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Save the oceans, feed the world!

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    You may be wondering
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    why a marine biologist from Oceana
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    would come here today to talk to you
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    about world hunger.
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    I'm here today because
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    saving the oceans is more than an ecological desire.
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    It's more than a thing we're doing
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    because we want to create jobs for fishermen
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    or preserve fishermen's jobs.
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    It's more than an economic pursuit.
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    Saving the oceans can feed the world.
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    Let me show you how.
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    As you know, there are already
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    more than a billion hungry people on this planet.
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    We're expecting that problem to get worse
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    as world population grows to nine billion
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    or 10 billion by midcentury,
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    and we can expect to have greater pressure
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    on our food resources.
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    And this is a big concern,
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    especially considering where we are now.
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    Now we know that our arable land per capita
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    is already on the decline
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    in both developed and developing countries.
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    We know that we're headed for climate change,
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    which is going to change rainfall patterns,
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    making some areas drier, as you can see in orange,
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    and others wetter, in blue,
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    causing droughts in our breadbaskets,
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    in places like the Midwest and Central Europe,
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    and floods in others.
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    It's going to make it harder for the land
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    to help us solve the hunger problem.
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    And that's why the oceans need
    to be their most abundant,
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    so that the oceans can provide us
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    as much food as possible.
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    And that's something the oceans have been doing
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    for us for a long time.
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    As far back as we can go, we've seen an increase
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    in the amount of food we've been able to harvest
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    from our oceans.
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    It just seemed like it was continuing to increase,
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    until about 1980,
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    when we started to see a decline.
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    You've heard of peak oil.
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    Maybe this is peak fish.
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    I hope not. I'm going to come back to that.
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    But you can see about an 18-percent decline
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    in the amount of fish we've gotten in our world catch
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    since 1980.
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    And this is a big problem. It's continuing.
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    This red line is continuing to go down.
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    But we know how to turn it around,
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    and that's what I'm going to talk about today.
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    We know how to turn that curve back upwards.
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    This doesn't have to be peak fish.
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    If we do a few simple things in targeted places,
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    we can bring our fisheries back and use them
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    to feed people.
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    First we want to know where the fish are,
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    so let's look where the fish are.
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    It turns out the fish, conveniently,
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    are located for the most part
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    in our coastal areas of the countries,
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    in coastal zones,
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    and these are areas that national jurisdictions
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    have control over,
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    and they can manage their fisheries
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    in these coastal areas.
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    Coastal countries tend to have jurisdictions
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    that go out about 200 nautical miles,
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    in areas that are called exclusive economic zones,
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    and this is a good thing that they can control
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    their fisheries in these areas,
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    because the high seas,
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    which are the darker areas on this map,
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    the high seas, it's a lot harder to control things,
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    because it has to be done internationally.
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    You get into international agreements,
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    and if any of you are tracking
    the climate change agreement,
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    you know this can be a very slow,
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    frustrating, tedious process.
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    And so controlling things nationally
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    is a great thing to be able to do.
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    How many fish are actually in these coastal areas
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    compared to the high seas?
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    Well, you can see here about
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    seven times as many fish in the coastal areas
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    than there are in the high seas,
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    so this is a perfect place for us to be focusing,
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    because we can actually get a lot done.
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    We can restore a lot of our fisheries
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    if we focus in these coastal areas.
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    But how many of these countries
    do we have to work in?
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    There's something like 80 coastal countries.
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    Do we have to fix fisheries management
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    in all of those countries?
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    So we asked ourselves, how many countries
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    do we need to focus on,
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    keeping in mind that the European Union
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    conveniently manages its fisheries
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    through a common fisheries policy?
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    So if we got good fisheries management
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    in the European Union and,
    say, nine other countries,
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    how much of our fisheries would we be covering?
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    Turns out, European Union plus nine countries
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    covers about two thirds of the world's fish catch.
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    If we took it up to 24 countries
    plus the European Union,
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    we would up to 90 percent,
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    almost all of the world's fish catch.
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    So we think we can work in
    a limited number of places
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    to make the fisheries come back.
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    But what do we have to do in these places?
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    Well, based on our work in the United States
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    and elsewhere, we know that there are
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    three key things we have to do
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    to bring fisheries back, and they are:
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    We need to set quotas or limits
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    on how much we take;
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    we need to reduce bycatch, which is the accidental
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    catching and killing of fish that we're not targeting,
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    and it's very wasteful;
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    and three, we need to protect habitats,
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    the nursery areas, the spawning areas
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    that these fish need to grow
    and reproduce successfully
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    so that they can rebuild their populations.
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    If we do those three things, we
    know the fisheries will come back.
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    How do we know?
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    We know because we've seen it happening
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    in a lot of different places.
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    This is a slide that shows
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    the herring population in Norway
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    that was crashing since the 1950s.
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    It was coming down, and when Norway set limits,
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    or quotas, on its fishery, what happens?
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    The fishery comes back.
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    This is another example, also
    happens to be from Norway,
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    of the Norwegian Arctic cod.
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    Same deal. The fishery is crashing.
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    They set limits on discards.
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    Discards are these fish they weren't targeting
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    and they get thrown overboard wastefully.
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    When they set the discard limit,
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    the fishery came back.
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    And it's not just in Norway.
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    We've seen this happening in countries
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    all around the world, time and time again.
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    When these countries step in and they
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    put in sustainable fisheries management policies,
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    the fisheries, which are always crashing, it seems,
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    are starting to come back.
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    So there's a lot of promise here.
