Rewilding the Sea - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 248

creatures that live under them or on top of them, and depriving ani-
mals of their habitat. But across great tracts of sea, rockhopping
trawlers turn over boulders of up to 25 tonnes, 53 either flushing out or
smashing the fish and crustaceans they harbour, destroying the habi-
tat as effectively as a bulldozer in a rainforest. 54
Sometimes I wonder what hold the fishing industry - a small com-
ponent of the European economy - has over ministers and members
of parliament. Does it sink the bodies of their political opponents?
Does it deliver the cocaine they use? While I doubt the reasons are
as exotic as these (except perhaps in Italy), the political power of this
industry is often mystifying. Perhaps the most likely explanation is
that while many voters are upset by its destructive practices, few have
as strong an interest in curbing them as the fishing companies have in
perpetuating them.
It took hunters and farmers millennia to inflict as much damage on
the life of the land as industral fishing has inflicted on the life of the
sea in thirty years. But, if this feeding frenzy can be restrained, the
restoration of marine ecology will be easier than restoring terrestrial
ecosystems, for two reasons. The first is that few marine species of the
continental shelves, even among the megafauna, have yet become uni-
versally extinct. (This is likely to contrast with animals living around
the abyssal seamounts, many of which are found only in one place,
are poorly documented and very slow-growing, and are now being
heavily exploited by trawlers.) There are some well-known excep-
tions, such as Steller's sea cow and the Caribbean monk seal. But even
animals which have been reduced to 1 per cent or less of their original
populations - certain species of shark, tuna and turtle, for example -
have, so far, clung on. There is enough time - just - to prevent them
from disappearing for ever.
The second reason is that most of the species which live in the sea
can reintroduce themselves to habitats from which they have been
removed. Either the adults are very mobile (many fish and mammal
species migrate hundreds or thousands of miles) or the eggs or young
are released as plankton, which can drift great distances on the cur-
rents, like marine thistledown.
There is one sure means by which the ecology of the seas can be
protected and restored. That is the creation of marine reserves in