The Ocean That Binds Us
A Multimedia Journey Through the North Atlantic
The ocean has the power to create, to move continents, and to destroy them. It is an ever present force in all of our lives, but those that live close to it know best its facility. A map of the global distribution of the human population will show that there are 2.4 billion people—that’s 40% of us— who live within 100km of a large body of salt water. Water is of course, essential to life, and settlers of all cultures have always chosen areas with access to this dynamic resource which we have used for drinking, eating, transportation, recreation, and energy throughout history. 3 billion of us depend on the biodiversity the ocean provides for our livelihoods and primary proteins. Economically, the value of the ocean is estimated at $3-6 trillion U.S. dollars per year.
But alas, we are human. Our global population is booming and the industrial revolution with its subsequent explosion of technology made us highly adept at extracting resources, ensuring that we are depleting our planet at a rate that it alone cannot overcome. Over the last five decades the population sizes of the world’s wildlife have declined by more than 60%, while human population and consumption have continued to rise.
In the 1970’s, scientists and other experts became concerned enough with the statistics that they started forming various committees to try to curb the onslaught of destruction. In 1992, world leaders in Rio de Janeiro concluded that the time was nigh to do something to attempt to deter the total collapse of the world’s biodiversity, and in 1993 the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity was born out of concern for future generations.
The members of the convention created three broad goals: The preservation of biological diversity; the sustainable use of its components; and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources. In 2002, they committed to “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth”. In 2010, they celebrated the International Year of Biodiversity and created the 2020 Aichi Targets while biodiversity still dwindled. Now, with one year remaining until the legally binding goals of the CBD, most countries are still struggling to meet their targets.
The human condition makes us more disposed to empathy if we have a personal connection. Though many of us have been to the ocean, modern comforts have detached us from its power, its vital role in our lives, and consequently, why it needs to be protected now more than ever. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) an average of 21.5 million people have been displaced by weather-related events every year since 2008 and that number is expected to rise as weather patterns become more erratic.
North of the last countries of mainland Europe, a line of islands spreads from the 58th degree latitude to the 66th that range in age from 4 to 465 million years old. The Northeast archipelago is a unique region that represents not only a cradle of early civilization, but a gradient of geologic time and human development. It is composed of three unique nations—the UK, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland—all of which have ratified the CBD, all of which have personal reasons to invest in the protection of the ocean, and all of which risk their livelihoods if they don’t.
Meet the communities of the Northeast Atlantic.
Song: Wind and Weather & The Fishermen and the Sea by Inge Thomson/Lise Sinclair
"Life began Tuesday noon, and “the beautiful, organic wholeness of it” developed over the next four days. “At 4 P.M. Saturday, the big reptiles came on. Five hours later, when the redwoods appeared, there were no more big reptiles. At three minutes before midnight, the human race appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark raving mad.”
- John McPhee, Basin and Range
John Dudley, a retired professor of geology and research associate at the Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary.
To understand the present, we must first understand the past—and a geologist might say we have to go back about 465 million years. At that time the warm, dry micro-continent of Avalonia at the interior of the supercontinent Pangaea housed parts of present-day Canada, United States, and the United Kingdom. 65 million years later the desert sands the would make up the famed Old Red Sandstone of the Orkneys and the Shetlands were deposited, and more than 20 million years after that, the North Atlantic started to open, separating Avalonia and marking the beginning of the migration that led to what we know as our planet Earth. But it was the migration of continents away from that Mid-Atlantic ridge that created what is now the Faroe Islands and the same lava flows continue to create on Iceland, which only burst above sea level 20 million years before today.
Two million years ago marked the beginning of the last ice age, and with that came the glaciers that would carve out perfect valleys for human settlement. When those glaciers melted, sea level rose above terminal moraines that became epicentres of nutrient-rich waters driven by deep sea upwellings. And the areas that weren’t touched by glaciers became the characteristically dramatic cliffs of Scotland and the Faroe Islands that are attracting increasing numbers of tourists every year.
