WEBVTT 00:00:00.034 --> 00:00:02.808 I'd say, if someone says they don't care about the ocean, 00:00:02.808 --> 00:00:05.803 then they're a fool. Because every second breath you take 00:00:05.853 --> 00:00:07.136 comes from the ocean. 00:00:10.536 --> 00:00:13.556 Billions of people around the world depend on the ocean for food. 00:00:13.606 --> 00:00:17.249 And this will become increasingly so as our population increases. 00:00:17.299 --> 00:00:19.972 70% of the earth's surface, something like 85% 00:00:19.972 --> 00:00:22.745 of the earth's living space - you cannot ignore it. 00:00:22.795 --> 00:00:25.768 We generally put the seas out of our mind. 00:00:25.768 --> 00:00:27.786 We think about them last. We think about them as places 00:00:27.836 --> 00:00:29.922 we go on holiday, and where fisherman work. 00:00:29.945 --> 00:00:32.736 We have this antiquated idea that the oceans are 00:00:32.786 --> 00:00:35.509 free for everyone and they're not going to run out. 00:00:35.552 --> 00:00:38.334 But we've seen that that's not true. And in every place 00:00:38.334 --> 00:00:41.335 where we have exploited things like whales or things like cod, 00:00:41.383 --> 00:00:44.963 we've managed to take it so far that we've trashed those populations. 00:00:45.689 --> 00:00:48.038 Our oceans are dying and the two main threats 00:00:48.038 --> 00:00:50.665 that we're imposing on the oceans are from climate change 00:00:50.919 --> 00:00:52.986 and over-fishing. It's as simple as that. 00:00:54.263 --> 00:00:56.342 If you care about anything else that lives in the oceans 00:00:56.342 --> 00:00:58.690 you need to care about the plankton. It's the basis for 00:00:58.714 --> 00:01:02.087 every single food web, and big cuddly charismatic animals we like, 00:01:02.110 --> 00:01:04.099 like whales, penguins and seals, 00:01:04.099 --> 00:01:06.894 all eat directly, large plankton krill. 00:01:07.054 --> 00:01:09.686 Half the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by 00:01:09.686 --> 00:01:13.026 this small plant plankton that lives in the oceans. 00:01:13.076 --> 00:01:15.316 So it's much more important than tropical forests 00:01:15.316 --> 00:01:17.813 in terms of the oxygen it provides. 00:01:17.977 --> 00:01:19.710 To save the plankton what we need to do is 00:01:19.744 --> 00:01:21.611 exactly what we need to do on climate change, 00:01:21.611 --> 00:01:24.288 we need to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide. 00:01:25.027 --> 00:01:28.080 The ocean absorbs about half of the carbon dioxide 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:29.449 that we put into the atmosphere. 00:01:29.467 --> 00:01:32.886 Now what that does, is it makes the ocean a bit more acidic. 00:01:33.081 --> 00:01:34.116 As it is doing that. 00:01:34.144 --> 00:01:35.902 And over the past, kind of, 100 years 00:01:35.930 --> 00:01:38.103 as we've been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, 00:01:38.152 --> 00:01:40.361 the ocean is gradually getting more and more acidic. 00:01:40.411 --> 00:01:42.074 Now that's a problem for the animals that live there, 00:01:42.105 --> 00:01:45.866 mostly because it stops them being able to make things like shells. 00:01:46.006 --> 00:01:49.145 People know what fizzy juice does to your teeth. 00:01:49.319 --> 00:01:52.512 So their shells are thinner, there's less calcium carbonate 00:01:52.512 --> 00:01:56.064 available for mollusks and creating bones and things like that. 00:01:56.330 --> 00:02:00.653 So it's a real problem, bottom up, for the food chain, for the whole ocean. 00:02:01.190 --> 00:02:03.651 There's really silly idea going around at the moment that 00:02:03.670 --> 00:02:06.582 the way that we address the big shift in the oceans, 00:02:06.582 --> 00:02:08.581 is by pumping something else into them, 00:02:08.598 --> 00:02:11.675 namely, iron to fertilize the oceans. 00:02:12.048 --> 00:02:13.642 This is patently nonsense. 00:02:13.658 --> 00:02:16.144 The best thing we can do for the oceans is leave them alone. 00:02:17.993 --> 00:02:19.329 One of the things that’s going to be most 00:02:19.349 --> 00:02:22.206 directly affected by ocean acidification is coral reefs. 