Carl Safina is a world-renowned marine ecologist and fisheries biologist.  He has campaigned for marine ecological causes (including banning drift-net fishing) and helped craft U.S. fisheries law and international fisheries treaties.  There are probably few in the world who can rival his expertise on such a wide variety of marine ecology topics as he has studied, written about, and campaigned for.

And he also happens to be one hell of a writer.

This is a powerful combination: he speaks about issues that he knows inside out, some of which could affect thousands if not millions of people worldwide, he writes about each one as if it were the single most important thing in his life, and his prose is so beautiful, passionate, and poignant that even if you had all the emotional detachment of a bull moose, you would still be left fighting to refrain from weeping bitter tears at humans’ capacity for wanton destruction — not only of the environment, but of our own humanity itself.

Song for the Blue Ocean is Safina’s first book, and in it he catalogues his journeys of discovery through a variety of fisheries: Atlantic tuna — predominantly bluefin — as well as cod and swordfish; Pacific Northwest salmon (near and dear to my heart); and Pacific coral reef fish (especially live capture for the home aquarium fish trade).  As an ecologist, his writing is of course informed with a conservationist slant; however, he spends extensive time talking to, going to meetings of, and going out on boats with “the other side”: the fishermen themselves as well as their industrial representatives.  For the most part, most especially when it comes to the fishermen themselves, Safina treats them with dignity and respect (indeed, Safina himself fished from a young age and so has a great love for it himself).  Because of that, you come to understand them as ordinary people with ordinary problems — mortgages to pay, families to feed, bills in arrears with no sight of relief on the horizon — and the reader comes to see it isn’t necessarily a black-and-white issue.  In fairness, it’s easy to like most of the fishermen as they tend to be realistic about the state of their particular fisheries; that is, they recognise the fish are in decline and that something has to be done.

Unfortunately, other people don’t have the luxury of being open and sensible: industry representatives tasked with protecting fishermen’s jobs; corporate representatives who look after the pocketbooks of the companies they work for; national representatives who must protect the economies of their countries.  Sadly, it is these people who wield power and influence in places where laws and treaties are enacted and who therefore must be overcome.  It is nothing short of shocking how blinkered they can be when it comes to denial and refutation of what one would assume to be incontrovertible scientific fact.  It is because of these people that some of the world’s most important fisheries stand on the brink of ruin.  If the fish are to be saved and restored, if will be because of the efforts of men like Safina.

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Safina’s journey starts in the Northeastern U.S. (he hails from New York himself).  Interspersed with his accounts of meeting with various fishermen and industry representatives are hard scientific facts charting the decline and fall of fish populations important to the area’s fishermen: bluefin tuna, swordfish, cod.  He also discusses the industry’s and various governments’ hardline opposition to these facts.  Opponents point to things like record tonnes of fish caught, while ignoring mitigating factors: more and bigger boats in the water utilising greater technology (sonar, spotter planes, huge nets) than was previously available means that greater overall effort is needed to catch the same unit of fish; and the fish being caught are, on average, smaller than they have been historically, meaning they aren’t living long enough to reach full size because they’re all getting caught, which is a problem in larger fish species that reach sexual maturity later and thus may have had few (or no) opportunities to reproduce by the time they’re caught.

For the fishermen on the ground (or, rather, on the water), there are no easy answers.  Should the government invest millions to buy their boats to be retired, re-train the fishermen for some other job, and relocate them to where the jobs are?  And what about the small towns, the communities that support them?  If the fishermen go away, how do the people left behind support themselves?  With the fishermen gone, would tourists bother visiting in enough numbers to keep alive local businesses?  And, of course, for many fishermen, their chosen vocation is a lifestyle choice: they have a great love and respect for the ocean and couldn’t conceive of doing anything else.  It would be like… well, it would be like telling a dedicated ecologist, “We don’t want you to do that any more, so instead we’re going to train you to sell car insurance.”  The difference, to say the least, would be jarring.

For everyone involved in the bluefin tuna trade (as an example), one major obstacle is that the economic incentives are overwhelming: landing just a couple of good sized, good quality (free from scratches and scars) bluefin can set up a fisherman for months or even a year, as these fish sell for many thousands of dollars.  They are the most sought-after fish in Japan, being served as sushi in the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in the country.  The irony is, the Japanese claim it is part of their national heritage and they couldn’t possibly agree to reducing worldwide catch limits, yet bluefin is so expensive that the only people who can afford to eat it are the wealthy… such as the people lobbying to keep the limits where they are or even increase them, the government ministers refusing to bow to international pressure, the companies profiting from the trade, and of course the wealthy friends, associates, corporate board members and campaign contributors of said lobbyists and government officials.  Such is the economics of politics (and vice versa).

