This article was published in the 50th issue of Sanlian Life Weekly in 2019, the original title is "Our Ocean", it is strictly forbidden to reprint it privately, and infringement will be investigated
Lead Writer / Yuan Yue
A fisherman takes a boat to a salmon farm (Courtesy of Visual China)
A country built on dried fish
If we think of Norway as a crocodile, the Lofoten Islands are like a small claw on the side of a crocodile. One day in late October, I took off in a small plane from Bod?, in mainland Norway, in just over 20 minutes to Svolv?r, in the middle of the Lofoten Islands. This is a typical Nordic town, although it seems to be very open from the air, but in fact, the permanent population is only 4700 people, which is not as large as the population of an ordinary residential community in Beijing.
There is a square in the center of Svolville, surrounded by a circle of hotels, and it seems that tourism is well developed here. I guess most tourists should come for the Northern Lights, because it is located on the 68th parallel north latitude, which is a good place to see the Northern Lights. But because of the Gulf Current, temperatures here are much higher than in other inland areas at the same latitude. The day we arrived was clear and the maximum temperature was around 4°C, which was quite pleasant. However, after all, this place has entered the Arctic Circle, the weather has changed, and sure enough, the next day a storm blew from the Arctic Ocean, and heaven instantly became hell, and the Northern Lights could not be seen.
Archaeological evidence shows that the Lofoten Islands were inhabited more than 10,000 years ago. Those people came thousands of miles to settle in such a harsh place, certainly not to see the Northern Lights, but to be attracted by the North Atlantic Cod. Norwegians call this cod Skrei, meaning "wanderer", because the fish lives most of the time in the Barents Sea further north, but every February to April, adult North Atlantic cod will leave the Arctic Ocean and swim south to the waters near the Lofoten Islands to spawn, hatching small fish just in time for the summer when food is plentiful, and then swim back to the Barents Sea when they grow up.
A local guide piloted a rubber boat and took us on a tour of the waters off the Lofoten Islands. According to him, the Lofoten Islands are made up of thousands of islands and reefs, extending south for more than 100 kilometers, forming hundreds of hidden fjords between the islands, which cannot be accessed by storms and whale sharks, so it is not only an excellent spawning place for marine fish, but also provides a lot of shelter for fishermen. In fact, at least 70% of all species caught by Norwegians spawn here, and fishermen just have to stay here and wait for rabbits. Therefore, despite the harsh climate, it still attracts many fishermen who are the ancestors of the Norwegians.
During the cruise, there were birds flying in the sky, and the tour guide constantly reminded us that this was a paradise for birds. But I noticed that the reefs on both sides were mostly bare, with no traces of seabirds nesting on them. I've been to Antarctica, where everything that comes with land is occupied by seabirds or penguins that are incubating eggs, and that's what nature should be. This comparison shows that the Norwegian fishermen who settled here must have taken out bird eggs to eat, and eventually killed almost all the birds that hatched here.
Chinese like to use the saying birds don't to describe the remoteness of a place, but in fact, the more remote the place, the more bird, because where there are many people, birds must not live well. In contrast, fish hide underwater, invisible to humans, and live slightly better than birds. But when humans invented fishing nets, fish finally escaped. Only in places where the environment is too harsh, the fish survive the protection of nature. The lofoten islands, for example, have been going on for thousands of years because the latitude is too high and the population is growing slowly, making it sustainable if fishermen fish only to feed themselves and their families.
Of all the marine fish, fishermen prefer the North Atlantic cod, which is not only large and tender, but also best stored as jerky fish
Of all the marine fish, fishermen prefer North Atlantic cod. This fish is not only large and tender, but also best made into dried fish and stored for off-season. The spring in Lofoten is not only windy, but also the temperature is always maintained at about 0 ° C, as long as the cod is cut open and hung on the shelf, it will soon be dried by the wind, but there is no need to worry about the fish rotting or freezing, which is the most suitable for making dried fish. Dried cod is lost in moisture, can be stored at room temperature for a long time, before eating as long as you soak in water for a few days can be restored to its original appearance, the taste is almost the same as fresh fish. You know, in ancient times, there was no refrigerator, all meat had to be preserved by smoking or salting, and the taste was much worse, but dried cod was completely without this problem, so it soon became the favorite ration for long-distance travelers. When vikings traveled to the European continent, they always carried a few dried cod in their bags, and it was this food that allowed the Vikings to dominate all of Europe.
