Racing Extinction Page #4

of breaking down grass

and other things that they feed on.

So, the contractions

are pushing this gas

out from the stomach,

going through here and the

one-way valve and into that?

Yes. And after this,

we collect inside the bag.

So, how long has that bag

been collecting gas?

Only two hours.

Methane is something

like 22 times more potent

as a climate-changing gas

than is CO2,

so it doesn't take very much

methane to make a difference.

A cow can basically

fill up a 55-gallon garbage bag

full of methane every day.

One cow's not a problem, but now

we have 1 .5 billion of them.

And it's an incredibly

inefficient way of producing food.

Three-quarters of agricultural land

is used just to feed livestock.

When you factor in everything,

the clearing of the land

for grazing, feeding,

and transporting, livestock

causes more greenhouse gases

than all the direct emissions

from the entire transportation sector.

I don't think it's

a competition between these problems.

l don't think one could

be put above the other.

lt's like saying,

"well, is global warming

worse than ocean acidification?"

Or, "Is fishing all the big fish in

the sea worse than polluting it?"

I think it'd be foolish

to try and single out

any one of them to say

this is how we're gonna

fix the planet's problems.

We need to fight them

on all fronts.

Look at all the rodents.

They're like house cats.

Look at this one.

lt's still alive.

A lot of doors closing.

Lights going off.

That's scary, man.

Yeah, we're definitely

not welcome here.

In 2003, the government clamped

down on the wildlife markets

across southern China, so things

started to go underground,

so operating

in early hours of the morning.

And it's horrific.

They're shutting down.

-What?

-They're shutting down.

That's crazy.

They're hiding them now.

Oh, my gosh!

This is a market that had to

switch places twice that year.

Oh. What are they doing?

I mean, they know they're

not supposed to be doing

what they're doing.

That's hardcore.

The more endangered it is,

the more illegal it is,

the more we have to go

to the back rooms.

Go straight up.

So, Louie,

l want to show you

something right here.

You're looking at

a dozen manta rays

sitting right in

these bags right here.

When you consider that each

of these animals

has one pup every couple years,

you're looking at literally

an entire generation wiped out,

just in these bags.

A few years ago, I started

noticing species of

manta and mobula ray

lined up in the streets

in areas that used to be

predominantly shark ports.

And it was really confusing

to me, because I understood

that you can't use their wings

for shark-fin soup,

and the meat from these rays

is very pungent.

It's not worth the time

of bringing in

these huge, heavy animals.

I couldn't believe

when I walked in.

There's just giant, oceanic

mantas all lined up in a row.

And just wanted to know

what was going on,

and then l started watching them

cutting out the gills.

The gills are missing.

Where did they put them?

Where did they take the gills?

And it came down to this.

It was an old cultural remedy

in a very small, coastal town

in southern China,

and that was over 50 years ago.

And that had

largely disappeared,

but I think it was just

following the Sars outbreak,

somebody got it

in their mind that

"Hey, we're running out

of sharks.

"What other products

can we move into the pipeline?"

The gills of manta rays ended up

in all the traditional

Chinese medicine stores

and the dried-seafood stores.

I remember my first encounter

with a manta in the water.

It's something

I'll never forget.

I'm sitting in the water,

and then just out of the blue,

this manta ray does

this huge flyby, right past,

and then goes back

into the blue.

And then I'm just left

breathless, waiting.

Just recently, we were in Bali.

At the end of the last dive,

everyone's out of the water.

And I look down,

and this one manta comes

right underneath me

and then just stops,

and it hovers,

and it's about 1 5 feet down,

and it just-- It's not moving.

And I'm like, "That's interesting."

I look, and there's fishing line

tailing off the top of its body.

And the first thing I did

is I swam down.

I snipped the line off

the top of its head,

right just above the hook.

And swam up.

She didn't swim away.

She was just hovering

right underneath me.

So I swim back down to her

one more time,

and I put my hand gently

right on the front of her head,

and I put my hand on the hook,

and I slowly worked that hook

right out of its top jaw.

And I thought, "That's it.

"You know, she's gonna

swim off now. She's been saved."

I look down, and she's

circling right under my feet.

So I swim back down to her

one more time,

and I put my hand right next

to where the injury was,

as if sort of rubbing it

and saying, "Hey, listen.

"You're gonna be okay."

And I put my head

right next to her eye,

and I just remember her eye

moving back and forth

between my mask,

looking at both my eyes...

and realized that she knew

I was trying to help her.

Often, people say, "How can

one person make a difference?"

What if you could see

how shark-fin soup is made?

If you could see how each year,

up to 70 million sharks

are killed to end up in soup,

could you still eat it?

I shared the footage of

a live, finned shark

in Indonesia with WildAid,

an organizer that has been

working on shark conservation

in China.

The film went to

over a billion people in Asia.

80% who were surveyed who saw it

said they were either gonna

quit eating shark-fin soup

or drastically reduce

their consumption of it.

Remember, when the buying stops,

the killing can, too.

As a still photographer,

I can see the power of an image.

It was transformative.

But I think it's in our DNA to

take care of future generations,

and if you can find that way in,

you can reach people

really quickly and change them.

The human eye

is so limited.

We see only a tiny,

little sliver

of the electromagnetic spectrum.

It's like if you owned

a grand piano in your house,

but you could only hear

one note on it.

Normally, carbon dioxide gas

is invisible to the human eye,

but certain wavelengths

of infrared will be absorbed

by gases like CO2 or methane.

So that's what's

going on here.

This camera has a very

particular color filter on it,

enabling us to visualize

the CO2 gas

that's coming out of

our noses and mouths.

We had two cameras.

One camera that sees

what your eye sees,

and the other,

what the fossil-fuel companies

don't want the rest

of the world to see.

The carbon dioxide world.

Let's do

this one coming at us.

Three, two, one.

I mean, it's disgusting,

but it's beautiful.

So, let's

just go up left here.

-On the left here?

-Real slow here.

Where these guys are gonna be,

a slow creep.

Slowly, slowly,

slow down.

Slowly, slowly, slowly,

slowly, slowly, slowly.

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