Seawater desalination, the industrial production of drinking water from the ocean, is a practice of increasingly intense interest to thirsty cities across the globe. And why not? It promises the ability to provide a reliable water source that is (seemingly) invulnerable to climate change. What is more, the market is responding, with a global estimated value of roughly $18 billion[1] (c.f., Swyngedouw and Williams 2016). And there is significant expected growth, up to $32 billion (that’s about half the estimated size of the wind industry),[2] in the next four years.
“Where we live, work, and play.” That’s the phrase environmental justice advocates have used for decades to reimagine the dominant meaning of nature. It’s meant to challenge the stubborn conception that the natures worthy of care are limited to unspoiled virgin forests and exotic creatures in the wild. The expression tries to interrupt the unthinking assumption that the environment is where people are not. It reasserts the truism that a human life is as sacred as a clear vista on a high mountain top.
In 2020, the world watched as climate, public health, economic, and racial justice crises converged. It has become increasingly evident that failures of collective and public policies around health and the environment have perpetuated individual suffering. If ever there was an opportunity for the collective to re-think business as usual… it is now. We are firmly situated in the Anthropocene: a time in which human activities are arguably driving our climate and changing environment. The ocean is not exempt from these human influences. Indeed, human energy demands and associated carbon emissions, unsustainable extraction of living and non-living marine resources, land-based activities, and natural processes are contributing to significant changes in marine and coastal environments. These changes include the persistence of plastic waste in most, if not all, ocean ecosystems and species, reduced oxygen and lower pH levels in coastal waters, unprecedented shifts in the range and distribution of marine species, and sustained elevated ocean temperatures over time and space, among others. These conditions exemplify what we are now calling the Anthropocene Ocean. The Anthropocene Ocean is also occurring amidst rapidly changing societies and associated limits to land-based industrial expansion; feeding an emerging narrative about the economic potential of the ocean and its resources (Campbell et al. 2016). Our rapidly changing ocean is also now perceived as the next frontier for growth and expansion of our global economic system.
“More to Sea” is a photojournalism project I engaged in May 2018 to June 2019. This project was an independent project, which was done after I graduated in a marine governance course. I’m currently a PhD student at Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Technology in Sydney where I study livelihood sustenance of small-scale fishers and local food systems. With More to Sea, I aimed to learn how small-scale fishers were doing. Photographs were combined with fishers’ stories and published on a website (moretosea.nl) and social media. An ebook is about to be launched by Too Big To Ignore, which discusses problems faced by fishers, solutions found, and future scenarios. For the EnviroSociety blog, I have created this short video which shows a number of quotes and photos of fishers that illustrate relations to fishing livelihoods, and people’s knowledges of their environment.
The 1949 Fisheries Law in Japan underwent a historic revision in 2018, which went into effect in December 2020. The revision included the further application of science-based resource assessment, the introduction of the Individual Quota (IT) system, the expansion of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) to more commercially targeted species, and the loosening of the entry restrictions to open fisheries to private companies. While the inclusion of scientific knowledge and approaches could deepen our understanding of oceans and marine species in the Anthropocene, most coastal fishing communities in Japan, whose fishing operation is local and cooperative-based, could find this revision a threat to their communal livelihoods due to its emphasis on rationalized single species-oriented approach to management, rather than a relational multi-species approach for their community wellbeing. This short essay aims to supplement and contextualize my recent article in Environment and Society (Hamada 2020) with the current state of Pacific herring fishery in Japan.
The sun beats down from a muggy, overcast sky. It turns the small hummocks of a calm ocean to a hammered pewter sheet as far as the eye can see. I sit towards the front of the boat with the harpooner’s assistant squinting out at the waters of the Savu Sea. It’s the end of a long hunting day on the water and we will soon call it quits and head home to Lamalera empty-handed after following a pod of sperm whales moving eastwards. We’re the farthest I have been out this season, but as I look north to the island, we are still directly south of the small peninsula of Atadei, on Lembata’s southern coast. At this moment I realize the endurance of Lamalera’s previous generations of marine hunters: as far as we have come, we are nowhere near the edge of the community’s historical hunting range.
