This story is about everywhere and everything. But we’ll begin in 1967. And we’ll begin with a shipwreck. Picture a disaster at sea and its easy to imagine dramatic conditions playing a part. The loss of a vessel during stormy weather is an ageless narrative of the ocean, but it is not always the case, and it is poignant that one of the most influential shipwrecks in human history occurred in conditions that were entirely typical and expected.
The oil tanker Torrey Canyon, currently resting in pieces on the ocean floor near where it struck Pollard’s Rock, on the UK’s Cornish coast, was a big ship by any standards. Nearly 1,000 feet (300m) long and 125 feet (38m) wide, it was carrying 117,000 tonnes of crude when it ran aground in broad daylight thanks to a combination of poor judgement, technical issues, and human error. Completely unprepared for such an eventuality, British authorities tried to salvage the vessel, but it began to disintegrate, so they decided to set fire to it from the air. 161 bombs, 16 rockets, 1,700 tonnes of napalm and over 44,000 litres of kerosene were used. Detergent was dumped into the water in an effort to disperse the resulting slick but only made the environmental impact worse. The oil coated over 1,000 square kilometers around the coasts of Cornwall, the Channel Islands and Brittany.
The Torrey Canyon disaster resulted in all kinds of change. Multiple knock-on effects were felt in the world of environmental stewardship and politics in general. Some say it helped to get environmentalism on the agenda, in the UK at least, and it had long-term effects on maritime liability law.
The resulting changes also help to illustrate a specific problem. A problem that is highlighted by the event’s inclusion, 45 years later, in arguments on both sides of a legal action regarding damages inflicted against the Belize Barrier Reef, and by an unrelated court case with wide-ranging ramifications that was brought in Ecuador around the same time.
For hundreds of years in the West, we have displayed a propensity to view nature with a mix of greed, ambivalence and antipathy. For millennia, people elsewhere have lived in greater harmony with nature.
I am a newcomer to Haida Gwaii and cannot claim to be an expert on Haida culture, but at this point I’ve seen slightly more than the average tourist and some things seem clear. Those animal symbols that you see on items for sale to tourists or in fancy urban galleries, they are not just for show or for decoration. They are ubiquitous in daily life and have enormous personal, expressive and ceremonial value. More than symbolic– they are closer to an invocation– the living presence of the animal called into the society of people. Nature’s power is mutable- a being may take one form and transform into something else, human, animal or otherwise. A different form with the same power, stemming from the same supernatural place. In this universe, livings things move from one form to another along the same substrate– a web of life which is vital, present, and vastly more powerful than humankind.
Haida music– the drum, the rattle, and the voice– is elemental but harmonious. Haida oral history refers to events that happened thousands of years ago and in the more recent past. Ancient and contemporary life exist not in parallel but simultaneously. Likewise, the supernatural and the everyday. In the West, we call down our enlightenment from above– from God or from Aristotle. Here, supernatural beings are invited in from the forest, the rivers and the ocean. People have their place in this universe, a unique place but not a place of privilege above everything else. Relationships are specific, individual. Everything moves in subtle tension with everything else.
Now imagine that you have felt that. Imagine if could feel that kind of harmony with nature.
Now, imagine that you could swim at nearly 70 kilometres per hour when you had to.
Mako sharks are one of the fastest living creatures in the sea. Sharks move in a subtly different way from other sea animals due to their unique physiology; Unlike a fish, a shark’s skeletal frame is made from cartilage, not bone, and its muscles are connected to its sub-dermal layer, not it’s skeleton, allowing to it lever maximum power into its swimming action. But makos move differently again– sharklike but with a fishlike tempo and with more head movement. Most sharks cruise, makos dart.
A mako is warm-blooded, like only a few of its closest cousins, and like all sharks it’s skin is covered in dermal denticles– tiny tooth-like scales that give it a hydrodynamic advantage. Its form is adapted to a high-speed life– elongated, trim, pointed.
And like all sharks makos are under attack in a host of ways.
