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Michael is on a quest to get his environmental footprint as low as humanly possible. So he built his own off-grid Tiny House. But downsizing and minimizing weren’t enough. He had to take more drastic measures, altering his lifestyle in some extreme ways, all in the name of saving the planet. But when it comes to his goal, he still feels in over his head. He doesn’t know if all the downsizing, minimizing, reducing, reusing, recycling, and sacrificing make a difference. It’s time to bring in the experts.
Join Michael as he sits down with scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, and environmental experts to figure out how to effectively reduce his footprint in all aspects of life. From food and fast fashion to cars and caskets, he gets into what the worst culprits really are and how we can all make more informed choices when it comes to the impact we have on the planet.
If you have feedback or would like to be a guest on In Over My Head, please email: info@inovermyhead.com
(00:00):
In Over My Head's connecting to the ocean season was made possible with support from the Ocean Frontier Institute, module I and Memorial University.
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Well, I'm in over my head no one told me tryin' to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head what do I really need? Tryin' save the planet oh will someone please save me? Tryin' to save the planet oh will someone please save me?
(00:31):
Welcome to in Over my head. I'm Michael Bartz. As the show has evolved over the years, I've realized that addressing climate change is about more than just lowering our environmental footprint. It's really about living sustainably. Living in my off-grid tiny house is just one version of this. But I wanna think more broadly about what sustainability includes. I'm curious about how the values, culture, and heritage of specific communities factor into this definition. This season is my first exploration of one such community. I recently had the opportunity to travel to St. John's Newfoundland to learn all about small-scale fisheries and governance. I talked with researchers, nonprofits, community members, and even tourists. I learned so much, and I can't wait to share these conversations with you. But first I'll provide a little context. All my interviews were framed around a specific project called Informing Governance Responses in a Changing Ocean.
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This is a collaborative research initiative that examines the consequences of social, ecological, economic, and institutional changes for the future of the fisheries coastal communities and the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. It also explores alternative options for governments and other governing actors to respond to these changes in order to help achieve a sustainable future. Informing governance responses in a changing ocean is just one project of many from the Ocean Frontier Institute, or OFI. OFI includes Dalhousie University, Memorial University, and the University of Prince Edward Island. Since I was in St. John's, I primarily talked to Memorial University researchers, but you'll also hear from other collaborators throughout this season. Alright, I think you're up to speed. So let's get started. This is connecting to the ocean Part one, conversation and conservation. Hi there. We're here at Quidi Vidi talking with tourists asking about their ocean connection. Do you have a minute to chat? So what's your connection to the ocean?
(02:33):
My connection to the ocean is mainly related actually to the vacations. We, in Switzerland, we don't have a ocean, but when we are on vacation, we, we love all the animals, whales, what you see, or dolphins. So it's always very positive concerning when you are at the ocean.
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Shortly after I arrived to St. John's, I sat down with the woman who brought me here to get an overview of the work they're doing and why it matters.
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My name is Ratana Chuenpagdee and my official title University Research Professor. So I work here at Memorial University in the Department of Geography. So I started off actually in my very first bachelor degree. I did marine science and I did this in Thailand. So Thailand is a pretty, pretty coastal place. So you, you always see what's happening in the ocean and a coastal community. So I have learned how to appreciate what's going on since, since I was very young. But then when I started to look at, you know, going to the graduate degrees, I started to look more at fisheries. I also look at it from the economics, from policy, from governance. So I started to inform myself with various perspectives about fisheries and oceans. So when I arrived to Newfoundland taking this position, I came in actually as a Canada Research Chair, and the title is Natural Resource Sustainability and Community Development.
(04:14):
So you can imagine that for a place like Newfoundland, we are surrounded by the ocean and the fisheries, but we also need to, you know, so on one hand we need to look at sustainability, but on another hand, we also have communities that depend on these ocean resources and, you know, other kind of natural resources. So I started to be, you know, become very interested in the interactions between the people and the ocean. So that's how I developed my research program around these kind of topics. But as my training is in governance, I'm always curious about what would be the role of various actors in this space in order to help promote sustainability, conservation wellbeing, livelihoods of people. So that is kind of like the background. Being in Newfoundland also means opportunity to, you know, look at the history. So everybody knows and heard about the cod moratorium, and I always was curious about it, and I didn't know much until I came and we talking since 2006 when I first started my position here.
(05:29):
If by chance you're a bit younger or not from Canada, you may not know about the cod moratorium. On July 2nd, 1992, the federal government banned cod fishing on Canada's east coast to restore depleted fish stocks. This ended almost five centuries of cod fishing here, which was central to Newfoundland's economy and culture. It was the largest layoff in Canadian history with some 30,000 newfoundlanders losing their jobs overnight. This season is more about looking forward than back. So we won't focus on this too much, but it's worth touching on because almost everyone I interviewed mentions it at some point. Alright, back to Ratana.
