Deep Trouble - Our Oceans

To be a life scientist now, is to explore despair. Arriving for the glory of the natural world, the experts find themselves chronicling the end of species, of the climate, of the ecosphere.

I'm Alex Smith. We're going to dedicate this Radio Ecoshock program to the sea, and to one of it's lovers, Dr. Daniel Pauly, head of the Sea Around Us Project. His latest article, published in The New Republic magazine September 28th, 2009 is titled "Aquacalypse Now, The End of Fish".

We'll hear some clips from Dr. Pauly, and an interview with one of his prize students, Dr. Jennifer Jacquet at the University of British Columbia. Her paper shows that a third of our ocean harvest is being fed to pigs and chickens. That's right, in this upside down world, pigs may not yet fly, but they have been morphed into major ocean predators, thanks to our industrial food complex.

In our second half hour, we'll zero in on the mighty salmon. This popular food fish is challenged around the world by humans - their rivers dammed, streams destroyed, our sewage and warming oceans. No worry. We'll make our own - farmed fish. Our guest Catherine Stewart of the Living Oceans Society warns that aquaculture, from Scandinavia to Chile, is pushing out the sustainable wild stock. Horrible things are happening, in places you and I never see.