It was a good way to celebrate this year’s World Oceans Day (every 8th of June): being at the fundraising Worlds Oceans Dinner at the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin, an historic establishment in the Dutch coastal town of Noordwijk aan Zee, with views over the windy waters of the North Sea. Seas, or better Oceans, that is what World Oceans Day is about.
We still know relatively little on what is going beneath the surface of the waters that covers the mayor part of our Blue Planet. (Why bother to waste large amounts of money on trips to Mars or the Moon if there is still so much to discover in the waters that covers the mayor part of our Blue Planet, I sometimes wonder). What we do know is not very comforting. Sea levels are rising, habitats disappearing at a fast rate, coral reefs are threatened through changing chemical composition and temperature of the waters, plastic particles are now found practically everywhere in the ocean environment. Changing currents may lead to unpredictable changes of the environment and extreme weather conditions. An increasing amount of species is under thread of extinction. Plagues of weeds, algae and jellyfish are increasingly bothering vast ocean areas. A growing amount of wild fish is getting overfished.
Reason enough to dedicate a day to our Oceans and stress the need for policies and governance that can fight the overwhelming amount of alarming issues in our waters.
The North Sea is not a world ocean in the strict sense, and more of an extension of the Northern Atlantic, but nonetheless a sea that has a great significance when it comes to issues of preserving our oceans. What about tuna? The good news is: bluefin tuna has made it’s come back in the North Sea. Disappeared in the seventies of the last century, the giant tuna, one of Europe’s greatest biological and cultural heritages is swimming around again, probably entering via its the Northern Atlantic migration route. This is (at least partly) an important result of improving stock management of ICCAT, the international management organization for Atlantic Tuna where the EU and its fisheries are the strongest stakeholder. The fact that they swim in the Northern waters is an indication of the new abundancy of this fish. And they find enough fish to feed on, which might get eventually a problem with their direct competitors: the fishermen.
There is more good news coming of the Mid and Northern European waters. After decades of painstakingly figuring out its Common Fisheries Policy, the European Union managed to put in place a governance that helped to recover important stocks of fish that once was overfished. Stocks of herring, plaice, sole, mackerel. Even the cod stock is making a slow come and sometimes difficult comeback. The fishing quota need our attention, and probably always will. But that does not alter the fact that policies and governance for sustainable fisheries as such have proved to work, even in complicated geostrategic areas like the North Sea.
No bluefin tuna on the menu of the World Ocean’s Dinner though. The organizing Good Fish Foundation, a Dutch NGO that has developed a handy app to inform consumers what fish is sustainable to eat, had chosen local fish and shellfish that are abundant enough to put on the menu. The invited chefs where competing to create the most innovative dishes with this local supply. The result was a surprising, healthy and sustainable 11- course meal.
The chefs in the kitchen are an essential link in the chain to sustainability, more essential than most of them realize. The Good Fish Foundation is working hard to improve the consciousness of chefs in restaurants and bars of what sustainable seafood they can offer their clients and what not. For who believes that demand really matters in steering a fishery to a more sustainable course, this is important work. There is still a lot to do: most cooks in The Netherlands (and elsewhere in the world) do not have a clue where the fish is coming from or how it is fished, let alone the state of the stocks, the amount of bycatch, the use of bait fish, the environmental impact, the status of social responsibility and other sustainability issues of the fish they cook. And even if they do, many are still in a search what all the ecological labels, certifications, sustainability claims really mean.
Fish apps like the one of the Good Fish Foundation of the American Monterrey Bay Aquarium really can help. But there is still much work to do to inform and educate the professional sector about the fish they like to serve. During the World Ocean’s Dinner, the World Oceans Deal was signed, in which 21 chefs and their suppliers promised to act like World Oceans Ambassadors to promote healthy oceans full of fish. Changing the demand for sustainable fish is not an easy task. What can these professionals do? They can show themselves as examples that a sustainable supply can work. They can promote it in their professional organizations and help to inform their colleagues. They could force the suppliers upstream in the chain to deliver a record of transparent and traceable origin of their fish. And, very important, they can convince the academies that learn their students to cook and buy seafood to make sustainability an integral part of the study course. That could really make a change.’