I'm going to speak about a tiny, little idea. And this is about shifting baseline. And because the idea can be explained in one minute, I will tell you three stories before to fill in the time. And the first story is about Charles Darwin, one of my heroes. And he was here, as you well know, in '35. And you'd think he was chasing finches, but he wasn't. He was actually collecting fish. And he described one of them as very "common." This was the sailfin grouper. A big fishery was run on it until the '80s. Now the fish is on the IUCN Red List. Now this story, we have heard it lots of times on Galapagos and other places, so there is nothing particular about it. But the point is, we still come to Galapagos. We still think it is pristine. The brochures still say it is untouched. So what happens here?
Govoriću o jednoj maloj ideji. A to je pomeranje dna mora. Pošto ovo može da se objasni u roku od jedne minute, ispričaću vam 3 priče da bih ispunio vreme. Prva priča je o Čarlsu Darvinu, jednom od mojih heroja. On je boravio ovde, 1835. Pomislili biste da je došao da juri zebe, ali zapravo nije. On je ovde sakupljao ribe. Jednu od njih je opisao kao veoma učestalu vrstu. Ta riba je škarpina zrakoperka. Mnogi su lovili ovde zbog ove ribe sve do osamdesetih. Ova riba se nalazi na Crvenoj listi Međunarodne unije za očuvanje prirode. Ovu priču smo čuli toliko puta na Galapagosu i na drugim mestima i ona nije ništa posebno. Ali u ovom trenutku, mi i dalje posećujemo Galapagos. Još uvek smatramo da je to drevno mesto. I dan danas u brošurama piše da je tu potpuno netaknuta priroda. Dakle, šta se ovde dešava?
The second story, also to illustrate another concept, is called shifting waistline. (Laughter) Because I was there in '71, studying a lagoon in West Africa. I was there because I grew up in Europe and I wanted later to work in Africa. And I thought I could blend in. And I got a big sunburn, and I was convinced that I was really not from there. This was my first sunburn.
Druga priča, koja opisuje jedan drugi koncept, zove se pomeranje obima struka. (Smeh) Pošto sam tamo bio 1971. godine proučavajući lagune u zapadnoj Africi. Bio sam tamo jer sam odrastao u Evropi i želeo sam da kasnije radim u Africi. Pomislio sam da bih mogao da se uklopim. Prilično sam izgoreo na suncu i bio sam sasvim uveren da ne pripadam tamo. Prvi put sam tada izgoreo na suncu.
And the lagoon was surrounded by palm trees, as you can see, and a few mangrove. And it had tilapia about 20 centimeters, a species of tilapia called blackchin tilapia. And the fisheries for this tilapia sustained lots of fish and they had a good time and they earned more than average in Ghana. When I went there 27 years later, the fish had shrunk to half of their size. They were maturing at five centimeters. They had been pushed genetically. There were still fishes. They were still kind of happy. And the fish also were happy to be there. So nothing has changed, but everything has changed.
Laguna je bila okružena palmama, kao što vidite ovde i sa nekoliko mangrova. Bilo je tu i tilapija dužine 20 centimetara, vrsta tilapije koja se zove crnobrada tilapija. Lovišta za ovu vrstu tilapije su držala veliki broj riba i zarađivala su više od proseka u Gani. Kada sam se vratio tamo posle 27 godina, ribe su se znatno smanjile, gotovo prepolovile. Sazrevale su sa svega 5 centimetara. Genetski su bile modifikovane. Još je bilo ribe i svi su bili zadovoljni. I ribe su bile zadovoljne što su tamo. Dakle, ništa se nije promenilo, ali se sve promenilo.
My third little story is that I was an accomplice in the introduction of trawling in Southeast Asia. In the '70s -- well, beginning in the '60s -- Europe did lots of development projects. Fish development meant imposing on countries that had already 100,000 fishers to impose on them industrial fishing. And this boat, quite ugly, is called the Mutiara 4. And I went sailing on it, and we did surveys throughout the southern South China sea and especially the Java Sea. And what we caught, we didn't have words for it. What we caught, I know now, is the bottom of the sea. And 90 percent of our catch were sponges, other animals that are fixed on the bottom. And actually most of the fish, they are a little spot on the debris, the piles of debris, were coral reef fish. Essentially the bottom of the sea came onto the deck and then was thrown down.