Today the Atlantic ocean is dominated by deep basins which are a significant player in the thermohaline circulation of the world’s oceans, and primary productivity increases on a south-north gradient. Water driven by the North Atlantic drift flows from west to east, and tides and wind control the currents on more productive nearshore shelves.
It seems the rich ecosystem and the various economies of the North Atlantic owe quite a bit to millions of years of constant shifting in the Earth's continental plates. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The volatile nature of its land defines Iceland, and its geologic features are a major draw for the myriads of tourists that flock to the island every year. We live in an age where we can enjoy the thrill of a volcanic eruption enough to seek it out, assured by the safety measures in place and confident that we can return at our leisure to the comforts of our homes.
But the first years of settlement were not so secure.
“The older people, of course, didn't really want to have their house facing the ocean in Shetland, they wanted to look the other way, 'cause they had to be on the ocean, and it was dangerous, and, whereas we, now, look out at the ocean vista as a nice thing.”
- Pete Ewins, WWF Canada
The power of the ocean has permeated the music and lore of most cultures around the world, and much of the writing is concentrated around stories at the time of settlement when charts were virtually non-existent, and the world largely undiscovered. With stories of monsters and sailors lost at sea, the Norse Vikings and other pioneers of sea exploration held both a deep respect and a deep fear of the dark, cantankerous Atlantic waters. Tales of the first settlers in Iceland and the Faroes have been passed down through the historic Icelandic Sagas, and have seeped through to the islands’ cultures to this day.
The first settlers to Iceland and the Faroe Islands had copious challenges when they first arrived in their wooden boats. It took multiple attempts to first arrive, and then to stay before permanent communities were established. In order to be successful, they had to be resourceful. Seabirds, fish, and whales provided necessary additions to the settlers’ diets in a landscape that harboured little terrestrial life, especially over the harsh winters. Various forms of drying and smoking were developed in order to preserve meat over the winter months.
We have come a long way since the days of survival and subsistence fishing. Today fisheries and aquaculture provide 260 million jobs and $100 billion US to the global economy. Management, however, is problematic, with 80% of assessed fish stocks are either fully or overexploited and illegal, unregulated, or unreported fishing cost the industry $23 billion US a year. According to the WWF Living Planet report, the illegal fishing trade is said to be worth between $10 and $23 billion.
Globally, the percentage of fish stocks that are at or above biologically sustainable levels dropped drastically from 90% in the 1970’s to 69% in 2013.
Fisheries are a foundation of the North Atlantic economy, but they are also the biggest threats to its biodiversity, according to data collected by the OSPAR convention, the international agreement for the protection of the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic. The convention, so named as a combination of the 1992 and 1994 conventions in Oslo and Paris, binds 15 countries in international agreement to work together for the protection of their oceans. According to the convention’s 2000 report, overfishing, bottom trawling, by-catch, and discards, along with shipping pollution, oil spills, accidents, and tributylin pollution. Other threats included chemicals from industry, sewage, and agriculture, eutrophication caused by sewage, agriculture, and fish farms, and habitat destruction by tourism in the Bay of Biscay on the coasts of France and Spain.
Fisheries and tourism are important to the economies of the Northeast Atlantic, but unsustainable management threatens to abolish both, as well as the ecosystems and cultures of the regions. Can we manage to balance our economies and our ecosystems?
Early settlers did not have the numbers or the technology to actively hunt whales, so it was likely that they relied on the whales that beached themselves on shore. A whale could provide food for months, and the blubber would have been prized for its high fat content. Eventually, whaling became engrained in the cultures of northern countries including Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and continues to this day.
Song: Mín Móðir by Eivør.