00:02:22.271 --> 00:02:24.410 And these are home to lots and lots of different 00:02:24.423 --> 00:02:26.105 species of animals and plants. 00:02:26.160 --> 00:02:30.336 Those will be the first victims of acidification, 00:02:30.386 --> 00:02:32.396 because they won't be able to grow the coral, 00:02:32.427 --> 00:02:35.885 and they will be more susceptible to damage and to storms . 00:02:40.802 --> 00:02:43.558 Fishing has a vast effect on the oceans. 00:02:43.723 --> 00:02:45.884 Something like three quarters of the fisheries in the world, 00:02:45.902 --> 00:02:47.880 either fully exploited or trashed... 00:02:47.930 --> 00:02:50.777 What ends up on our plates, is only part of the story. 00:02:50.789 --> 00:02:53.983 Bits of coral, starfish, sea urchins, all the way up to 00:02:53.983 --> 00:02:57.129 albatrosses, turtles, seals, sharks and whales 00:02:57.179 --> 00:02:59.334 are caught and killed in the name of fishing. 00:03:04.078 --> 00:03:05.698 We also catch too many fish. 00:03:05.698 --> 00:03:08.972 Many of the large species of fish in our oceans, like swordfish, 00:03:09.011 --> 00:03:12.036 tuna and sharks, are down to ten percent of what 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:14.205 they used used to be fifty years ago. 00:03:14.205 --> 00:03:16.917 Fishing isn't farming, fishing is hunting. 00:03:16.941 --> 00:03:19.735 To do hunting in a successful way, you need to have large areas 00:03:19.781 --> 00:03:21.873 and take out things at a sustainable level. 00:03:21.942 --> 00:03:25.875 Fish like cod are now markedly smaller than they were 30 years ago. 00:03:26.058 --> 00:03:30.223 A cod caught in the 1960's was as tall as a human. 00:03:30.273 --> 00:03:33.945 But cod caught these days are about thirty centimetres long, 00:03:33.995 --> 00:03:36.214 and fit on a plate and haven't had time to breed. 00:03:36.264 --> 00:03:39.246 We actually trash entire ecosystems just to get the fish. 00:03:39.296 --> 00:03:42.241 They can be damaged by dodgy fishing techniques, 00:03:42.291 --> 00:03:45.580 dynamite, believe it or not, is used in coral reef fishing. 00:03:45.803 --> 00:03:48.732 By bottom trawling... so it's a really destructive process. 00:03:52.594 --> 00:03:55.821 We're all emitting carbon dioxide, most of us eat fish, 00:03:55.821 --> 00:03:58.186 if you eat pigs or chickens, you eat fish. 00:03:58.242 --> 00:03:59.768 because they're fed on fish meal. 00:03:59.818 --> 00:04:02.890 So most of us are complicit in this, but we don't quite 00:04:02.909 --> 00:04:05.248 know it because the oceans are out of sight, out of mind. 00:04:05.266 --> 00:04:07.453 But the seas belong to all of us so we need to reduce 00:04:07.471 --> 00:04:09.760 our carbon emissions. That's the most important thing we 00:04:09.785 --> 00:04:11.922 need to do. But also, obviously, the most destructive 00:04:11.950 --> 00:04:14.163 source of fishing are the ones we need to stop. 00:04:14.252 --> 00:04:16.255 If a fishing method is particularly destructive, 00:04:16.298 --> 00:04:18.190 it shouldn't be acceptable. People shouldn't be buying 00:04:18.216 --> 00:04:20.356 the fish and people shouldn't be letting it happen. 00:04:20.387 --> 00:04:22.418 As a consumer you need to make the right choices when 00:04:22.439 --> 00:04:24.280 you go to the supermarket or restaurant. 00:04:24.330 --> 00:04:27.048 And as a citizen you need to tell your politicians what to do. 00:04:27.738 --> 00:04:30.354 The one thing that people can demand from politicians, 00:04:30.467 --> 00:04:33.283 is protected areas. On land we have national parks, 00:04:33.333 --> 00:04:37.405 at sea we have pitifully few areas that are protected at all. 00:04:37.455 --> 00:04:39.739 There is no chance for things to grow back again. 00:04:39.828 --> 00:04:42.172 The problem with fish at the moment is we have devalued it, 00:04:42.190 --> 00:04:44.229 in much the same way as we have with other food. 00:04:44.279 --> 00:04:47.647 Fish is not a cheap commodity so if you see adverts for, 00:04:47.647 --> 00:04:50.488 prawn rings or 99 pence fish fillets, 00:04:50.538 --> 00:04:53.385 it's not actually reflecting what's happening out there. 00:04:53.395 --> 00:04:56.594 It's simply because we're greedy and fish are tasty.