Occasionally the gulf between how food is bought and how it is harvested really hits you. Out in the English Channel on a 12-man rigid inflatable boat called Y-Knot, in gale-force winds and depleted light, it hits me repeatedly on the side of the head in the form of large and powerful waves.
It is 1 October 2006. A moratorium on scallop fishing in the seas off the South Hams coastline was lifted today. Throughout the summer months, this area fell under a 400 square kilometer ‘no take’ zone, introduced as part of the South Devon Inshore Potting Agreement, which prevented dredgers fishing for scallops and wreaking havoc on the seabed.
Eight miles out of the relative shelter of Dartmouth harbour, Y-Knot’s crew - Darren, Andy, Wayne and John - may be fishing for scallops, but they’re doing it the ethical way. They dive to the seabed and hand-pick the shellfish, causing minimal disruption to the ecosystem. If this trip is anything to go by, it’s a harrowing way to make a living. The Observer photographer, Andy Hall, and I are hanging on for grim death. ‘Your mascara’s running,’ yells Darren, Y-Knot’s owner, above the engines, presumably to me. I very much want to yell back that that’s the least of my worries, but every time I open my mouth, I’m engulfed by a wave.
Normally, I feel nauseous in a rowing boat, but here I don’t feel sick. Presumably my brain is too occupied with clinging on and not getting thrown into the dark swell - ‘You’d probably have 10 minutes in there,’ estimates John. I have no desire to pull the toggle on my life jacket, though at some point I notice that our photographer’s life jacket doesn’t seem to have a toggle at all. Rain starts to fall in huge, cold bulbs of water that run straight down the neck of my borrowed waterproofs.
Eventually the boat comes to a stop parallel to the South Devon village of Beesands. I grew up on this coastline and know it well, which should bring some comfort. But from this vantage point, the thunderous, craggy shore has nothing in common with the bucket-and-spade territory I know. I can make out the abandoned cliff-top village of Hallsands. A reminder that this area knows all about the destructive practice of dredging. In the 1900s, materials for development in Plymouth were dredged near Hallsands, despite warnings from locals that it was ruining the coast’s natural sea defences. They were proved right when, one night in 1917, most of Hallsands was swept away.
John puts on his oxygen tank, rolls backwards off the Y-Knot, and is consumed by the dark water. Without radio contact, the only way we know the divers haven’t met with a nasty end is that they send up a buoy. John’s buoy doesn’t come up. ‘For the record,’ says Darren, after 20 minutes, ‘at the coroner’s enquiry, you can all be my witnesses that I told him what to do.’ Because the light is failing, he can’t wait any more, and plops over the side. We sit in the boat while the three divers crawl about (visibility is less than half a metre) looking for scallops. The waters look eerie in the half-light.
After 30 minutes, John sends up a basket (with a buoy attached), the first indication that he hasn’t drowned. Wayne hauls in the basket, full of large, juicy scallops. The moratorium has obviously worked: the shellfish are a good size. The baskets begin to arrive one after another. Then the divers follow, wriggling back into the boat like seals. By now it’s pitch black, freezing cold and it takes an hour to get back to Dartmouth, where the crew spends another hour sorting and measuring the scallops.
Even though Darren Brown sells direct to restaurants such as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in Cornwall, and through his Shell Seekers stall at London foodie haunt Borough Market, it’s hardly big bucks. There are around 200 scallops in each of the nine baskets, selling for between 90p and £1.40 each. Factoring in fuel costs for transport and the Y-Knot, plus wages for four men, the profits are meagre. There has to be an easier way.
There is. Dredging. And it’s on the increase in Lyme Bay, where Darren and the crew are based and used to fish. Darren claims dredgers have obliterated the coast there. ‘It’s amazing,’ he reflects, ‘that you can have a county constantly promoting the beauty of the Jurassic Coast as a tourism destination, and let the dredgers come in and ruin it.’
Government agency English Nature agreed, and backed a Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT) campaign for an enforced no-dredging area covering 60 square miles (less than 10 per cent of Lyme Bay), to enable scallop stocks to recover. The Southwest Inshore Scallopers’ Association was hastily formed to oppose this, and Ben Bradshaw - now Minister of State for Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) - weakly agreed to some voluntary recommendations. In the context of fishing, ‘voluntary’ (at least in the minds of most environmentalists) equates to ‘meaningless’. The Lyme Bay story is typical. All over Europe, the US, Canada and Australia, and increasingly in Africa and Asia, fishing is territorial, political. Commercial interests and the ecologists are permanently at war.
