On this podcast we are joined by guest host Alena Goebel as we talk to Professor Christina Hicks about the impact of fishing on our oceans. We examine the differences in scales of fisheries and the important nutritional role fish plays in numerous communities. We look at what is meant by sustainable fisheries and the differences between large scale fish production verus community governed artisanal fishing.
Christina is an Environmental Social Scientist interested in the relationships individuals and societies form with nature; how these relationships shape people’s social, environmental, and health outcomes; and how they create sustainable livelihood choices. Christina is a professor within the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre. She gained her PhD in 2013 from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University; after which she held an Early Career Social Science Fellowship at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University. Christina main source of research funding conmes from an ERC Starting Grant: FAIRFISH, and she was awarded the 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography. Christina’s work is global with particular field sites on the east and west coasts of Africa and in the Pacific.
The author reccomended was Daniel Pauly https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Vanishing_Fish/rHKPDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.
The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.
On this podcast we are joined by guest host Alena Goebel as we talk to Professor Christina Hicks about the impact of fishing on our oceans. We examine the differences in scales of fisheries and the important nutritional role fish plays in numerous communities. We look at what is meant by sustainable fisheries and the differences between large scale fish production verus community governed artisanal fishing.
Christina is an Environmental Social Scientist interested in the relationships individuals and societies form with nature; how these relationships shape people’s social, environmental, and health outcomes; and how they create sustainable livelihood choices. Christina is a professor within the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre. She gained her PhD in 2013 from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University; after which she held an Early Career Social Science Fellowship at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University. Christina main source of research funding conmes from an ERC Starting Grant: FAIRFISH, and she was awarded the 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography. Christina’s work is global with particular field sites on the east and west coasts of Africa and in the Pacific.
The author reccomended was Daniel Pauly https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Vanishing_Fish/rHKPDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.
The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.
stephen thomas:
Welcome to the nature recovery podcast. We're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline. And we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. Hello, and welcome to the nature Recovery Code Podcast. I'm Stephen Thomas. And I'm very glad today that I have a co host. Hi, my name is Alina Google. I'm a diva student here at the University of Oxford, with the interdisciplinary Centre for conservation science. And for my research, I look livelihood choices. Christina is a professor within the political ecology group at Lancaster University's environmental centre. And in 2019, she was awarded the Philip levy Hume prize for geography. Christina's work is global, but with a particular field sites on the east and west coast of Africa Okay, so if I can start off, we're gonna be talking about fish, fisheries, water and the oceans, which is something we haven't explored too much on the nature recovery podcast. So as someone from the UK, I the the bias feeling I get from media reports about fishing is that generally, our oceans fairly certain there are numerous cultural and geographic reasons for this, as well as huge variants in local communities versus the sort of the national consumption of the country. But I was wondering how you would sum up the state of the oceans, in your opinion, specifically in regards to
Christina Hicks:
Yeah, gosh, okay. I'll just say a lot there. I'll try and tackle a few issues. I think one of the key things perhaps with maybe where I'll start is separating large scale industrial fishing from small scale fishing. And a lot of my work focuses on small scale fishing, small scale island nations, for obvious reasons, have high rates of fish consumption. And it's right that they do because they don't have many other animal source food alternatives. But then you've got many coastal regions that should have high rates of fish consumption, for example, along the west coast of
Alena Goebel:
And what would you say are the gender relations between the industrial fishing and the artisanal fishing?
Christina Hicks:
Yeah, so again, that that complex, I think probably 15 years ago, when people talked about fisheries, they were talking about industrial fisheries. So funding were focused on industrial fisheries research tended to be focused on IT management measures and policies tended to and together our voice can be heard. And we can counter the narrative of like we can counter the narrative of the trajectories fisheries are going in. But also we can generate better policies, we can recognise the existence of practices that are much more sustainable. So on the global landscape, I
Alena Goebel:
And talking about this competition, who's actually regulating fisheries? What mechanisms are there? How have they been evolving in the past years? Who's deciding who takes the fish? Yeah,
Christina Hicks:
that's it. That's another, I think, I mean, I find fisheries fascinating, because they are so diverse, so complex, so beautiful, and so intensively exploited. So it's a real, you know, it's a real inequity, I think, perhaps, I think, I like to think about fisheries management along they're emerging more recently. So they're not necessarily old fashioned or traditional. You have you have contemporary systems of customary management. One of the challenges is that the more formal statutory forms of governance and management, often are introduced and failed to recognise international agreements, that that that all countries have to international agreements between countries and, for example, most recently, there's been the high high seas treaty, there's been the fishery subsidies agreements that have been agreed at that that international level.
