I'm an ecologist, mostly a coral reef ecologist. I started out in Chesapeake Bay and went diving in the winter and became a tropical ecologist overnight. And it was really a lot of fun for about 10 years. I mean, somebody pays you to go around and travel and look at some of the most beautiful places on the planet. And that was what I did.
Eu son un ecólogo, sobre todo, un ecólogo de arrecifes de coral. Comecei na Bahia de Chesapeake a mergullar no inverno e de repente torneime un ecólogo tropical. E foi moi divertido durante uns 10 anos. É dicir, alguén te paga para viaxar polo mundo e ver algúns dos lugares máis fermosos do planeta. E iso foi o que fixen eu.
And I ended up in Jamaica, in the West Indies, where the coral reefs were really among the most extraordinary, structurally, that I ever saw in my life. And this picture here, it's really interesting, it shows two things: First of all, it's in black and white because the water was so clear and you could see so far, and film was so slow in the 1960s and early 70s, you took pictures in black and white. The other thing it shows you is that, although there's this beautiful forest of coral, there are no fish in that picture.
Acabei en Xamaica, nas Antillas, onde os arrecifes de coral estaban entre as estruturas máis extraordinarias que nunca vin na miña vida. Esta foto é moi interesante e amósanos dúas cousas. A primeira é en branco e negro porque a auga era tan clara que podías ver tan lonxe. Ademais, os carretes eran tan lentos nos anos 60 e principios dos 70, que se facían as fotos en branco e negro. A outra cousa que mostra é que aínda que haxa ese fermoso bosque de coral, non hai peixes na foto.
Those reefs at Discovery Bay, Jamaica were the most studied coral reefs in the world for 20 years. We were the best and the brightest. People came to study our reefs from Australia, which is sort of funny because now we go to theirs. And the view of scientists about how coral reefs work, how they ought to be, was based on these reefs without any fish. Then, in 1980, there was a hurricane, Hurricane Allen. I put half the lab up in my house. The wind blew very strong. The waves were 25 to 50 feet high. And the reefs disappeared, and new islands formed, and we thought, "Well, we're real smart. We know that hurricanes have always happened in the past." And we published a paper in Science, the first time that anybody ever described the destruction on a coral reef by a major hurricane. And we predicted what would happen, and we got it all wrong. And the reason was because of overfishing, and the fact that a last common grazer, a sea urchin, died. And within a few months after that sea urchin dying, the seaweed started to grow. And that is the same reef; that's the same reef 15 years ago; that's the same reef today. The coral reefs of the north coast of Jamaica have a few percent live coral cover and a lot of seaweed and slime. And that's more or less the story of the coral reefs of the Caribbean, and increasingly, tragically, the coral reefs worldwide.
Estes corais en Discovery Bay en Xamaica foron os máis estudados do mundo durante uns 20 anos. Éramos os mellores e máis brillantes. Viu xente da Australia para estudar os nosos arrecifes, o que non deixa de ser gracioso porque agora nós imos aos deles. A opinión dos científicos de como funcionan os arrecifes de coral baseouse nestes arrecifes sen ningún peixe. Entón, en 1980, houbo un furacán, o furacán Allen. Coloquei a metade do laboratorio na miña casa. O vento foi moi forte. As ondas eran de 8 metros a 16 metros de altura. Os arrecifes desapareceron e formáronse novas illas. E pensamos, "Somos moi listos. Sabemos que os furacáns aconteceron de sempre no pasado". Publicamos un artigo na revista Science, a primeira vez que alguén describía a destrución dun arrecife de coral por un gran furacán. Predecimos o que ía acontecer. E fixémolo todo mal. O motivo foi a sobrepesca e o feito de que o último herbívoro, un ourizo de mar, morreu. Uns poucos meses despois da morte dos ourizos, as algas comezaron a medrar. Este é o mesmo arrecife. Este é o mesmo arrecife de hai 15 anos. Este é o mesmo arrecife hoxe. Os arrecifes do norte de Xamaica teñen unha pequena porcentaxe de coral vivo e moitas algas e lama. Esta é máis ou menos a historia dos arrecifes de coral no Caribe, e cada vez máis, traxicamente, dos arrecifes de todo o mundo.
