The Law of the Seas isn’t law enough. Oh sure, the long established United Nations treaty is used to regulate oceanic commerce, scientific exploration and maritime territorial claims. And while it’s not broad enough to address the most critical issues confronting our seas it’s enough to inspire anti-UN conspiracy buffs in the U.S. Senate who have blocked its ratification for over 30 years now. But to date the Law of the Seas and other treaties and multilateral agreements on the dumping of waste to the catching of tuna have not done enough to deal with the cascading disasters that threaten the survival of the ecosystems that make up a living ocean.
These threats include industrial overfishing for the global seafood market with fish being caught faster than they can reproduce and much of that protein being siphoned off to the supermarkets and white linen tablecloth restaurants of the developed world and China.
Then there’s the oil, chemical, plastic, farm and urban nutrient waste that’s created some 500 ‘dead zones’ in coastal seas and introduced bits of micro-plastic that act as toxic sponges (a million times more effectively than seawater) for chlorinated compounds like PCB concentrating them in the marine food-web from zooplankton to the seared Ahi you order at your favorite eatery. A recent report suggests that by mid-century there could be, by weight, more plastic than fish in the ocean.
There’s also the ongoing loss of coastal and ocean habitats including bays, estuaries, salt marshes, sea grasses, mangroves, coral reefs, seamounts and fishing trawl raked seabeds essential for the preservation and restoration of our blue planet.
And on top of all that, fossil-fuel fired climate disruption is warming and acidifying the ocean. Along with sea level rise and loss of polar sea ice it turns out that a warmer more acidic ocean also holds less dissolved oxygen. That’s not a problem for jellyfish but less happy news for marine mammals and bony fish. Also algae is on the decline as ocean temperatures rise and while the rainforest has been called “the lungs of the world” it’s actually tiny phytoplankton that provides us with about half the oxygen we breathe.
So given all we get from the ocean including recreation, transportation, trade, energy, protein, medicine, weather, oxygen and a sense of awe, wonder and joy, isn’t it time we gave something back? But what can I, a mere Harvard Law Student hope to contribute, you might wonder?
Of course the choices we make every day impact the seas around us (see my book, ‘50 Ways to Save the Ocean’). But the unique skills you’re developing as near and future lawyers might also provide some useful impacts. I’m not suggesting a focus on maritime law, that obscure corner of the profession that ranges from Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius who in 1609 argued for Mare Liberum or ‘Freedom of the Seas’ to today’s shipping and government counsels arguing over claims of access and ownership in the South China Sea, the Arctic Ocean and elsewhere, though that can be fun.
Rather I’m talking about the willingness of a few litigators and legal thinkers to re-imagine our relationship with the planet’s last great commons. Today there are a handful of environmental and human rights attorneys, prosecutors and maritime law-enforcement agents willing to go after the most egregious of the Salt Water special interests: the commercial fishing fleets, offshore oil and gas industry, shipping industry, the Navy and coastal developers who, through greed or ignorance or a combination have put the crucible of life on our salty blue planet at risk.
New York Times’ reporter Ian Urbina’s recent series ‘Outlaw Ocean’ helped expose the lack of law or justice on the high seas, from murders of mariners that go unprosecuted to the use of Burmese and other slave crews by large scale fishing operators.
Today, the lines between industrial fishing, Illegal, Unreported and Undocumented (IUU) fishing, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and organized crime are becoming ever more blurred. Overfishing, and its criminal cousin, pirate fishing are common currency from Thailand and Korea to Russia, Fiji, Costa Rica, Italy, and Spain. Plus there are a few fishermen out of New Bedford who’ve had their run-ins with the law.
At the same time solutions are being scaled up and codified. Last May my non-profit ocean conservation group Blue Frontier (www.bluefront.org) organized the largest Citizen Lobby for Ocean Conservation on Capitol Hill in history. Our delegates from 24 states met with 9 Senators, 25 House members and 120 congressional staffers to support a bipartisan bill aimed at ending unregulated and pirate fishing in the world’s ocean and signing on to a global agreement. Two months later the House passed the bill and the Senate followed. On November 5th the President signed it into law. Now suspected pirate fishermen, shark finners and the like can be more effectively tracked and seized when they come into various ports around the world with their ‘hot fish’ and slave crews.
In November we also founded the Sea Party Coalition to stop offshore oil (www.seaparty2016.org). Members range from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace to commercial fishermen, coastal businesses elected officials and homeowners. We even have a few Tea Party Republican Congressmen along with climate activist Bill McKibben, an 85-foot inflatable blue whale, and other more usual suspects.
The Sea Party aims to make proposed new offshore drilling in the Arctic and along the Atlantic coast the next Keystone Pipeline (an idea whose time has passed). Our slogan; ‘Don’t Spill on Me;’ our election year goal; nothing less than restoring the blue in our red, white and blue.
Lawyers like Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council have also commanded multi-year legal battles with other ‘Big Fish’ ocean powers such as the U.S. Navy, repeatedly suing the Navy over its use of low-frequency sonar that has been linked to the stranding deaths of various whales and other marine mammals.
Reading the book ‘War of the Whales’ that starts as a scientific mystery thriller and ends up as a legal drama made me think of Reynolds as very much like the lawyer in ‘A Civil Action’ if the plaintiffs in that case had been Flipper and his pod mates.
All I’m really saying is it’s a big world and most of it is ocean. Where I live in California, the world’s 6th largest economy with some 40 million people, cutting edge marine science actually informs policy which has resulted in the kind of laws that allows us to live well with our coast and ocean. That’s because Californians have a sense of entitlement to the Pacific Ocean and a democracy of blue interests that makes for contentious democratic debate with generally good outcomes.
Not surprisingly some of the best lawyers I know, including a dive buddy of mine, get to enjoy the ocean while also defending it by suing polluters and creating practical solutions for sustainable seas. That’s a lifestyle I might recommend to any new attorney.
David Helvarg is an author and Executive Director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation group. His latest books are ‘The Golden Shore’ and ‘Saved by the Sea.’ You can reach him at Helvarg@bluefront.org