The effects of this war were revealed in the report ‘Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services’, published on 3 November in Science and picked up by every newspaper and news channel in the world. In the report, an international group of ecologists and economists, led by renowned marine biologist Boris Worm, reported that 29 per cent of seafood species have collapsed. The report is the grim sequel to Worm’s seminal 2003 paper, co-authored by fellow marine biologist Ransom Myers, in Nature, which concluded that industrialised fisheries typically reduce community biomass by 80 per cent within 15 years of exploitation.
Despite those 2003 findings, there was not enough change in industrial practice. Three years on, Worm’s latest report shows that the impact of decreases in species population in ocean ecosystems affects the oceans’ planet-sustaining functions, including filtering pollutants such as carbon. The most chilling fact is that, if current trends continue, the last commercial fish species will be lost by 2048.
The idea that the next generation will not have any wild fish is unbearable. Yet we are devouring current supplies at an alarming rate: according to UN figures, human consumption of fish increased from 93.6m tonnes in 1998 to 100.7m tonnes in 2002, providing 2.6bn people with a minimum of 20 per cent of their average per capita protein intake. By 2015, total world consumption of fish is predicted to reach 179m tonnes. We see the same trends in the UK. Last year, sales of fresh fish surpassed fresh poultry for the first time ever. And yet, we’re still encouraged to eat more - the Food Standards Authority (FSA) recently launching its ‘two [fish] a week’ campaign.
Could the threat of the end of wild fish be the necessary wake-up call to the fishing industry? History suggests not. After all, the industry already had a major warning when the Grand Banks cod fishery collapsed in the Eighties. Known as Newfoundland Currency (a reflection of its fiscal might), cod has been fished in the Canadian fishery since the 19th century. In the Sixties, trawlers moved in and stocks began to plummet. In 1974, quotas for total allowable catches were brought in, but they were too high. When the fishery collapsed, 40,000 jobs were lost. There has been little sign of recovery in the cod population, suggesting that once species numbers plummet so far, recovery is slow - or even impossible.
Though the fishing industry seems loathe to take action, Greenpeace has entered the fray. The Save Our Seas campaign aims to halt the decline of the world’s oceanic systems. And its priority is the Mediterranean. Geophysically speaking, this sea has always been at a disadvantage: there are no significant tides to help disperse pollution and its entrance at Gibraltar is too small to allow large movements of water. At the same time, 150,000 tonnes of oil spill into the Med each year from boating accidents and operational discharges. Overfishing, particularly of bluefin tuna, disrupts the ecosystem further, and Greenpeace scientists are adamant that the only way to avoid further decline, and possible collapse, is through establishing eight ‘no-take’ policed marine reserves, the biggest of which would stretch for 18km. To help publicise the campaign, Greenpeace has sent in its most famous fighter, Rainbow Warrior.
Nothing can prepare you for seeing Rainbow Warrior for the first time. Although she looks well used, she’s still iconic, from her painted rainbow and dove emblems and wooden ship’s wheel (salvaged from the original) to the carved dolphin figurehead. The first Rainbow Warrior was blown up 21 years ago in Auckland by the French Secret Service. On deck, I watch as yachts make detours to take photos. Tourists wave madly and give victory signs.
That’s one way of greeting Rainbow Warrior. Another is to behave as the French purse seiner (trawler) fleet did in Marseilles, days before my arrival. Despite permission to dock - the Greenpeace crew was due to present a study on the benefits of marine reserves - a fleet of 20 French purse seiner pulled up alongside the Old Lady (as she’s known, on account of her creakiness), boarded, threatened the crew and blockaded the port until the authorities towed Rainbow Warrior out, against the express wishes of Captain Mike Fincken.
The fishermen had reason to be paranoid. The French fleet is the largest in the Mediterranean. It is able to swoop on shoals of fish using sonar and satellite equipment. Huge nets trap tuna during the crucial spawning part of their migratory cycle. These days, Cessna aircraft are even employed to track