Now, that's my little, depressing story. All of us in our 60s and 70s have comparable depressing stories. There are tens of thousands of those stories out there, and it's really hard to conjure up much of a sense of well-being, because it just keeps getting worse. And the reason it keeps getting worse is that after a natural catastrophe, like a hurricane, it used to be that there was some kind of successional sequence of recovery, but what's going on now is that overfishing and pollution and climate change are all interacting in a way that prevents that. And so I'm going to sort of go through and talk about those three kinds of things.
Agora, esa é a miña pequena historia depresiva. Todos nós temos historias tristes parecidas aos dos anos 60 e 70. Hai decenas de miles destas historias. E é realmente difícil imaxinar que todo acabará ben, porque vai a peor. A razón de que se agrave, é que, despois dun desastre natural como un furacán, adoitaba acontecer algún tipo de sucesión secuencial de recuperación. O que sucede agora é que a sobrepesca, a contaminación e o cambio climático están a interactuar de xeito que evitan que iso aconteza. Entón, dalgunha maneira, vou falar sobre estes tres tipos de cousas.
We hear a lot about the collapse of cod. It's difficult to imagine that two, or some historians would say three world wars were fought during the colonial era for the control of cod. Cod fed most of the people of Western Europe. It fed the slaves brought to the Antilles, the song "Jamaica Farewell" -- "Ackee rice salt fish are nice" -- is an emblem of the importance of salt cod from northeastern Canada. It all collapsed in the 80s and the 90s: 35,000 people lost their jobs. And that was the beginning of a kind of serial depletion from bigger and tastier species to smaller and not-so-tasty species, from species that were near to home to species that were all around the world, and what have you. It's a little hard to understand that, because you can go to a Costco in the United States and buy cheap fish. You ought to read the label to find out where it came from, but it's still cheap, and everybody thinks it's okay.
Escoitouse falar moito sobre o colapso do bacallau. É difícil imaxinar que dúas, ou algúns historiadores dirían tres, guerras mundiais, que tiveron lugar durante a era colonial, foron polo control do bacallau. O bacallau alimentou á maioría dos pobos de Europa Occidental e aos escravos traídos para as Antillas. A canción "Jamaica Farewell"-- "Arroz e peixe salgado son bos" -- é un emblema da importancia do bacallau salgado do nordeste do Canadá. Todo foi abaixo nas décadas dos 80 e 90. Unhas 35.000 persoas perderon o emprego. Ese foi o principio dun deterioro en serie, que vai de especies grandes e saborosas, a especies máis pequenas e non tan saborosas, de especies que se pescaban perto de casa, a especies espalladas por todo o mundo, e as tes ao teu alcance. É un pouco difícil entender todo isto, porque podes ir a Costco nos E.E.U.U. e mercar peixe barato. Tes que ler o rótulo para saber de onde ven, mais aínda é barato, e todo o mundo pensa que está ben.
It's hard to communicate this, and one way that I think is really interesting is to talk about sport fish, because people like to go out and catch fish. It's one of those things. This picture here shows the trophy fish, the biggest fish caught by people who pay a lot of money to get on a boat, go to a place off of Key West in Florida, drink a lot of beer, throw a lot of hooks and lines into the water, come back with the biggest and the best fish, and the champion trophy fish are put on this board, where people take a picture, and this guy is obviously really excited about that fish. Well, that's what it's like now, but this is what it was like in the 1950s from the same boat in the same place on the same board on the same dock. The trophy fish were so big that you couldn't put any of those small fish up on it. And the average size trophy fish weighed 250 to 300 pounds, goliath grouper, and if you wanted to go out and kill something, you could pretty much count on being able to catch one of those fish. And they tasted really good. And people paid less in 1950 dollars to catch that than what people pay now to catch those little, tiny fish. And that's everywhere.
É difícil transmitir isto. Así, un xeito que eu creo que é interesante, é falar da pesca deportiva, porque á xente gústalle saír e coller peixe. É unha desas cousas. Esta foto mostra o peixe premiado, o maior peixe capturado por xente que paga moito diñeiro para embarcar nunha lancha, ir a un lugar de Caio Oeste, na Florida, beber moita cervexa, largar moitas liñas e anzois na auga, e retornar cos mellores e maiores peixes, e os peixes campións son colocados neste panel, onde lles fan fotos, e obviamente este tipo está moi satisfeito con ese peixe. Ben, agora iso é así, pero na década de 1950 xa era así: o mesmo barco no mesmo lugar, no mesmo panel do mesmo peirao. Os peixes campións eran tan grandes que non podían poñer ningún deses peixes pequenos nel. Eses peixes pesaban de media 100-150 kg, eran meros. Se alguén quería saír e matar algo, case podería estar seguro de que ía pescar un daqueles peixes. Estaban deliciosos. A xente pagaba menos, en dólares de 1950, por pescalos do que pagan agora por pescar peixiños pequenos. E iso pasa en todas partes.
