Reese Halter: Get Outta Oceans
Fisheries are a leading cause of the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Corruption, underreporting, transnational organised crime, subsidies and turning off vessel tracking are hastening the collapse of human civilisation.
A team of oceanographers used AI to uncover clandestine fishing. They found that three-quarters, or 3.5 million vessels go dark while plundering the seas. Never before in the history of life on Earthhave the oceans been emptied, all at once, of everything large.
Forage fish like anchovies, herring, mackerel, menhaden, sardines, shad and others are Mother Earth’s alkalisers. They defecate calcite crystals that counteract the ever-rising carbonic acid from burning fossil fuels. Fish are indispensable ocean acidity combatants and carbon keepers.
Between 1950 and 2014, the world's fishing fleets looted 318.4 million tonnes of large fish from the ocean. Instead of many trillions of fish bodies sinking into the deep sea and becoming stored carbon, 37.5 million tonnes of heat-trapping carbon were thrust into the atmosphere.
Sharks defend sea grasses, salt marshes and mangroves from overgrazing. Sharks are the finned gatekeepers of the sprawling blue carbon banks that stockpile almost 50 per cent of all the carbon buried in the ocean sediments, or 25 billion tonnes. Sharkwater Extinction estimated that as many as 150 million sharks are brutally slain annually (Watch it and Sharkwater and Revolution for free at www.WaterBear.com). Since 1970, fisheries have decimated shark and ray populations by a shocking 71.1 per cent.
Compounding matters even more, fossil fuel heat is adding 15.95 Hiroshimas every second of the year into the oceans. For up to six months of the year, marine bottom heatwaves are increasing the ocean floor temps by as much as 3C. That means it has become too warm with too little oxygen for the largest planetary carbon warehouse, the ocean floor and its innumerable bottom creatures to lock carbon into Davey Jones’s locker. Humans have spoiled nature’s time-tested carbon capture process. It has gone haywire. So, expect more frequent and more intense climate bushfires, climate heatwaves, climate floods, flash droughts and crop failures.
Humankind is out of time.
The way we think, our value system and social organisation to accommodate 83 million new humans annually, must change radically. Plant-based diets could easily feed humankind. Animal agriculture including fisheries have inflicted enough planetary agony! Freeing up 80 per cent of all agricultural fields will allow rewilding nature to drawdown carbon.
The oceans require 100 years to heal, no fisheries allowed.
Hope with Action
There is a masterplan in place for a 2035 fossil fuel-free world. Electrifying civilisation with wind, water,sun, using battery storage, heat pumps, all existing technologies, will erase air pollution, decelerate global heating and give the under 31s, some 4.1 billion, a chance for a life span. Meanwhile, wind-water- sun-powered hydrogen fuel cells with electric motors will propel long-distance air and marine transport, while helping power steel-making and many other essential industries.
Common sense frugal living is the first order of the day! We need an ocean of courage and a galaxy of grit from authentic planetary leaders to save our only known meaningful island in a sea of 400 billion other suns.
#EndFisheries
#EndFossilFuelSubsidies
#FossilFreeWorld2035
#RewildingEarth
#PlantBasedDietsForAll
#AgonisingAge
Dr Reese Halter is an Earth System Forensics distinguished scientist, award-winning broadcaster, author, poet and vegan.
2024© Reese Halter