So remind me again, what’s so great about the ocean?
Beaches, yeah great, sunsets, romantic walks, sand between the toes.
But the sea itself…nasty, untrustworthy, never staying in one place. Can’t even drink it.
And fish – don’t get me started. Terrible, flappy, slimy, smelly things. And ug-ly, yip you don’t see fish on a catwalk now do you?
So why are all these snow flakes on about: “Oh we need to save the sea?”
Apparently every second breath we take is made by all that wet stuff.
Well seas don’t have a monopoly on that – trees do exactly the same thing without making a fuss.
But the ocean covers 71 percent of the world’s surface, they say, distributing heat and balancing weather like a giant DVS system. Yeah, OK that’s your job. Just get on with it.
And the bit about how the ocean has sucked up 25 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by humans, slowing climate change by a quarter?
Well yes, that’s quite impressive. I didn’t know it was that much. I’ve only just caught up with all that greenhouse stuff.
Presumably it’ll keep doing that. Surely someone with legal training must have written it into the sea’s contract?
Keep sucking carbon and we won’t pull the plug. Capiche. Tough love, that’s what the “big blue” needs.
But no, everyone keeps going on about how the poor oceans are dying. Boo Hoo.
How would you kill the sea anyway? Go down to the low tide mark and start hitting it with a baseball bat?
Worked for the fur seals. Too far. OK. Sorry.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m on the sea’s side (seaside, geddit?)
I’m on the seals’ side too, love the way they balance balls on their noses. Almost as talented as David Seymour. And better looking, not like the smooth handfish (sooo fugly – see above)
Apparently this maritime horror show got declared extinct earlier this year. Hands up who gives one?
That’s what I thought. But I’ve been talking to Kevin, an oceanographer – this is what he calls himself – lovely bloke, works at the fish and chip shop. Probably votes Green but that’s his business. A lot of us did, to keep Labour out of the coalition. Shame it didn’t work.
Anyway Kev says it’s not actually the sea we need to save. The ocean has been taking all this glory for something it doesn’t actually do – getting all the credit, for carbon sucking, oxygen pumping and the like.
Well drain it then, I told him. Pull the plug. Think of all that real estate. Especially around Auckland. I mean so long as Jacinda doesn’t slap us with a marine capital gains tax. Imagine everyone with baches at Pauanui they’d get all the land out to the economic exclusion zone.
Kev didn’t think that was a smart idea. He asked me to imagine the sea as a jar of olives. I like an olive, especially on seafood pizza. Kev says the ocean’s power lies in the olives not the brine. It’s the critters, the underwater tenants, the smooth handfish (well not anymore) and his mates, that’s who’ve been looking after us humans.
Then Kev used this word beginning with B, there was no call for that I said. Not blo*dy, bug*er or bull*hit. Biodiversity. Bless you, I said.
Kev explained it was one of those complicated words people use to make themselves sound brainy, when they could just as easily have said all the animals and plants in the sea. The olives in the jar, all the living stuff under the waves.
Hey so another fun fact from Kev, about the B-word.
You know how the Grumpties (Green numpties) are always complaining about how we’re running out of animals, endangered this and that. Well don’t worry petals cause eighty percent of our B-word, our native biodiversity, in NZ lives offshore. (like our wealth frankly but that’s another blog)
So don’t worry if we kill off the rest , we’ve still got a huge reserves bench out under the waves.
Kev said that wasn’t exactly what he meant.
He’s kind of changed my mind about the fish, though, even the ugly ones. They’re not just nice to have around, to slap on the barbie, to gawp at in aquariums. Who hasn’t made their kid laugh by banging on the glass as Nemo goes by. Turns out, they have a bigger role than just food and entertainment.
The real small ugly ones called phy-to-plank-ton are actually saving us from ourselves. They’re the guys that make the oxygen. The ones that slurp up the carbon that we make when we drive back to the supermarket in our enormous urban assault vehicles because we forgot something. Maybe that last can of sardines.
And all those slippery buggers are all so reliant on each other, so co-dependent, you take a few key characters out and the whole thing goes to stink. Kill a significant proportion of fish in the sea and we actually harpoon ourselves in the foot. Big time.
How are we doing on that front? Very well. We kill around three trillion (that’s a thousand billion fish) every year. In the last 40 years fish populations have been halved. Ninety per cent of large fish, like sharks, swordfish and tuna, have been hunted from our oceans as a result of fishing.
And domestically? Here in NZ we’re making great in-roads – smashing the under sea mountains that are like coral cafes where all the fish hang out, with indiscriminate bottom trawling. The commercial fishing industry is in general agreement that they should be careful and responsible but neither them nor the Government will agree to put cameras on all the boats to make sure. And New Zealand, even with its huge sway on the international stage, can’t quite bring itself to agree to a decent amount of ocean sanctuaries cause they’re worried about fishing interests.
So in terms of bringing our unmatched ability to make species extinct, to the seas, we’re doing just fine. There’s even some hints on the channels that I follow that it’s all part of a master plan, from the real villains – gelatinous plankton. Otherwise known as Jellyfish.
Kev says the Jellies have a plot for world domination and thanks to human fishing practices they’re well on the way.
Step one: Kill off the Turtles as by-catch and the Tuna, cause they’re great in salads, and those are the Jelly’s natural predators done for.
Step Two: Use humans to take out the small pelagic fish like sardines, herrings and anchovies that compete with the jellies for food and scoff jellyfish offspring.
Step three: Grow arms and legs and crawl up the beaches and take out the humans before they make the world uninhabitable from climate change.
You might think that sounds a bit far fetched. But this year I started believing in a number of things, including climate change. And if the plandemic was set off by 5G transmissions why not jelly armageddon?
If you remember that’s exactly what happened 460 million years ago when the fish got sick of swimming in their own poo and took to the land. Jellyfish have been around for about the same time – 500 million years – coincidence? – I don’t think so. And guess what the collective noun for jellyfish is? Smack. That’s all you need to know.
From climate change and plastics, to deep sea mining and overfishing – the threats facing our oceans are growing and becoming more urgent by the day. Here’s how we protect them.
