Comfortably Unaware (7 page)

The solution to the declining freshwater supply does not lie in increasing demand and then simply supplying more, as we
are currently doing. Rather, it is to understand where our water is going, to reduce this extraneous demand, and then to change to a more efficient use system. Knowing that the majority of our water supply is involved in the raising and processing animals for food, and knowing that it requires a mere fraction of water to provide a more nutritious food derived from plants, one of the solutions to global depletion of water is quite simple:
Stop all consumption of animals for food
. Pretty simple.

So let's go back to that restaurant where you ordered a burger, steak, or another form of animal product. And let's presume, in this new scenario, that you now feel enlightened in some capacity to think that some animal products eaten as food are less healthy for you than other animal products. Specifically, you have decided to cut back on red meat—which is an interesting term, in that this form of animal tissue has a generous blood supply; hence, it appears red in color. Back at the restaurant, what do you order? Fish, of course, because you have heard that this form of animal product is healthier for you, with its good type of fat. Actually, fish of any type has both saturated fat and cholesterol, both of which are not necessarily that healthy for you to consume. An ongoing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that an alarming 100 percent of freshwater fish samples from the United States contain mercury, and a large percentage of certain fish caught from the ocean contain heavy metals and/or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are highly toxic, cancer-causing chemicals.
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Additionally, not one fish caught anywhere in the world has fiber, antioxidants, or phytonutrients, all of which
make you a healthier person; these can only be found in plant foods. While there has been much hype about omega-3 fatty acids, no hype has been given to plants that can provide a more stable form of omega-3 fatty acids than is found in fish (and is broken down easier by your body). Plants such as flax or hemp contain omega-3 fatty acids in a quality and quantity whereby it is easy to obtain the needed daily amount. And unlike the baggage that comes with fish, these plants come to you with much needed fiber, no cholesterol, no saturated fat—and no loss to our oceans. Let's examine one more very important issue: where did your fish come from? You may say, “It doesn't matter”—you are simply eating lunch, so who cares? Unfortunately, the fish you are eating and the demand for fish by many other people have placed such a burden on our oceans that they may never recover.

Truthfully, our oceans are a mess. The rate of depletion, human-induced extinction, and environmental degradation in our oceans is most likely “greater than anything witnessed on land,” as described in a recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme.
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Coastal zones, as well as the high seas, are under great stress from unsustainable practices, including overharvesting of fishing grounds, bottom trawling, pollution and dead zones, and infestation of invasive species—all fueled by the massive desire to eat more fish. While global warming trends are measurably affecting our oceans, it is the indiscriminate, unregulated overfishing of our seas that will have the most profound and long-lasting effect on all of the complicated intertwining of fragile ecosystems. Our oceans are highly complex and dynamic systems, all interconnected to each other and vital to all living things on earth. The core of these vital systems and environmental mechanisms is living marine biodiversity itself.

The largest amount of marine life is associated with the seabed, especially on continental slopes and shelves of seamounts. Seamounts (mountains rising from the ocean floor that do not reach to the water's surface) are home to corals, sponge beds, and numerous communities of species. They provide feeding, spawning, nursery grounds, and shelter for thousands of species of commercial fish, as well as migratory species such as whales.
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Many seamounts that are separated from each other behave like marine oases, with distinct species and communities found nowhere else on earth, such as the Tasman seamounts, with a 34 percent
endemism rate
(sea-life species that are found nowhere else on earth). With traditional fishing grounds now depleted, the fishing industry is targeting newer stocks, with more sophisticated locating equipment, farther offshore, including around and on seamounts. Large industrial vessels and fleets operate for weeks and months, targeting deep-water species on continental slopes and seamounts. Over 95 percent of the damage—and possible irreversible change—to seamount ecosystems is caused by unregulated and unreported bottom-fishing, with extremely destructive gear such as trawls, dredges, and traps. It is estimated that trawling alone is more damaging to seabed areas than all other fishing gear combined and is destroying deep-sea communities that will take decades and centuries to recover—if at all. These species and ecosystems are particularly at risk with additional stress, such as climate change and pollution.
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What happens, essentially, is that fishing vessels clear a seamount area of as much fish as possible, and once devastated and depleted, fishermen simply move on to the next seamount to start the process all over again. Many known seamounts are already overexploited to the point where extinction may well
soon follow or recovery may take centuries.
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“Extinction” and “recovery” are terms that, in this context, need to be applied to a particular marine species that is dependent on seamounts, such as the right whale, and to various complex ecosystems—those with which exploited marine species are involved. We do not even fully understand many of these species and marine ecosystems, much less appreciate them.

There are four levels of what I consider classic human behavior with this demand for fish and subsequent overfishing situation:

1.  The human population consumes a food item, but they do not have a clue to where it comes from, what it took to get it to their mouths, or what it is doing to our planet; or they do know but simply do not care. Either way, this behavior is irresponsible as well as unacceptable.

2.  The fishing industry is oblivious or does not care and is blinded by the immediate, short-term economic gain, which is also not acceptable.

3.  Those who are somewhat aware are not addressing the issue aggressively enough and are not solving the problem quickly enough. These are organizations and individuals, such as UN Special Report committee members and others who have studied this topic, as well as those in a position to make policy change. Again, this is not acceptable, as depletion continues to occur on a daily basis.

4.  We are demanding, consuming, and ultimately irreversibly destroying living species and interconnected ecosystems,
the complexity of which we, as humans, do not even fully understand
. It is the essence of ignorance, the “me kill you” mentality that should have been left back in the Early Pleistocene era.

