People of the Sea

3 billion people rely on the oceans for their livelihoods. But who are they? What are their stories? Hannah Stitfall is moving away from the ocean’s wild animals this week, and meeting its humans instead. She’s joined by lifelong fisherman Jerry Percy, and speaks with free-diver and ocean advocate Hanli Prinsloo about who the oceans are for.

We’ll also meet Frida Bengtsson, a researcher who focuses on fisheries, tells her success story of working with fisheries in the Barents Sea.

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Jerry Percy (Intro):
I’ve fished most of the waters of the UK and the Southern Ireland and in a variety of boats. And it’s about as close as you can get to real life, I think. A) because you’re out in the ocean, and the ocean really doesn’t take any prisoners. If you get it wrong, it will kill you. Fishing is still the most dangerous occupation in the world.

You’d be right to ask, why if you get cold, wet, miserable, you sometimes have no catches, the environment will kill you at the slightest opportunity. What in the devil you’re doing there? You could be doing something far more sensible! And I think if you really held most fishermen down and beaten them with a stick, they would admit. I don’t know what the adjective is. I’ll call it spiritual, but it’s not. But it’s just you and the ocean and the fish and the weather. It puts your life into perspective, like almost nothing else, where the slightest mistake is likely to kill you. But at the same time, you’re an integral part of that ocean environment. And there’s nothing else on Earth – to me – that can match that.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, a podcast series that brings the oceans and the incredible life within them right into your ears. I’m Hannah Stitfall and in this episode, we’re moving away from the oceans wild animals and meeting its humans instead.

Jerry Percy (Intro con’t):
There’s a number of statistics, pick the number anything between, for every one person at sea, you’ve got four or five, six, seven on land. That was absolutely vital, and kept those little coastal communities going. And that’s all gone.

Hannah Stitfall:
3 billion people around the globe rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. But who are they? And how do we include their perspective, when we talk about the future of the seas?

Hanli Prinsloo (voiceover):
These are people who have a relationship with the ocean, it might not be the relationship I have, but the ocean is for them as well. And we can’t have that complex conversations we need to have about the future of our oceans if everybody’s not represented.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, Episode Eight.

It’s such an honour to have Hanli Prinsloo in the studio with me today. Now Hanli is the founder and CEO of a company called I Am Water in South Africa. Welcome Hanley!

Hanli Prinsloo:
Thank you!

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you for coming on. Why do I get the pleasure of having you in the studio with me today? What you’re doing here?

Hanli Prinsloo:
Yeah, I mean, the work we do in Cape Town is so incredibly important and close to my heart. But a lot of the support we need and decision makers we work with are based in other parts of the world. So every now and again, I come up to London, and I have some meetings, and I have some events. And this week has been has been one of those weeks – doing the work for the work.

Hannah Stitfall:
So in a nutshell, I mean from from your perspective, who are the oceans for?

Hanli Prinsloo:
If we zoom out and look at our our planet, it’s a blue planet, with mostly ocean, and that ocean is what allows life on Earth. So everybody who breathes and those who don’t breathe in the ocean, every person, every animal, every tree, the oceans are for them. And when we look at our species, the oceans aren’t only for those who actually live off the sea or spend time in the water. It truly is for everyone, whether we know it or not just through the actual air we breathe. But as is the case with so many natural spaces, access to those haven’t always been for everyone. But it truly is for everyone, not just because that’s right. But it’s because it’s what makes us better people.

Hannah Stitfall:
And talk to me about accessibility to the oceans. I mean, how is it in South Africa?

Hanli Prinsloo:
South Africa’s an interesting, sharp end of the conversation, because of our political past where natural spaces were for whites only the access literally was restricted. It wasn’t just restricted because of people’s access in a kind of philosophical way, like in many other places of the world. But in South Africa, it was literally restricted and what happens when you do that, systemically for so many years and generations, the ocean will become a place of fear and lack of access for many in society and that unfortunately takes conscious dismantling, and a long time to change. And so today, if you go to the beach in South Africa, you might see diversity on the beach, but you will not maybe see a lot of diversity beyond the waves. And I think that is a huge shame and something that needs a lot of work.

Hannah Stitfall:
And tell me about the groups that you work with in in South Africa.