Unfortunately, or for the Norwegians, fortunately, the secret was discovered by people on the European continent, and dried cod soon became a staple of the European travelers, and columbus's ocean-going fleet is said to have relied on dried cod to supplement protein. In addition, Christianity stipulates that meat is not allowed during Lent, but fish can be eaten, so dried cod has become a favorite of European Christians. As a result, cod went from a food originally reserved for Norwegians to a luxury that all Europeans wanted, rising in price and peaking at 80 percent of Norway's total exports. The Norwegians changed the phrase "In God We Trust" printed on dollar bills to "In Cod We Trust," meaning that cod, like U.S. dollar bills, is the strongest hard currency in the Norwegian mind.
As a trading hub for dried cod, Bergen quickly became the richest city in Scandinavia. Since the 14th century, between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of dried cod have been transported from here to the European continent every year. Because cod loses most of its moisture during air drying, plus the heads and offal thrown away before making dried fish, the total trade is equivalent to catching at least 6 million tons of fresh cod per year! Such a large catch, small sailing boats alone are no longer enough, so the steam engine was used for the first time on fishing boats.
There is an art gallery in the centre of Svolville that exhibits the work of a painter who was born here, Gunnar Berg. One of his most famous paintings, The Battle At Trollfjord, depicts a battle in the Trollfjord in 1890. The fjord is located near the Lofoten Islands and has a narrow entrance, so when schools of fish swim in to spawn, fish can be easily caught by sealing off the entrance to the fjord. In order to monopolize the fishing rights of the fjord, a fishing company hired a group of huge tonnage steam fishing boats to stop at the entrance of the fjord and prevent small fishing boats from entering. In order to make a living, the local Norwegian fishermen rushed towards the steamboat in small fishing boats, and the two sides fought fiercely, and the scene was extremely fierce. Fortunately, Borg was there, and he painted the battle scene truthfully, so that we can experience the cruelty of human beings competing for natural resources.
However, no matter how high the level of Borg's painting, he could not paint what was happening underwater. As fishing techniques have become more advanced, north Atlantic cod populations have rapidly declined. Norway experienced a cod crisis as early as the 1950s, which forced the Norwegian government to reduce its quota in hopes of giving cod a breathing respite. But Canadians across the Atlantic are unaware of the gravity of the situation and continue to increase their fishing quotas. Fishermen have increased their trawling area and added sonar equipment, GPS systems and quick-freeze freezers to their boats, so that once the cod swims into Canadian waters, they will never escape.
In 1993, Canada's fisheries authorities abruptly declared an indefinite moratorium on fishing, and 36,000 fishermen in The Newfoundland region lost their jobs overnight. It was the largest unemployment incident in Canadian history, and fishermen protested for half a day, but they could do nothing because the number of cod in the entire Newfoundland fishery had dropped to only 1% of the original, and even if they sneaked out to sea, they could not catch fish.
The incident shook the global marine fishing industry, and everyone finally realized that the good days were coming to an end. In fact, since that event, the total amount of fishing in the world's oceans has declined year after year, and there is still no sign of recovery. Newfoundland's cod stocks have not recovered until now, as the uncontrolled fishing of fishermen has revolutionized the local ecosystem. The number of Capelin, Herring and various shrimp and crabs that had been preyed on by cod had soared, and the cod roe had been eaten.
Norwegians also adopted new fishing techniques similar to those of Canadian fishermen, and the fishing limits were much higher than the limits of the local ecosystem, but because the terrain of the Lofoten Islands was too complex, large fishing boats could not be used, and some other accidental reasons, the Norwegian cod fishing industry survived. Fortunately, the Norwegians have learned their lesson and cooperated with Russia, which has partial sovereignty over the Barents Sea, to implement a very strict fishing quota system, hoping to make Norway's oldest industry sustainable.
Unexpectedly, as the temperature of the North Atlantic sea rises, the spawning grounds of cod continue to migrate northward, and the number of cod that come to the Lofoten Islands to spawn is decreasing. The Norwegians finally realized that the oceans are part of the Earth's ecosystem, greatly affected by climate change, and that they cannot solve this problem on their own, and that all of humanity must be mobilized to work together.