Alena Goebel:
And who had the most powerful players in those negotiations?
Christina Hicks:
Oh, do I need to answer? I guess the most powerful pay is tend to be the countries with the greatest economic capacity. So with the biggest fleets with the largest economies, with the longest histories in fishing, you do have, though, you know, within say, for example, within the know, people, countries, reaching, you know, negotiating agreements in the back in the backstage. So, you've got these principles like common but differentiated responsibility that recognises, historically, some countries have had a far greater influence on for example, degrading the environment
Alena Goebel:
Thank you. Big sector that is now coming up as aquaculture, like if you consider plants as well, aquatic plants that has even overtaken capture fisheries in terms of output. Does this mean that now the pressures on oceans is reduced? Or how are aquaculture and fisheries linked?
Christina Hicks:
Yeah. So I mean, I think that's it's a difficult question to answer. I think the hope is that aquaculture will reduce pressure on wild fisheries. I think it's difficult to actually see that happening. Perhaps, what you see is that it stops The pressure on wealth fisheries producing fish at a national scale, yes, it's a really important piece of the puzzle. But in terms of replacing livelihoods, I think a little bit more needs to be thought through about why people go fishing, what is it that they are losing out by those fish stocks? And what is it that actually would
stephen thomas:
I guess just building on that, you know, when I see stats, things like say 90% of fish stocks are fully exploited or over fished. I don't know exactly what that means. But to me, that kind of strikes me as like, there's an empty ocean or something like that, or we, there's no, eat less fish doesn't doesn't really work in a global context, and probably doesn't even work in a national context. And then you have the ideas of livelihood and everything like that. And meanwhile, you know, there are a huge millions of hungry people, I think, one in 10, people will go hungry can't sort of seem how you can square these sort of complex problems. And do you have any insight on that?
Christina Hicks:
Yeah. So I mean, I guess first, if I talk to the 90%, fully over or over exploited? I think that figures used a lot. Because, yeah, like you said, it's confronting, and it's, you know, calls for urgent action action. But one of the challenges is, is it's conflating fully exploited of fisheries management has been to allow people to fish as much as they can, that remains within sustainable limits. overfished obviously means you've gone past that point. So by putting those two numbers together, what you're putting together is places that are doing what they're setting out the size of those stocks differ as well. So if you look at the proportion of the landings, so what's caught and the proportion of them that comes from sustainable stocks, it's over 80%. So, you know, there's decades of fisheries management and fisheries managers have put a lot of effort into trying undermines places that are doing well, it means we don't learn from our successes or from our failures. And all we have is a kind of, you know, statistic that makes the world stand up and say, right, everyone stop. And which, I guess to the second part of your question, then risks undermining important source of micronutrients. So vitamin B, 12, even calcium and iron, and zinc. And these micronutrients are things that we need in tiny quantities, particularly in the first 1000 days of life. And if children don't have enough of these micronutrients, then it has long term implications anywhere else. So the so yeah, so. So fish are really important in the diets in those places. But the problem of overfishing is often happening in a different place, or by different actors, and often by a fewer number of actors or entities. So the problem to me very much is about who's who's
stephen thomas:
Yeah, no, that's fascinating. I didn't, there's so much to know. And there's complexity around that. I'm just gonna ask one follow up question. And then. And I think we were talking a bit about it earlier. And it's, I suppose, when you're when people have that kind of livelihood of think, to some people's experience, if you're, if you're not immersed in that environment, if you didn't grow up in a coastal town, and we're here in Oxford, where we're about as far from the sea in the UK as you can be. But I'm guessing those that work in fishing, spend huge amounts of time in farmers, I have a stewardship for the land, but the ocean is something that I didn't really have a familiarity with. So kind of, can you speak to anything? And I know it will vary between communities about that about that relationship between the sea and the human? Yeah.