(06:02):
And so for me, coming from Thailand and have been working in Mexico and other places where small-scale fisheries are so important, but when I come to Newfoundland, when I first arrived to Newfoundland, I think, you know, just like many other European countries and you know, other more developed countries, they work a look more at industrial large scale fisheries. So I was like, what about the small boat? What can we do more about them? And that's actually how we started the project, the Too Big to Ignore, which is this global partnership for small-scale fisheries to do more research to understand this. And I would then argue, right, that for Newfoundland we also need to look at this particular sector because they have many contributions in many roles to play food security and, you know, jobs and, and also connection to the ocean. It's embedded within the communities.
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Tell me about some of the conversations you're having.
(07:02):
We actually never thought that conversation would be an important aspect of our work, because as researchers we usually do our research, we talk a lot with people, and then you know, we, we write about what we hear. We, we take information in and we turn that into papers, scientific articles that only read by the people like us. We might do some kind of community reports or even policy brief, but you know, we don't, we don't really, we are not very good at communicating about what we do. We hope, we always are hopeful that we would be able to influence policies and decision-making, but that is really not happening . So the general public really most of the time always puzzled by why we do things. And, you know, why is it that it's so difficult to understand in most of the time?
(08:00):
And it's not because they're not knowledgeable, in fact, it's the other way around. We sound like we don't know what we are talking about when we are trying to communicate about this because we're just not used to doing it. You know, like, like really communicate in a way that is more effective. A lot of people do talk about that now. There needs to be a change in the narrative about how we talk about the ocean. So I think having good conversation about the ocean could help us get to where we need to be if we are concerned or we are really serious about, you know, sustainability and the future of the ocean and of course of the coastal communities. We like to experiment with this a little bit to see how ocean conversation can take us to ocean conservation and ocean sustainability. And, you know, with, with within that context, of course, it's about the viability and the sustainability of coastal communities.
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I know in, in some of the work that you're doing right now, values is, is a big thing in that you're looking at people's values and their beliefs and how that impacts sustainability in fisheries. So tell me a bit about that.
(09:14):
Yeah, no, this is a good one because you know, like I said, I, I did study resource economics and most of the time we learned that there's a, you know, there's a, a range of values. They're not just monetary, they're a lot of non-monetary value. They're not just values for the present or the current generation. They also values for future generations thinking about, you know, options that people want to have when they're trying to protect the resources. But when we get to making decisions about development projects, economic activities, we tend to forget that there are many other of those values that are very hard to, to capture and to estimate. And some of them are not even possible to turn into dollar figures. So in you are trying to make this calculation about what to do, how much, you know, whether we would have a return on investment, whether it would be cost-effective or not, we basically are, you know, not really capturing the total values, which again, are not easy and they should not be monetized. So how do you really go about what really matters to people, what they really care about, and have that integrated incorporated into our decision-making without having to turn them into the dollars amount all the time. So trying to put more emphasis on those really important values that are not captured or considered in our decision-making. This is what we're trying to do.
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What sort of values would those be?
(10:55):
Yeah, I imagine something like family, family relationships, right? When people talk about social safety net, what are they talking about? They might not want more infrastructure, they might not want you know, another supermarket, let's say, but they might want better activities around building support for the communities, for people who may not have the opportunity to go get fish, how are they supported in the community? It's so through the social safety net, right? So it does play in, in something that is fundamental to the, the feeling of that, you know, being part of the community, the sense of belonging, for instance, you know, to know that you're not gonna go hungry today, you're gonna be safe whenever you knock on somebody's door when you need help. Those are some things that come up, right when we talk about this. It's the same with the ocean.
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There are so many other values of the oceans that are not articulated in this way. When people say they get joy, they feel pride, they feel connected to the ocean. It's not just because they make money of the ocean, in fact that plays a part of it, but not everything. But it's about being on the ocean, feeling that, you know, even breathing the air from the ocean, it's different and that brings childhood memories or that brings, you know, so these kind of bring back some of these connection. And when people talk about the values and the connection, they really refer to those things that are really difficult to assess and gauge and evaluate. And I don't think we should be doing that too much, but we learn about them as we have the conversation, our starting point of the community for a community to work.
(12:48):
There are so many elements that need to be part of it. There's always this care and concern, which is the same concept as what we do when we talk about conservation. So it is happening within the community context that people are caring for each other and would protect each other. And there's some of these, you know, stewardship, ethics and conservation ethics around how people go about life. And that's what we also trying to highlight the importance and the role of communities small scale fishers and coastal communities, their role in conservation. Because somehow, sometimes that is a major disconnect. It seems that you know, because you take fish from the sea, you're not conserving the resources, but I mean, people recognize the limit. People know how much they could take. People are playing by the rules, but also doing more even to contribute to enhancing the stewardship of the resources.