Norwegian fisherman (Courtesy of Visual China)
Marine fisheries are facing a crisis
If we want to act in unison, we must first unify our thinking. With the support of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. government hosted the first "Our Ocean Conference" in 2014, hoping to bring together people around the world who care about the oceans to discuss maritime policy. Since then, the congress has been held annually, and this year's sixth congress was held on October 23-24 in Oslo, Norway, and attracted more than 500 government, business, academic and non-governmental organizations from more than 100 countries around the world.
The conference was presided over by Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen S?reide and personally addressed by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. After the brief opening session, the conference quickly moved into discussions, the first of which was the relationship between climate change and the oceans. When it comes to this topic, ordinary people are certainly most concerned about sea level rise, after all, it is related to the future life of hundreds of millions of coastal residents. Data released by the Conference show that sea levels rose by a total of 15 centimeters throughout the 20th century, and twice as fast as in the 20th century so far in the 21st century. If left unchecked, sea levels would rise by another 1.1 metres in 2100, the lives of about 700 million people would be significantly affected, and many island nations would cease to exist.
However, most of the scientists present believe that the greatest threat to the oceans from climate change comes from the massive bleaching (death) of coral reefs, which will be directly related to the rise and fall of marine ecosystems in the future. The data show that the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere has risen by about 1°C compared with before industrialization, and this increase has caused nearly half of the coral reefs to face the threat of death. If the warming increase is increased to 1.5°C, 70% to 90% of the world's coral reefs will die, which is why the UN climate conference has set a temperature control target of 1.5°C. If this target is not achieved and warms up more than 2°C, 99% of the world's coral reefs will die and marine ecosystems will collapse.
Coral reefs are a refuge and spawning ground for many marine fish, and if coral reefs are gone, the marine fishing industry will face extinction. In fact, marine fish are already dying because of the crazy fishing in recent decades. According to the latest statistics disclosed by the Congress, 33 per cent of marine fish stocks are currently overfished, the number continues to decline, and if not converged, there is a risk of extinction. Another 60 per cent of marine stocks are currently in full catch, i.e. catches and reproduction are comparable, and while they can barely sustain current production, they can no longer increase. The remaining 7% of marine fish stocks still have the potential to increase production, but most of them are located in remote areas far from the population, making it difficult to fish.
The crisis in the fishing industry is most relevant to developing countries, because the vast majority of people in developed countries do not rely on eating fish for their daily protein needs. According to statistics, about 10% of the world's population currently relies almost entirely on marine life to supplement protein, all of them from developing countries, and often the poorest of them. Most of them live by the sea and are therefore the biggest victims of sea level rise.
In other words, those most affected by global climate change are the poorest people today. Because of the lack of empathy, the solutions proposed by established rich countries are often unrealistic, and China, which has recently succeeded in lifting itself out of poverty, has the most say in this regard. Dr. Qu Dongyu, who has just been elected Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, was invited to give a keynote speech at the conference, and he gave only one solution: farming. Since wild fish can't be caught, and humans are very short of protein, let's find a way to raise fish.
When it comes to aquaculture, China leads the world in both scale and technology. But Norwegians have a more say in the farming of high-value marine fish. The country is sparsely populated, with excellent water quality and low sea temperatures in the territorial waters, making it the most suitable for salmon farming. According to statistics, Norway's total seafood exports in 2017 were 94.5 billion NOK (about 72.5 billion yuan), ranking second in the world. Among them, the proportion of farmed fish is 72%, and most of them are farmed salmon. In fact, only 0.5% of atlantic salmon on the international market are wild, and the rest are farmed.
Although the Norwegian salmon farming industry is very large, the density of aquaculture is not high. I took advantage of the opportunity to take a flight to take a closer look at the wide fjord between the Lofoten Islands and the Norwegian mainland from the air, and saw only one farm, a total of 8 cages. Unlike China's coastal areas, which have been filled with various cages placed by the aquaculture industry.
