The Ross Sea is a precarious stretch of ocean, hidden away at the bottom of planet. For years it has enjoyed an existence free from the blight of man, allowing a wide range of creatures to flourish in their most wild forms. Penguins huddle on ice floes while vast orcas cruise the icy waters, waiting for an opportunity to strike. In the crystalline depths Antarctic toothfish go about their business, while petrels soar high above.

This magnificent area is the last pristine ocean ecosystem, a fact that has motivated a committed group of scientists and activists to make a stand against its exploitation. This fight is poignantly displayed in Peter Young’s documentary, “The Last Ocean” – a fantastic piece of cinematography that captures the raw beauty of this final refuge from humanity and the struggle to preserve it for future generations.

Decades of unrestrained commercial fishing have plundered the once abundant oceans. Despite the growing evidence of its negative effects, commitment to historical profit models continues to push these companies deeper and deeper south. In 1996 New Zealand granted the first commercial fishing licence and now a host of countries scramble for the short-term gains such exploitation might enable.

The subject of this modern day gold rush is the mysterious Antarctic toothfish, rebranded as Chilean Sea-bass and sold all over the world. Already this is having an effect on the ecosystem, with scientists reporting far lower numbers and warning of further detrimental effects if fishing continues on unabated.

In decrying the plunder of a single species the scientists are really emphasizing the wider effects such exploitation has. Ecosystems, such as that of the Ross Sea, are delicately balanced and interlinked worlds – with the removal of one species having far greater resonance than its loss alone. This is captured in the science on trophic cascades and the idea of food webs.

At the risk of sounding condescending, this works (largely) by large predators eating smaller ones, who have eaten smaller ones, who have eaten smaller ones again. At the top we have our primary predators, orcas and so on; at the bottom, tiny phytoplankton that convert the sun’s energy into fuel. Energy flow in these systems works from the bottom to the top, until the primary predator dies and its decomposing body forms its own ecosystem, allowing a myriad of invertebrate species to recycle the nutrients – fulfilling the legendary circle of life.

Somewhere in the middle of this system, towards the top end of the scale, sits the Antarctic toothfish. There is much about this species that scientists still don’t know, including crucial information on where it spawns and the length of its life cycle. What is more clear is that its wholesale removal from the Ross Sea will have considerable downstream effects: larger predators will lose their food source, and smaller ones will lose their predator – resulting in an unbalancing of the system and inevitable change, to the detriment of the ecosystem as a whole.

Indeed, this uncertainty invokes one of the emerging rules of international law: the precautionary principle. At its core the principle requires a conservative approach to development in situations where the impacts are unknown. The logic is fairly simple: if what is at risk is unique and unable to be remade, and our action has the potential to destroy this precious thing, then we should not act.

This places a burden on the government, as the initiator of the action, to establish that their proposed fishing system will not result in harm. This has simply not occurred and is a tragic example of our governments failing to learn from their past mistakes. In the late 1970s, ignorance over the age of sexual maturity for Orange Roughy resulted in a management system that saw fishing companies able to capture and sell juveniles. The effect of this was rapid and brutal. Within 30 years the fishery had crashed and Orange Roughy was nearly lost to this world forever (and just to be clear, I don’t mean as an option for dinner).

While our governments might be slow to learn the lesson from these past failures, our scientists are not and, as the documentary explains, an alliance of environmental and scientific organisations has banded together to attempt to halt this fishing. Their goal is clear: to get the body tasked with governing the Ross Sea to implement a marine reserve and put an end to this exploitation.

In what is a sadly typical example of green-washing, both the New Zealand and United States’ governments have proposed their own marine reserves for the Antarctic – excluding the areas currently subject to fishing permits. This blatantly ignores the science discussed above and allows for exploitation that will undermine any marine reserve that might result. Ecosystems such as the Ross Sea are complex and interdependent – to ring fence a portion and call it conservation is tantamount to blasphemy and a deception we should not accept.

The Ross Sea is an area of unparalleled purity and beauty – to lose it for the short term profit of a few companies in a dying industry would be a true tragedy. CCAMLR, the international body tasked with regulating the Ross Sea, meets at the end of July to determine the outcome of all this, and your voice is a valuable resource in the fight to save what we already have.

If you are interested in supporting the cause, you can sign the petition on the Antarctic Ocean Alliance’s page here, or send a letter to your country’s responsible minister here. There is much in our world that is hidden beneath the waves; let us not be blind to what we can’t see.

Want more information?

Watch the TED talk on the documentary by Peter Young here.

Catch up with the Last Ocean Charitable Trust’s blog here.

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