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Safina next goes to the Pacific Northwest to explore the region’s salmon fishery and associated problems.  It is here that his narrative is, in a way, at its most bleak, yet also its most uplifting.  For the salmon fishery has, in many areas, more or less completely collapsed.  Yet the community-wide efforts to restore them show just what can be accomplished when people from both sides of an issue can pull together.  Which is not to say there are not still individuals who insist on protecting their own interests (or those of their employers) at all costs, but at least there is cause for hope.

A big part of the problem for salmon is the dual nature of its life cycle.  Salmon lay their eggs in freshwater streams; when the eggs hatch, the juvenile fish remain for a time in the stream; at some point, then, they make their way out to sea, where they live out their adult lives; eventually, they return to their native streams to spawn, after which they most often die (within a few hours or days).  The pressures on salmon happen at both stages of their lives: not only are they overfished in the ocean as adults, but their native streams are decimated by logging, damming, farming, or other factors, meaning even those salmon that survive that long are unable to return “home” to spawn.

It is this weakness, however, that is turning into a strength.

Whereas on the East coast, where the fish are purely ocean-going, the fishermen only have two choices — fish, or don’t — the Northwest fishing community has come to realise they can be an active part of the solution.  Along much of the coast, they literally don’t have a choice: when you’re lucky to catch even a couple of fish per day, you literally can’t make enough to live on, pay the bills with, and do upkeep on your boat with.  Some have turned to recreation — taking tourists out for sportfishing or whale watching or sightseeing (or all three).  Others have tried to get licenses to fish off of the Alaskan coast.  Some, though, have taken a different road, joining teams of conservationists trying to restore salmon streams and make them fit for spawning again.

The hills and mountains of the western region of the Northwest are (or were) covered by vast pine forests, many of which would be classed as temperate rain forests: cooler than tropical rain forests, but receiving just as much rainfall.  Logging is a common business, and the modus operandi is to clearcut: the forest is literally stripped bare, right down to the ground.  This affects all running water downstream of the cut, which in turn affects the salmon.

Salmon need stream conditions just so when they spawn: they need nice, loose gravel to lay their eggs in, which will shelter and protect the eggs yet still allow water to flow around them; they need tangles of loose wood in the stream, which create eddys that serve as nice resting spots for adult salmon returning upstream and also sheltered spots for juvenile salmon to hide in, as well as helping slow the flow of water during the rainier seasons; and finally the salmon need the stream to be sheltered by trees and not run too slow, so the water is just the right temperature for the eggs.  Clearcut logging destroys all of these aspects of the stream:

  • Rain washes the topsoil into the streams and rivers, silting them up and slowing the flow.
  • During heavy rains, the lack of groundcover causes the water to pour off the clearcuts and into the streams, causing them to flood and scouring them clear of gravel (not to mention eggs) and fallen logs and branches that otherwise gather in the streams.

Both the silting and the scouring render the streams unusable to salmon: the silting covers up the gravel, so there is nowhere for the salmon to lay eggs (or covering up eggs that have already been laid, smothering them, depriving them of oxygen); the slowing of the normal water flow due to silting plus the lack of covering trees means the water heats up until it is too warm for the eggs, killing them (keep in mind this can affect the entire waterway dowstream of the clearcut, not just the area immediately adjacent to it); and floods scouring the wood and gravel from the streams means that the salmon have nowhere to hide, nowhere to rest, and (again) nowhere to lay their eggs.

This is where the conservationists and fishermen come in: they have undertaken to make some streams fit for use by salmon again.  From replanting cleared-out areas (and not just with more fir trees) to depositing logs and other dead wood into streams to create new tangles, they’re slowly giving back to the salmon what they’ve lost.  They are also counting the salmon in the stream — especially juveniles heading downstream — to track what kind of an effect their efforts may be having.  Through this, it’s easy to see that these aren’t just people out to make a buck; they truly have a love and a care for this creature around whom they have built their lives.  It’s amazing to see.

Coming from the other side — land users who have no particular tie to the fish — are a group of farmers in northern California.  It is their tale that, if anything, is even more inspiring.  Many of them grew up in the area and remember fishing in the streams as youngsters; the fish are gone now, and they mourn that lost part of their childhood (and the fact that their children will never get to have that experience).  Therefore, they’ve undertaken to bring the salmon back to their lands.