Multiple international bodies including the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild flora and fauna (CITES) have banned both commercial whaling and trade in international waters, except in unique circumstances. Iceland rejoined the IWC in 2002, with a reservation for the moratorium on whaling, disagreeing with the whale management plan discussions that were prolonging the 1982 decision for a zero-catch limit on commercial whaling. One company in particular, Hvalur hf, and its infamous CEO Kristjan Loftsson, continues the fin and Minke whale hunt in Iceland, with a 2018 quota of 161 fin whales. Meanwhile in the Faroe Islands, the traditional pilot whale hunt continues.
Both countries have received strong international criticism for their whale hunts. Media, NGOs, governments, and even celebrities continue to to tell them to stop on bases of ethics and conservation, with little success.
Faroese doctor Pal Wiehe heads the department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in Torshavn, and has been approaching the Faroese pilot whale hunt from a different perspective. Pilot whales are toothed whales, and feed on squid and fish species that are higher in the food chain. Due in part to bioaccumulation, that means in the present day they contain high levels of mercury. Dr. Wiehe has been studying mercury levels in Faroese families, focusing especially on newborns and monitoring them as they grow up.
Aside from the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Environmental Program created an international Minamata treaty in 2013 to control the anthropogenic release of mercury. Wiehe has been an active contributor to the research, and as his patients, the Faroese people have begun to listen.
Pilot whale populations in the North Atlantic are estimated to be between 300,000 and 500,000, and researchers claim that based purely on the average annual catch of around 600, the hunt is sustainable. Efforts by foreign organizations to tell the country to stop a 1000 year old tradition has not gone over well. In 2014, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society brought Pamela Anderson on board and sailed to the Faroe Islands for a campaign to stop the whale hunt. Wiehe and others believe that it may have united Faroese against foreign attacks, and strengthened the hunt.
The broader issue is that the levels of mercury in pilot whales are a perfect and nightmarish example of the direct effects of international contributions to marine contaminants. Pilot whales are a canary in the coal mine for international mercury regulation, and the remote communities of the Faroe Islands serve as examples of the direct, concentrated effects that distant contamination can have on our own communities.
"Whales or fat and polar bears and caribou in North America, those are signifying--defining parts of what it means to be an indigenous person so, but if it's contaminated by, you know, industrial man, emitting this stuff, it's essentially waste that is shunted onto somebody else's plate, and that's...Almost a human rights issue."
- Pete Ewins, WWF Canada
"They don't like whaling in Iceland. You always, they always teach you on the ship, 'Don't eat whale meat', especially in Reykjavik. In Reykjavik you have several restaurants where you can eat whale meat and it is a fact that the Icelanders for themselves, they don't eat very much whale meat. It's a tourists. Yeah two... More than two million tourists, on Iceland, and the tourists eat the most... Whale meat in Iceland.” - Klaus Kiesewetter
Do tourists have a role to play?
Until the late 20th century, fishing was the predominant force in Iceland’s economy. However, the open market caused large fluctuations, which meant a lack of stability for the country’s citizens. Iceland’s tourism industry started booming in the mid 1980’s, at the same time that the International Whaling Committee banned all commercial whale hunting. Between 2000 and 2008, growth soared by 66%. By 2009, it was declared by Loneld Planet as one of the world’s “hottest destinations”. During many years of recession in its fishing industry until the 1990’s tourism was called a “light in the darkness” by formal general director of the Icelandic Tourist Board, Magnus Oddson.
With economies like Iceland transitioning further away from the fisheries and increasingly investing in tourism, what is our role as responsible travellers? As tourists we love our waterfront views. About 50% of tourists travel to coastal areas, and it is not uncommon especially on small islands for tourism to account for over 25% of a country’s GDP.
The answer is yes.
The decisions we make with our actions and our wallets have a significant effect on the livelihoods of the communities we visit, but also the environments that we visit. As humans we are active components of our ecosystems, not above them, and everything we do—whether or not we consider a place our own—will have an effect on the ecosystem in which we act. In Iceland at least, tourism is in the driver’s seat for the trajectory of not only the whale economy in Iceland, but likely in any destination you choose to travel to.
