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| EXTENDED
INTERVIEW: SYLVIA EARLE |
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 December 2004  |
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Sylvia Earle, executive director
for the Global Marine Program for Conservation International and explorer
in residence at The National Geographic Society, explains why coral
reefs are in trouble and why people should care.
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BETTY
ANN BOWSER: How would you summarize the condition that coral reefs of
the world are in today?
SYLVIA EARLE: Coral reefs around the world are in real trouble. Now it depends on what great expert you go to to say just how degraded they are. Some say we've lost 10 percent and 30 percent are degraded. In general the rule of thumb I keep hearing and I trust the evaluation here is that half the coral reefs worldwide are either gone, that is based on what it was before. Human activity and exploitations have severely depleted them or either gone or on the way out, severely degraded. That means the good news is about half are still in pretty good shape. So we've still got a chance. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Why are they in such trouble? SYLVIA EARLE: Well, some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world. And there's no question that it is a factor but it's preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation. I think the most important factor there is humans as predators, that we have an appetite first of all for the big things, turtles, dugongs or manatees, whatever you call them, the large fish. Ed Wilson, a biologist at Harvard, has said that human beings have had an appetite for the large, the slow, and the tasty on the land over the last 10,000 years. This caused the loss of the large wildlife except in a few places like parts of Africa. But by and large the creatures that were in North America and much of the world are just gone on the land, the big ones. And the same thing is now happening in the oceans, but it's not limited to the large nor the slow. Think of tuna, some of the fastest creatures on the planet. And yet we have managed to cause their populations in the last 50 years the last 30 years to go from where they were to in some cases 10 percent and other cases down to even maybe 1 or 2 percent of what they were when I was a kid. So our capacity to enter the food chains in the ocean as the biggest, the most veracious predator that the planet has ever seen. We've lost 90 percent of the big fish in the oceans worldwide in 50 years. And the impact on coral reefs as well as other ecosystems from kelp forests to deep-sea communities is profound. |
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| Reefs as indicators of ocean health | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: Why should people care about this? SYLVIA EARLE: People need to understand that coral reefs as a reflection of the health of the ocean as a whole is an indication that our life support system, the ocean, is in trouble. And if it's in trouble, we're in trouble. Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it. And astronauts, oceanographers, biologists will tell you that the ocean is at the cornerstone of what makes the planet function as a system of where humans can thrive. And most of life on earth is tiny, microbial. We're the odd ones. We're in that upper, little thin layer of big creatures that are dependent on this whole chain of life that makes Earth as an ecosystem stand out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here. An atmosphere we can breathe, water in abundance, food, something that will supply us with what it takes to make human life possible, let alone prosperous. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Describe a world with all the coral reefs gone. SYLVIA EARLE: A world with all the coral reefs gone could, theoretically, still go on and support life that would be possible for humankind. At least I hope that's the case because I can see a future out there with coral reefs as a functioning system in the ocean basically gone. And I hope that we will somehow find ways for human beings to prosper despite that. The same thing with rainforests. If you could eliminate all the rainforests, and we're doing a pretty good job of doing just that, sort of taking away the underpinnings of our life support systems, the parts of the planet that generate oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, create this hospitable planet that we take for granted with resilience and a stability that we count on for our economies, for our social stability, for all the things human beings tend to think are for forever, but are at risk because of our own actions. So you ask, suppose there are no coral reefs anymore. I think the most important aspect here is if coral reefs are gone there's a lot else that is wrong with the ocean of which these are a symbol, I mean an obvious recognizable sign of trouble. And I think that's the way we should be alerted right now. Coral reefs are in trouble. The ocean is in trouble. We're in trouble. They're important right now for a host of things. The least important thing that coral reefs delivers to humankind is food. And for some communities in coral areas in come parts of the world that seems to be the number one reason we should protect coral reefs. Because they give us grouper and snapper and other yum yum things we like to munch on. There used to be turtles and dugans, but we've largely eliminated that as a source of food and we're very quickly eliminating the wildlife otherwise from the ocean as a source of food. When you see that 90 percent of the big fish and more than that in terms of turtles and other large creatures, sharks, I mean they are fish of course. But in some parts of the world sharks are down like other big fish to less than 10 percent of what they were when I was a child. I used to do my share of fish consuming. But I don't do that anymore. BETTY ANN BOWSER: You don't eat fish? SYLVIA EARLE: I don't eat fish. I don't eat fish because I value them alive more than I do swimming with lemon slices and butter on my plate. I want them swimming out there in the ocean. So you know sharks. I used