Hanli Prinsloo:
So in Cape Town where I Am Water has our headquarters, we work particularly with schools from underserved communities. So, township areas, for those who have been in South Africa, we speak of many underserved communities as townships, and you’ll have hundreds and 1000s of people living within walking distance of the ocean, that feel very removed from a natural space. And this removal is partly because of this political past, trans-generational fears, maybe even safety of walking to the ocean or getting there. And what we decided at I Am Water is to target schools in particular, where learners are within proximity of the ocean but have no access to that ocean. So as I Am Water, we actually have an understanding with the Department of Education, that we can take children from school to the ocean and share ocean experiences with them. And from many of those that can’t swim. They may have been to the ocean on Boxing Day or Easter or something with family members, but they can’t swim. First time they’ve put on a mask and snorkel. First time they’ve actually looked underneath the waves, which is what is the real beating heart of I Am Water is getting people to open their eyes underwater. And for these young people, it’s not just an experience of an adventure. It’s a realisation that nature is for everyone. The self esteem and the confidence the resilience we grow when we are in nature is accessible for them as well. And I truly believe that it’s through that connection with nature that we can see true custodianship grow.

Hannah Stitfall:
Absolutely. 100% agree. I remember last year, it was World Oceans Day. And I was doing a live segment for The One Show, which is a TV show here in the UK. And we were doing at the Wave in Bristol. And all day, they had groups of inner city school children, and they were teaching them to surf for World Oceans Day. And I remember the guy saying to me, some of them when they felt, they first got there, they the kid started crying. They’d never even seen water like that before and then having to get in it. But after they’d had the day there, they all left, all of the children. They had this is amazing. This is wonderful. Oh, I really want to go to the beach and a lot of them had never, they’ve never even seen a beach. I find that crazy, being in the UK. You know, we’re an island, we’re surrounded by coastline. But of course, it’s it’s not accessible to everybody. You know? So I think that’s why what you’re doing in in taking people to the ocean and giving them those experiences is so important. I think is… Why do you think it’s important? How has this become kind of like your your life’s work.

Hanli Prinsloo:
I personally didn’t grow up close to the ocean. I grew up on a horse farm outside Pretoria, about as far from the ocean as you can be in South Africa. But I was always very deeply in love with wilderness and with animals. And my father was a horse whisperer. So this understanding of our relationship with big animals was embedded in me very, very early on. And of all the places in the world. I started free diving in Sweden, in a cold fjord. And then I had amazing experiences through my career as a competitive free diver working with film and photo projects going around the world diving with big animals and really using that interspecies connection and passion that I was brought up with. But every time I came home, I would stand on the beach and see who’s on the beach and who’s on the water. And it just wasn’t changing. And even though my passion for my own journey was so clear, it just became impossible to pursue a personal journey when you see a need much greater than your own. And knowing what the ocean means to me and the healing and the space of reconciliation I’ve experienced in the ocean. It was completely inevitable that I Am Water should be born.

Hannah Stitfall:
The marine biodiversity in South Africa. It is it is phenomenal. I mean, South Africa is known for having the big terrestrial Big Five, isn’t it? But you’ve also got the the marine Big Five that’s what is it? It’s the great white shark, the Southern Right Whale, African penguin, Cape first seal, and the bottlenose dolphin. So over your time, you must have had some incredible experiences with the marine wildlife. Tell us a few more stories about them.

Hanli Prinsloo:
I think the last few years people have really realised that Cape Town in particular, we’ve known about, you know, diving with the sharks on Aliwal Shoal or up the east coast or the sardine run, etc. But I think people have really realised just what biodiversity South Africa has and how diverse it is and how cold water really is a hotspot for biodiversity, you know, we all want to think we’re gonna dive into blue water in a swimsuit, and go and see coral reefs and you know, tropical environments, and then you get in the water in a kelp forest and you think, this is pure magic.

You know, moving through the water column, along the stem of an old growth kelp forest, where from 25 metres down to the surface, you’re surrounded by life. It’s a water column of life, as opposed to blue water, which I love. But it’s different because you get down to find the life whereas in the kelp forest, it’s all around you all the time. And, you know, in Cape Town, we I mean, South Africa, we have the Indian Ocean on our East Coast and the Atlantic on our West Coast. And the Agulhas current coming down from Mozambique and Madagascar and the cold Benguela coming up. And so we have these incredible natural phenomena happening all around us that drives life. And that drives vitality and diversity. And I think, in a way it reflects our country and our people, you know, just that real energy and the ocean and real like, the beauty of not all being the same. And I think that’s really something South Africa brings to the world both as a tourist destination, but also as a nation.