Christina Hicks:
I mean, not to, you know, I think you can't, I think generalising is always risky. So I don't, you know, I wouldn't want to, you know, paint the image of the kind of romantic fisherman who has no harm, makes it has no harm, you know, on the environment. But definitely, if people contexts that you often have these rules that evolve, that regulate who gets to fish, when they get to fish, how fish is shared and distributed, what bits of fish are eaten by which people in the communities and in the household. And so those kinds of systems that evolved not only for sustainability becomes consolidated and what used to be many people going out fishing and observing, it ends up being, you know, one or two people who are fishing as a job, they have much more gear, they're going out. So they're that kind of connection to nature, you become more and more, even though you might be
Alena Goebel:
Yeah, I would have a question building on this and about them the identity that you talked about earlier, I worked in small scale fisheries in Mauritania for a couple of years. And then I noticed that, due to loss of income, a lot of people turn their backs to fisheries because impact on the social cohesion of a country of a society. So I was wondering if you've seen this also, in the areas where you do research in eastern West Africa. And if you have seen any positive developments where things like this have changed where there's been a positive involvement? Yeah.
Christina Hicks:
So. So I've worked in Senegal, so neighbouring Mauritania and heard very similar stories to to the to the one that you describe, I think something that you touched on there is that, you know, we've been talking about fisheries, and we've talked about fish consumption. But we've pressures that are exerted along that value chain that can be destroyed and that feedback. So I think you've raised a really important point there. I think in terms of have I observed any positive responses. So there's, I guess, maybe two initiatives, probably, that I'd speak to so firstly, like, fishing and processing happened, but have the greatest impact on driving those processes that you described, in Mauritania, and also in Senegal. So the price of fish for example, the demand for specific forms of fish, and, and it changing the market dynamics. And the other initiative is more think one of the challenges is, you know, when we talk about fisheries, especially small scale fisheries, they're often you know, spread around the world and so, a small so you have, you have large fishing centres, but you also have many, many small fishing centres. And if, you know, when fish
Alena Goebel:
think Thank you. One last question on my site. For listeners who want to learn more about this topic about the oceans and conservation challenges. Are there any documentaries, readings podcasts that you could recommend?
Christina Hicks:
Yeah, I mean, I think we're spoiled in the marine environment. There's a whole wealth of incredible, you know, documentaries, and, you know, films and things. But maybe one book that I've just finished recently that I absolutely loved, was Daniel Polly's his, his book, and it them. So you get this story of how that whole field emerged, and how difficult it was to emerge. But you also get his personal story, which is one of real kind of, you know, survival, despite all of the challenges that life throws at you. So that would be my recommendation.
stephen thomas:
Thank you for that. We'll put a link in the show notes. So final question. And we ask all our guests, this is the nature recovery podcast. So we ask our guests, what does nature recover mean to them? We've not yet had the same answer twice. So what does the phrase nature recovery
Christina Hicks:
Yeah, I'm, so I guess, I mean, it's not really a phrase I would use or have used. So I would probably have to think a little bit more about it. But I think I would like nature. I mean, nature to me, has to include people as well. So nature recovery, then has to be returning to a
stephen thomas:
Perfect answer great way to end the podcast. Thank you very much, Professor Christina Hicks, thank you so much for your time. So there we go. Some insights there into the world of fishing and fisheries, the differences between over exploited and fully exploited, and the nuances about
Unknown:
So I certainly learned a lot from that. I hope you did, too. As
stephen thomas:
ever, when it comes down to the things the answer is repeat after me, it's a little bit more complicated than that. But that's what science is, therefore, to look at these issues to find out more and to bring these issues to light. So I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any You've been listening to the nature recovery podcast with me Stephen Thomas. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, please consider leaving us a review as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone