Longlines lethal to giants of sea

Voice Of Dr. Elliott A. Norse | 7/18/04 | Santa Barbara News-Press

Recently on these pages, I shared some disturbing news from my marine biologist colleagues: that the oceans' big predators are being eaten into oblivion.

No, the problem isn't sharks; it's the sharks that should be worried.

People who have grown fond of swordfish steaks, the fatty bluefin tuna flesh called toro, and shark-fin soup, are creating so much demand that commercial fishermen are killing these fishes off.

I worry far less about man-eating sharks than about shark-eating men.

That's why I suggested some effective ways to save the ocean's "megafauna."

What's more, it's not just sharks, tunas and swordfish that are disappearing. So are other animals in the blue vastness, including Pacific leatherback sea turtles, the largest turtles in the largest ocean, and wandering albatrosses, the birds with the largest wingspan. These animals are imperiled by longlining.

Pelagic longliners -- flagged in nations including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United States and Spain -- are vessels that play out lines up to tens of miles long, armed with thousands of hooks.

They offer that rarest of resources in the open ocean: a free meal. Many attract the seas' megafauna with plastic lightsticks that emit a cold greenish-yellow glow befitting their chilling purpose.

The big oceanic tunas, swordfish, marlin, sharks and seabirds range across thousands of miles of ocean. Upon encountering longlines, these magnificent animals -- not having learned in millions of years that some things are too good to be true -- swallow the bait. Some become shark-fin soup in your favorite Chinese restaurant, toro sashimi in high-end sushi places, or swordfish steaks in local seafood houses.

Longliners rescue some loggerhead sea turtles and seabirds, but the drowned ones get dumped overboard.

As a child, my parents shared their love of seafood with me when the other kids in my neighborhood were discovering burgers and pizza.

I still enjoy seafood. But my parents also taught me that the land's apex predators, the wolves, tigers, cheetahs, grizzly bears and golden eagles atop the food web, aren't bad, so we shouldn't be killing them off. They taught that wildlife belong in this world, too. After all, they were here long before we were.

So it's clear how my childhood interest in marine biology became an educational and career path. Now I'm fortunate to be working to save apex predators in the last vast wilderness on Earth: the open oceans.

Indeed, my colleagues -- including Duke University Marine Laboratory's Dr. Larry Crowder, currently on sabbatical at UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, or NCEAS -- and I recently happened upon a novel way of saving big animals in the open ocean.

We built upon an idea being discussed by growing numbers of scientists including Drs. Bob Warner and Steve Gaines of UCSB. It's the idea of marine reserves -- places fully protected from all preventable threats, including fishing, oil drilling, weapons testing and pollution.

On land, protecting places is a major conservation tool for both wildlife that stay put and those that migrate long distances, such as whooping cranes. Bob, Steve and their NCEAS colleagues showed that protected places are also effective for conserving marine wildlife.

When people stop fishing, marine life rebounds within reserves. Indeed, like national parks on land, marine reserves become the best places for wildlife.

Unfortunately, the United States has few fully protected marine reserves. We lag far behind Australia in that department. Most are in the intertidal zone, shoreline areas that alternate between submergence and exposure to air during lunar tidal cycles. The rest are within 200 nautical miles of shore.

Moreover, there are almost no marine reserves in the high seas, the 64 percent of the wild blue beyond the jurisdiction of individual nations, where tunas, marlin and sharks the size of horses -- and sometimes faster -- crisscross vast expanses, looking for food.

Food in the open ocean is sparse. But because oceanic watermasses dance to the rhythm of the winds, at certain places, at certain times, two magic ingredients -- nutrients and light -- coincide.

This stimulates population explosions of phytoplankton, microscopic plants, which are eaten by small animals such as copepod crustaceans, which, in turn, are eaten by roving hordes of small fishes.

Sometimes panicking small fishes form swirling "baitballs," but predators have seen their tricks for eons, and are prepared. Shimmering marlin, slashing tunas, and patient sharks take their turn.

From beyond the horizon, sei whales, spinner dolphins and black-footed albatrosses find prey concentrations, tuck in to the next course in their progressive dinners, then launch into the blue.

One day, one week, one month, the feast is here. Then it moves, or disappears, or reappears tens or hundreds of miles distant.

Scientists know that wildlife depend on these movable feasts thanks to new high-tech tags that relay information to satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above.

Unfortunately, using predictable pathways puts oceanic animals at risk.

Longliners are savvy. Armed with the latest data about ocean conditions broadcast from U.S. government satellites, they know where to lie in ambush.

But people who want to conserve marine life can also use this information. As on land, when we know where migratory animals feed, breed or commute in-between, we can safeguard the key places.

Rather than protecting huge areas of ocean, we can focus on those places where the megafauna are so concentrated that people, in essence, would be "shooting fish in a barrel."

And when such habitats move, as they do in the open ocean, the boundaries of the protected areas can move with them, even daily.

This is a peculiar notion until you start to think about it. On land and in nearshore waters, the habitats we protect are considerate enough to sit still. Conserving them starts with interested people, such as scientists, fishermen and government officials, deciding priorities for protection, delineating these habitats, letting the public know where the protected areas are, and making sure folks keep an eye out for lawbreakers.

At sea, as on land, having watchful neighbors makes law enforcement easier.

We need safe havens to protect essential feeding and breeding places and the ocean highways that connect them. But since these habitats move, we need to invent something that has never existed before: dynamic marine reserves, protective cordons that move with the wildlife like the security entourage surrounding moving rock stars and politicians.

Experts in international environmental law say the United Nations has authority to establish reserves in international waters, but will require cooperation from nations whose vessels fish there.

In recent years, the United States has ceased being a leader on environmental issues, making it much harder for Americans to win cooperation from other countries that formerly admired and listened to us.

Despite the challenges, we must start laying the scientific, technological, legal, policy and political foundations for reserves on the high seas.

The great tunas, billfishes, sharks, sea turtles and albatrosses are disappearing. There's no time to lose.

In the open ocean, lured by food attached to thousands of longline hooks, unsuspecting marine life, such as blue marlin, take the bait.