Hannah Stitfall:
And I was having a look on your, on your website, and I read that your first experience with a tiger shark was when you were free diving, tell us about that.

Hanli Prinsloo:
So with these two oceans in this diversity we have, you know, you can in Cape Town encounter seven gill sharks, which are like swimming fossils in the cold water, great white sharks moving up our coastline, and then up towards Aliwal Shoal and Durban area you have the tiger sharks. And I was invited to do a free dive with tiger sharks. It was, in hindsight, probably, I hadn’t done a lot of diving with sharks. And the tiger shark is then kind of a big guy to take on.

Luckily, as with most things, once you do if you’re new to something as you go with experts, and I had the opportunity to dive with, with Marc Andreessen and Steve Benjamin, who are incredible shark and ocean people along their coastline, and I just remember, Steve saying to me, like, Hon, if you’re lucky enough to have one of the Tigers come up to you just don’t swim away. Okay? Because if you swim away, the shark thinks your prey and I’m like, Totally makes sense. Totally. Don’t swim away, don’t swim away. I mean, the reality of that is you’re down at 15 metres holding your breath, and this tiger shark clocks, you and she starts swimming straight towards you, right? So it’s like, Don’t swim away, like hold your ground. Just look at in the eyes, oh the eyes are on the side, where do I go? But that swimming away? I don’t understand, you know, so you’re doing like your own little like frozen choreography down there.

And then the shark approaches, passes by, and in that instant realising, and I feel like this is something that only really, I can tell you this, and I tell people this, but you only really know it when you experience it. When you’re around big sharks and you realise I’m not on the menu. And you only realise it when you experience it. It’s the weirdest thing I can tell you that. And they were telling me that. And then that moment when when she approached and realising as she swam past, like she’s not interested in me as food, she’s interested because I’m another bizarre looking big animal in the water. But I’m not food.

And that is a really powerful realisation, I think. And I mean, I still, I still love swimming with tiger sharks. They’re one of my favourite shark species. Now I’m very experienced. And actually, I’ve taken people to swim with tiger sharks and really understand their behaviour and understand under which conditions it’s safe to swim with them. But they are just so sassy.

Hannah Stitfall:
Sassy?

Hanli Prinsloo:
They really are! I mean, they just like strut around with their stripes and they move with such confidence and they really just don’t care. They just do their own thing. They eat whatever they want. They go wherever they want. They yeah, they’re, they’re a really cool shark.

Hannah Stitfall:
And when you take some of your groups of children in the water…

Hanli Prinsloo:
Just a disclaimer, I do not take groups of children with tiger sharks just so everybody knows! These are two different things!

Hannah Stitfall:
Massive disclaimer. No, no kids and tiger sharks, don’t worry.

I mean, when they get into the water for the first time, and then they come out what what are their reactions like?

Hanli Prinsloo:
You might get me emotional here. But you know, we’ve been doing this for so many years taking children into the ocean and around the world in different places. And when a young person opens their eyes underwater for the first time, there’s so much that happens in them. And you can see it and their bodies going from like a sense of, of fear and like holding, and this isn’t for me to, they come up. And the things we’ve heard them say, and what they’ve shared with us is things like, I didn’t know it could be beautiful. I didn’t know it was salty. Imagine. And then one of the things we hear the most is, All my problems felt so far away.

Hannah Stitfall:
Oh!

Hanli Prinsloo:
And you think, You’re 11. You shouldn’t have problems that need to be far away. But that’s what nature gives us. It gives us a place of healing, of escape. But it also teaches us something about ourselves and about our strength and about our resilience and about what we can do that we thought we couldn’t, that gives us tools, when we step back into our everyday lives, can make us stronger.

Hannah Stitfall:
So we’ve been sat here talking about people having more access to the oceans. But of course, as we know, 3 billion people rely on the oceans for their livelihood, and how do we include them in this conversation?

