Arlington, VA (June 3, 2022) — PBS NewsHour’s live-streamed special, “Tipping Point: Fisheries on the Brink” will air Wednesday, June 8th at 7:00 p.m. ET online and on NewsHour’s social platforms, including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
The 90-minute live event will air on World Ocean Day and explores the connections between climate change, warming oceans, migrating fish populations, the economic stressors facing fishermen and the fishing industry, bad actors on the high seas, and ever-growing seafood demand. The webcast will be hosted by PBS NewsHour science correspondent and Tipping Point executive producer, Miles O’Brien.
As our world surges toward a global population of 9.9 billion by the year 2050 – the need to feed all those people is spiking too. That’s putting unprecedented stress on our fisheries. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicates that already “58% of the world’s fish stocks are being fished at or beyond sustainable levels.” The reasons are many – but it boils down to too many boats chasing too few fish, creating a classic “tragedy of the commons.”
Climate change will only exacerbate the problem – warming waters are already forcing fish populations to migrate toward cooler habitats. A recent paper in the journal “Science” calculates that rising seawater temperatures will leach oxygen out of the seawater at increasingly dangerous levels. If we don’t manage to significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions immediately, marine animals will face a mass extinction within three hundred years.
The conversations on this critical subject will take place on the dock at the Maritime Gloucester Museum. The second largest fishing port in New England, Gloucester sits at the southern edge of the Gulf of Maine – a body of ocean water that is warming faster than any other place on the planet.
The special includes live and recorded conversations with various officials, scientists, fishermen, and thought leaders including United States special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry, biologist Daniel Pauly, “The Climate Diet” author Paul Greenberg, Princeton professor Curtis Deutsch, and others.
The “Tipping Point” series is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and John F Swift.
Press Contact: Ella Richardson, erichardson (at) newshour (dot) org
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