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Why Saying "Fishing Is Bad" Backfires · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Picture a woman on a beach before sunrise sorting the night's catch to
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  feed her kids and sell at a local market.
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  Then picture a campaign poster that says, "Stop eating fish." Who do
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  you think that poster just reached?
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  Here's what most people don't know about who catch the world's fish.
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  You tell a fishing family their livelihood is destroying the ocean.
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  And then I want you to watch what happens.
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  They stop showing up to the meetings, they stop sharing their
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  catch data with scientists, and they stop answering the phone.
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  They don't wanna talk to people who are gonna say, "What you're doing is
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  wrong." And now the people who know that water the best and like more than
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  anyone is, are out of the conversation.
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  And today we're gonna be talking about why the simplest conservation message
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  about fishing does so much damage, and what to do at the fish counter instead.
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  Now welcome back to another episode of the How to Protect the Ocean.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  I am a marine biologist and science communicator here to give you all
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  the stuff that goes on in the ocean, ocean news, ocean conservation, about
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  ocean science, so that you can make a better decision around the ocean.
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  You can kinda understand what's happening and feel better.
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  Like, may hopefully feel a little bit more hopeful and know how to
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  approach conversations about the ocean.
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  Now yesterday we went to a reef in the Pacific where parrotfish, sharks, and
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  pink crust helped corals come back from a six months of heat and bleaching.
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  Now every one of those fish is part of a food web.
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  And in most parts of the world, people are part of that food web too.
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  So let's talk about that feeling you get at the seafood counter,
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  that one where you're like, you've seen the documentaries, you've read
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  the headlines about overfishing.
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  Part of you think you should stop eating fish.
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  And another part of you shows that it's complicated, Because people
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  somewhere depend on catching it, like, their, families depend on it.
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  So you either feel guilty or you stop thinking about it because you don't wanna,
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  like, approach this difficult topic.
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  I've been there.
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  Like, I get it.
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  I've seen the frustration at the seafood counter and where, like, the person
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  behind the counter not knowing how a fish is caught or where it comes from.
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  And of course, I've watched all the well-meaning conservation message about
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  fishing land on exactly the wrong people.
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  And you get also, like, crazy ones like Seaspiracy, which is full of
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  misinformation and misdirects and takes away from what we really should
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  be talking about, more realistic options about what we need to do.
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  And but we always see people say fishing is bad, and here's the problem
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  with that when we say fishing is bad.
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  It treats a family with a small boat and a hand line the same as those
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  fleets of industrial trawlers, and it treats a fishery with strong
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  management the same as the one that didn't have a strong management.
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  And in a lot of places, fish is the main source of protein that people have.
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  That's what they do.
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  That's how they survive morning, noon, and night.
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  And so you tell a kid in one of those communities that the fishing
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  is bad, and you're attacking how their family eats and their culture.
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  And the adults here too, they step back from the scientists, they
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  step back from conservationists, and honestly, I don't blame them.
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  To understand how big the gap is between the message and the
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  reality, you need to know who actually catches the world's fish.
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  And for a long time, almost nobody did.
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  Researchers called it the hidden harvest.
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  For decades, fishery statistics were built around what's easy to count,
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  so big boats landing at big ports.
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  The catch gets weighed, recorded, and sold through formal markets.
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  But what got missed was everything else, so the woman wading at low tide
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  to collect shellfish, the man in the canoe with a net on a lake, the fishers
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  who land their catch on a beach and sell it to a village by noon Those
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  never show up in a national database.
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  Back in 2012, a study ti-tried to estimate just how much of that was being missed.
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  It found that the catch from inland fisheries was likely
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  underreported by about 70%.
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  And in developing countries, small-scale fisheries were producing over half of
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  the fish catch, and almost all of it, 90% to 95%, was eaten locally, often
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  in rural places where poverty is high and good nutrition is hard to come by.
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  That's where it was.
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  So a group of organizations went back to do it properly, and the UN's Food
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  and Agricultural Organization and Duke University and the World Fish
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  Research Center spent years pulling together case studies from 58 countries,
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  plus surveys and national data.
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  And in 2023, they published a 376-page study called Illuminating Hidden
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  Harvests, and here's what they found.
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  Small-scale fisheries bring in at least 40% of the entire global
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  catch from wi-wild fisheries.
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  They employ ar-around 60 million people, and that's about 90% of everyone who
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  works in fisheries on the planet.
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  Another 53 million or so fish for subsistence to feed their own families.
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  And roughly four out of every 10 people in small-scale fisheries are women So
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  when we say fishing is bad, the majority of the people hearing it is small-scale
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  fishers, and they're often the ones losing out when big industrial fleets
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  come in and work the exact same waters.
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  So if the blanket message is aimed at the wrong people, where should the energy go?
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  So you're probably asking yourself, "Well, Andrew, like, if all these small-scale
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  fishers are around, and they're the ones that are, like, doing most of the fishing,
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  and they're getting this blanket message, like, teaming them up with or putting them
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  in the same category as industrial fish, like, so where should that message go
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  about sustainable fishing and everything?"
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  Before we get into that, you have to understand that sustainable
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  seafood is complicated.
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  I'm not gonna, pretend otherwise, but there are a few simple
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  principles that you can use.
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  So first, you support the people and fisheries doing it well, and recognize
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  that many small-scale fishers are already managing their resources in smart ways.
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  The same study found that co-management, where communities and governments
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  share decision-making is in place for only about 20% of small scale's catch.