Moja treća priča je to da sam bio saučesnik u uvođenju mrežnog ribarenja u jugoistočnoj Aziji. Sedamdesetih, zapravo početkom šezdesetih, Evropa je učestvovala u mnogim razvojnim projektima. Razvoj ribarstva je značio nametanje državama, koje su već imale oko 100 hiljada ribara, da uvedu industrijski vid ribarenja. Ovaj brod, prilično ružan, se zove Mutijara 4. Plovio sam na njemu, radio istraživanje, ankete kroz oblasti Južnog kineskog mora, posebno na Javanskom moru. Ono što smo uhvatili, ostali smo bez reči. Ono što smo uhvatili je bilo, sada znam, dno mora. 90% našeg ulova su bili sunđeri i druge životinje koje se nalaze na dnu. A zapravo većina ribe je bila retka pojava na smeću i to su bile ribe koralnog grebena. Dno mora je bilo na našoj palubi koju smo potom vraćali nazad.
And these pictures are extraordinary because this transition is very rapid. Within a year, you do a survey and then commercial fishing begins. The bottom is transformed from, in this case, a hard bottom or soft coral into a muddy mess. This is a dead turtle. They were not eaten, they were thrown away because they were dead. And one time we caught a live one. It was not drowned yet. And then they wanted to kill it because it was good to eat. This mountain of debris is actually collected by fishers every time they go into an area that's never been fished. But it's not documented.
Ove slike su sjajne jer ova promena je zaista brza. Za samo godinu dana, radite istraživanje i potom počinje komercijalno ribarenje. Dno je potpuno promenjeno, prešlo je od tvrdog ili mekog koralnog dna u muljeviti haos. Ovo je mrtva kornjača. Njih nismo jeli, nego smo ih bacali nazad jer su bile mrtve. Jednom smo upecali i jednu živu. Ona se još nije udavila. A onda su hteli da je ubiju jer su kornjače ukusne. Ovakve gomile smeća sakupe ribari svaki put kada se otisnu na more u kojem nikada nisu lovili. Ali ovo nikada nije dokumentovano.
We transform the world, but we don't remember it. We adjust our baseline to the new level, and we don't recall what was there. If you generalize this, something like this happens. You have on the y axis some good thing: biodiversity, numbers of orca, the greenness of your country, the water supply. And over time it changes -- it changes because people do things, or naturally. Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don't perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers. And that, to a large extent, is what we want to do now. We want to sustain things that are gone or things that are not the way they were.
Mi smo promenili svet, ali ne uviđamo to. Pomeramo našu baznu liniju na novi nivo i ne sećamo šta je bilo tamo. Ako ovo uopštavate, onda se nešto ovako dogodi. Na Y osi su dobre stvari: biološka raznolikost, broj orki, zelenilo, zalihe vode. Tokom vremena, to se menja -- to se menja jer ljudi rade neke stvari ili se menja prirodno. Svaka generacija će koristiti vizije koje su dobili na početku svog svesnog života i koristiće to kao standard vrednujući ga kao početak. Razlika koju vide se procenjuje kao gubitak. Ali ne uviđaju da se pre toga dogodio gubitak. Postoje etape promene. Na kraju, ono što želite da održite su samo jadni ostaci. To je ono što mi činimo danas. Želimo da održimo stvari koje su nestale ili koje nisu više onakve kakve su bile.
Now one should think this problem affected people certainly when in predatory societies, they killed animals and they didn't know they had done so after a few generations. Because, obviously, an animal that is very abundant, before it gets extinct, it becomes rare. So you don't lose abundant animals. You always lose rare animals. And therefore they're not perceived as a big loss. Over time, we concentrate on large animals, and in a sea that means the big fish. They become rarer because we fish them. Over time we have a few fish left and we think this is the baseline.
