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High seas fisheries play a negligible role in addressing global food security

Authors: Laurenne Schiller, Megan Bailey, Jennifer Jacquet, and Enric Sala

Abstract
Recent international negotiations have highlighted the need to protect marine diversity on the high seas—the ocean area beyond national jurisdiction. However, restricting fishing access on the high seas raises many concerns, including how such restrictions would affect food security. We analyze high seas catches and trade data to determine the contribution of the high seas catch to global seafood production, the main species caught on the high seas, and the primary markets where these species are sold. By volume, the total catch from the high seas accounts for 4.2% of annual marine capture fisheries production and 2.4% of total seafood production, including freshwater fisheries and aquaculture. Thirty-nine fish and invertebrate species account for 99.5% of the high seas targeted catch, but only one species, Antarctic toothfish, is caught exclusively on the high seas. The remaining catch, which is caught both on the high seas and in national jurisdictions, is made up primarily of tunas, billfishes, small pelagic fishes, pelagic squids, toothfish, and krill. Most high seas species are destined for upscale food and supplement markets in developed, food-secure countries, such as Japan, the European Union, and the United States, suggesting that, in aggregate, high seas fisheries play a negligible role in ensuring global food security.

Read more here.

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Watch over Antarctic waters

Commentary led by Cassandra Brooks, and also David Ainley, Peter Abrams, Paul Dayton, Robert Hofman, and Donald Siniff at Nature.

In a rapidly changing climate, fisheries in the Southern Ocean must be managed cautiously…

Read it here.

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Defining denial and sentient seafood — a response to Sneddon et al.

Hooked Follow Up III: Gone Monster Fishing NGCUS - Ep Code: 3867Sneddon et al. address the scientists who reject the empirical evidence on fish sentience, calling them “sceptics” and their work “denial”. This is the first article to frame the question of fish sentience in these terms, and it provides an obvious opening for social science and humanities research in the science of fish sentience. It is also worth asking what practical changes in the lives of fish might arise from the mounting evidence of their sentience. I suggest that the relationship between sentience and our sense of moral obligation is not as clear as we often assume. Read the full response here.
Continue reading “Defining denial and sentient seafood — a response to Sneddon et al.”

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Asad Raza’s Weekend Guests: Jennifer Jacquet

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As part of Root sequence. Mother tongue (2017), Asad Raza’s show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, he invited series of guests to occupy the installation with choreographic, musical, and intellectual events for weekend visitors to the museum. Comprising mentors, friends, and younger creative practitioners, the group is a plurivocal portrait of the artist’s community. Asad Raza and Jennifer Jacquet discuss octopus, fish, shame, climate change, and other things.

Continue reading “Asad Raza’s Weekend Guests: Jennifer Jacquet”

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Very Bad Wizards talk shame

Psychologist David Pizarro and philosopher Tamler Sommers talk shame with Jennifer Jacquet, including the pros and cons and the difference between shame and guilt. Is shaming effective for generating social progress or getting tax cheats to pay up? Is twitter shaming on the rise or on its way out? And what does David do when he’s alone in the dark? Listen here.

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Public shaming can make the world a better place

The discussion about 21st-century shaming usually turns to cases in which an otherwise well-behaved person posts a tweet or photograph that results in excessive punishment by an anonymous and bloodthirsty online crowd which ruins that person’s life for a while. Many people, myself included, object to this form of vigilantism. But other examples of shaming — singling out big banks for environmental destruction, exposing countries for refusing to end forced labour or calling out denialists who undermine action on climate change — challenge the mistreated tweeter as shaming’s stereotype. What shaming largely is, after all, is not necessarily what shaming might be. Read more at WIRED.CO.UK.

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Is Shame Necessary in The Brooklyn Rail

“Guilt only needs to be addressed by the self, whereas shame can force change in others’ behavior. Shame can scale and its target need not be human. A company or an industry can be shamed, but they cannot feel guilty as these entities lack consciences. This important distinction is central to Jacquet’s thesis: abandon guilt and turn to shame as the tool for resolving collective action problems.” Read more in The Brooklyn Rail.