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  That's a lot of room to bring fishers into the process instead of shutting them
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  out and just leaving it to government.
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  Second, put the pressure where the biggest impacts are.
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  Very large industrial operations can remove enormous amounts of fish.
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  Like, you see these like, big ships that are just containers of freezers, they
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  just put them in there, and all the little ships bring them back in, and they just
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  take it to wherever they wanna take it.
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  And of course, like, when you don't have, like, management or monitoring,
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  your enforcement is weak, and that's where the accountability needs to land.
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  And that's a systems question, how fleets are permitted,
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  monitored, and held to the rules.
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  The third thing you need to know is remember that yesterday's episode when
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  we talked about marine protected areas that they can work in fishers' favor?
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  A healthy protected area can act like a nursery, with fish piling over
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  the boundaries into fishing grounds.
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  When the communities understand that, the conversation changes from, "They're taking
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  our water," to, "This keeps our fishery alive, and we can fish for generations
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  to come sustainably." And the last thing, make the good choice easy for the person
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  buying the fish, which brings us to a restaurant kitchen in Vancouver, Canada.
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  Because here's the thing, most of us aren't going to read fishery
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  stock assessments before dinner.
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  It's just not gonna happen, and neither are most chefs.
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  One chef in Vancouver figured out that a long time ago.
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  And in the early 2000s, Robert Clark was the executive chef of a seafood restaurant
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  in Vancouver called C Restaurant.
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  He cared about where the fish came from, but figuring out which seafood
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  was sustainable meant digging through science, reports, and competing opinions.
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  And chefs are busy, they have to worry about the whole business.
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  Most of them didn't even have time for, whatever they were doing in the kitchens.
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  So Clark teamed up with Jason Boyce at the Vancouver Aquarium,
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  and the idea was simple.
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  The aquarium would do the homework, keeping up with the science on which
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  species and fisheries were in good shape.
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  And the restaurants that joined would put a small symbol next to their dishes
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  that were passed on to the customers.
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  Diners wouldn't need a marine biology degree to make sure
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  they're eating sustainable seafood.
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  They just have to look for that symbol.
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  They called it OceanWise, and it started with a handful of
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  restaurants, then it spread across Vancouver, then across Canada.
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  Chefs in Toronto, Halifax, and everywhere in between were
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  participating in this program.
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  And grocery stores decided to join.
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  Seafood suppliers joined.
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  Today, the program has more than 750 business partners and over 2,000
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  locations selling seafood with the OceanWise recommended symbol Now, I
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  wanna give you the honest footnote here.
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  Ocean Wise is a recommendation program.
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  It doesn't certify fisheries the way that, like, the Marine Stewardship Council does.
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  So over the years, some people in the food world have pushed for more
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  transparency about how recommendations get made, and that kind of scrutiny is
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  healthy, It makes the program better, and it's a part of how programs like
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  this survive and become a lot more legitimate and a lot more trustworthy.
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  Now, what Ocean Wise proved is that you can take a complicated
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  decision and make it simple the exact moment someone's choosing.
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  And similar programs exist all over the world.
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  South Africa has one called Sassi, and in the US there's a Seafood Watch
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  program from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
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  So what do you actually do with all of this the next time you're at the counter?
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  Here's your, call to action for today.
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  next time you buy seafood, ask where it came from and how it was caught.
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  And to be honest, if they don't know, don't buy from them, Cause at the
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  grocery store, at a restaurant, at a market, you say, "Where's this from?
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  How was it caught?" That's it.
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  That's all you have to do.
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  And if they know, great.
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  You can look it up or you can look for that symbol, like OceanWise.
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  And if you don't know, you've just told the business that the customer cares.
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  Enough people ask and the business starts finding out.
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  Like, they're starting to like, "Okay, we gotta do something about it." And if
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  there's a local fisher or fish market near you, buy from them, like, directly
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  because they're supporting that fisher and they know where they caught their fish.
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  Most fishers love talking about their fishery.
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  They love it.
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  Now, imagine a coastline where the fishing family and the marine
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  scientists are in the same room.
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  Like, they're talking.
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  The scientist gets decades of on-the-water knowledge 'cause nobody knows more,
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  than fishers who are on the water and where these fish are, and the
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  family gets a protected area next door that keeps their catch coming back.
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  And that person at the fish counter in Toronto or in Cape Town asks that
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  one question that pulls the whole system toward better knowledge, and
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  that's how fishing stays in a family for generations, It happens when
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  the fish, the reef, and the people stay part of that healthy system.
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  Now, tomorrow we're wrapping up the week with that feeling a lot
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  of you have told me about, that overwhelming sense that the ocean's
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  problems are too big for one person.
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  And I'm gonna tell you about a penguin, a post box, and a campaign
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  that asked for love instead of money.
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  Now I want you to be able to listen to that, so I want you to hit that follow
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  button if you haven't hit it already.
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  This has been another episode.
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  And of course, I wanna hear from you because this is the
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  beginning of a conversation.
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  I wanna hear what you think and how you approach buying seafood.
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  I would love to hear your thoughts.
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  No judgments, I just wanna know, and does this help you?
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  That's what I would really like to know.
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  Does this episode help you in choosing seafood in a better way?
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  We're looking at Seafood Watch or Sasi or OceanWise, wherever you're located.
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  But anyway, that's it for today's episode.
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  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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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you tomorrow, and happy conservation.