Under the Sea (Little Mermaid)

Most of us rarely think about life in the ocean – it is an unseen world for the most of us. Then we hear about millions of barrels of oil being spewed into the Gulf, and we realize on some small scale what must be going on in that unseen world. We see the occasional photo of an oil-soaked bird, a dolphin washed upon on shore dead, and feel a certain sadness.  But the reality below the waterline is beyond our comprehension. I remember when I was a small child out on a boat, asking where to put a small bit of trash. One of the men on board lalughed and said, “This is the world’s biggest trashcan all around you.” I thought it was shocking even then, but little did I realize how very destructive such an attitude would become. We have literally turned an entire world full of living beings into dead zones, plastic islands, trash barges, and a toxic soup. Maybe Nemo was our last attempt at interjecting light hearted fantasy into that mysterious world of the deep.

Discovery News – Quest

Some people believe the oceans will be completely fished to extinction by 2050, a datte that is growing ever nearer. It is astounding that his projection would garner so little attention as so many of us are busy burying our collective heads in the sand. As dismal as this scenario is for us, for aquatic animals it is even worse in the here and now. As humans develop ever more wasteful and productive means of quickly emptying the ocean of all life, as humans despoil and pollute her waters and pillage her bounty,the prospect of staying alive in the ocean means survivng a continual onslaught from floating plastics, to toxic oil spills to commercial overfishing. Amid all of this destruction is the disturbing element of bycatch, animals who are caught on longlines and in commercial fishing nets who are killed as a byproduct of commercial fishing. They are discards, not profitable and may be tossed back into the ocean, dead or alive. Unfortunately, many are severely injured and may be tossed back into a lingering death. Most will never again be part of the reproducing populations so needed to replenish the oceans with life itself. It is estimated that the number of marine animals callously killed as bycatch reaches into the billions each and every year.

Fish Are Friends Not Food (Nemo)

Most efforts to decrease the number of animals caught as bycatch emphasize release methods.  Some gill nets are clear filament and are invisible to all forms of marine life, as they are tossed out to sea to entrap as many animals as they can.  Some are bottom trawlers and are laid out to be later brought up quickly, ensnaring anyone unlucky enough to be in their vicinity. Longlines also catch many animals that are discarded. Birds, turtle, fish, dolphins, whales, sharks, seals and many other species of animals are killed by commercial fishing operations in numbers that are never calculated. If someone was devising a plan to wantonly destroy the ocean as quickly as possible, it is doubtful they could do a much better job than human beings are doing today, even as we face a growing human population and ongoing resource pollution, including waste from animal agriculture on such a scale that thousands of square miles of dead zones increase every year at the mouths of rivers like the Mississippi in the US and in other nations as well. While some fisheries have begun using things like Turtle Extruders which may allow some turtles to escape the nets, they will still spell death for most of the animals that are thus ensnared. It is enough to make you lose your vegan lunch. If you need a good cry, Google Bycatch Photos and weep. The losses are in the millions of metric tons, each and every year.

A few statistics from the World Wildlife Fund:

• Over 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from entanglement in fishing nets each year, making bycatch the single largest cause of mortality for small cetaceans and pushing several species to the verge of extinction.
• Over 250,000 endangered loggerhead turtles and critically endangered leatherback turtles are caught annually on longlines set for tuna, swordfish, and other fish, with thousands more killed in shrimp trawls.
• 26 species of seabird, including 23 albatross species, are threatened with extinction because of longlining, which kills more than 300,000 seabirds each year.
• 89 per cent of hammerhead sharks and 80 per cent of thresher and white sharks have disappeared from the Northeast Atlantic Ocean in the last 18 years, largely due to bycatch.
• Shrimp trawlers catch as many as 35 million juvenile red snappers each year in the Gulf of Mexico, at least they did  before the oil spill there, enough to have an impact on the population.
• Billions of corals, sponges, starfish, and other invertebrates are caught as bycatch every year.

