Ocean sanctuaries (one exists in Scotland, after a lengthy legal batter) are the answer. Kind of like a ‘Switzerland of the oceans’. Nobody owns them, so all creatures are safe from fishing and by-catch.
It’s a ‘hands-off’ area where nobody is allowed to fish, or faces legal action. At present, just 1% of the world’s oceans are protected sanctuaries, campaigners hope to get this soon at 40%.
Ocean sanctuaries also matter, as climate change is causing fish and marine creatures to migrate out of natural areas, due to warmer seas, and changing food needs. This issue ends up bringing non-native species onto foreign shores, often bringing disease.
Ocean sanctuaries also protect seagrass that is eaten by sea turtles (ocean lawnmowers) along with protecting bottlenose dolphins and sea slugs.
In Scotland, Lamlash Bay has the UK’s first ocean sanctuary. Just one square mile (it took 13 years of campaigning by locals to create it, showing the opposition at hand). Nothing is allowed to be taken here, leaving octopus, scallops and fish to live amid the maerl (a unique seaweed that grows in the bay).
Lessons (not learned) from the Pandemic
During the pandemic, one sea in the Mediterranean went quiet. After lockdown ended, nobody knew why local orcas (killer whales) were ramming and sinking the boats. But some marine biologists believed they were annoyed that the fishing had come back, after a year or two of quiet and having their seas restocked with food.
I would like to tell you a few things about this virus and the lessons it should teach us. I would like to say: fish have returned to the Venetian canals, now that humans have stopped polluting them. Nature recovers swiftly, when stop our plundering of Her bounty.
Now I will say what I believe: that this civilization will not learn anything from this virus. All this civilization wants to do is to get back to normal. Normal is cheap lights and cheap lattes, Chinese girls sewing our T-shirts, biblical bushfires and barrels of oil, and African children poisoning their bodies sorting the plastic we have dumped on their coastlines. Normal is nitrate pollution and burning stumps, and the death of our seas. Paul Kingsnorth
