With the year drawing to a close and a new decade upon us, it’s hard not to look back and consider where we’ve come, as well as forward to where we’re going, without a fair amount of trepidation.

The general picture in terms of the health of our planet’s life support systems is fairly disheartening, with much recent progress being rapidly reversed, and protective legislation being rolled back by various the right wing populist movements’ sinister clowns and their disaster capitalist billionaire neo-libertarian backers, in countries such as the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil and many others.

It’s hard to decide whether Greta Thunberg being named as Time‘s Person of the Year should be a source of hope for the power of the individual to inspire widespread change, or in fact as an indication that so dire is the situation that a 15-year-old Swedish school girl is needed to speak out on behalf of the planet because of the ineptitude of our elected so called representatives.

Meanwhile in the scientific community, estimates to do with the timescale and severity of climate collapse are generally being revised… for the worse. The effects of the current rapid planetary heating are being felt earlier and more severely than even some of the more pessimistic forecasts warned in the 90’s and 2000’s.

If you feel overwhelmed, helpless or despondent, it’s worth remembering that switching to a plant-based diet is something immediate you can do that will have a massive effect on your own planetary footprint, right now, today.

Australia

Fight For The Bight: Big oil wins round 2 to the dismay of environmental groups

“We’re selling The Lucky Country for five magic beans. It’s a fucking disgrace” – Sean Doherty

Despite widespread protest from environmental groups and a highly mobilised surf community in part lead by veteran surf journalist Sean Doherty, Norwegian oil giant Equinor has been approved by the industry regulator Nopsema to exploratory drilling the Great Australian Bight, representing stage two of a four stage approval process.

“Privately Equinor know that the Bight is frontier drilling but they’re being driven by sheer greed… while being cheered on and subsidised by an Australian government whose only plan for this country is to dig, drill and burn till there’s nothing left” said Doherty via his IG. “We have become a First World quarry for countries like Norway and shameless companies like Equinor. This is what it’s come to. We’re selling The Lucky Country for five magic beans. It’s a fucking disgrace.”

The proposed Stromlo-1 drilling site is in Southern ocean waters over 2km deep, nearly 400km off the South Australian coast, in a area of particularly rough seas and known to be a nursery for endangered wildlife species including the southern right whale.

If approved, Equinor plans to begin work in late 2020 with the operations expected to last between 30 and 60 days.

Record bushfires rage over festive season

“To deny the science and signs of climate change in these times. If you are in a leadership position and refuse to act or even acknowledge it, I believe that it’s as bad as lighting these fires yourself” – Dan Ross

5 million hectares have burnt so far in Australia’s 2019/20 summer season. While bushfires are a natural feature on the Australasian continent, what’s unique about this season is the scale.

The Gospers Mountain fire, which started in a lightning strike north-west of Sydney in late October and has now burned about 500,000 hectares, has now combined with others on the NSW Central Coast. It is believed to be the largest single ignition-point forest fire recorded in Australia and, for mid-latitude forests, possibly the world.

Former WCT surfer Dan Ross said via IG, “It’s a disgustingly blatant act of disrespect towards the firefighters, communities and families of Australia to deny the science and signs of climate change in these times. If you are in a leadership position and refuse to act or even acknowledge it, I believe that it’s as bad as lighting these fires yourself. Same goes for the ones supporting them in those positions.”

In November, for the first time ever on record, Australia recorded no rain anywhere on the continent over a day. Meanwhile, other climate records are tumbling all the time. An average daily max of 41.9 deg C nationwide was recorded in early December, beating the record set the previous day, by 1 degree C. Nullarbor in South Australia set a new record high for December, 49.9 deg C.

The Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrisson, who once took a lump of coal into Parliament to champion the excavation of the fossil fuels, is a climate crisis denier and maintains the forest fires are merely part of a natural phenomenon, and unrelated to man-induced climate shifts.

Europe

With record numbers of dolphin strandings in Biscay in 2019 – the Pelagis observatory puts the numbers at 6000 – 10000 off the French west coast alone, more than the Faroe and Taiji Cove dolphin slaughters combined, as a result of mid depth trawling for species such as sea bass, several other species of macrofauna have hit the headlines for the wrong reasons in European waters already this winter.