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And oftentimes, I think we just again, you know, not appreciating that enough. Sustainability is not just about the ecological aspect, right? We have economic sustainability, we have social sustainability. And again, you know, those are not as highly considered harder to understand and not as well factored in when we talk about sustainability and decision making because we are so used to, you know, ecological assessment, we are very much into that kind of technological oriented solutions. And so therefore we don't really look at social solutions and the importance of understanding social sustainability, which I think would take us much longer in terms of that horizon when we talk about really long-term sustainability, which is what sustainability should be about.
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Yeah, and like you said, it's kind of difficult to measure, right? It's not something you can necessarily just put on a graph of how someone feels about the ocean or that connection to the community. So I understand why it would take longer or be more challenging to, to figure that out.
(14:57):
And I guess that's why the changing, you know, the conversation about the ocean should change so that we don't, and, and even researchers should change in the way we talk about it. Why is it that we always have to feel like we need to produce figures and numbers just to communicate, right? We should be able to use more narratives, we should be able to really, you know, really try to tell difficult stories, but in, you know, in an impactful way. I'm now gonna talk a little bit about policy people too, because government seem to be wanting that to help making decision. And we also have to have the conversation with governments about can we not see the importance of have having more narratives, more stories, better conversation, good dialogue about what we need to do in order to really make decisions. I think there are many that really recognize the importance of it, but when it comes to, you know, putting something on paper, like strategies, people struggle, just like scientists, researchers need to write paper, paper policy, need to put strategies.
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The language that we use to write the papers and the strategy are really, you know, there's no room for narratives, there's no room for some nuances that we wanted to really dig more into, right? This is what I'm trying to get at in terms of how can we change the nature of policy-making, decision-making so that it's really more inclusive in taking in all those important aspects. And it might feel a little bit fuzzy, even a little bit clumsy, you know, we, we need to be playful with it a little bit as well. That doesn't work, right? We know you said, you know, policy people need to do this and that, and there's a checklist and a milestones and et cetera. But it's more human nature to do that. I think, you know, people like to use the word changing mindset, but I think we are talking about new awareness.
(17:03):
We are talking about, you know, being very generous in the way we, we think about the ocean to each other, you know? So there's a lot of history always, you know, when you think about how, which harvesters interact with the, the government, there's history, there's tension, always people get upset easily. And, and so we, you know, we just have to do a lot of talking around this and, and find that common ground, find a way to, you know, get the conversation going without being stuck in that kind of, you know, the, the history too much. Not to dismiss it, but to figure that out, right? What we have in common is we can can figure that out, how we connect to the ocean, and if that connection to the ocean helps us think about how we then can contribute to ocean conservation, you know, sustainability. That's a really good starting point for us. So tell me, what is your connection to the ocean?
(18:07):
You know, I feel like I, I don't have a connection to the ocean. You know, growing up in the prairies by the mountains, sure we would, we would go, you know, on the Oldman river, we'd go canoeing and stuff. And, and I always love going to the mountains and jumping in lakes and, and spending time in the water there. But being so far away from the ocean, I actually feel very disconnected from it. And I'm, I feel very fortunate to be here in Newfoundland talking to you and talking to everyone else and actually seeing this place and, and experiencing it for myself. 'cause This is the first time I've been out to the east coast. So I'm very much looking forward to finding my connection to the ocean while I'm here. I wanted to learn a little more about the projects that Ratana's team is working on. So I sat down with...
(18:48):
Evan Andrews. I am a Banting fellow at the Department of Geography at Memorial University.
(18:55):
Governance is a key part of the work they're doing here. So I thought it would be good to have Evan provide a definition.
(19:00):
I think of it as two things. The first is people and things. So that's really about people working together, doing stuff, leveraging material things. So that's like policies, laws, resources, and other kind of capacities. People often think of governance as government, but governance is bigger than that. It's about all sorts of different organizations. People working together to try to solve problems. Governance is also a lens. We can look at how decisions are being made for fisheries or oceans and what's really shaping that decision. We can look to see how, you know, people have worked together or not, or what policies were involved. Did they lead to outcomes that were anticipated? If not, what happened? We can look at the kind of frameworks that informed those decisions. Governance as a lens takes us also to big social and philosophical issues, including what principles and values are shaping how decisions are made.
(20:15):
Is it about environmental sustainability? Is it about economic development? Are decisions being driven by considerations of justice, equity and, and human dignity? We can look at those principles and values. We can also look at the rules, laws and policies, and then ultimately, at an everyday kind of lens, what are people doing on the ground every day to make decisions? How are they sharing information? How are they sharing resources? So governance is a big topic. It's a, a very important one. In the context of fisheries and oceans, people often think a lot about management, so a lot about decisions related to access and allocation and, and the like. But to understand those decisions, you need to think bigger, bigger in the structure and processes around those decisions to really start to tease out what's happening with those decisions. How in the future if things change, can those decisions be improved?