to say, "Well I don't eat sharks because it's like if I don't eat them maybe then they won't eat me." But in fact I don't worry about sharks eating humans, eating me. They do take a little bite out of one of us once in a while. But we consume millions of sharks, hundred of millions of sharks every year, consumed either wholly or in part taking their fins and making shark fin soup out of it. It just seems like such a ridiculous waste of a credible creature to just take the fins and make soups out of it. But it happens because we don't appreciate what the real value of sharks, and tuna, grouper, and swordfish, all the creatures in the sea. Whether they're corals, such as beautiful corals that are here in the tank at the Denver aquarium behind us or out in the Great Barrier Reef or the Florida Keys or anywhere. Live coral is a wonderful thing and to take it for road building materials or as an ornament for your mantelpiece or just to say coral reefs, why should I care about them? It's like why should I care about life itself? This is a part of what makes life possible for us. Coral reefs are host to enormous diversity which provide the stability against the ups and downs of climate change that by and large are natural over the course of thousands, tens of thousands, millions of years. Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted. Ice ages have come and gone, humankind has persisted. But you add the human impact, our numbers now and our consumption of wildlife, what we've done to the margins of the ocean in terms of destroying the mangroves along the shore or adding nitrates and phosphates from upstream farms, what we put into the atmosphere that falls back into the ocean. The whole collection of insults to our life support system that in the end mean that now the ocean is in serious decline, serious trouble. And so are we. |
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| Level of urgency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: How urgent is this problem? Doing something about it? I've read projections that the coral reefs of the world are going to be gone in 20 years, 30 years. SYLVIA EARLE: When you look at the projections of where coral reefs were 50 years ago, and that's a pretty good baseline, although it wasn't the pre-human baseline by any means. Already, when I was a child, there was serious degradation and loss of the big wildlife, the turtles, the manatees, the swordfish, the tunas, the sharks, they had already been consumed to such an extent that it was nothing like a pristine world. Yet, when I first went to the Florida Keys it was like going to the Bahamas or to remote parts of the Caribbean. The water was really crystal clear right up to shore. I went to Clearwater High School near Tampa Bay, Florida, when Clearwater had clear water. It's murky water today because of human impacts. Fifty years has caused 90 percent of impact in the ocean in 50 years has caused just a drop in the big fish and even a lot of the small fish as well. In a piece of time you can project. Coral reefs, the decline in 50 years. Here's where they were. Here's where they are. It doesn't take rocket science or any kind of big brain to say, OK here's where they were, where are they going to be in the next 50 years? Like, good-bye coral reefs. Good-bye big fish. BETTY ANN BOWSER: So there is urgency? SYLVIA EARLE: There is urgency like you have. The urgency comes from knowing. We now are aware. We're aware that in the process of catching fish to eat, we consume on the order, that is we kill on the order of 300,000 dolphins, whales and other marine mammals. I mean it's a price we shouldn't allow to have happen. Just the nets, the hooks, the other things, that doesn't count. Birds that are caught that go for the bait on long lines. Doesn't count the small fish, the sponges, the starfish, and other diversity of life that gets swept up in bottom trawls or the destruction of entire ecosystems because of our appetite and our ignorance for the real cost of fish that comes to supermarkets, to restaurants because you don't see it on the menu, the bi-catch issue. You don't see on the menu the decline. You don't see on the menu that our future is tied up with our consumption of wildlife. Most people don't think of fish as wildlife. They understand that if you put lion or tiger on the menu, wait a minute I shouldn't be eating this. These creatures are really important. But you put grouper or swordfish or tuna, the beloved tuna fish sandwiches and salads and such on the menu, you say well, you know, there's plenty of tuna. It must be OK cause it's here on the menu. People aren't aware of the need to take personal responsibility for what they consume. |
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| Halting the decline | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: What are some of the things that man could do to stop the decline? SYLVIA EARLE: The good news about the current plate of the ocean, coral reefs in particular but it spreads across entire ocean basins the whole future of the oceans and that's our future. The good news is it isn't too late. It's too late to bring back what we had 200 hundred years ago, 100 years ago, even 50 years ago. But there's no doubt that we can make things better. Fifty years ago it was thought that the Barrier Reef could pretty much take care of itself. But by the mid-1970s it was clear that actions needed to be taken. And so the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority was established as an effort to try to embrace that with an aura of protection management zones were established. But until recently only 4 percent was really safe for the fish, the turtles and other wildlife. No take if you will. Now there were overarching policies that protected things like turtles and dugals, the manatees of Australia. But still shrimping, trawling and commercial fishing was allowed throughout most of what we think of as that circle of the park. But now because of the decline, 33 percent is now no-take as they say. In our own coral reefs here in the United States we have 18,000 square miles under protection under the marine sanctuary program. And that's great good news. Its shows that we're beginning to care about the ocean. