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The Tiny Fish Whales Cannot Live Without · How To Protect The Ocean

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  The future of whales, seabirds, salmon, and even commercial
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  fisheries may depend on fish most people never even think about.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekly 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 don't miss tomorrow's story.
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  Today, we are talking about a strange problem in ocean conservation.
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  Why do we pay so little attention to some of the most important
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  fish in marine ecosystems?
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  Because forage fish are essential.
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  We've talked about it all week.
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  Scientists know it, fisheries managers know it, conservation
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  groups know it, but most people have never even heard of the term.
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  And honestly, that may be part of the problem.
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  Ocean conservation often focuses on large charismatic animals.
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  We have whales, we have sharks,
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  sea turtles, dolphins, and that makes sense.
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  People emotionally connect to those species.
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  They inspire documentaries, campaigns, and donations.
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  But ecosystems are not built around popularity.
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  They are built around relationships, and forage fish sit near the center
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  of many of those relationships.
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  These small fish support predators across entire ecosystems.
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  But because they are small, probably common-looking, and often commercially
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  processed out of sight, they become almost invisible to the public.
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  That invisibility creates a conservation challenge because public pressure
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  often influences political priorities.
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  And it is much harder to build urgency around species people don't even
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  recognize, especially when those species are caught in massive industrial
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  volumes far from public attention.
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  In many ways, forage fish suffer from a branding problem.
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  But ecologically, they are incredibly important.
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  This matters because conservation success often depends on protecting
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  systems, not just individual species.
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  You can protect whales all you want, but if whales cannot find enough
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  food, recovery becomes harder.
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  You can create marine protected areas, but if food webs become
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  unstable, ecosystems still struggle.
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  Forage fish force us to think differently about conservation.
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  They remind us that ecosystems depend on abundance, not just survival.
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  This is one reason scientists increasingly support ecosystem-based management.
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  The goal is not simply preventing collapse.
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  The goal is maintaining healthy, functioning ecosystems, and that
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  requires enough prey species in the water to support predators.
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  There is a public awareness issue here, and a lot of people do not realize
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  how interconnected ocean systems are.
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  They may not understand that salmon, seabirds, whales, and tuna often
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  compete for the same prey resources, and that industrial fishing can
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  affect ecosystems in indirect ways.
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  Once people understand those connections, that conversation changes.
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  Suddenly, forage fish are no longer bait fish.
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  They become ecosystem infrastructure, and that framing actually matters.
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  We're talking about communication here.
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  And a lot of the times when we talk about communication, we
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  know that it's really important.
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  And one of the things that I covered last week was we know communication is
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  important, but I had conversations over the week where it's like communication
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  isn't funded enough or at a level where we can actually get communicators or
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  marine influencers, science influencers, and science communicators to say,
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  " Hey, let's talk about forage fish.
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  Let's talk about the real important part of the ocean that will provide
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  its stability, especially in warming times like we have with climate change,
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  or in times where fishing pressure is at probably an all-time high, and
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  we're starting to realize how important those forage fish are." So, if you are
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  interested in finding out more of how you can communicate better and amplify
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  your message better, whether it be about forage fish or anything that's important
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  to you and your organization, or your company, or you're part of a larger
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  academic project, or just in your academic lab, hit me up at piscesoceans.ca.
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  We have a tool there that I'll link in the show notes where you can go
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  on the website and you can figure out where you need help the most.
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  We're a consulting firm of scientists, ocean communicators, and project
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  managers that can help you with your project and amplify your message.
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  We understand the science.
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  We understand how important science communication is for you and
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  your organization, your company, and your project, and we want
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  to make sure that it succeeds.
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  So if you want to know more, go to the show notes, click on that
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  link, or go to piscesoceans.ca.
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  The good news about all of this is that awareness around forage
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  fish conservation is growing.
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  Researchers are improving ecosystem science, which is great.