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Evan also told me about Moving Together for Marine Conservation.
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The Moving Together for Marine Conservation project is an outreach and governance capacity-building project, which emphasizes building sustained and broad awareness and collaborations among different people. So different ocean stakeholders and rights holders, you know, including folks like local communities, advocacy groups, NGOs, indigenous nations, and governmental representatives. And here we're talking about sort of federal, provincial, and municipal. And that's really to support and sustain the marine conservation targets, which are Canada's reasonably ambitious goals to protect 25% of the ocean by 2025 and 30% by 2030. We're focused on outreach, capacity building, and new awareness. So we're trying to draw attention to new things about marine conservation, new connections, new interactions. 'cause we think they're gonna be important for mobilizing collective support and action for marine conservation in the province. So we have three project goals. The first one is to develop a comprehensive understanding of how, why and what is being conserved and protected.
(22:32):
The second is to broaden marine conservation perspectives. So, you know, moving perhaps more broadly beyond just thinking about MPAs to all sorts of different ways of conserving in the ocean space by understanding diverse social, cultural and economic values and experiences. Finally, we're keen on increasing governance capacity in Newfoundland and Labrador to inform marine conservation targets, which we call MCT through engagement with various stakeholders and rights holders, and kind of sharing insights for better planning and decision making. So it's moving together for marine conservation, which is MTC, and in the end for informing the marine conservation targets, which is MCT. So my hope is that MTC for MCT catches on, but, but who
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Knows? - It's not very catchy.
(23:26):
No, I think, I think it will, I think we can make it a hashtag.
(23:30):
I learned that MTC is discovering how people connect to the ocean.
(23:34):
We hosted a project workshop we call an ocean connections workshop. We didn't even really talk about marine conservation till the end. And that's because we wanted to know, no matter what it is, marine conservation or fishery sustainability, what connects people to the ocean. If you understand what connects people to the ocean and you can make those connections really visible and really direct and explicit, then you know what motivates them to get out and act. And in this case, it's for marine conservation. I came to the notion of marine conservation, you know, reasonably late. My work was on fisheries in this province, and I was always thinking about them in terms of how they can make a go of it and what kind of management and, and more broadly governance is needed to support them in their family's pursuits. Through this project, I'm realizing that in many ways I was also studying a way of conserving, these are small-scale inshore fisheries that can conserve a lot of them every day in their lives. It's that realization that I'm coming to, and that there are many other examples like that, that I think are gonna be important to the conversation about the marine conservation targets. And without those, that broad and diverse dialogue, we're just going to be thinking of marine conservation as closing off space to other people. And some of those protections are important, but they don't completely describe all the great work that people are doing on the ground that are informing Canada's capacity and ability to conserve in the ocean and marine spaces.
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And what are some of those other things that need to be included in that conversation?
(25:32):
In the space of marine conservation, sometimes there's this idea that fisheries are part of the problem, you know, because we've had a, the 1992 collapse of a North Atlantic cod in the province, ups and downs with shellfish fishery and real concerns about the future. And the easiest way to explain those things is that fish were over-harvested and the culprits all get put together in one bucket, and that's an oversimplification. If you talk to many of the owner-operator family-run fishing operations here, you will hear them and their concerns about declining, you know, forage fish like capelin or concerns about whether certain species will rebound and rebuild and, and what they're doing to support that. Not all fishers are, are doing that, but many of them are. And so it's not quite right to cast them as the problem. In fact, it might be more appropriate in some cases to cast them as a solution.
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We're learning about as we talk to more people, different ways of conserving and protecting. That's why we're kind of focused in this project on first understanding how, why and what is being protected. Those different approaches are underpinned by different experiences on the coast and on the water. And that's why we're really concerned about those experiences and, and the different values and visions for marine conservation. And hopefully, we're gonna be able to bring all that knowledge together to inform the governance of marine conservation, which does involve of course, the marine conservation targets. But I, I think it's bigger than that. There's one way to think about this, which is a kind of more instrumental view, right? So you need to bring different people together to work together to do marine conservation. That's thinking about marine conservation as an outcome. But there's another way to think about it, which is about marine conservation as the means, as the mechanism to bring people together to connect to the ocean, to connect to what's really important to connect with traditions and values and practices that have been with this province for many years to restore attachment to the culture here.
(27:59):
So on one hand, while thinking of marine conservation as an outcome is really important for the wonderful fish and important habitats, and ecosystems. As a means, marine conservation can be an avenue for justice for people whose cultural practices have been eroded, who feel like they're not part of the conversation about the place that they live, who want to remain in communities and have the relationships they've had with one another and marine resources for generations. I think this project can help clarify pathways for both of those things, and I think they're related.