“We walk on these beaches nearly every day and I always take a bag to pick up litter, most of which is fishing-related.”

Early in December, a sperm whale found dead on Harris in the Hebrides had 100kg of plastic and other human litter in its stomach. Dan Parry, who lives in nearby Luskentyre was quotedon the BBC website saying, “It was desperately sad, especially when you saw the fishing nets and debris that came out of its stomach.

“We walk on these beaches nearly every day and I always take a bag to pick up litter, most of which is fishing-related.”

The Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (Smass) reports that whale and dolphin strandings in Scotland are on the increase with a 400% increase in the last decade (204 in 2009 – 930 in 2018).

Interestingly, the ocean plastic issue is generally seen as single use water/drink bottles, rather than as a direct result of commercial fishing, despite the evidence that discarded fishing gear is at least 50% of marine plastics globally, and issue we pondered in the feature The World ocean Day Conspiracy back in June.

A glimmer of good news for cetaceans came shortly after Christmas (26/12/19) with mid depth trawling banned in 100km2 area west of Ile de Re on France’s west coast as a direct result of dolphin deaths.

Just the other 7 million square km’s to go, then.

Alas, the general picture remains bleak, with haggling among EU member states over EU fishing quotas for 2020 next year has begun in Brussels, with member states likely to ignore scientific advice and argue for higher quotas for key stocks.

The EU pledged to end overfishing by 2020 as part of changes to the common fisheries policy agreed in 2013, something that it has completely failed to do.

Brazil

2019 is notable for being a terrible year for deforestation in the Amazon, with the area cleared as a result of policies by President Bolsonaro climbing to rates back in the bad old days of the 80’s.

Bolsonaro’s evangelical cult is the same adhered to by many of Brazil’s leading professional surfers, maybe part of the reason we’re likely to be subjected to dozens of mentions of God on WSL broadcasts, yet sadly no use of the platform to champion the cause of the planet, as noted in Why Are The World’s Best Surfers Talking About The Wrong Burning Bush?

Elsewhere in Brazil, something that did get a bit of a shout out in surf star social media via the new 2019 World Champ’s Italo Ferrieira’s Insta, was oil hitting beaches in the country’s northern Bahia region in autumn.

As reported on Sao Paolo Folha International edition in December, raw sewage and toxic compounds now also threaten coastal areas, as well as the persistent oil.

“Four months after the first oil slicks on Northeastern beaches were registered, Northeast Brazil faces double pollution on its coast with the presence of microorganisms and chemicals considered harmful to human health.. one-third of the beaches improper or inadequate for swimming, an analysis that takes into account the presence of bacteria present in human and animal feces.

New oil slicks have stopped arriving on beaches… oil is embedded in the sand, rocks, and coral reefs.

In all, about 5,000 tons of oil have been removed from the 11 affected states (all nine in the Northeast plus Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro).

Agencies such as Bahia and Pernambuco conducted spot chemical analyzes to verify the content of petroleum-derived substances such as benzene, toluene, and xylene considered harmful to human health.”

Hawaii

You might recall the WSL’s recent ads for its own newfound environmental credentials, WSL Pure/ Stop Trashing Waves ‘By 2050, there could be plastic in the ocean than fish’ goes the official line (with zero mention of fishing in the campaign, obviously).

Well, turns out that in the waters off the birthplace of our sport, Hawaii, it already does. By a factor of seven to one.

A study published in PNAS found bits of plastic outnumber baby fish by seven to one in nursery waters off Hawaii.

Plastic densities in surface slicks off Hawaii were, on average, eight times higher than the plastic densities recently found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Inside the slicks there were seven times more plastics than there were larval fish.

“We found tiny plastic pieces in the stomachs of commercially targeted pelagic (open sea) species, including swordfish and mahi-mahi, as well as in coral reef species like triggerfish,” said Dr Whitney.

Plastics were also found in flying fish, which are eaten by top predators such as tunas and most Hawaiian seabirds.

“Biodiversity and fisheries production are currently threatened by a variety of human-induced stressors such as climate change, habitat loss, and overfishing,” said Dr Jamison Gove, of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu.

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