A Word of Hope
The lands and waters of the Northeast Atlantic are defined by the cries of seabirds. There are eight main seabird species that are all globally significant and nest on the Shetlands, the Faroes, and on Iceland: The gannet, the fulmar, the razorbill, the guillemot, the shag, the eider duck, the arctic tern, and of course the puffin.
One small Shetland island, in particular, has become an internationally recognized nesting area and through a strong grassroots movement and unanimous support from its residents, successfully created its own marine protected area. Fair Isle is an island owned by the National Trust for Scotland, and got its first MPA in October 2016 after 25 years of lobbying by the Fair Isle Marine Environment and Tourism Initiative (FIMETI)and the Fair Isle Bird Observatory (FIBO). It received support not only from the community but from the Shetland Fishermen’s association. When it was announced there were approximately 30 MPAs in Scotland, but Fair Isle was unique because it was community-led.
The MPA protects the waters from commercial fishing in order to benefit fishermen and the wider community. Until the early 1900’s the island, which is 7.7km2, relied almost exclusively on fishing, but a rapid decline in fish stocks forced the community to rethink their economy. After a sudden explosion of seabird numbers the people of Fair Isle switched to tourism. The island is now a major tourism wildlife tourism destination for international visitors, and is heavily invested in keeping their seabird populations safe. The observatory has been in operation for over 70 years in order to monitor populations but also to draw tourists in. In the summers they have counted 4000 breeding pairs of gannets, 20,000 guillemots, just under 2000 razorbills, over 6500 puffins, and around 400 pairs of “bonxies”, or Great Skuas. Puffins, whose Fair Isle population has halved in 30 years, and black-legged kittiwakes, whose breeding populations have declined by over 87% in the region since 2000, are two of ten species facing extinction in Scotland.
“There's been a Bird Observatory on fair isle for 70 years now, so it was established to monitor the migrant birds and the breeding seabirds, and also to help the island, so uh, bring tourists to the island, give a bit of extra income to the people on here and um... It's done a good job in all of those things, I think, in those 70 years.”
- David Parnaby, FIBO warden
Fair Isle, an island of approximately 55 permanent residents, has shown the world the power of a concerted effort by a small number of people. If more communities around the world choose to stand up for their oceans, we could be living in a very different world within the next few decades.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity includes 196 governments from around the world, with the mission of “halting biodiversity loss and [enhancing] the benefits it provides to people”.
We are swinging on a pendulum atop a desperate precipice between the chasm of ecological collapse and the verdant pastures of recovery.
At the beginning of this year, 16% of federal marine waters (0-200km from shore) were considered protected areas. We have one year left before the UN deadline to ensure that new protected areas are not just paper parks. In the North Atlantic the OSPAR network of 465 marine protected areas covers 858,890 km2, 6.3% of their marine area. But what does that percentage mean? Scientists are increasingly concerned that a percentage goal is not effective because governments may choose empty ocean areas with little to no traffic, or they may call areas protected and allow industrial activities such as commercial fishing and trawling within those areas, which is currently the case for 56% of European MPAs. This is where our voices need to come in.
How many protected areas are really effective, and how many are empty areas full of political opportunities? Recent studies have predicted that it is unlikely for the UN to meet 15 of its Aichi targets—one study predicted that only two goals will be met in full. Conservaton group Scottish Natural Heritage reported that current regional efforts were insufficient, due to fishing pressure and lack of funding, to meet 13 of their own goals. It seems no matter how many government agencies there are, and no matter what level they are working on, they need the input of their citizenship to create real change.
It’s time to push our leaders for quality over quantity. Tell your local politician that we need to protect the most important habitats, not just the largest ones. Tell them that we need to target areas of heavy human pressure, and not just offshore waters with little to no traffic. And tell them that their 2020 commitments mean something to the people of the North Atlantic, and to you.
Can 2020 be different? It's up to us.
Song: Wind and Weather & The Fishermen and the Sea by Inge Thomson/Lise Sinclair