(28:40):
Next, I want to learn about Too Big to Ignore, or TBTI. Evan is a senior research fellow for this project, so he filled me in on what it's all about.
(28:48):
Too Big to Ignore is a global partnership for small scale fisheries research. It is often called now the network of networks in that it brings so many different fisheries and ocean research networks together. I'm working with a colleague, Christine Knott, and of course Ratana on understanding the Canadian context for TBTI. So often people think of small-scale fisheries as only occurring in the global south or in developing countries or whatever kind of way you want to try to split up the world, which are always oversimplifications. By definition then they think of fisheries in other parts of the world, including Canada as not being small scale as being, you know, I suppose larger scale, but also with bigger capacities and stronger gear. And those people often associate efficiency with that and also, you know, stronger business acumen and ultimately more success. And that is all based on the assumption that there really are no small-scale fisheries in places like Canada.
(30:03):
So I've been working with Christine and Ratana, and what we've been doing is identifying the small-scale fisheries that exist in Canada. We've been doing it through an ebook called Thinking Big About Small-Scale Fisheries in Canada, which has 25 chapters and over a hundred authors participating who have identified small-scale fisheries on every single one of, Canada's coasts and on every major river and lake systems in between. They look sometimes like the small boat harvesters on the Atlantic. They look like treaty-based fisheries such as food, social and ceremonial fisheries, or moderate livelihood fisheries. They look like subsistence fisheries in different regions in the Arctic. They are small commercial operations on the Great Lakes. They are the independent harvesters struggling for access in an ITQ system on the Pacific Coast. So there's many different variations of them. We tend to not think of those fisheries as one group for good reason, but they're connected in the way that they contribute to the sustainability and positive outcomes for the rural communities.
(31:22):
Often that depend on them. They have for generations been the safety net for many of those communities. So we're wondering about how they're doing, what challenges they're facing, what opportunities that they have, and ultimately what solutions they offer to sustainability and, and justice and equity problems. We're really seeing this ebook as a starting point for what we're calling TBTI Canada. So that Canadian chapter of TBTI. And it's a really important one because, you know, just the other day in one of my classes, I had someone tell me there's no small-scale fisheries in in Canada. And because there are no small scale fisheries, the landmark SSF guidelines do not apply in Canada. While those small-scale fisheries guidelines bring really important principles and ways of thinking to fisheries governance and ocean governance more broadly, but sometimes they're kind of rejected out of turn just because people assume there's no small-scale fisheries in Canada, even though this book suggests the contrary, we need to be having conversations about what's the future of small scale fisheries it, what are the solutions they offer and how we need to share those across those diverse types of fisheries I mentioned so that they can all thrive in a situation that's uncertain, such as with climate change or, you know, increasing coastal development or riparian development depending on which system we're working on.
(32:58):
And that's something I'm really keen to continue. So this TBTI Canada and through this ebook is a way to get, get that going. And we're sharing chapters every month through the TBTI digest, and we're hearing already that they're pretty well received. So that's pre pretty exciting. Another stream of work we have going on, it's one that I care to work on in the evenings and weekends. , yeah. Coming back to governance, part of the realization is that the way governance is set up in such a way, it kind of puts these fisheries into silos. The question is, what does a holistic way of governing look like that considers these different kind of fisheries together is a big one. You have different rights, different jurisdictions across provinces and territories, different levels of government and different types of communities being supported, each facing different issues. So that, that's a really interesting opportunity to start to think across them. And I think what connects them is the solutions that they offer and focusing on that in terms of how those get mobilized and shared and scaled up for the future.
(34:18):
It sounds like it's not that small-scale fishing is the solution, but it's just another part of, of, I guess we'll call it the solution.
(34:25):
Yeah, but they might be the solution. That's a question worth asking. It's not a prescription, it's a question. It's about thinking about, you know, does independent family owner-operated kind of fisheries with strong ties to communities distributed along the coast, often with low environmental impact, strong involvement of women, women and used to be also children, you know, not advocating for labor laws to be broken here, but they, they contribute in, in many ways. Why isn't that the solution to natural resource exploitation in an era where access limited resources are degraded and climate change is tossing everything up in the air? That's a question worth asking without over-romanticizing small-scale fisheries. Of course, I think it's just rejected before the question is even asked. It's one that I'm, I'm really keen to get in. Small-scale fisheries are also the solution for, you know, the erosion of culture, the erosion of attachment to tradition.
(35:36):
I'm not talking about turning back the time, I'm talking about getting connected again with what mattered to families for generations. So when I say solutions, I think of two things. The first is that it's about learning from these people in these fisheries about how they've navigated social, environmental, cultural, and economic changes for generations and technological ones too. Those are kind of strategies, strategies, solutions, alternatives, and how they persisted. The second one is about thinking about the model, the way of being, the way of working and the qualities that are involved in that as a solution to a seascape that's crowded, a coastal scape that in, in some cases is harmed. And a way of fishing that's increasingly industrialized. It's small-scale fisheries that bring the money home to rural communities that keep them thriving, that exist in different forms around the world. But we're learning through this ebook that it exists also in Canada.