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that enough? SYLVIA EARLE: In the way that we care about national parks which are also in trouble. Because A., it's not enough and B., we're not really taking care of our national parks on the land. ... But in the ocean, commercial fishing and sport fishing and other consumptive activities are taking place even in that fraction of 1 percent in the area that we have jurisdiction over, our national waters. There's more ocean under U.S. national jurisdiction than there is land. Part of the United States -- if you really drew an accurate map of the United States would be out 200 miles to the edge of the exclusive economic zone. But it's almost anything goes even in our national marine sanctuaries. It's not to say that there are some constraints. But it's very modest as compared to what we are doing for national parks. Now you ask is the protection that we have in our national waters in our international waters enough? Far from it. We're just beginning to appreciate that our actions are responsible for the degradation of the ocean. Through fishing, through contamination either deliberate dumping of things in the ocean or the inadvertent loss of resilience because way upstream activity, things that go into our backyards, fields, farms, golf courses, that flow into ground water or rivers and ultimately out into the sea. In the last 50 years, well I used to say there are about 50 dead zones that've developed in recent times as a consequence of human input into the sea either deliberate putting of things we don't want on the land, dumping, and the pollutants that in some cases flow directly into the ocean or indirectly into the river and then into the ocean. Now and according to a recent survey just in 2004 that number in the last five years has climbed to 150 so-called dead zones. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Where are they? SYLVIA EARLE: They're in coastal waters worldwide. One of the most notorious is at the mouth of our beloved Mississippi River. Forty percent of the nation drains into the Mississippi and then into the Gulf of Mexico. That is so if you live in Iowa, if you live in Wisconsin, if you live almost anywhere in central United States and eastern seaboard also much of that, ultimately most of that flows into the Mississippi and then out into the Gulf of Mexico. Whether you put chemicals on your lawn to make them greener and the more the better some people think. But you know there's an excess that goes into ground water that flows into the rivers and ultimately out into the Gulf. Where are they? They're in the Chesapeake Bay. A big chunk of the Chesapeake Bay is now certifiably a dead zone because of the upstream nutrients we call them euphemistically, the nitrates, the phosphates, the fertilizers, that are applied to our farms. There's an excess that gradually flows to our waters. And also what we allow to go into the atmosphere. There are nitrates and phosphates that go into the atmosphere and ultimately fall back into the sea. Even iron as a nutrient goes into the atmosphere caused by burning. One example is the Indonesia fires of 1997 sent ash into the atmosphere that fell back into the ocean coupled with upwelling event. All these things have interconnections. But it was the fallout of iron and nitrates and phosphates from that fire those great fires that created a haze atmospheric issue. It also created a flow of nutrients into the ocean. A big blossoming of certain kinds of small creatures in the ocean that thrive on increased nitrates and phosphates. But they gobbled up all the oxygen and literally smothered the coral reefs. I mean all these connections that ultimately come back to us. BETTY ANN BOWSER: So you've got global warming, you've got overfishing, you've got people dumping stuff into the water. All these things going on. But it sounds like from all the experts that we've talked to, and we've talked to a lot of people at this point between Australia and the Florida Keys, but the one thing that man could do is just leave them alone. It sounds so very simple. When you look at all the other things that are stressing coral reefs that the one thing that everyone has concluded that might help is to just leave them alone. SYLVIA EARLE: Well there are great reasons for hope. One of the best reasons is that nature is resilient. Again think about the great changes over the history of earth. I mean comets or whatever struck the earth 65 million years ago or whatever it is to cause the dinosaurs to go belly up and a lot of other things as well. But nature is resilient. Over time given the resilience of life, things can be restored and life will prosper. But we care about the future of humankind. I do. I'm a mom. I have three children. I'm a grandmother. I have four grandsons. I really care about what's going to happen in the next 50 years. Of course I care about the next 50 million years. And I believe in spite of humankind, life will prosper. But I'm most concerned about what we can do now. One of things is we can do is look at the marketplace. Look at our fishing policies. We need profound fisheries reform. We are not as a species dependent on wildlife from the sea for our survival. Most of our calories come from three plants, rice, corn and wheat. The rest comes from other things. Some people will argue with that saying we need fish to feed the growing number of people, now 6 billion, only 2 billion when I came on the planet myself. The number of people and their demands is increasing. But there is another reason for hope, humans have this capacity to think about and use our good minds once we know what the problems are to come up with solutions. We need to be able to use our will our spirit to act on the problems with our good minds and say, look now that consumption of wildlife land and sea is really damaging our life support system, it's hurting our supply of fresh water land and sea. Because fresh water after all is generated from the ocean that goes back to recharge our rivers, lakes, and streams and our fresh water. And we are so damaging the structure of the ecosystems in the ocean that even the generation of water that goes into the atmosphere is impacted by our changing of these ecosystems. |