Hanli Prinsloo:
I think recognising that the ocean really is a space for everyone. And then on top of that, that the ocean engages people in different ways. And not only seeing it through our own filter is really important. For me, personally, I’m around free diving in the ocean, protecting the ocean, sharing connection. But all around the world, there’s coastal communities who depend on fishing, from the ocean for their livelihood, there’s whole industries built around that – some of them good, some of them bad. But these are people who have a relationship with the ocean, it might not be the relationship I have, but the ocean is for them, as well. And we can’t have the complex conversations we need to have about the future of our oceans if everybody’s not represented, because then there will always be gaps. And there will always be blind spots in the decision making as well.

Hannah Stitfall:
Yeah.

Hanli Prinsloo:
And so whether we comfortable with it or not all voices have to be heard when it comes to the ocean and who it’s for.

Hannah Stitfall:
Absolutely. And next up, we’re going to be talking to somebody who’s from the sustainable fishing industry to get his take on it on all of that.

Hanli Prinsloo:
Yeah, and I think that’s a really important part to look at. Because for some people, the only relationship they have with the ocean currently might be through seafood, or through what they eat that comes from the sea. And to explore that and to develop it, but at the same time realising that that’s also many people’s connection through the ocean through the work they do.

Hannah Stitfall:
Well, Hanli, thank you so much. It’s been fascinating and brilliant talking to you today. Keep up the amazing work that you’re doing. And I will come to the kelp forests in South Africa, maybe this time next year, maybe this time next year. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Hanli Prinsloo:
Thank you for having me. I look forward to hearing all the other stories on the oceans pod.

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Hannah Stitfall:
So I want to know more about what Hanli was saying the end there about the fact that 3 billion people rely on the oceans for their livelihoods. Now, it’s hard to say exactly how many fishermen there are in the world. But estimates hover in the range of 40 to 60 million. Those might be commercial fishermen or small scale fishermen.

Now my second guest today is one of them. Jerry Percy has been a fisherman his whole life. And he has been a prominent voice in the sustainable fishing movement. So it gives me great pleasure to welcome Jerry!

Jerry Percy:
Hi, Hannah.

Hannah Stitfall:
How are you?

Jerry Percy:
I’m just great. Thank you.

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you for being here today. Now, I’m not going to lie here. This is something I know very little about, you know, the sustainable fishing industry, the commercial fishing industry, but you are a pool of all knowledge on this, aren’t you?

Jerry Percy:
Don’t hold your breath.

Hannah Stitfall:
So first of all, tell me your story. I mean, how did you start fishing? Where were you? How old are you?

Jerry Percy:
I don’t know quite what you mean by small scale is better term probably, I represent small scale sector.

So I went on holiday to the Hebrides, a friend of mine was working on the farm up there. And the farmer had a couple of reasonably decent sized lobster boats and he said, Don’t want to come out for the day. And I went out, and nothing to do with fishing beforehand, and went out and they just had a big storm up there. So this is huge Atlantic rollers great big swell rolling and the boats rolling through sort of 60 degrees and the guys are falling over and the gear, fishing pots are sliding about and I spend the whole day holding on to the exhaust stack for dear life. And we came back in and he said, Did you like that? I said, Love it! He said, Do you want a job? And I said, Yes, please!

And that was really how it started. And from there over many years, I fished west of Ireland, Hebrides, Scotland, Irish Sea, English channel, North Sea, with most sorts of fishing gear, not all of them but most sorts and boats from five metres to 26 metres. So single handed in little boats and with quite a big crew on bigger boats.

So that’s sort of the fishing and I’m doing it my whole life because I got sucked into this sort of representation thing a few years ago. So I represent the small scale sector in the UK and previously in Europe, but I’ve also been I was deputy director to a fishery managers in South Wales have my own fish processing plant, I ran the first real time internet based fish auction in England and Wales, been skipper of fishery protection vessels, so poacher and gamekeeper if you’d like, but that has set me up so I do understand the industry as a whole, the good, the bad, the great, lots of good, etc.

Hannah Stitfall:
And describe to me what it’s like to be out on a on a trawler.