(36:44):
We just have not done a good enough job to making them visible, to ensuring that that connection is recognized and thinking about opportunities holistically across those different fisheries to enhance them. If we know they're a potential solution and we know they're, they need supports, policy, regulatory all sorts of barriers that they face, then enhancing them is about enhancing the opportunity for those solutions for all. So by thinking about small-scale fisheries as a space where they're not problems, but they're solutions, then we're really thinking about solutions for coastal communities and other rural communities that live along rivers, lakes, and, and watersheds in a future that's increasingly uncertain. The other important aspect of the work that we do here is about engaging directly with the government. Some researchers see that as selling out, particularly those researchers that work with, and, even on behalf of communities, we work with government, first of all, they're often well-intentioned and very bright people from which I learn a lot, but we also better understand how decisions are made and if we want our good theory, the good evidence we create to inform decisions, what better way to do that than first to be more aware of how those decisions are made so we can direct our recommendations and propose strategies and outcomes from our research.
(38:19):
And through that dialogue, we create opportunities for common interest strategies to move forward, which in the end, we know are about things like justice and equity and human dignity. So it's, it's trying to clarify that, that target, and we can talk about solutions and we can talk about small scale fisheries in a in a different way.
(38:41):
My next conversation had me learning about conservation and one particular species that needs to be protected.
(38:47):
I'm Jack Daly and I'm a marine scientist with Oceanic Canada. What Oceanic Canada does, which I think might be a little bit different from perhaps other NGOs working on fisheries, is really pushing for the sustainability of fisheries so that people can fish and eat fish. So we're not necessarily an animal welfare organization, we're really about sustainably managing fisheries so that we can get those long-term benefits. So a lot of what our work is is working kind of on the ground, sometimes going to specific fisheries management meetings to ensure fisher managed sustainably, trying to help Canadians and the Canadian government to have that bird's eye view of their fisheries.
(39:29):
Jack told me about the fisheries audit that Oceanic Canada does every year.
(39:33):
What that audit essentially does is it uses the government's own publicly available data and science, and we essentially collate it. And that largely looks at the commercially exploited fisheries. You know, we have more than 200 marine species in Canada and to see how those stocks are doing to see if they're getting healthier, if they're, if they're getting worse. Unfortunately, what we see is not a lot of change. We see a lot of stagnation, and that's a real shame coming from, you know, one of, the biggest fishing countries in the world in a country that has a rich history of fishing. One reason that we say the findings are kind of stagnating is because the way that fisheries are managed in Canada, and the way that fisheries are kind of managed globally in terms of best practices is through the precautionary approach. The precautionary approach is essentially a framework which divy up the fish stocks into their health status.
(40:28):
So through that approach, you can identify if a fish stock is healthy, if it is cautious, which means it's, it's not necessarily healthy, but it's not necessarily unhealthy, or if it's critical. The healthy zone is the zone in which fish can be exploited sustainably you know, at a certain target, a certain limit. The cautious zone is a zone where you kind of want to balance both the, the socioeconomic needs, but also the environmental needs. You wanna make sure we're not gonna dip down. You wanna get that trend going back up. And then the critical zone is really that zone where it's, it's hard for fish populations to recover. So once a stock goes into a critical zone, that is where the ecological and scientific factors take over. What we see in Canada and what we've seen for the past, you know, five or six years, is that, you know, around 30% of these stocks are healthy, which is great.
(41:18):
About 15% are in the cautious zone. A worrying number is 17% are in the critical. So the zone where we should not be fishing, even though many of these stocks we do fish, and then the biggest number is 37% are uncertain. So that's something that we point to every year as something that needs to be addressed. We need to have a hundred percent of our stocks have a status and therefore we can start making change. And when you have almost 40% of stocks, we don't know the status. That's really hard for us to manage. We can still understand some trends, but if we do not have a stock status, it's hard for us to manage it. It's also hard for us to be accountable. One thing I will mention is that Canada in 2019 passed an updated version of the Fisheries Act, and for the first time mandated the rebuilding of fish stocks in that act.
(42:07):
You know, the Fisheries Act in Canada is, I think it's the second oldest act in our country, maybe the first, it's one of the oldest acts. It's over 150 years old, and it took us 150 years to make it the law to rebuild fish populations. Part of the trigger to rebuilding fish populations is when stocks fall into the critical zone, then the law, you know, starts working into overdrive and makes DFO have to rebuild those stocks. If we have 40% of stocks uncertain, then that really limits our ability and limits the government's ability to put their full weight behind those stocks to help them rebuild. You know, for a country that's really proud of its science and its fisheries, we should not have 40% uncertain stocks. Oceania's analysis has shown that a vast majority of those uncertain stocks can be put in categories if the work is done.
