9 quotes found
"Over the years, I’ve seen changes. I’ve been a witness to perhaps the greatest era of discovery about the ocean. But at the same time, the greatest era of loss. Since the middle of the 20th century, humans have succeeded in extracting from the ocean, immense quantities of wildlife. The estimate is by the middle of the 21st century, if we keep taking wild fish at the level that we are today, there’ll be no commercial fishing, because there won’t be enough fish to catch."
"We understand that leaving trees or planting trees really helps the carbon equation, but nothing matters more than maintaining the integrity of ocean systems. I mean, these big animals, even the little ones, they take up carbon. They sequester carbon when they sink to the bottom of the ocean. The ocean is the biggest carbon sink on the planet."
"“Do fish feel pain?” As a scientist, it’s common sense. They have a nervous system, fish do. They have the basic elements that all vertebrates have. They have the capacity to feel on a level that I almost can’t imagine we can. We feel pain, we feel touch. But fish have a lateral line down their sides that senses the most exquisite little movements in the water. So you see a thousand fish moving like one fish. Those who say, “Doesn’t matter what you do to a fish, they can’t feel anything.” Or that they… can’t relate to pain, or they can’t sense danger in the future. Well, they haven’t really observed fish. I think it’s a justification for doing dastardly things to innocent creatures. It’s the only explanation I can think of for treating fish with such a barbaric attitude. [So you don’t eat fish?] Oh, I don’t eat fish now, or any animal."
"We are at war with the oceans. And if we win this war, we’re going to lose it all, because mankind is not able to live on this planet with a dead sea. It’s the total industrialization of fishing that is the problem here. We are pretty much destroying everything at rapid speed."
"Even the groups that are talking about marine plastic are highly reluctant to talk about what a lot of that plastic is, which is fishing nets and fishing gear. We hear a lot about the , and say, "Oh, isn’t it terrible? All our cotton buds and plastic bags are swirling around in the Great Pacific garbage patch." 46% of it is fishing nets, discarded fishing nets, which are far more dangerous for marine life than our plastic straws. Because, of course, they’re designed to kill. Now, this is so crashingly obvious, why aren’t we talking about it? Why aren’t even the plastics campaigns talking about fishing?"
"By continued extraction of fish out of our oceans, you’re essentially deforesting our oceans by not only removing the fish, but the act of removal, the methods of removal are devastating to habitat, to ecosystems."
"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the was the biggest in history. It gushed huge quantities of oil into the deep sea for a period of months. And everyone was appalled at the death of wildlife on the beaches as the oil slopped ashore. But in fact, the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico destroyed more animals in a day than that oil spill did in months. Because large areas were closed to fishing because of the possibility of being tainted by oil, marine life actually benefited from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill because it got a respite from fishing."
"If you want to address climate change, the first thing you do is protect the ocean. And the solution to that is very simple: leave it alone."
"They want the people who eat fish to support them. And this was a problem when I was National Director for the , that was their problem. They didn’t wanna come out against hunting, against fishing, or against meat-eating. Because they thought they would lose membership support if they did. A lot of these groups aren’t interested in solving the problem, they’re interested in exploiting the problem."