Jerry Percy:
Firstly, it’s not just trawling. So the fishing industry is not the fishing industry. There’s all sorts of subcomponents of it. So you’ve got mobile gears, as you say, trawlers, dredges, etc. And then you’ve got passive gears, which are things like pots, nets and lines, which sit still they don’t move. And then you’ve got large scale, and then you’ve got small scale.

So it’s, it’s already quite complex picture like that. So I’ve done, I was a trawler Skipper in the North Sea. And then there’s a whole range of lobsters and potting for lobsters and crabs and prawns etc. There’s a whole vast range of different sorts of methods and gears. So you can say that fishermen are really the last hunters.

But I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fisherman anywhere where they might not want to admit it, but there is that sort of, I wouldn’t use the word romantic – God knows out in gales and wind and cold waters is not romantic by any stretch of the imagination, but there is, and if I was waxing lyrical, and my fisherman friends would strangle me for it, there is a spiritual element to it, if you’d like for want of a better expression, where you’re out there in the sea, there’s you and whatever God you pray to when things go wrong, and that’s it. There was nothing else, no one could get at you, the moment you stood the lines off and got out there, there was just you and the fish and the rest of it.

Now there’s a bit different because you have overflights we have all sorts of electronics on board to say, where we are, where we’re going, how fast we’re going, and so on and so forth. But there is that elemental, element to fishing to catching fish to being a hunter to be out in the oceans away from land and all the rubbish that goes on in that.

Hannah Stitfall:
And in your years of fishing, tell us one of, there might be quite a few, what’s one of your most memorable stories.

Jerry Percy:
Oh gosh, where do you start? My favourite seabird is the Gannet. And you’re on trawlers when you hold the gears, a lot of small fishes up floating about on the surface, etc. And you literally you can get 1000s of gannets diving around you. And it’s just it’s mind blowing. It’s just incredible. This just this rain of these huge birds that come down, fold their wings out at last moment, dive in and grab a fish and come back out.

I mean, dolphin families with 30 or 40 dolphins; dads, mums babies swimming around the gear around the boat, never once did we touch them. It is just that sort of basic human instinct of not, not relating to but being in the company of these massive, wonderful creatures.

Hannah Stitfall:
And in the time that you’ve been spending in your life out at sea, how have you seen the oceans change?

Jerry Percy:
Oof, hmm… From a fishing perspective, I mean, when I started, I fished out of Lowestoft, and we come out, you go down the dock about three in the morning, and you stand there on the on the deck freezing to death, basing up frozen sprats, which is, if you really want to lose sense in your fingers. And then we’d leave just before or just after dawn and you’d, we used to go down off the Thames for the sandbags down there. The code used to set the lines down there and steaming down the coast, couple of miles off, you come across a myriad, any number of small boats, anything from single bloke in a 16 footer to a couple of blokes in a 20 or 22 footer like that. And there were loads of them off the beach out at a little harbours, etc. And, they’re gone. They are no longer here. And each one of those boats is supporting a family, mortgage, houses and there’s a number of statistics pick the number anything between for every one person that see you’ve got four or five, six, seven on land – so you’ve got support services, everything from engineering to boat building to transport to mechanics and all the rest of it, so that was absolutely vital, and kept those little coastal communities going. And that’s all gone.

Hannah Stitfall:
What’s, what’s happened to…

Jerry Percy:
There’s no fish. Simple as that. There’s no fish. And it became more and more difficult.

I mean, we’ve become very, very good at catching fish. And some would argue too good. Take long lining. So we used to bait by hand. So as I said, you stand there on the deck in the morning freezing to death, and we would hand bait, and that put a limit on the amount of gear you could bait, you know, to get in the water. And then when we hold, we removed the fish by hand, and that again, slowed down. So you couldn’t get there was a limit to how much you could hold.

Along came things called auto-liners, does what it says on the tin. These were automatic systems. So they baited the hooks automatically, and they removed the fish without touching them by putting the hook out through something called a stripper. And these were incredibly efficient. So although I talked about, say three or four thousand hooks, people might think it’s, it’s a lot of hooks, it’s not that I’ve heard 4000 hooks back for not efficiency, single fish on the line. But generally speaking, you know, they’re not hugely efficient in that respect.

An auto-liner can work 25,000 hooks, and it can work at it day in, night out.

Hannah Stitfall:
25,000?!