On a map with street names, Buddy Dive Resort is on Kaya Gobernador Nicolaas Debrot, but chances are directions will include some hand waving and a “you can’t miss it, it’s the big yellow one.” On Monday nights at Blennies Restaurant and Bar (conveniently located within Buddy Dive Resort), there is a presentation on coral restoration and the work that Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire (CRFB) does around the island. Each presentation goes through the specific conditions for coral growth in the waters of Bonaire, the science behind coral propagation, and the types of coral the foundation focuses on.
The presentations offer a primer on the work that CRFB does, and hopes to garner support and interest from the people who are an otherwise captive audience at the restaurant. Listeners learn that the foundation’s mission is “to develop affordable, effective strategies for protecting and restoring the shallow water population of staghorn and elkhorn corals along the coastlines of Bonaire and Klein Bonaire.” They also learn that “CRF Bonaire, supported by the local government and the Bonaire Marine Park, is developing a large scale reef restoration program, promoting awareness and engaging tourists and local volunteers.” The foundation is young—created in 2012 after a visit from Ken Nedimyer of CRF’s United States branch to discuss conservation efforts. In February of that year, the government and marine park granted a permit for Buddy Dive to begin its work (CRF Bonaire 2015).
The last slide from the presentation at Blennies
As a leader for young adult scuba service trips on the island this summer, I saw the presentation three times, twice with a group of young adults. Both times, I brought groups for the express purpose of attending the presentation, giving strict instructions not to order anything aside from water; we were the only ones at the outdoor restaurant explicitly paying attention to the speaker.
I saw three different people give these presentations in three consecutive weeks. Yago, a handsome Spaniard with an awareness of his audience, was incredibly personable and often tried to engage us by making jokes and seeking answers to his somewhat rhetorical questions. The second week (which I attended without teenagers), Elena gave the presentation. She attempted some hasty jokes that fell on deaf ears and bulldozed through the scientific terminology with aplomb and novel pronunciation. Elena was Spartan with her words—no nonsense—and seemed as though she could not be done soon enough. She clearly cared about the restoration project but did not know how to address the lack of interest on the part of those dining. All of the coral restoration instructors take turns giving the presentation, as it is not a highly coveted after-hours job. Augusto, the head dive master instructor, gave the third week’s presentation. He struck a balance between Yago’s lighthearted banter and Elena’s direct, to-the-point information. Augusto has been in charge of diving at Buddy Dive for thirteen years and an integral part of the coral restoration endeavor for the past three. All three were highly informative presenters, and they rattled off scientific terms in English despite the fact that it was no one’s native tongue.
For some diners, the presentation disturbed their idyllic sunset dinner, and the presenter made an insincere apology and asked them to be quiet. There are no walls at Blennies, and the roof is thatched palm. It appeals to the tourists who flock here in droves for a rustic, tropical experience. For some guests, the dinner and drinks made them loud distractions. For others, dinner and drinks made them loud participants in the presentation. Either way, it was clear that the informational presentation was a surprise add-on to their tropical meal in paradise. Some were resentful while others embraced the laidback island spirit. Perhaps some of them would go on to get a coral restoration certification once they got tired of the house reef or maybe become curious about the haphazard obstacle course used for training set up under water by the shore. Maybe they would take the pictures of bleached and dying coral to heart and feel compelled to do their part to regenerate swaths of reef.
Sunset from Blennies during the presentation
Bonaire is a small island off the coast of Venezuela and a special municipality (as of 2010) of the Netherlands. It is therefore a common destination for vacationing Dutch, and several of the Dutch dive instructors grew up spending time on the island. The official language is Dutch, the local language is Papiamentu, and most everyone speaks English. The island is one of the top destinations in the world for shore diving, the access and ease of which is (so I’m told) unparalleled. Painted yellow rocks with the names of dive sites dot the roads along the shore, demarking shore dives. Especially along the southwestern shore of the island, it is hard to go more than a few hundred yards without a yellow rock.