Deep Blue Sea, Snatam Kaur

In just one year, 1992, a single French tuna fishery noted the following bycatch in 25% of their vessels: 330 striped dolphin, 114 common dolphin, 13 long finnned pilot whales, 10 bottlenose dolphins, 1 Russo’s dolphin, 1 sperm whale, and 2 fin whales. This is a statistic from the Fisheries and Aquatic Department in the UK and is not meant to single out the French. Such statistics are found around the globe and represent a true and utter decimation of ocean life, yet we continue to go on our way, decimating sea life, year after year.

Discovery News Seaturtle Report – Turtles as Bycatch

In the eastern Mediterranean, a monk seal which was found that had died with osteoporosis. The young female was only half its normal weight and its bones were light and brittle. Instead of the usual spoils of fish and other marine animals inside its stomach, it had only sea sponges, sea grass and parasites. There is the primary and unnecessary loss of life that comes from the coveted marine life sought after my mankind, but there is also a secondary loss of life through bycatch and finally, through the devastation of the natural marine environment, leaving some poor animals like this monk seal to try surviving in damaged habitat without anyplace left to hunt or forage for decent food. The mercury levels in many animals is so high that it has been determined to be toxic for human consumption — and not healthy for the animals either. Some animals are killed outright because they need to feed off of fish, such as the dolphin slaughter in Taijii Japan, popularized by the recent documentary film, The Cove.

CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and will be sited in a few of the following examples of bycatch disasters:

• Seabirds pay a very high price. Albatross are down 65% over the past 65 years, and are now declining further by 4% annually.
• Olive Riddleys, the second smallest turtles, are losing their lives with longlines.
• The Monk Seal, once exploited for oil, are now losing the battle for existence due to loss of habitat and overfishing.
• The Vaquita, a CITES  endangered cetacaen, is now down to only a few left, less than 200. Gillnets are the biggest threat to these animals. Now, more ar dying as bycatch than there are new births to replace them. They are near extinction.
• Another CITES animal is the Dugong near Northern Australia.  Because they survive on seagrass found near shore, they often drown in fishing gear. They are also near extinction.
• Common Murie account for a high level of bycatch: nine thousand per year in the Baltic Sea, 22,000 off Newfoundland. Gillnets are a big threat to these creatures, resultin gin s\a high mortality rate.  Worse still, their habitat is shrinking rapidly, limiting their chance to stage a comeback.
• The North Atlantic Right Whales have been depelted by years of whaling. In the East North Atlantic, they are already believed extinct with only a few remaining in the Western NA.
• The Australian Sea Lion was hunted through the twentieth century and is now listed as threatened. Gillnets and lobster traps are part of the dangers that claim so many of these anima lives.
• Scientists fear that the Northern Right whales, some Humpback whales and quite a number of other endangered stocks of smaller and larger whales, such as the Irrawaddy dolphins in the Philippines (approximately 50 animals), Hector’s dolphins from New Zealand (approximately 100 animals), the La Plata dolphins from South America or the Vaquita porpoises in the Gulf of California (scarcely 500 animals) and some porpoises will soon be extinct, despite the fact that they are no longer hunted.
• An added problem for many animals, such as the dolphins in the Black Sea and the West Pacific (Korean) grey whales, is the almost complete destruction of their habitat.
• Harbour porpoises in the Baltic Sea provide another sad story. The approximately 1.60-metre-long, snub-nosed, black and white porpoises suffer particularly from gill net fishing (for cod and flatfish) and drift net fishing (for salmon and cod).

Discovery clip – Bycatch

Marine animals also have to overcome other manmade disasters on a daily basis. There is the oil that has been spilled over the past several years into their habitat, made worse by the addition of disbursements; there is the routine leakage of toxic substances from maintenances of large ships, the large amount of plastics gathering in the oceans, the runoff from animal agriculture, chemicals and other toxins. Elliott Norse, President of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute of Washington, checked 300 Albatross chicks on Midway Island, 1600 km from the nearest land. Each chick had plastic in its stomach.The amount of animal suffering caused by man is beyond comprehension. We have invaded, polluted, pillaged, and destroyed. Until there are enough people who respect all forms of life, these problems will continue unabated.  If you are not vegan, please go vegan. If you are already vegan, please spread the word about these unseen animals that are paying such a hugge price for our hubris and our folly.

Sea Noises, Dr. Roger Payne

FAO Report

WWF Bycatch News