Planet Ocean Page #5

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now seems so far away.

Within only 200 years

we violently disturbed four

billion years of natural history.

We never see the beauty of life anymore,

but only what it can do to our species,

what it can produce for us.

Everything around us is alive,

and suffers our existence.

We all leave our traces

wherever we go.

It is said that sperm whales dreams

with their head upside down.

But are not we all dreaming,

to think that we can continue

with this insane growth

without any consequences?

Hundreds of our ships

sail continuously

across the seas of our planet.

The more our needs expand,

the more numerous our machines are.

Whatever we do,

our industrial civilization

destroys the natural world around it.

The risk of pollution becames

a threat to all our neighborhoods.

Our giant engines burning

tons of gas per hour.

We spit everywhere polluting materials

the sky and the ocean.

In the polar regions

the permanent ice cap melts

as a result of global warming.

In those regions are no factories,

no machines,

and yet this warming is caused

by our own carbon emissions.

Fossil energy, oil

that we need for our civilization,

heats the ocean.

But the melting of the Arctic

has another, more serious consequence.

In the north, by melting

of the permanent ice sheet,

dark waters are revealed.

The water absorbs the sun's heat,

which used to be reflected by the ice.

And the phenomenon is growing.

The ocean itself accelerates global warming.

In Greenland,

just as in the Arctic,

land-based glaciers melt.

As they melt, trickling streams of

fresh water flows into a salty sea..

The great movement of ocean currents,

this stream that circles the globe

and regulates the climate,

gradually becomes clogged.

What will be the consequences?

None of us has lived through

such a change to find out.

More than 20,000 kilometers away,

far away from the polar regions,

Climate chaos is already being felt.

It is not visible at the surface.

To see it, we need to go reef diving

in the tropics,

such as near the Blue Hole in Belize,

the second largest coral reef in the world.

Corals are very sensitive

to temperature changes.

A difference of only one degree for

a few weeks is enough to kill them.

Then only

a reef of white skeletons remains.

These bleachings intensified recently.

Scientists worry.

A quarter of the corals on the planet

died within 50 years.

The immediate problem is not their death,

but rather the impact of their disappearance.

They die and leave nothing behind.

The sea is a desert oasis.

Further offshore, the vastness of the ocean

hides something else.

After the corals, the other critical

factor is the health of the plankton.

More and more

scientific missions on this ocean

are just beginning to discover

more effects.

They try to understand

what will change in marine life.

The life that feeds us.

It seems that the plankton,

the basis for all food chains

are moving towards polar regions,

where the water is still moderate.

In 50 years it has moved

1200 km further north.

This redistribution of plankton

has effects on marine life.

Every year the Cownose Ray migrates

between Brazil and the temperate zones

in search of food.

Every year, the journey brings them a little

higher, slightly more to the north.

The global warming

disturbs the ecology of the ocean.

With this change,

our fisheries change.

But I know

that we can not stop fishing.

In Chile, where one quarter

of world tonnage is fished,

the sea is the income for thousands of

traditional fishermen and their families.

Many have large debts

to pay for their boats.

The commercial species are scarce,

So they fish for what remains.

Previously we ate no Chilean sardine

or Peruvian anchovies.

But now we fish more

than 10 million tons each year.

This is an extraordinary attack

on a single species,

the only one still living in these waters.

Along the coast of Chile

a powerful flow rises

from the bottom of the ocean.

It is rich in plankton

and sardines flourish.

This is an upwelling flow.

It circulates the water

and provides nutrients.

Seals and birds hunt the small

fish around the rising water of life.

The Chileans fishing with trawls,

very long tubes that are closed,

collect just over 40 tonnes per load.

Five hundred thousand fish in each net

is sucked into the machine.

Sardines live only a few years,

so they reproduce rapidly.

This is the last bluefish

still surviving

even as catches increase.

But we do not eat this fish.

We catch it to make flour out of it.

Fish flour that we feed farmed fish.

In total, 25 million tons of fish

annually is grown,

of which the most

comes from Norway and Chile.

We grow only species

with a high market value,

such as sea bream, sea bass and salmon.

You need several kilos of sardines

to produce one kilo of farmed fish.

Our farms are an industry that is

based on a natural food source.

But what do we do if

there are no sardines anymore?

And as our food sources run out, we

continuously push our luck further and further.

The open sea is a free zone.

Two-thirds of the ocean belongs to everyone

and therefore belongs

to the first to use it.

Off the coast of West Africa

shipowning thugs make poor fishermen

plunder the last areas that are rich in fish.

Aboard their wrecks,

these men are left to themselves,

refueled once a month,

if they are lucky.

Men and boats who seem

to have no value to anyone.

In Mauritania, port of Nouadhibou

degenerated to a graveyard

of pirate fishing.

Hundreds of boats off the coast

seized, abandoned wrecks,

probably already replaced

by other vessels.

The pirate ships gather

in less supervised areas,

as the African sector.

At sea, these illegal vessels

reload their cargoes on board

of authorized vessels

so their catch can be legally sold

on international markets.

In the worst-case estimates, illegal fishing amounts

to as much as 26 million tonnes of catch,

a quarter of the global total.

Gain dominion over the seas.

In the sea,

90% of large predators has disappeared.

One of the last of these,

Atlantic bluefin tuna,

is on the brink of extinction.

Yet they are legally fished

in the Mediterranean,

one of the last refuges of

this species, where they reproduce.

The tuna are caught in a very large net

that is closed like a pen.

The catch is caught alive

and fattened in a nursery

before slaughter

and sales on international markets.

This fish is a luxury food source.

A top quality tuna weighs 300 kilos

and can sell for more

than 500,000 euros.

Corruption and lies prevail everywhere.

The tuna fishing fleets benefit from

millions of euros in European subsidies.

We respect no quotas,

We take no precautions

for the preservation of the species.

At this rate, the extinction of the tuna

is a matter of a few years..

We plunder the common good

because it belongs to no one

and it seems vast.

But what remains for tomorrow?

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