  That became a lot stronger because now we are looking at food sources,
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  we're looking at habitat sources, we're looking at a lot of different
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  things that affect these fish.
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  Other outside pressures, marine pollution, climate change,
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  overfishing, all that kind of stuff makes a difference in the way that
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  we manage these fishery species.
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  So protecting predators, as I said before, it means very little if we fail to protect
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  the food that keeps these predators alive.
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  And that's what really matters.
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  And that's what I want you to take home from this episode.
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  And of course, if you know someone who is interested in this type of stuff or
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  you know a researcher who's interested in forage fish and they would like to come
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  on and talk more about forage fish here on the podcast, please share this episode.
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  And of course, don't forget to follow this podcast, the How to
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  Protect the Ocean podcast, so you can get your next weekday update.
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  And of course, Friday, in a couple of days, we are going to be talking to Jack
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  Daly from Oceana Canada all about their new report in Canada about forage fish.
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  It's a really great report.
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  I want you to take a look at it.
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  We're going to dive deep into it.
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  And this is kind of prepping you for understanding how important
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  forage fish are for that interview.
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  So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  We'll talk to you tomorrow and have a great day and happy conservation.