If you are among the one billion people on the planet who live within easy striking distance of the world’s ocean today would be a good day to dip a toe or more into it or spend a few minutes simply pondering that horizon line where blue meets blue because today — June 8th — is the first official, United Nations-declared World Oceans Day.
The concept, first proposed in 1992 by the Government of Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, has been celebrated for the past half-dozen years by a loose coalition of aquariums, zoos, museums, conservation organizations and agencies, universities, schools, and businesses. Today the Ocean Project lists thousands of events around the globe celebrating and informing about the ocean.
My favorite recent step-in-the-right-direction regarding the health of the ocean are calls upon high-end restaurateurs around the world to give up on blue fin tuna. One of the most popular, thus most-endangered fish species, blue fin is the heart of many sushi menus. Which turned out last week to be an easy target for protest. In New York City, at the elegant Nobu, Greenpeacers slipped faux menus in with the real thing listing specials like “Rack of Mountain Gorilla Seasoned with Powdered Rhino Horn ($32).” The goal was to encourage the restaurant to drop the endangered blue fin from its menu.
Across the Atlantic, the owner of the luncheon chain Pret A Manger – after seeing a powerful new documentary “End of the Line” about how modern fishing is destroying the oceans’ ecosystem – has banned tuna from its sushi and sandwiches. “End of the Line,” based on the book of the same name by Charles Glover, has its international release today.
Despite my own concerns about lots of the big fish in the sea and our incredibly consumptive demand for them, I have been in the past a passionate tuna lover. Lightly seared, nearly raw, would be my favorite. But no more, I’m going cold turkey on tuna. Which, if it became a real trend, could make a big difference. Remember those nasty CFCs which were eating up the ozone over Antarctica? We quit using them and the ozone hole is closing proving that small steps can make a big difference.
Or you can follow the lead of one of Nobu’s patrons who, interviewed during the Greenpeace action by the Times, suggested all the tuna talk was making him hungry all over again. “I get another order. It was just great.” For now, Nobu is not going to remove the fish from its menu — opting instead just to let people know that what they’re about to order contains meat from an endangered species.
While we spend most of our time here talking about life at or near sea level, I have a bunch of good friends whose lives are dictated by getting higher and higher, in the mountains. Tragically that passion, even by the most elite climbers, too often ends up in headlines we’d rather not see. I spent the weekend monitoring the Internet for news of two friends – Jonny Copp, founder of Boulder’s Adventure Film Festival and my fellow Mountain Hardwear sponsored-athlete Micah Dash – who’d apparently disappeared on Mount Edgar in Sichuan, China. When they missed their flight out of Chengdu on June 5th, the searching began. Copp’s body was found yesterday at about 12,000 feet among avalanche debris (photographer Wade Johnson was nearby). For now, Dash remains missing.
We sailed into Kodiak on a somewhat rarified day for this part of the world, one filled with sunshine rather than rain. The weekend just past had been its annual Crab Fest, an event dampened by typical May weather: horizontal rain and temperatures just above freezing. But on a big, blue, sun-shiny day you’d be hard-pressed to imagine a more beautiful place, the entirety of Kodiak Island and the snowcapped mountains that rim it wrapped beneath an indigo sky.
Ironically, the place it reminded me of most of was Kamchatka, where we’d been a week before. Both are spectacular lands of active volcanoes and hot, spurting geysers. The seas that surround both are the same steel-blue, the volcanic mountain ranges similarly tall and foreboding, with fishing boats moving in and out of the bays. Both regions share physical turmoil as well as beauty, visited frequently by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunami waves. Rain is a constant for both (Kamchatka, 110 inches a year, Kodiak, 68).
A very good halibut day, off Kodiak Island
Though separated by one thousand miles of Bering Sea they started out with similar human roots as well. The very first Russian colony in North America was founded in 1784 at Three Saints Bay on southeastern Kodiak Island and until 1804 it was the center of Russian activity in Alaska. Russians are responsible for the name “Alaska,” derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning “the mainland” or more literally, “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed.”
In the mid-1800s Russia, worried that the expanding U.S. and Canada would usurp its Alaskan territory without paying, attempted to play one against other in a bidding war, which proved unsuccessful. Ultimately, in 1867, the U.S. bought Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million (two cents per acre) and would become the 49th state on January 3, 1959.
Today both economies are driven by fishing. Kodiak is consistently one of the U.S.’s top three ports, with 750 fishing boats working off the island profiting from a wealth of Pacific salmon, Pacific halibut and crab. One thousand miles to the west biologists estimate that a sixth to a quarter of all Pacific salmon originate in Kamchatka’s highly productive waters, including all six species of anadromous Pacific salmon (chinook, chum, coho, seema, pink, and sockeye).
But that’s where the comparisons come to a screeching halt. The state of the local economies and the health of the natural environments couldn’t be more different. The air and sea around Kodiak are nearly pristine; in Kamchatka, far from it, impacting the quality of life for all. Per capita income is widely different too (Alaskans, $33,000 a year; Kamchatkans, less than $7,500) and, no matter what you think about Alaskan politicians (Ted Stevens?), those in Kamchatka win the prize for blatant corruption.
How did these two regions, so similarly blessed by nature, turn out so differently? Two words: Soviet Union. During the Soviet era Kamchatka was closed to outsiders for decades, for military reasons; today half of the territory of the Peninsula is still controlled by the Army. The result has been hard on both man and nature.
One of the first things you notice in Kamchatka is that there are very few old people. The harsh climate is partly to blame, but it is human influence, rather than natural forces, that shortens the lifespan of local residents. Despite its unspoiled appearance, the peninsula is filled with toxic pollutants, the most frightening aspect of which is that no one is really sure just how contaminated it is.
Until 1990 Kamchatka was home to the Soviet Pacific Submarine Fleet, several major airbases and is still an important testing ground for ICBMs. This substantial military presence has contaminated the landscape with heavy metals, radiation and other pollutants. The large naval base across from the capital city of Petropavlovsk bobs with poorly maintained nuclear submarines.
The decrepit capital appears to have been forgotten by time. Crumbling, Soviet concrete-slab buildings line the once-lush hills dropping down to the water. The once-bustling port is now mostly idle and crammed with rusting ships and scrap metal. Poaching – mostly illegal caviar, but also whales – are big economies and locals blame the intense poverty. It is estimated that criminal gangs poach at least half the fish sold from Kamchatka; when we were there twenty fishing trawlers were moored out at sea, impounded for poaching.
While I met some beautiful and incredibly gracious individuals in Kamchatka, I couldn’t help but think their situation desperate. The few I met who would talk openly admitted that the corrupt bureaucracy that continues to oversee the plundering of the region’s unique natural resources cannot be – or at least should not be — continued. For their sake I hope big changes come. Soon.
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