Ocean Conservation Works
Last month, I did something I have not done in a long time: I took a vacation. For much of my career, I traveled for work, so I would spend my downtime visiting family, or relaxing in whatever wilds I could find wherever I happened to be. So it was a great joy to find myself instead in a small boat off the coast of Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, slipping on fins and a mask and dropping into the warm waters of the Pacific, learning to spearfish.
July was particularly hot for many regions of Mexico, including this one, which suffered under the same heat-dome conditions that hit the United States. As I followed my guide, Lisandro, a lanky Argentine, through pristine water, finning over a rocky reef and looking for pompano and green jack, I found myself thinking about our warming world.
Mexico is among the 20 countries responsible for supplying three quarters of the world’s fish and shellfish. For its maritime ecosystems, and the coastal communities that rely on them, climate change brings a slew of challenges. Changes in the sea surface temperature will mean dying coral, increased algal blooms, parasites and diseases, and decreased catches. Ocean acidification will kill off species and impact harvests of bivalves, while deoxygenation will mean smaller average sizes of fish and changes in migration patterns of some species. Rising sea levels will displace harbors, towns, and aquaculture sites.
These changes are coming fast, and here, as elsewhere, adaptation is important (so is mitigation, but that’s another story). Conservation will be paramount. Luckily, Mexico provides a great model. In 2017, the country extended protection to 57,000 square miles around the Revillagigedo Islands. A recent study concluded that the protests by the fishing industry — which feared the protections would lead to depleted catches — were ill-founded. In a before-and-after study, researchers found “no decrease in catches,” helping to demonstrate that “well-designed [marine protected areas] benefit marine ecosystems and, in the long term, can also benefit the fisheries they support.”
We need more such protections, and fast. Moneyed interests need to step aside, or, even better, pitch in. We are out of time for excuses, deflection, foot-dragging, and belly-aching. Small changes are better than nothing. Big changes are best of all. All of it helps.
Back from fishing, after a home-cooked meal of pan-fried pompano and fresh mango salsa, I sat down to read, another vacation pleasure. I brought with me All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, a collection of essays and poetry edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K. Wilkinson, who remind us that, though it may seem daunting, and though, yes, some irreparable damage is done, “it is far too soon to give up on the rest.”
Don’t give up. Take a break if you need to, but then keep fighting, keep hoping.
I’ll see you out there.
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky/Unsplash
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