Although we were not able to get a closer look at the salmon farm in Norway, we visited the Salmon Centre in the center of Bode and learned about the whole process of salmon farming through text and video. Salmon are migratory fish, and after hatching, the juveniles are first raised in freshwater ponds for 10 to 16 months, then transferred to seawater cages for another 14 to 22 months, and can be harvested when each fish weighs 4 to 6 kg. Norwegian salmon cages are conical, with a circumference of 160 to 200 m in the surface and a depth of 20 to 50 m in the underwater section, and each cage can only be kept at a maximum of 600 tonnes of salmon at the same time, as the Norwegian government stipulates that the total volume of fish cannot exceed 2.5% of the total volume in the cage. Even so, the density of salmon in the cage is much higher than in the wild, easy to become a paradise for parasites, coupled with the waste excreted by farmed salmon will pollute the environment and reduce the quality of seawater, which is the main reason why the density of marine aquaculture cannot be too high.
However, the biggest problem with salmon farming is the source of feed. Wild salmon eat small fish, and farms certainly hope to replace them with feed from plant sources, such as soybeans and corn, otherwise it is not only expensive to raise, but also not environmentally friendly. The problem is that salmon feed must contain enough omega-3 fatty acids, which are abundant in the ocean but rare in crops and extremely low in soybeans and corn. There have been scientists who have made soybeans omega-3 fatty acids also produce omega-3 fatty acids through genetically modified technology, but because of the opposition of the reversal forces, this new technology cannot be applied, so salmon feed must still add a large number of wild marine fish ingredients, such as small fish and shrimp caught by mistake during marine fishing, or by-products such as fish heads and offal left over from fish processing. These things could have been used more efficiently, but now they can only be used as fish feed.
Marine aquaculture seems beautiful, but if the problem of feed sources cannot be solved, it is difficult to reduce the cost of feeding, and its impact on marine ecosystems is also difficult to reduce. Technologies like GMOs have the potential to help us solve some of our problems, depending on when people will embrace these new technologies. Norwegians are quite dogmatic in this regard and have not yet accepted these new technologies, which will seriously hinder the healthy development of the marine aquaculture industry.
The biggest threat to the oceans from climate change comes from the massive bleaching of coral reefs, which will be directly related to the rise and fall of marine ecosystems in the future (Courtesy of Visual China)
The authenticity of marine protected areas
Although the ocean can produce valuable protein for humans, the ocean is not just a fishing ground for humans, it also carries important ecological functions.
"The oceans, which account for 71 percent of the Earth's surface, produce 51 percent of oxygen, absorb 80 percent of the new heat from human activities, and are the most important regulators of earth's ecosystems." Speaking at the conference, former U.S. Secretary of State Kelly pointed out that "we need to protect the oceans and reduce the disturbance to marine ecosystems in the same way that we protect terrestrial ecosystems." For example, a trawler is the equivalent of a chainsaw, and if we allow such fishing boats to operate at sea, it is equivalent to a large forest being cut down. ”
Indeed, because of the issue of perspective, humans care far more about terrestrial ecosystems that are visible to the naked eye than the oceans. The first terrestrial nature reserve, Yellowstone National Park, was established as early as 1872, but the first Marine Protected Area (MPA) was not built until the early 20th century, and it grew much slower than the terrestrial reserve. Today, the total area of land nature reserves in most countries has accounted for more than 10% of the national land area, and the proportion of many developed countries has even exceeded 30%, but until today, the total area of MPA only accounts for about 7% of the world's total marine area, which is still the statistical result after relaxing the standard. If calculated according to more stringent standards, this proportion is only about 4%.
According to statistics, there are currently about 15,000 MPA in the world, the vast majority of which actually allow humans to engage in commercial activities, including fishing. Many countries treat areas with only one restriction (such as restricting trawling or restricting the fishing of a certain species of fish) as MPA, which leads to a very confusing definition of this concept, so many MPA is called "Paper Park" by environmentalists, meaning that they only exist on paper, and the actual effect is very poor.
In the eyes of scientists, the real MPA should completely ban fishing, or only allow local fishermen to fish in small quantities for their own livelihood, only in this way can they truly play a role in protecting the ecological environment. Unfortunately, the MPA that meets this criterion accounts for only 1.8% of the total area of the world's oceans, which is far worse than land protected areas.