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    What does this mean for the world fish catch?
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    This means that if we take that fishery catch
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    that's on the decline
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    and we could turn it upwards, we could increase it
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    up to 100 million metric tons per year.
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    So we didn't have peak fish yet.
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    We still have an opportunity
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    to not only bring the fish back
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    but to actually get more fish
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    that can feed more people
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    than we currently are now.
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    How many more? Right about now,
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    we can feed about 450 million people
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    a fish meal a day
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    based on the current world fish catch,
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    which, of course, you know is going down,
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    so that number will go down over time
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    if we don't fix it,
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    but if we put fishery management practices
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    like the ones I've described in place
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    in 10 to 25 countries,
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    we could bring that number up
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    and feed as many as 700 million people a year
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    a healthy fish meal.
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    We should obviously do this just because
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    it's a good thing to deal with the hunger problem,
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    but it's also cost-effective.
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    It turns out fish is the most cost-effective protein
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    on the planet.
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    If you look at how much fish protein you get
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    per dollar invested
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    compared to all of the other animal proteins,
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    obviously, fish is a good business decision.
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    It also doesn't need a lot of land,
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    something that's in short supply,
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    compared to other protein sources.
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    And it doesn't need a lot of fresh water.
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    It uses a lot less fresh water than,
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    for example, cattle,
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    where you have to irrigate a field
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    so that you can grow the food to graze the cattle.
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    It also has a very low carbon footprint.
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    It has a little bit of a carbon footprint
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    because we do have to get out and catch the fish.
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    It takes a little bit of fuel,
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    but as you know, agriculture
    can have a carbon footprint,
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    and fish has a much smaller one,
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    so it's less polluting.
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    It's already a big part of our diet,
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    but it can be a bigger part of our diet,
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    which is a good thing, because we know
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    that it's healthy for us.
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    It can reduce our risks of cancer,
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    heart disease and obesity.
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    In fact, our CEO Andy Sharpless,
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    who is the originator of this concept, actually,
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    he likes to say fish is the perfect protein.
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    Andy also talks about the fact that
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    our ocean conservation movement really grew
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    out of the land conservation movement,
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    and in land conservation,
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    we have this problem where biodiversity
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    is at war with food production.
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    You have to cut down the biodiverse forest
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    if you want to get the field
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    to grow the corn to feed people with,
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    and so there's a constant push-pull there.
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    There's a constant tough decision
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    that has to be made between
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    two very important things:
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    maintaining biodiversity and feeding people.
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    But in the oceans, we don't have that war.
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    In the oceans, biodiversity is not at war
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    with abundance.
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    In fact, they're aligned.
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    When we do things that produce biodiversity,
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    we actually get more abundance,
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    and that's important so that we can feed people.
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    Now, there's a catch.
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    Didn't anyone get that? (Laughter)
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    Illegal fishing.
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    Illegal fishing undermines the type of
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    sustainable fisheries management I'm talking about.
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    It can be when you catch fish using gears
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    that have been prohibited,
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    when you fish in places where
    you're not supposed to fish,
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    you catch fish that are the wrong
    size or the wrong species.
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    Illegal fishing cheats the consumer
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    and it also cheats honest fishermen,
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    and it needs to stop.
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    The way illegal fish get into our
    market is through seafood fraud.
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    You might have heard about this.
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    It's when fish are labeled as something they're not.
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    Think about the last time you had fish.
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    What were you eating?
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    Are you sure that's what it was?
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    Because we tested 1,300 different fish samples
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    and about a third of them
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    were not what they were labeled to be.
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    Snappers, nine out of 10
    snappers were not snapper.
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    Fifty-nine percent of the tuna we tested
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    was mislabeled.
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    And red snapper, we tested 120 samples,
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    and only seven of them were really red snapper,
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    so good luck finding a red snapper.
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    Seafood has a really complex supply chain,
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    and at every step in this supply chain,
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    there's an opportunity for seafood fraud,
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    unless we have traceability.
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    Traceability is a way where the seafood industry
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    can track the seafood from the boat to the plate
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    to make sure that the consumer can then find out
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    where their seafood came from.
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    This is a really important thing.
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    It's being done by some in
    the industry, but not enough,
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    so we're pushing a law in Congress
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    called the SAFE Seafood Act,
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    and I'm very excited today to announce the release
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    of a chef's petition, where 450 chefs
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    have signed a petition calling on Congress
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    to support the SAFE Seafood Act.
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    It has a lot of celebrity chefs you may know --
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    Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali,
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    Barton Seaver and others —
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    and they've signed it because they believe
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    that people have a right to know
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    about what they're eating.
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    (Applause)
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    Fishermen like it too, so there's a good chance
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    we can get the kind of support we need
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    to get this bill through,
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    and it comes at a critical time,
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    because this is the way we stop seafood fraud,
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    this is the way we curb illegal fishing,
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    and this is the way we make sure
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    that quotas, habitat protection,
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    and bycatch reductions can do the jobs
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    they can do.
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    We know that we can manage
    our fisheries sustainably.
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    We know that we can produce
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    healthy meals for hundreds of millions of people
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    that don't use the land, that don't use much water,
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    have a low carbon footprint,
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    and are cost-effective.
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    We know that saving the oceans
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    can feed the world,
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    and we need to start now.
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    (Applause)
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    Thank you. (Applause)
Title:
Save the oceans, feed the world!
Speaker:
Jackie Savitz
Description:

What's a marine biologist doing talking about world hunger? Well, says Jackie Savitz, fixing the world's oceans might just help to feed the planet's billion hungriest people. In an eye-opening talk, Savitz tells us what’s really going on in our global fisheries right now — it’s not good — and offers smart suggestions of how we can help them heal, while making more food for all.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
11:10

English subtitles

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