(42:59):
And, you know, we think that Canada should do it because it would actually perhaps increase the amount of healthy stocks we have, you know, all those uncertain stocks, they're not all critical. What, it really comes down to is consistency in terms of having the science and focusing the science on all stocks, not just the stocks that are the most commercially valuable, which is what we tend to do. You know, that the Fisheries Act was passed in 2019, it's now 2023, it's soon to be 2024. We're coming up on the five-year review of this act. We should have greater results than we currently do. And especially for government, that really prides itself on conservation, on transparency. You know, a lot of this part comes down to transparency, showing the science, showing what's being done and having it all publicly available. Sometimes it's a, it's a, you know, funding issue, but a lot of time I think, I think it's a priorities issue. This needs to be a priority.
(43:50):
Jack taught me about one fish that's in the critical zone - Capelin.
(43:55):
Capelin is, you know, the primary forage fish in the Northwest Atlantic. When we talk about forage fish, we talk about the fish that essentially eats all the phytoplankton and the zooplankton, and then everything else that's big eats them. So they transfer this massive amount of energy through their little bodies, up the food chain to cod, to puffins, to whales, et cetera. Caplin, or an example of a stock that has been in the uncertain category for about 30 years since it collapsed in the early 1990s. And for the first time, DFO was able to assess the stock as critical, and not only as critical this year, but look back and see for the past 32 years, for 30 of those years, it has been in the critical zone again, in the zone where it's really hard for it to rebuild. Now that it's in the critical zone, we ask that the government follows its own policy and law to manage the fishery in a way that allows it to rebuild.
(44:51):
And so what do we mean by that? When a stock's in the critical zone, the guidance from the Canadian government is to keep fishing mortality or death from phishing to the lowest possible level. So what we're really asking for is for the government to pause this fishery and then to develop a working group for a rebuilding plan. Just give an example of what a stock may look like when it's in the critical zone. I think Capelin is such a good example. Capelin used to live to five or six, now they live to two, to three to four. They used to mature at three to four, they used to reproduce at three to four. Now they produce it two to three, sometimes age two. So not only is the stock smaller, not only is the biomass, which is the total weight of the amount of capelin in their, their population area, not only is the biomass at 7% pre-collapse levels, but the actual fish changes and why capelin are so important and why its designation as in the critical zone is so fascinating is because the model that was able to identify it in a critical zone directly connects capelin to cod.
(45:54):
Capelin are the primary food source for cod. So I always point to forage fish as an example, because although they're extremely complicated fish to manage, they're also such a canary in the coal mine because they're an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. If you don't have forage fish, you're not gonna have healthy fisheries. We wonder why cod doesn't rebound. You know, part of the reason is 'cause we're taking its food outta water. We're not allowing it to rebuild.
(46:17):
Jack explained a little about how climate change has affected Capelin.
(46:21):
We call their distribution circumpolar because they're all around the North Pole, essentially. They're in the North Atlantic, they're in the North Pacific, they're at the same kind of latitude around the top of the earth. You find them in Iceland, you find them in Norway, Russia, Alaska. What's so unique though about Newfoundland and Labrador Capelin is it's one of the few populations of Capelin that tends to reproduce by rolling on the beaches. Now you do see that in Alaska, you see that in Iceland, but you don't see it as much as we see it here in Newfoundland, Labrador. It's quite unique. There are not spawners like salmon, you know, where salmon go back to the river where they were born. Capelin go where it makes sense for them to reproduce. And with hotter waters and hotter beaches. Recent research is indicating that capelin are spawning less on the beach and spawning more deep underwater.
(47:15):
And that is changed, which is gonna have a really great effect on, you know, people's use of capelin in Newfoundland and Labrador where they go to the beach and grab 'em right off the beach. To eat less capelin on the beach means less access to capelin, less access to food. And I think it's so interesting and so emotional for so many people because it is really kind of the people's fish. It rolls up on the beaches, it rolls up at your feet, everybody has access to it. You have generations of Newfoundlanders and laboratorians doing it. You also have new Canadians. When we were on the beaches, we saw international students running down with pasta strainers grabbing capelin from the water. We had some newcomers from Ukraine that were at the beach that were just overjoyed at seeing the capelin roll up on the beach. You can be somebody with a big net that you can throw out and catch them, or you could be a little kid grabbing them with your hands. It's something that happens annually. It something that happens every summer in Newfoundland. It's that connection that humans have to the ocean that I think is so lost when now we have our fisheries, so export-oriented, so disconnected from community. So when people have the chance to connect to fish, it's such a great opportunity, especially for Newfoundland and Labrador. I mean, it is, you know, the iconic fishing province of this country.