It's not just the fish, though, that are disappearing. Industrial fishing uses big stuff, big machinery. We use nets that are 20 miles long. We use longlines that have one million or two million hooks. And we trawl, which means to take something the size of a tractor trailer truck that weighs thousands and thousands of pounds, put it on a big chain, and drag it across the sea floor to stir up the bottom and catch the fish. Think of it as being kind of the bulldozing of a city or of a forest, because it clears it away. And the habitat destruction is unbelievable. This is a photograph, a typical photograph, of what the continental shelves of the world look like. You can see the rows in the bottom, the way you can see the rows in a field that has just been plowed to plant corn. What that was, was a forest of sponges and coral, which is a critical habitat for the development of fish. What it is now is mud, and the area of the ocean floor that has been transformed from forest to level mud, to parking lot, is equivalent to the entire area of all the forests that have ever been cut down on all of the earth in the history of humanity. We've managed to do that in the last 100 to 150 years.
Non son os peixes que están desaparecendo. A pesca industrial utiliza cousas grandes, maquinaria grande. Redes de 40 km de extensión. Palangres ("o pincho") que teñen un millón ou dous de anzois. E o arrastre, que significa coller algo do tamaño dun camión con remolque que pesa miles e miles de quilos, colgalo nunha gran cadea e arrastralo polo fondo mariño para axitar o fondo e capturar o peixe. Pensade niso como unha escavadora demolendo unha cidade ou arrasando un bosque, porque o elimina todo. E a destrución do hábitat é incrible. Esta é a fotografía, unha foto típica do aspecto que teñen as plataformas continentais do mundo. Pódense ver os regos no fondo, do mesmo xeito que se poden ver os regos nun campo arado recentemente para sementar millo. Isto era antes un bosque de esponxas e coral, que é un hábitat crítico para o desenvolvemento dos peixes. Agora é lama. A área do fondo do océano que se transformou desde o bosque ata o nivel da lama, como un estacionamento, é equivalente a toda a área de todos os bosques que algunha vez foron cortados en toda a terra na historia da humanidade. E logramos facelo nos últimos 100 ou 150 anos.
We tend to think of oil spills and mercury and we hear a lot about plastic these days. And all of that stuff is really disgusting, but what's really insidious is the biological pollution that happens because of the magnitude of the shifts that it causes to entire ecosystems. And I'm going to just talk very briefly about two kinds of biological pollution: one is introduced species and the other is what comes from nutrients. So this is the infamous Caulerpa taxifolia, the so-called killer algae. A book was written about it. It's a bit of an embarrassment. It was accidentally released from the aquarium in Monaco, it was bred to be cold tolerant to have in peoples aquaria. It's very pretty, and it has rapidly started to overgrow the once very rich biodiversity of the northwestern Mediterranean. I don't know how many of you remember the movie "The Little Shop of Horrors," but this is the plant of "The Little Shop of Horrors." But, instead of devouring the people in the shop, what it's doing is overgrowing and smothering virtually all of the bottom-dwelling life of the entire northwestern Mediterranean Sea. We don't know anything that eats it, we're trying to do all sorts of genetics and figure out something that could be done, but, as it stands, it's the monster from hell, about which nobody knows what to do.
Tendemos a pensar nos derrames de petróleo e no mercurio, e fálase moito do plástico nestes días. Todo este material é realmente noxento, pero o que é realmente insidioso é a contaminación biolóxica que ocorre debido á magnitude dos cambios que provoca a ecosistemas enteiros. Só vou falar brevemente sobre dous tipos de contaminación biolóxica. Un deles son as especies introducidas, e o outro é o que vén dos nutrientes. Entón esta é a infame Caulerpa taxifolia, a chamada alga asesina. Escribiron un libro sobre ela. É un pouco embarazoso. Liberáronna accidentalmente do acuario, en Mónaco. Foi criada para ser tolerante ao frío, para tela nos acuarios. É moi bonita e axiña empezou a encher de maleza a, en tempos moi rica, biodiversidade do Mediterráneo noroccidental. Non sei cantos se lembran da película "A Pequena Tenda dos Horrores", pero esta é a planta que aparecía na película. Mais, no canto de devorar á xente na tenda, o que está a facer é encher de maleza e sufocar practicamente toda a vida do fondo de toda a rexión noroeste do Mar Mediterráneo. Non sabemos de ninguén que a coma. Estamos a tentar facer todo tipo de xenética e pensar nalgunha solución. Pero, tal como está, é o monstro do inferno sobre o que ninguén sabe o que facer.