Farming can have similar effects on a stream to clearcutting: removing cover causes the stream to heat up; animals (namely cows) coming to use the water can cause the stream banks to collapse, silting them up (covering gravel and also slowing the flow thus contributing to warming), as well as polluting the water with their waste (fertilizer runoff can contribute to this as well); and lack of adequate cover can help contribute to flooding and scouring.  The farmers, therefore — at their own time and expense — have also taken their own measures to restore and protect the streams on their land.  For all the ill will Safina encounters in his travels, this chapter more than any other fills one with hope for humanity and for our common future.

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The final leg of Safina’s travels (and travails) takes him to various islands in the Pacific and to Hong Kong.  The islanders here are dependent on the reef fish for their livlihood — either to ea,t or to sell for food or for the live aquarium trade, or as a draw for tourists.  They are all experiencing problems, to a greater or lesser degree.

For instance, one of the time-honoured methods of fishing that had been brought to these islands was the use of dynamite.

It certainly made the fish easy to catch, but it decimated the reefs the fish live on, meaning the fish no longer had anywhere to live, meaning no more fish.

Another popular method — and one still in common use when this book was written — was the use of cyanide. The men would dive down, release a bit of cyanide near the fish, the fish would become unconscious and the men could catch them easily.  The problem with this is two-fold: first, cyanide would kill the coral, again ruining the reef as a habitat for the fish; second, the fish would actually be severely damaged by the cyanide, but it often wouldn’t show until the fish ate some food for the first time after being poisoned, at which point they would die.  So the fish would be kept for up to a week without being fed while they made their way to market in Hong Kong (or wherever), at which point some unsuspecting customer buys them and feeds them, and they die.  Meaning the customer has to buy even more fish, thus fueling the cycle.

And, of course, this isn’t even taking into account possible ill effects exhibited by the fishermen from exposure to the cyanide.

Again, though, the fishermen themselves have started to recognise the downside — primarily the damage to the environment and thus the threat to their own livlihoods — and initiatives are underway to teach about the ills of fishing that way and also to instruct them in alternative methods of catching the fish.

*  *  *  *  *  *

The full breadth of this book — the time and research that went into it — is simply awe-inspiring.  It is the people that inhabit it, though, that ground this work, making it accessible.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Safina also has a gift for writing that captures the imagination.  Unfortunately, due to the subject matter, it is generally more downbeat than upbeat, but there is also enough there to give cause for hope.  While I was in university, I was lucky enough to meet Safina around the time this book came out (he gave a guest lecture at one of my classes) and to actually go and meet firsthand some of the people he mentions in the book and see the work they are doing to restore streams and track the numbers of fish passing through.  They and their work are no less amazing on paper than they are in the flesh, and that is down to Safina’s brilliant, poignant writing.

The one major downside of this book is that it was first published in 1998, leading one to wonder, “What now?”  What has happened in the last 11 (so far) years?  Are things any better?  Worse?  He could really do with writing another chapter, an epilogue, briefly catching the reader up on developments (if any) on each of the issues covered in the book in the years since.  Even if it was only released as a purchasable, downloadable pdf, I’m sure a lot of people would be interested enough to fork out a couple of dollars (or three, or four) for that. I know I would.  And it would be easy enough for him to keep updated every couple of years with any further developments.

For more information:  There is an excellent Safina bio (though from 2005, so again a tiny bit out of date) at the H.W. Wilson website.  Safina also is co-founder of the marine conservation organisation The Blue Ocean Institute (www.blueocean.org).  On the website you can view (or download) their excellent Seafood Guide, which is a guide to ocean-friendly seafood: a list of most seafood species generally consumed and whether it 1) has a healthy enough population that it is considered sustainable and 2) is fished (or raised) in a manner that is both sustainable and ecologically friendly.  It was only just updated in March 2009, and it goes into extensive detail on each species covered, giving it an overall score and then breaking down each component of that score.  If you don’t already wonder where that seafood you just ate came from, you will.  A must-read for anyone, not just the ecologically conscious.

Recommended further reading by Carl Safina: He only has two other books published at the minute (though another is due soon): Eye of the Albatross and Voyage of the Turtle, neither of which I have read, though I fully intend to.

I haven’t yet decided which book I’ll review next, though I’m leaning toward The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  Actually, upon looking I only just saw now that they’re making a movie of it starring Viggo Mortensen.  If it was anyone else in the lead role, I would likely cringe and run a mile in the other direction.  With Viggo, though, at least there is hope; if anyone could bring the proper dignity, gravitas and ennui to the role, it is him.  In any case, it looks like my mind has been made up about the next review.  It promises to be shorter than this one, don’t worry. ;)

All the best,

M

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