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| Restrictions on fishing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: Should there be restrictions on how much fish you can take out of the oceans and countries? And how would it be enforced? SYLVIA EARLE: A number of things can be done very specifically. We need to reform our consumption of wild fish. We need to direct our appetite for exotic creatures to responsible aquaculture. There's a lot of aquaculture like a lot of agriculture that is causing huge environmental issues. But the seed of the solution is there. If we want to eat shrimp, we need to figure out how to responsively cultivate them. If we want to eat fish, think about cultivating things low on the food chain like catfish and tilapia. It's not a sliver bullet solution but it is the answer ultimately. We shouldn't be eating carnivores. We do not raise carnivores. Cows are not naturally carnivores or chickens or other things. So we need to invest in responsible aquaculture. That's the subject of another whole entire program. If I could do one thing to write an insurance policy for humankind and the ocean which reflects back on us, it is to embrace what remains of the healthy ecosystems that are still there of the wild ocean. Look at critical areas like coral reefs that have high biodiversity and that are currently are at risk. Conservation International like other organizations that have been looking at the issue of what do we do. You focus on critical areas. They've done it largely for land until recently now targeting oceans around the world. And say OK if you can't do it al at once, where are the most vital so-called hotspots? What can we do to embrace them with policies which will at least save what we can of the greatest diversity such as in Indonesia in the coral reefs around Australia? And then southern coast of Australia, it has enormous diversity, not coral reefs but kelp forests. Let's look at worldwide what are the critical ecosystems that make the ocean function? We have the capacity in our time. I think the next 10 years are the most important in the next 1,000 years in terms of making policies, taking actions that will deliver us a hospitable healthy planet, and thus a planet that works for us. Life will go on with us or without us. I care. Most people care about an enduring future for humankind. And we have the possibility the opportunity right now in this decade to take those actions that will make all the difference in the world forever. If we wait and say we needed more information, we got to do more studies. We know enough to know right now the ocean is in trouble and our future therefore is in trouble. We also know what the prescription is. We just have to have the courage. We have to have the ability to say these are the actions we have to take right now to protect our future. By protecting the ocean, the diversity of life in the ocean. And it couples directly with life on land. Upstream, downstream, ocean, tops of mountains, all of it ties together. BETTY ANN BOWSER: It's hard to get fishing policies enacted. It's hard to do enough about coral reefs, I mean to do anything about global warming. But if we did nothing else but set aside more area and leave them alone, would that be enough you think to save coral reefs? SYLVIA EARLE: Protecting critical areas in the ocean is a giant step in the right direction. Protecting coral reefs really not only saying it but doing it. Indonesia, there's a country that's really not in great shape financially but they have committed to establish more than 20 percent of their coastal waters, largely coral reefs, for protection. Madagascar another country that has a pretty shaky economy. But they understand their future and their economy. Madagascar, a country that is not really strong economically, but they see the connection between a healthy economy and a healthy environment. They're taking measures right now to protect the land and to protect more than 20 percent of their coastal waters. Imagine if the United States did something similar. We have a fraction of 1 percent of our coastal waters as full protection or even modest protection embraced in the National Marine Sanctuary management areas. Costa Rica just this year has boldly stepped forward and said 25 percent of our exclusive economic zone is going to be protected. We are now and they are now looking to find the ways and means to strategically identify where within their exclusive economic zone out 200 miles they can fully protect because they too understand the connection between a healthy environment and a healthy economy. BETTY ANN BOWSER: You sound hopeful. SYLVIA EARLE: I am an optimist. I am hopeful that because we're beginning to peal back the greatest threat to the ocean in our future which is ignorance. Make the connection between a sound economy and a sound environment. A sound ocean and our own human future. I do believe. I know we have the power. I know we have the capacity that once we know, we can begin to care. And once you care, the actions not only can be but will be taken because we understand. And humans are not really dumb. They are largely unaware of the magnitude of the problem that we now face about how future links to the natural world that sustains us. Our job, our greatest challenge for our lifetime and for all that follows in humankind is to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that sustain us. Whether it's coral reefs, it's tropical rainforests, it's just the fresh waters, our atmosphere, the diversity of life on earth, we are a part of this. And we have the power to either so undermine it that will just grind to a point that life will go on but life that is hospitable for us is so degraded that we as a species collapse the ways these other species and other systems have collapsed. That too is in our power. We have a choice. We are at a crossroads. The key is what are we going to do about it. But I'm an optimist. I think that we will make the right choice that now we are beginning to understand. |
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The NewsHour Science Unit is funded by a grant from:  The National Science Foundation. Reports are produced solely by the NewsHour and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. |
