So remind me again, what\u2019s so great about the ocean?<\/p>\n\n
Beaches, yeah great, sunsets, romantic walks, sand between the toes.<\/p>\n\n
But the sea itself…nasty, untrustworthy, never staying in one place. Can\u2019t even drink it.<\/p>\n\n
And fish – don\u2019t get me started. Terrible, flappy, slimy, smelly things. And ug-ly, yip you don\u2019t see fish on a catwalk now do you?<\/p>\n\n
So why are all these snow flakes on about: \u201cOh we need to save the sea?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Apparently every second breath we take is made by all that wet stuff.<\/p>\n\n
Well seas don\u2019t have a monopoly on that – trees do exactly the same thing without making a fuss.<\/p>\n\n
But the ocean covers 71 percent of the world\u2019s surface, they say, distributing heat and balancing weather like a giant DVS system. Yeah, OK that\u2019s your job. Just get on with it.<\/p>\n\n
And the bit about how the ocean has sucked up 25 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by humans, slowing climate change by a quarter?<\/p>\n\n
Well yes, that\u2019s quite impressive. I didn\u2019t know it was that much. I\u2019ve only just caught up with all that greenhouse stuff.<\/p>\n\n
Presumably it\u2019ll keep doing that. Surely someone with legal training must have written it into the sea\u2019s contract? <\/p>\n\n
Keep sucking carbon and we won\u2019t pull the plug. Capiche. Tough love, that\u2019s what the \u201cbig blue\u201d needs.<\/p>\n\n
But no, everyone keeps going on about how the poor oceans are dying. Boo Hoo.<\/p>\n\n
How would you kill the sea anyway? Go down to the low tide mark and start hitting it with a baseball bat?<\/p>\n\n
Worked for the fur seals. Too far. OK. Sorry.<\/p>\n\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m on the sea\u2019s side (seaside, geddit?)<\/p>\n\n
I\u2019m on the seals’ side too, love the way they balance balls on their noses. Almost as talented as David Seymour. And better looking, not like the smooth handfish (sooo fugly – see above)<\/p>\n\n
Apparently this maritime horror show got declared extinct earlier this year. Hands up who gives one?<\/p>\n\n
That\u2019s what I thought. But I\u2019ve been talking to Kevin, an oceanographer – this is what he calls himself – lovely bloke, works at the fish and chip shop. Probably votes Green but that\u2019s his business. A lot of us did, to keep Labour out of the coalition. Shame it didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n
Anyway Kev says it\u2019s not actually the sea we need to save. The ocean has been taking all this glory for something it doesn\u2019t actually do – getting all the credit, for carbon sucking, oxygen pumping and the like.<\/p>\n\n
Well drain it then, I told him. Pull the plug. Think of all that real estate. Especially around Auckland. I mean so long as Jacinda doesn\u2019t slap us with a marine capital gains tax. Imagine everyone with baches at Pauanui they\u2019d get all the land out to the economic exclusion zone. <\/p>\n\n
Kev didn\u2019t think that was a smart idea. He asked me to imagine the sea as a jar of olives. I like an olive, especially on seafood pizza. Kev says the ocean\u2019s power lies in the olives not the brine. It\u2019s the critters, the underwater tenants, the smooth handfish (well not anymore) and his mates, that\u2019s who\u2019ve been looking after us humans.<\/p>\n\n
Then Kev used this word beginning with B, there was no call for that I said. Not blo*dy, bug*er or bull*hit. Biodiversity. Bless you, I said. <\/p>\n\n
Kev explained it was one of those complicated words people use to make themselves sound brainy, when they could just as easily have said all the animals and plants in the sea. The olives in the jar, all the living stuff under the waves.<\/p>\n\n
Hey so another fun fact from Kev, about the B-word.<\/p>\n\n
You know how the Grumpties (Green numpties) are always complaining about how we\u2019re running out of animals, endangered this and that. Well don\u2019t worry petals cause eighty percent of our B-word, our native biodiversity, in NZ lives offshore. (like our wealth frankly but that\u2019s another blog) <\/p>\n\n
So don\u2019t worry if we kill off the rest , we\u2019ve still got a huge reserves bench out under the waves. <\/p>\n\n
Kev said that wasn\u2019t exactly what he meant.<\/p>\n\n
He\u2019s kind of changed my mind about the fish, though, even the ugly ones. They\u2019re not just nice to have around, to slap on the barbie, to gawp at in aquariums. Who hasn\u2019t made their kid laugh by banging on the glass as Nemo goes by. Turns out, they have a bigger role than just food and entertainment.<\/p>\n\n
The real small ugly ones called phy-to-plank-ton are actually saving us from ourselves. They\u2019re the guys that make the oxygen. The ones that slurp up the carbon that we make when we drive back to the supermarket in our enormous urban assault vehicles because we forgot something. Maybe that last can of sardines.<\/p>\n\n
And all those slippery buggers are all so reliant on each other, so co-dependent, you take a few key characters out and the whole thing goes to stink. Kill a significant proportion of fish in the sea and we actually harpoon ourselves in the foot. Big time. <\/p>\n\n
How are we doing on that front? Very well. We kill around three trillion (that\u2019s a thousand billion fish) every year. In the last 40 years fish populations have been halved. Ninety per cent of large fish, like sharks, swordfish and tuna, have been hunted from our oceans as a result of fishing.<\/p>\n\n
And domestically? Here in NZ we\u2019re making great in-roads – smashing the under sea mountains that are like coral cafes where all the fish hang out, with indiscriminate bottom trawling. The commercial fishing industry is in general agreement that they should be careful and responsible but neither them nor the Government will agree to put cameras on all the boats to make sure. And New Zealand, even with its huge sway on the international stage, can\u2019t quite bring itself to agree to a decent amount of ocean sanctuaries cause they\u2019re worried about fishing interests.<\/p>\n\n
So in terms of bringing our unmatched ability to make species extinct, to the seas, we\u2019re doing just fine. There\u2019s even some hints on the channels that I follow that it\u2019s all part of a master plan, from the real villains – gelatinous plankton. Otherwise known as Jellyfish.<\/p>\n\n
Kev says the Jellies have a plot for world domination and thanks to human fishing practices they\u2019re well on the way.<\/p>\n\n
Step one: Kill off the Turtles as by-catch and the Tuna, cause they\u2019re great in salads, and those are the Jelly\u2019s natural predators done for.<\/p>\n\n
Step Two: Use humans to take out the small pelagic fish like sardines, herrings and anchovies that compete with the jellies for food and scoff jellyfish offspring.<\/p>\n\n
Step three: Grow arms and legs and crawl up the beaches and take out the humans before they make the world uninhabitable from climate change.<\/p>\n\n
You might think that sounds a bit far fetched. But this year I started believing in a number of things, including climate change. And if the plandemic was set off by 5G transmissions why not jelly armageddon?<\/p>\n\n
If you remember that\u2019s exactly what happened 460 million years ago when the fish got sick of swimming in their own poo and took to the land. Jellyfish have been around for about the same time – 500 million years – coincidence? – I don\u2019t think so. And guess what the collective noun for jellyfish is? Smack. That\u2019s all you need to know.<\/p>\n
So remind me again, what\u2019s so great about oceans? Beaches, yeah great, sunsets, romantic walks, sand between the toes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":15044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"I love fugly","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25,41],"p4-page-type":[6],"class_list":["post-15043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenpeace","tag-oceans","tag-biodiversity","p4-page-type-story"],"yoast_head":"\n