Neko će pomisliti da je ovo uticalo na ljude u predatorskim društvima, kada su ubijali životinje, ali nisu uviđali da to rade i nakon nekoliko generacija. Jer očigledno, životinje kojih ima na pretek, pre nego što izumru, postanu jako retke. Dakle, ne gubimo životinje kojih ima u izobilju. Uvek gubimo retke životinje. Zbog toga to ne smatramo velikim gubitkom. Tokom vremena koncentrišemo se na velike životinje, u moru su to velike ribe. One postanu retke jer ih mi pecamo. Tokom vremena sve je manje riba i pomislimo da je to bazna linija.
And the question is, why do people accept this? Well because they don't know that it was different. And in fact, lots of people, scientists, will contest that it was really different. And they will contest this because the evidence presented in an earlier mode is not in the way they would like the evidence presented. For example, the anecdote that some present, as Captain so-and-so observed lots of fish in this area cannot be used or is usually not utilized by fishery scientists, because it's not "scientific." So you have a situation where people don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.
Pitanje je zbog čega ljudi prihvataju ovo? Zato što ne znaju da je ranije bilo drugačije. Zapravo, mnogi ljudi od kojih su neki i naučnici, osporavaće da je stvarno bilo drugačije. Oni će osporavati ovo smatrajući da dokazi koji su predstavljeni prema ranijem stanju, nisu predstavljeni na način na koji oni misle da treba da budu predstavljeni. Na primer, anegdota koju neki pričaju jeste da je neki kapetan posmatrao mnogo riba u ovoj oblasti koje se ne mogu koristiti ili ih ne koriste naučnici za proučavanje riba, jer to nije "naučno". Time dobijate situaciju da ljudi nisu upoznati sa prošlošću, iako živimo u pismenim zajednicama jer ne veruju izvorima iz prošlosti.
And hence, the enormous role that a marine protected area can play. Because with marine protected areas, we actually recreate the past. We recreate the past that people cannot conceive because the baseline has shifted and is extremely low. That is for people who can see a marine protected area and who can benefit from the insight that it provides, which enables them to reset their baseline.
To je velika uloga koju igra zaštićena pomorska oblast. Jer u pomorski zaštićenim oblastima ponovo stvaramo prošlost. Stvaramo prošlost koju ljudi ne mogu ni da zamisle jer se osnova pomerila i nalazi se veoma nisko. To je za ljude koji mogu da posmatraju te zaštićene oblasti i koji mogu da imaju koristi od uvida u situaciju i to im omogućava da reše ovaj problem.
How about the people who can't do that because they have no access -- the people in the Midwest for example? There I think that the arts and film can perhaps fill the gap, and simulation. This is a simulation of Chesapeake Bay. There were gray whales in Chesapeake Bay a long time ago -- 500 years ago. And you will have noticed that the hues and tones are like "Avatar." (Laughter) And if you think about "Avatar," if you think of why people were so touched by it -- never mind the Pocahontas story -- why so touched by the imagery? Because it evokes something that in a sense has been lost. And so my recommendation, it's the only one I will provide, is for Cameron to do "Avatar II" underwater.
Šta je sa ljudima koji ne mogu to da urade jer nemaju pristup -- ljudi sa Srednjeg zapada, na primer? Moguće je da umetnost i filmovi ispune ovu prazninu i simulaciju. Ovo je simulacija Česepik zaliva. U Česepik zalivu je pre mnogo godina bilo sivih kitova, pre 500 godina. Primetićete da su boje slične onima kao u filmu "Avatar". (Smeh) Ako pomislite na taj film, ako se zapitate zašto su ljudi bili toliko oduševljeni, bez obzira na priču o Pokahontas, zašto su te slike uticale na nas? Zato što to izaziva nešto u nama, kao osećaj da smo nešto izgubili. Od svih saveta koji mogu da vam dam, jedan jedini ću podeliti sa vama, a to je da Kameron snimi "Avatar 2" ispod vode.
Thank you very much.
Hvala najlepše.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)