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  Conservation groups are increasingly pushing for precautionary
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  management, which is also great.
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  And more policymakers are starting to recognize that ecosystem health
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  requires protecting food web stability.
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  But there are still some major challenges.
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  Industrial demand for fish meal and fish oil remains high.
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  Climate change is increasing ecosystem stress.
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  And fisheries management decisions are often involve
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  political and economic trade-offs.
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  So this issue is not going away.
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  In fact, it may become one of the more defining ocean conservation debates of
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  the next decade because ultimately, this conversation is bigger than forage fish.
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  It is really about how humans think about conservation and
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  how humans think about the ocean.
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  Do we only protect species that people emotionally connect with?
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  Or do we protect the systems that make entire ecosystems possible?
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  That is the much bigger question.
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  And honestly, the one the ocean urgently needs us to answer.
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  One of the most memorable conversations I had is when people were saying,
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  "Hey, look, sometimes it's great to be like, 'Hey, we're gonna protect sharks,
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  we're gonna protect whales, we're gonna protect sea turtles, we're gonna
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  protect polar bears,' because those are iconic species, the ones we emotionally
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  connect with," like I mentioned earlier.
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  But they're not necessarily the ones that we need to focus on.
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  Yes, we need to focus on it and a lot of times they are in trouble.
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  Sea turtles, most of them are critically endangered.
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  We have polar bears who are critically endangered.
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  North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered.
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  We have a lot of animals that are in trouble.
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  But a lot of the times it's not just because of the individual species, and
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  managing the individual species is not gonna make things better right away.
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  But managing the ecosystem as a whole is going to make things better because
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  you're gonna make sure that the foundation is there for that whale, that sea
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  turtle, that shark, that polar bear.
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  Making sure that we are managing everything together is important, but
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  it's also the hardest thing, ' cause it's also the hardest thing to communicate.
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  Because it's like, if you want to lose weight, you can eat nothing, no problem.
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  That's a quick fix.
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  But what you really have to do is you have to look at your lifestyle, and
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  you have to say, "If I want to hold this weight off, or if I want to lose weight
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  healthily, I have got to look at how I eat, how I sleep, how my mental health
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  is, how, like, my whole lifestyle is.
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  Is it active?
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  Is it sedentary?" We have all these different ways of looking at
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  health, and we do that when people actually get healthy, they end
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  up losing weight because they look at their whole system and look at
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  how to better protect that system.
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  The same thing is with the ocean.
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  We're not just protecting individual species.
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  If you protect the whole system, those species are inevitably protected.
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  So good conservation is often not about protecting the most famous species.
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  It's about protecting the system underneath the species we love.
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  So that's the episode for today.
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  I would love to hear your comments on these episodes, and I'd love for
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  you to hear the episode tomorrow.
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  You can go to speakupforblue.com/feedback to let me know what you
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  think about these episodes.
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  Don't forget to go to our sponsor, piscesoceans.ca.
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  That's www.piscesoceans.ca.
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  Link is in the show notes among other links of how to get a hold of
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  me to have conversations with me.
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  More and more of you are reaching out to me, and I love that.
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  If you just love the podcast and you wanna tell me, I love that.
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  I always wonder who's listening to the podcast, how they're listening to the
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  podcast, what app they're listening on.
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  Are they going to YouTube for Ocean Decoded and all that kind of stuff?
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  I want to know more.
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  And what you want to know.
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  Like, what topic do you want me to cover next?
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  I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
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  And don't forget, if you wanna hear more and you haven't followed
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  this podcast, shame on you.
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  No, I understand.
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  Don't worry about it.
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  But if you wanna follow the podcast, please do so now, and share
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  this episode with somebody you think is gonna enjoy this episode
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  and learn more about the ocean.
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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 when I talk to Jack Daly from Oceana Canada,
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  where we talk about forage fish report that they just released for Canada.
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  And it's not a good one, but you're gonna wanna hear it.
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  So thank you so much.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.