Jerry Percy:
25,000. Automatically baited, automatically shot, automatically hauled. And as soon as they finish all in, they can turn around or shoot it all back again.

So you know, you’ve got smaller boats, in shore fishing three, four or 500 pots, whatever it is, you’ve got larger boats offshore working 10,000 pots each. And I don’t know if that figure means anything to your listeners, to me is just scary, you know.

And the outcome of that is, there’s something called catch per unit effort – don’t panic. And that’s just how much you fish for how much effort you get. So the catch per unit effort as a level is going down. And the number of pots in the water is going up. So we’re putting more pots in the water and catching less fish. And you don’t need to be a fishery scientist to know how that’s going to end up.

Hannah Stitfall:
That doesn’t make any sense.

Jerry Percy:
Doesn’t make any sense at all. So when I talk to fishermen all the way around the coast, they go, It’s too little and it’s too late, Jerry.

We’re facing a situation now where there’s no fish on the ground. And all the way around the coast. It used to be that southwest of England was really the sort of the the bountiful place there 28 species or whatever it is to fish down there. It’s plenty of fish as well. And they were doing really well. I’m getting a phone call from there now saying, I had a call from the other day, from a guy 30 years, he’s been fishing crab out of a small boat out of the southwest of England. He says no crab. There’s no lobster, it’s gone. And if you’ve got boats offshore with 10,000 pots, he’s hardly surprising is it? You know? So that’s the sort of scenario we’re in.

Hannah Stitfall:
So what do you think, to people saying the answer to the issues with there being no fish is to stop eating fish completely? And is there such a thing as sustainable fishing?

Jerry Percy:
Of course, there’s such thing as sustainable fishing. We are an extractive industry. And perhaps the management hasn’t really kept up with some impacts of that. But I think now government realised through the Fisheries Act, etc, that they’ve got to do a lot more. Whether they do or not, is really the $64,000 question. And whether they do enough in the time scales that we need, because we’re losing boats hand over fist, then that’s another question.

So yes, of course, there is sustainable. There’s any number of sustainable fisheries, if you buy sensibly and sustainably and you know, look on the internet, do a bit of reading, get up, get an understanding of what’s going on. There is plenty of sustainable fish. There is a need for effective management, especially in effort and I think you, taught I was up in here in London couple of days ago at a meeting an all day meeting with Defra and they’re full of good intent about the Fisheries Act and what they’re going to do. People really need to be pushing this. And, What are you doing? You know, are you going to ensure that we have a long term sustainable industry for the future? We are at something of a crossroads here.

Hannah Stitfall:
So in an ideal future, would you say there’s a place for the fishing industry and what does that look like?

Jerry Percy:
Good question, Hannah. Yes, we’re an island race. It was Aneurin Bevan in 1945, I think. For you young folk he was a Labour MP of some note. And he said if I can remember it, I wasn’t there at the time, I’m not quite that old. But he said that Britain is an island built on coal and surrounded by fish. And he went on to say that only an organisational genius could arrange a shortage of both at the same time. Which is where we are now. So yeah, we are an island nation. We are surrounded by fish and with effective management, which has been painfully lacking, especially in terms of effort and allocation of who gets what, then yes, we could have a genuinely sustainable long term fishing industry. With all the benefits that accrue from it. Yes, there is every opportunity for that to happen. But people have to pressure their MPs and their governments to make sure that that actually does happen. Because it’s not going to happen by accident. It’s only going to happen if the public actually get a bit agitated about this and say, you know, where are we going to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years time? What do we want? And how do we get there?

Hannah Stitfall:
So the moral of the story is we all need to be agitated and harass our MPs.

Jerry Percy:
Yeah, absolutely.

Hannah Stitfall:
Not just about ocean conservation about many other things to be honest in the world of conservation and the natural world.

Jerry Percy:
My other pastime is beekeeping. And God you if you think fishing industries got problems, you ought to look at the insect life. I mean, it is fret it is genuinely tear it and I mean this most sincerely. People ought to be really looking at what’s happening, because we’re just poisoning the planet very, very quickly. We’re looking at another annihilation of so many species.

