Transcriber: Mirjana Čutura Reviewer: Ivana Korom
I suspect that many of you have a concern
when you have a dinner of wild salmon,
or you're eating a plate of steamed clams or whatever your favorite seafood may be.
Probably you love the ocean.
Maybe you swim, or you scuba dive, fish, or sail.
Maybe the beach is one of your favorite vacation spots.
Perhaps you are moved by the ocean's elemental beauty and power.
And yet, you're sitting down to eat a plate of ocean wildlife.
You're aware that overfishing has depleted marine ecosystems throughout the world.
You know that the world population is growing
and that billions more people will need more animal protein to eat,
including fish.
And so, maybe you're wondering,
"Will our need to eat make us kill the ocean we love?"
I've thought about that question a lot.
And I'm here to tell you the answer is "no."
We are accustomed to thinking on land,
about the trade-off between food production and protecting wildlife.
In the sea, we don't have that trade-off.
Ocean fish are the last significant source of food that is wild.
And so, by protecting marine ecosystems and the wild fish in them,
we can enable ourselves to feed millions of people, year after year.
So, to make it personal,
you can enjoy fish in the wild and your salmon or clams.
In fact, choosing fish from among other sources of animal protein
is not only a healthy choice, it's a good choice for the planet.
Let me explain how we can save the ocean to feed the world.
There are about a billion people who are hungry.
Of that, about half live in countries that are major fish producers.
They're going to need more fish to eat
as will the additional population,
which is now estimated to grow to about nine billion in 2050.
Where are we going to get that food?
On land,
that food will come from habitat.
What we do on land is we take forests and fields,
and we turn them into farms and ranches.
That's not true in the ocean.
In the ocean, we harvest wild fish.
If we leave the fish in the ocean, they like to reproduce.
Having fish in the ocean is like having money in the bank.
If we manage the principal well, we live on the interest.
Now, it's true that we begin with a little bit of a deficit
because of historical overfishing.
Through all of human history,
we have put more effort into catching fish,
and we've caught more fish until 1988
when the catch of fish peaked, and it's been falling since
because there are fewer fish in the ocean.
Now, we know what to do to turn that around:
three things.
Set and enforce reasonable quotas on the fishing fleets,
especially the industrial boats.
Protect habitat, especially those where fish are reproducing and growing.
And reduce bycatch.
Bycatch is the incidental taking of other animals
in the nets and on the hooks.
Typically, bycatch is discarded over the boat, dead or dying.
It's a very wasteful practice.
In some fisheries, more bycatch is thrown overboard
than is brought back to port and sent to market.
If we do those things, we can restore fishing to its 1988 level and beyond.
Now, on the current trajectory of decline,
the oceans can feed about 450 million people a daily meal.
If we take the steps that I described,
we can increase that to 700 million people.
And if we feed all the fish to people
instead of using a significant amount of the fish
in a reduction fishery to feed to agriculture and livestock,
we can feed 1.1 billion people.
How do I know we can do this?
Because we've done it.
The U.S. haddock fishery crashed between 1965 and 1995.
In 1995, the U.S. imposed fishing limits, and the haddock bounced back.
In Norway, the herring crashed.
Norway imposed reasonable fishing limits, and the herring bounced back.
Norway had a similar crash with Arctic cod.
They reduced bycatch and stopped discards from boats,
and Arctic cod bounced back.
The same thing has happened in every ocean
at every latitude where it's been tried.
Now, you might be asking yourselves,
"Okay, if this is biologically feasible, is it politically feasible?
Who will take these steps?
Does it need to be the UN? Who can do this?"
Well, it turns out that the shallow parts of the sea near the coasts
are the most productive parts of the sea.
That's where the fish tend to live, or most of them.
And since the 1970s,
every coastal nation has extended its regulatory jurisdiction over fishing
to 200 nautical miles, or about 231 statute miles.
That means that most of the fish in the ocean are controlled by nations.
And the fish are not evenly distributed among nations.
The top 10 nations --
and for this purpose, I'm counting the European Union as a nation
because the Union controls fish centrally --
the top 10 nations of the world control 68% of the catch.
And the top 25 nations control 90%.
That means that a reasonably feasible number of countries
can take action to reverse the decline
of the significant part of the world's fisheries.
Now, you might be asking yourselves,
"Okay, if it's politically feasible, is it economically feasible?"
This graph shows the cost-effectiveness of different sources of animal protein.
Fishing, ocean-caught wild fish, is twice as cost-effective
as lamb, beef, poultry, or pork.
You might be asking yourselves,
"Well, what about competition for other resources?"
Let's look at fresh water.
Other sources of animal protein require significant amounts of fresh water.
Wild fish requires negligible amounts.
What about the limitations of greenhouse gases?
Other sources of animal protein generate significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
Wild fish - very little.
Now, you might be asking yourselves,
"Can the ocean, in fact, produce enough fish
to make a different score buoy?"
This graph shows the share of animal protein
produced by various sources of animal protein.
Currently, the ocean-caught wild fish
provide about 14%, or one-seventh, of all the animal protein in the world.
That's about at a par with eggs.
You know that wild-caught ocean fish could be healthy
compared to eating red meat,
particularly for obesity and heart disease.
But even if you don't eat fish, for whatever reason,
this is still an issue that can be beneficial to you
because other sources of animal protein require grain,
which wild fish don't.
The cost of grain has been increasing steadily since the 1960s.
A more productive ocean will reduce price pressure on grain -
and thus price pressure on other food -
and reduce pressure to take terrestrial habitats
and turn them into farms and ranches.
Let's bring this down to an individual scale.
When you eat a quarter-pound hamburger,
to produce the beef in that hamburger
requires enough fresh water to fill 10,000 glasses.
That's for the animals and the grain that the animals are eating.
In fact,
the quarter-pound hamburger represents enough grain to make four boxes of cereal.
Producing the beef in that hamburger generates as much greenhouse gases
as an average U.S. commute.
Let's take that to a global scale.
To produce beef around the world every year
requires as much fresh water as is used in the United States
for domestic purposes in 50 years.
For wild-caught fish --
ten days.
It takes the amount of land
equal to the areas of New York and California combined
to produce beef.
For ocean-caught wild fish -- almost no land.
Producing beef every year
generates as much greenhouse gases as is generated in Russia.
For wild-caught ocean fish -- Malaysia.
To produce beef takes as much corn as we grow in the United States
in three years.
For ocean-caught wild fish -- none.
So --
we can accomplish two goals.
We can save marine ecosystems and produce fish to feed a growing world.
And eating wild fish, over other animal protein,
is lighter on the planet.
Occasionally, the rule of trade-offs does not apply,
and we can accomplish multiple goals using the same resources.
When that happens in business, we call that synergy,
and we invest in it.
When it happens in politics, we call it a win-win,
and we vote for it.
That's the situation that we face in the ocean.
There is no war between conserving ecosystems and producing food.
Together, let's save the ocean to feed the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)