These fishing areas of exploitation are beyond national jurisdiction and have limited, if any, regulation, which makes them extremely vulnerable to further exploitation beyond recovery. Most deep-sea fish in these areas are slow to mature, produce only a few offspring in their lifetime and, therefore, will more easily be completely destroyed by heavy bottom-trawling and other gear now used.
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Of the seventeen primary fishing stocks worldwide,
all
are either overexploited or on the verge of collapse. Examples of commercially extinct areas are the Grand Banks near Newfoundland and the Georges Banks off New England, both once considered the most productive on earth. Until fifteen years ago, the fish you ordered for dinner would have most likely originated from one of these two very productive areas. At less than 1 percent their original numbers in these waters, now there simply are no fish.
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Across all our oceans, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 70 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted.
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The World Conservation Union lists 1,081 types of fish worldwide as threatened or endangered.
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There are currently four million fishing vessels that catch fish at a rate and amount that is almost three times that considered to be sustainable.
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Our most competent ocean scientists admit to understanding
and comprehending only a very small amount about our seas, so it is interesting that someone had enough unilateral confidence in himself to come up with the figure of what is “sustainable” in any ecosystem in our oceans.

Although latest statistics reveal that a record 106 million tons of fish were caught in 2009, the report does not account for the millions of tons of total sea life caught in the process and discarded, either dead or dying.
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This “bykill” is most pronounced with shrimp fishing. Please think about this just for a moment when you next eat shrimp: for every one pound of shrimp sold and consumed, more than twenty pounds of other sea creatures are caught and killed in the process. Innocent victims include fish that has no commercial value, juvenile fish, turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals, such as the dolphin.
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Overfishing and the massive amounts of subsequent bykill have such detrimental global implications that the United Nations has adopted resolutions to help in the reduction of both. The real difficulty, however, lies in the adoption and actual enforcement of policies by the international community. For example, one such UN ruling (Item 150, Report of the Secretary-General, July 14, 2006) states: “Observers have collected data on fish discarded at sea by most vessels. Fishermen are required to properly release, to the extent practical, unharmed sharks, bill-fishes, rays, Dorado, and other non-targeted species, including sea turtles, and to receive some training in release methods.”
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So with this ruling, are we to understand that there will be “
observers
” of “most” vessels? That fisherman are required and “
reminded
” (but by whom?) that they are to “properly” release, “to the extent practical,” any “unharmed” species, and that they will receive “some training in release methods”? Might we assume,
then, that the problem is now solved? Of course not. The policy itself is ludicrous, and there is
no assurance whatsoever
by our governing bodies that any part of the problem will be solved. While I am encouraged by the recognition that there is a significant overfishing and bykill difficulty, proper implementation and enforcement of appropriate laws quite clearly remains problematic, at best.

It is also very important to note that one-third of all fish caught worldwide are used as fishmeal—to feed the ever-growing numbers of livestock.
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That is correct: your desire to eat animal products (fish
or
livestock) fuels industries that are depleting our planet and destroying our oceans and environment. As executive director Achim Steiner stated in a recent report of the United Nations Environment Programme with regard to our oceans: “We are now observing … in the absence of policy change, a collapsing ecosystem [of our oceans] … with climate being the final coup d'grace.”

Depletion of our oceans is very real and, in many cases, is occurring at an irreversible rate. This catastrophic depletion is initiated and perpetuated by our demand for fish, the “healthy” alternative—but healthy for whom?

Yes, that would be you

“The activist is not the person who says the river is dirty.
The activist is the person who cleans up the river.”
—Ross Perot

EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY, THERE
is depletion in the form of pollution. Pollution of any kind depletes the environment of clean healthy soil, waterways, ground-water, and the air we breathe. Some of the largest contributing sectors to this pollution are the meat, dairy, and fishing industries—and those who choose to eat things that these industries produce. “How can that be?” you say. “I simply eat it; I am not polluting.” Well, yes, you are. And here is how it all works: Your contribution to pollution begins with what you decide to purchase
to consume. It's not just with the occasional purchase; it's with every food item you eat, every day. With meat and animal products, the pollution associated with your choice is massive. In order to raise that animal for you to eat, there is baggage that silently comes along with it—silent to you, that is, although it speaks loudly elsewhere. In the United States alone, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce over five million pounds of excrement
per minute
. These are the animals raised each year so that people can continue eating meat, and they produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population in our country. This manure sewage is responsible for global warming, water and soil pollution, air pollution, and use of our resources. The waste produced by the animals raised for food includes with it all the antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other chemicals used during the raising and growing process. Accompanying this is methane released by the animals themselves, as well as the carbon, nitrous oxide, and additional methane emissions produced during the whole raising, feeding, and killing process.

Regarding pollution of our global water supply, livestock are responsible for 37 percent of pesticide use, 55 percent of erosion, and 50 percent of the volume of antibiotics consumed.
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This ultimately ends up in our waterways, either directly or through runoff, creating water contamination. Livestock are responsible for 33 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus loads found in freshwater resources.
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While there is no current assessment of the effective load into freshwater resources of sediments of heavy metals or biological contaminants, it can be reasonably assumed that livestock have a major role in these processes of pollution as well. In the United States, recent EPA studies have shown that 35,000 miles of rivers in twenty-two states and groundwater in
seventeen states has been permanently contaminated by industrial farm waste.
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Raising animals for us to eat pollutes our waterways more than all other industries combined.
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