So we’ve all got our problems. But yes, you’re quite right Hannah. You know that if you look across the panoply of conservation, fisheries, insects, everything else, it’s just, it’s just where the hell are we going? It still amazes me at the size of some shoals of fish. And globally, the seas were literally alive with fish. The problem is now is very largely super trawlers fishing, narrow waters, fishing just offs are our own waters. And they, they take immense, unbelievable quantities of fish on a daily basis, but the stocks tend to be quite resilient or work.

With climate change added to it, we’ve got to make far more effort to make sure that the stocks we have on a global basis are resilient to climate change, and to overfishing. And probably on a global basis, the best or the most obscene example of this is, so these massive super trawlers, they have, through the EU, not blameless in this, have fishing, they bought fishing rights in Africa. So they go down to the African coast, mainly Western or entirely Western Africa. And they fish, they have lots of small fish, lots of shoals of massive, immense shoals that the indigenous fisherman with smaller boats off the beaches rely on for money, for food. Fish is very often the only protein source for millions if not billions of people in the world, people tend to forget this. So they go down there and they’re out of sight out of mind. There’s no monitoring. And they fish these stocks that are tend to be reduced down for feeding pigs, and for fish oil, etc. And so they denude the African quarters of their fish. And then they come back up here and fish our fish around here – herring, mackerel, blue whiting and God knows what else. And that again, is turned down into either into fish meal to feed pigs, or it’s frozen and then sent back down to Africa to feed the population! They haven’t got their own fish because we fished them all. So this is lunatic, vicious circle of fishing!

Hannah Stitfall:
That’s, that’s awful.

Jerry Percy:
There’s a big question about who should have the right to fish – how, where, when… where’s the benefit? What does society want from and for us as fishermen. And you have to take that wider view so that you look at those coastal communities – and they’re they’re being decimated not just here, as I say but but across the world for a whole range of reasons. But it is, it has to be about the people where the benefits of fishing, we don’t… fish are a public resource. They don’t, I don’t own a fish, we all own a fish, it’s all ours. And I think where some people have a difficulty is a fisherman saying well, because of that we have a responsibility, and society has a right, the public have a right to know what we do, how we do the impact of it, and so on so forth. And I think that’s increasingly becoming understood that we have to take that broader view and taking coastal communities and supply chains and everything else.

Hannah Stitfall:
Well, thank you. For for all of our listeners now we all need to go and write an email to our MPs and, and make our points heard because we are you know, we are in a dire situation.

Jerry Percy:
And we need to support those organisations that are actually doing it because so many people I mean, there’s been protests about things like Palestine and the environment, all sorts of things and you know, we all know see on TV and papers about things like Just Oil and the penalties handed down to these folk etcetera, that a lot of folk that, just for a whole range of reasons can’t go and get a banner and march. So we need to support those people who are protesting in support of the, the life of the planet, whether it’s fish or a bumblebee or a honeybee, or whatever else, you know, if you can’t do it yourself, support those who can!

Hannah Stitfall:
Totally agree. Jerry, thank you very much.

Jerry Percy:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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Hannah Stitfall:
We’ve been tracking the progress of the Arctic Sunrise as it heads towards Galapagos for a few weeks now. And in next week’s episode, it’s finally anchored. We’re joining them on board for an episode all about Galapagus. You’ll meet the ship’s captain, Ecuadorian scientists, and local fishermen. I’m also joined by Spanish actress Alba Flores, who you might know from her show on Netflix, Money Heist. She’s just returned to the outside world after spending a week on board the Arctic Sunrise. In the meantime, don’t miss out on that amazing bonus content the team has been making for you. Come check us out @oceanspod on Instagram, X/Twitter and Tiktok.

But before that, we’re going to meet a woman called Frida. She’s got a small but powerful success story about how fisheries can be a force for good.

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This episode was brought to you by Greenpeace and Crowd Network. It’s hosted by me, wildlife filmmaker and broadcaster Hannah Stitfall. It is produced by Anastasia Auffenberg, and our executive producer Steve Jones. The music we use is from our partners BMG Production Music. Archive courtesy of Greenpeace. The team at Crowd Network is Catalina Nogueira, Archie Built Cliff, George Sampson and Robert Wallace. The team at Greenpeace is James Hansen, Flora Hevesi, Alex Yallop, Janae Mayer and Alice Lloyd Hunter. Thanks for listening and see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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