(48:26):
I was in Newfoundland when the capelin rolled in, so I saw firsthand what Jack was talking about. While I was there, I met Cece and her daughters and asked them about their experience catching Capelin.
(48:36):
So what, what brings you out? Why did you come to catch the Capelin?
(48:40):
We just wanted a bunch of fresh fish to cook up tonight to experience catching and then gutting, and then frying kind of the whole experience, beautiful day as well. And what else are you gonna do on a Sunday morning? Right? Doesn't get any better than this. Yeah, right.
(48:55):
And so, yeah, what's, how do you feel when you're, you're catching your own fish? What does that make you feel like?
(49:02):
Primal, obviously very primal feeling. And if there's freedom involved in it and it just feels, I just feel very lucky that we can just come here and you don't have to be in a boat. You just stand in the shore and just collect your fish, right? Mm-Hmm, .
(49:17):
Yeah. And, and so I guess, is this a way that you connect to the ocean?
(49:21):
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, you find your place here. It's definitely a connection for sure, especially after a busy week and you know, we've been inside for a long time as well here in Newfoundland for a long time. The weather's been bad, so it's just refreshing, fresh all around.
(49:41):
I wanted to get Cece's daughter Maria's thoughts on all this, but first, she had a very important question for me.
(49:48):
Are we gonna be on the news?
(49:49):
You'll be on the internet, which is better than being on the news. So do you like to eat fish?
(49:56):
No. I don't really like fish, but I like catching fish.
(50:02):
What do you like about catching fish?
(50:05):
Because it's fun, it's relaxing. You have something to do around the ocean and you feel so proud of yourself after you catch it.
(50:15):
Alright, back to Jack. Do you feel like small-scale fisheries can have an impact or are important to add to this conversation?
(50:24):
Yeah, I mean, I think small-scale fisheries are essential to this conversation because small-scale fisheries are the fisheries in Canada that really highlight the connection between fish as food and fish as food for the community. And sometimes something that we can sometimes lose when we talk, when, when we zoom out as, as Oceana does. You know, looking at the health of fish stocks across the country, small-scale fisheries really offer that example of what it means when a fishery is not only sustainable but sustainable from a community, from a social sense. I think the biggest thing that small-scale fisheries bring to the conversation is that they help elevate it into the public sphere where people, can talk about it. These resources are far too important to be left to a handful of decision-makers in a DFO office somewhere. So, I think one mis misperception of conservation is that it's being led by the environmental NGOs, and I think that's far from the case.
(51:20):
It's being led by local people and I think NGOs in Oceanic Canada can offer certain things. Oceanic Canada really focuses on the policy and the legal change to ensure things are managed sustainably over the long term. But that can never happen in a vacuum. That can never happen just by negotiating with the minister's office in Ottawa. The leaders of the conservation movement, especially in Atlantic Canada where I'm most familiar, are at the community level. I think it's so easy to talk about, you know, how we should stop fishing kind of abstractly, but when you really look at the impact of it to coastal communities, not only in Atlantic Canada but around the world where billions of people rely on fish protein for food, it's definitely something worth preserving and protecting. And that's why I'm happy I work with Oceania Canada, but I'm also happy there are tons of other organizations including community groups, including Fisher groups and indigenous communities that are ensuring that this resource is, you know, protected not only for us, but for the future generations that are going to need a stable source of fish protein, you know, when we're seeing changing climates and all this global change.
(52:28):
So what's your connection to the ocean?
(52:31):
For, for me, I think our ocean connection is both my wife, myself, we just love spending time up the Sunshine Coast actually. And just love that area and it's so relaxing, peaceful, and yeah, vibrant and nice people as well. A little bit almost pride comes to mind actually, and just what we have and what we need to take care of in a sense.
(53:05):
Next time on connecting to the ocean, I look at the health and wealth of the ocean and coastal communities.
(53:13):
And so if you can't rely on more traditional food systems and you can't rely on local fisheries massive, massive health outcomes for those people,
(53:25):
It means looking not only at the ecological aspects of the ecosystem, but of the diverse economic, social, cultural and governance aspects of our system.
(53:37):
Cultural heritage is often a very strong asset and a unique piece of community identity that, you know, maybe doesn't get recognized as much as it could or, or sort of isn't valued to the fullest extent.
(53:49):
Connecting to the Ocean was produced by Michael Bartz with production assistance from Evan Andrews, Truman Osmond, Nanatakorn Chayangkul, Vesna Kerezi and Ratana Chuepagdee. Special thanks to all the guests who gave generously of their time and expertise.
(54:04):
I'm trying to save the planet, oh will someone please save me?
(54:14):
In Over My Head's Connecting to the Ocean season was made possible with support from the Ocean Frontier Institute, module I and Memorial University.