Vues de l'océan préservé

In “Glimpses of a pristine ocean”, Enric Sala shares his “spiritual experience” dealing with sea ecosystems. He offers surprising insights and data on coral reefs and their declining biodiversity. He explains how we can reestablish their healthy, balanced state, and gives perspective on the economic benefits that would go along the ecological benefits.

In “Save the oceans, feed the world!”, marine biologist Jackie Savitz gives an unexpected speech on how preserving and restoring our oceans can help contribute to ending world hunger. She unfolds information on global fisheries and their negative impact on both our economy, society, and environment, while proposing smart solutions that could reverse and ameliorate the state of our oceans’ biodiversity and food circulation.

Sala’s interpretation of the biomass pyramid provides context to the material covered in lecture as it contradicts common knowledge of what the pyramid looks like. Generally, most of the biomass is placed low on the food chain pyramid, with the herbivores (plankton eaters). The carnivores are then placed above, and then follow the top predators that are placed at the top of the pyramid (sharks, large groupers, etc.) However, Enric Sala depicts this understanding of the biomass pyramid as a consequence of having studied degraded reefs: in the natural world that has not been affected by human actions, this pyramid is reversed. In some places, the top head of the pyramid accounts for 85% of the biomass.

Savitz gives perspective to class material as she states the fact that marine biodiversity has quantifiably declined over the years. As a matter of fact, we can see “about an 18% decline in the amount of fish we've gotten in our world catch since 1980.” This is shocking to note, as we know that most of where the fish live is located in exclusive economic zones, areas that belong under jurisdiction to coastal countries who have power over decisions for marine protection. However, most of these countries have not yet adopted strong enough laws to prevent illegal fishery or do not have successful sustainable practices.

Enric Sala’s work follows principles of sustainability as he believes that the reversion of the biomass pyramid is majorly linked to the destruction of our coral reefs. He explains that this occurrence impairs global revenue as over-fishing and under-protection of our waters leads to a huge loss of income compared to the revenue a healthy ocean biosphere could amount to. In fact, “the revenue would be more than 20 times higher and that would be sustainable over time.” Marine protected areas (or no-take reserves) would in effect increase the number of species by 21%, the size of organisms by a third, the abundance of organisms by almost 170%, and hold on average 4.5 greater biomass. When giving his speech, Sala gives shocking statistics: “it would only cost 16 billion to set up 20 percent of the ocean as marine protected areas that actually give new living choices to the fishermen as well”. This kind of positivism needs to be spread in order to capture attention on the danger that our marine ecosystems are in.

Jackie Savitz studies the notion of sustainability in her speech by undermining illegal fishing and its obstruction to sustainable fishery management. Unsustainable practices refer to using prohibited catching gear, fishing in illegal places, or illegally fishing certain

...