Norway is not a good example in this regard, in part because the country is sparsely populated and the population density is too low. Norway's land area is roughly equivalent to China's Yunnan Province, but the total population is only 5 million, and there are basically no people in sight once they leave the city, so Norwegians have not felt that their environment will be destroyed by human behavior, and Norwegian law has correspondingly given ordinary Norwegians great privileges to freely travel to any place within the national border, and nature reserves are no exception. In other words, Norwegians feel that the whole country is a nature reserve and there is no need to build another one. There are currently only 6 MPA in Norway's exclusive economic zone (within 20 nautical miles of the coastline), accounting for less than 1% of the total area. We went to visit one of the MPA, this marine reserve called Saltstraumen is about an hour's drive from the city of Bode and is itself a fjord about 2.2 km long, because the entrance is very narrow, so that the sea flow in and out of the fjord is extremely fast, with a maximum speed of up to 20 knots per hour (equivalent to 37 km / h), which is said to be the fastest tidal current in the world, which creates a very unique ecosystem that deserves to be well protected.
However, many houses have been built along the coast of this fjord, and it is clear that many people have chosen to live here. According to the tour guide, most of them are fishermen and usually come to the fjord to fish. This fjord is also a well-known local landscape park, receiving an average of 180,000 visitors a year. In fact, it is precisely because of too much human interference that the number of seabirds here has decreased by 70% to 90% in the past 10 years.
Norwegians have more say in the farming of high-value marine fish (Courtesy of Visual China)
Don't underestimate these human activities, as they directly affect the top predators in the area and have a huge impact on local ecosystems. Professor Jane Lubchenco, an American marine ecologist who was former chief scientist of the U.S. Oceanic and Atmospheric Management Agency (NOAA) and now teaches at Oregon State University, explained why. Originally, ecologists used to believe that the health of ecosystems depended on the health of primary producers (such as trees, grasses and seaweeds, kelp and other species that can photosynthetically), but there is growing evidence that the actual situation is likely to be the opposite, and it is the top predators, such as lions and tigers, that really play a decisive role, because these top predators control the population of those secondary predators (such as herbivores) in the ecosystem, which is equivalent to protecting the health of primary producers.
For example, if all the tuna in a sea are caught, the number of small fish and shrimp that have been eaten by tuna will explode, and the latter will eat up the seagrass, which is the refuge of many weak and small fish, so the biodiversity of the entire sea will be greatly affected, and eventually the system will collapse. The problem is that the more top predators tend to have more delicious flesh and higher economic value, whether it is whale sharks or cod, tuna, salmon, are fishermen's favorite marine fish, which has a devastating impact on marine ecosystems.
One way to solve this problem is to establish an MPA to provide a safe haven for marine life. Signatories to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity have agreed to increase the MPA share to 10% by 2020, but as things stand, it's not optimistic. Professor Lubchenko estimates that only 7.8 per cent of the commitments made so far by all countries are honoured, some distance from the 10 per cent target.
American marine ecologist Professor Jane Lubchenko (Courtesy of IC photo)
What is more worrying is that 86% of the total area of the world's completeDs come from 21 large marine protected areas, most of which are located in the far seas of the tropics, and there are no fish and no fishing activities, making little difference between the construction of protected areas and the construction of protected areas. In contrast, very few MPA are built in temperate offshore waters, where the largest numbers and species of fish are abundant, but they have always been the hardest hit areas for marine fishing.
However, as can be seen from the above statistics, most of the current 15,000 MPA in the world is very small. However, Professor Lubchenko believes that the size of the area is not so important, the key is the location. In her view, properly sited so that major fingerlings are protected at all stages of their life cycle can help them maintain population size, and their effects can even extend beyond protected areas. In other words, she believes that the purpose of the MPA is not only to protect the marine ecology, but also to increase the scale of the marine fishing industry. It has been calculated that if the MPA is set up properly, the ocean capture production of the entire planet can be increased by another 20%.
To achieve this goal, governments must first respect science when designing MPA, rather than accommodating tourism or fishing; second, governments must unite and act together, because many important marine fish species are migratory, and the design of MPA must break national boundaries and cooperate with each other. So an important topic of this ocean conference is to urge governments to abandon protectionist policies and unite to protect our oceans.
epilogue
The biggest difference between our Ocean Congress and other environmental congresses is the focus on action. The two-day conference received a total of 370 commitments from countries and businesses (as well as NGOs) from around the world, involving a total of $63.7 billion.
After years of environmental propaganda, politicians and business owners have finally understood that although we live on different lands, we only have one ocean, and we must protect it well.
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