Makos are more prevalent than other shark species and their numbers have not declined as much as some at this point, but their IUCN Red List status has recently been toughened from Threatened to Endangered. Some sport-fishermen like to target Makos because they provide a unique thrill in the hunt (a mako can leap several meters out of the water in its attempts to break free), and they are just as sought-after for their fins as other shark and ray species. Even as global pressure against finning– historically the most profitable way to exploit sharks– gains momentum and important legislation against the fin trade is implemented, the market for shark meat and other shark and ray parts is expanding. In addition, millions of sharks and rays, as well as other creatures, have been caught accidentally by commercial fishermen targeting other species. Even sharks that have been tagged for research purposes get taken. The image of a tracking signal from a tagged mako caught in the Central Atlantic in this article illustrates one such abrupt end– the straight line from ocean to port like the horizontal line on an ECG.
The picture for all shark species is a confusing patchwork of legal and illegal fishing, trade in fins, meat and other parts and bycatch– only some of which is reported. In 2011, the fin trade was estimated at around 16,000 tonnes– a 5% decrease from the previous year, while the shark, ray and skate meat trade was estimated at around 121,000 tonnes– a 42% increase over the same period. A 2019 industry report focusing on the economic opportunity of shark parts projects that the market will grow by a further $360 million dollars by 2023. Oceana reported an estimated 12 million sharks and rays killed as bycatch throughout the nineties.
It is difficult to reconcile these numbers with any sense of being in harmony with nature. Socio-economic proposals having to do with everything from food supply to plastic pollution talk about the need to live within planetary boundaries– levels of extraction and pollution that the biosphere can support. Philosophically it is a big step from indigenous worldviews that call for living in harmony with nature, but I’m going to argue that from a functional perspective it shouldn’t be– every living thing is dependent upon the web of life, this ecosystem, for survival. If you accept that respect for nature is at least on some level a requirement, the way you think about what’s happening to sharks right now says a lot about you.
As part of my research for this piece, I reached out to a number of Instagram accounts featuring the work of people who feature sharks in their imagery. My hypothesis was that the popularity of photography depicting people interacting with big sea creatures was perhaps some kind of telling parallel– a yearning for a connection and a sign of respect– or at least a desire to live in world where respect for nature prevails– an echo of ancient knowledge, perhaps felt by people who feel a lack of connection with nature in their daily lives. I wonder if #sharklovers represents some new kind of genuine, if distant, social connection with the environment– a shark nation under one tag. No responses so far.
Makos may be about to get a big lift thanks to high-level international agreements that are in the works right now. Parties to the CITES agreement– the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species– are meeting this week to update and amend the treaty. Many important species are up for protection including both shortfin and longfin mako sharks, and IUCN Critically Endangered guitarfish and wedgefish species. The good news is that protective measures for these sharks have successfully made through the initial vote to include them– we won’t know for sure until the treaty gets fully ratified at the end of the conference. This is important stuff. 24% of all shark species are threatened with extinction. CITES can play a role in taking some of them off the world’s food menu, even while most NGOs in the space concede that attempts to sustainably fish some species will need to be accommodated.
Guitarfish and wedgefish live close to shore but makos are pelagic, that is to say, deep-sea animals, and as a result, they may have some other good news on the way. Work on the new UN Treaty for Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (a treaty for managing human interaction with marine life on the high-seas as opposed to coastal waters), is entering its final stages. Great news in general although by definition it will almost certainly provide for exploitation as well as protection.
The tension between protection and exploitation has become fundamental to all conversations regarding the living world. Is CITES a treaty for conservation or a trade agreement? Will the treaty for biodiversity in the high seas be more of a framework for conservation or for development? Conservation versus sustainable use. Always both, needing to be reconciled, never one guiding principal. There is a solution however.
One of the groups I have been in touch with regarding the treaty for the high seas is the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN), thanks to one of their board members who works for the Earth Law Center focusing on the oceans. They have been doing some work in connection with the treaty language– making their own recommendations– as many will. The stuff they sent me is fantastic.
More on all of the above in part two.