Buddy Dive lies along a stretch of road that is home to many resorts that cater to tourists. These resorts provide all the equipment and (for the most part) instruction needed to start diving independently. In order to dive in Bonaire, one must be outfitted with a Stichting Nationale Parken (STINAPA) tag and pay a fee to the marine park. STINAPA is the nongovernmental, not-for-profit National Parks Foundation commissioned by the island government to manage the two protected areas of Bonaire: the Bonaire National Marine Park and the Washington Slagbaai National Park (STINAPA Bonaire 2011). In this way, Bonaire ensures that its natural beauty continues to exist for more tourists to visit. Every diver is therefore literally invested in conservations efforts on the island. Divers who wish to dive on their own must also do a “checkout dive” before getting this tag or diving anywhere else on coastline. They must prove that they are safe divers who will not endanger themselves, the reef, or others. On Saturdays, direct flights arrive from a handful of airports around the United States, as well as from Amsterdam. Sunday mornings at the Buddy Dive dock are hectic affairs tinged with American Southern accents, shouts in Dutch, jokes in Spanish, and slippery feet as the newly arrived prepare for a checkout dive.
Recently, some of the Buddy Dive instructors, representing a smattering of nationalities, created a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) certification specialty. The organizing certification body of divers around the world has granted its particular means of restoring coral, which is a huge boon. For some people who come to dive, this possibility and almost certainty of another badge and card to put onto their diving resume is a great draw, as divers love to collect specialties. Another tag! Another skill set! For some of these tourists, coral restoration is simply another way to get a dive in. For others, like the kids I brought to the island, the idea of saving the charismatic reefs is what brings them to Bonaire and Buddy Dive.
Coral reefs are tangible, colorful habitats and objects of conservation. The underwater landscape is vast and for the most part far more unknown compared to its terrestrial counterpart. To see pictures of coral reefs at their full resplendence is reminiscent of scenes from Finding Nemo. Perhaps this is part of the allure—to feel as though one is a part of a movie. There may not be many charismatic mega fauna in and among the branches of elkhorn and staghorn coral, but the colors and proximity of the smaller fish are almost enough to make a first-time diver gasp in her mask. Seahorses like to hang on the coral nurseries, and little, awkward trunkfish dart in and out of the branches.
A group of students hangs coral in the nursery off the shore of Klein Bonaire.
CRF Bonaire’s Facebook page shows fun pictures of newly certified divers, as well as underwater action shots of people cleaning and hanging coral in the nurseries, captioned as “coral lovers,” “coral heroes,” and “brave soldiers of the polyp.” It is interesting to note the age range of people who have gone through the course; the students I led were among the youngest, while most of the others are middle aged and retired. After they leave Bonaire, most of them will not go home to a reef to restore. This has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Perhaps they will come back, but there isn’t a direct tangible transference of skills and actions that stem from their coral restoration. Instead, they will share their photos with friends, wear the T-shirt they bought at the gift shop, and think about how relaxed they felt on the island. Hopefully the seeds of awareness have been sown, and perhaps at some point they will consider the small dent they have made in a wider global oceanic conservation effort.
Caroline Lowe is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She graduated from Harvard College with an honors degree in Folklore and Mythology, and her studies focused on the intersection of biology and folklore, specifically the role whales play in Māori culture in New Zealand. She hopes to continue educating people about how to best approach their own interaction with the natural world.
All photos in this post are credited to the author.
References
Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire. 2015. “About CRF Bonaire.” crfbonaire.org/about-crf-bonaire (accessed 24 August 2015).
STINAPA Bonaire National Parks Foundation. 2011. “STINAPA Bonaire.” stinapa.org (accessed 24 August 2015).