Now another form of pollution that's biological pollution is what happens from excess nutrients. The green revolution, all of this artificial nitrogen fertilizer, we use too much of it. It's subsidized, which is one of the reasons we used too much of it. It runs down the rivers, and it feeds the plankton, the little microscopic plant cells in the coastal water. But since we ate all the oysters and we ate all the fish that would eat the plankton, there's nothing to eat the plankton and there's more and more of it, so it dies of old age, which is unheard of for plankton. And when it dies, it falls to the bottom and then it rots, which means that bacteria break it down. And in the process they use up all the oxygen, and in using up all the oxygen they make the environment utterly lethal for anything that can't swim away. So, what we end up with is a microbial zoo dominated by bacteria and jellyfish, as you see on the left in front of you. And the only fishery left -- and it is a commercial fishery -- is the jellyfish fishery you see on the right, where there used to be prawns. Even in Newfoundland where we used to catch cod, we now have a jellyfish fishery.
Agora outra forma de contaminación é a contaminación biolóxica: é o que pasa co exceso de nutrientes. A revolución verde, os fertilizantes artificiais de nitróxeno, usamos demasiado diso. Están subvencionados, unha das razóns do uso excesivo. Percorren os ríos e alimentan o plancto, as pequenas células vexetais microscópicas nas augas costeiras. Pero desde que comemos todas as ostras e comemos os peixes que comerían o plancto, non hai ninguén que coma o plancto. E hai máis e máis, así que morre de vello, algo que é inaudito para o plancto. E cando morre, cae ao fondo e entón apodrece, o que significa que as bacterias o descompoñen. E nese proceso empregan todo o osíxeno. E ao consumir todo o osíxeno, fan o ambiente totalmente letal para calquera cousa que non pode escapar nadando. Así acabamos tendo un zoolóxico microbiano, dominado por bacterias e medusas, como se ve á esquerda diante de vostedes. A única pesca que queda é a comercial, a pesca de medusas que se ve á dereita, onde adoitaba haber gambas. Mesmo na Terranova, onde adoitabamos capturar bacallau, agora temos pesca de medusas.
And another version of this sort of thing is what is often called red tides or toxic blooms. That picture on the left is just staggering to me. I have talked about it a million times, but it's unbelievable. In the upper right of that picture on the left is almost the Mississippi Delta, and the lower left of that picture is the Texas-Mexico border. You're looking at the entire northwestern Gulf of Mexico; you're looking at one toxic dinoflagellate bloom that can kill fish, made by that beautiful little creature on the lower right. And in the upper right you see this black sort of cloud moving ashore. That's the same species. And as it comes to shore and the wind blows, and little droplets of the water get into the air, the emergency rooms of all the hospitals fill up with people with acute respiratory distress. And that's retirement homes on the west coast of Florida. A friend and I did this thing in Hollywood we called Hollywood ocean night, and I was trying to figure out how to explain to actors what's going on. And I said, "So, imagine you're in a movie called 'Escape from Malibu' because all the beautiful people have moved to North Dakota, where it's clean and safe. And the only people who are left there are the people who can't afford to move away from the coast, because the coast, instead of being paradise, is harmful to your health."
Outra versión deste tipo de cousas é o que se chama a miúdo mareas vermellas ou floracións tóxicas. Esa foto é sorprendente para min. Falei sobre iso millóns de veces, pero é incrible. Na esquina superior dereita da imaxe da esquerda é case o Delta do Mississippi, e a parte inferior esquerda da imaxe é a fronteira de Texas con México. Pódese ver todo o noroeste do Golfo de México. Pódese ver unha floración de dinoflaxelados tóxicos que poden matar peixes, feita pola bonita e pequena criatura no ángulo inferior dereito. E na esquina superior dereita vese este tipo de nube negra que se move cara á costa. Esa é a mesma especie. A medida que se vai achegando á costa e o vento sopra, e pequenas gotiñas de auga entran no aire, as urxencias de todos os hospitais énchense de xente con insuficiencia respiratoria aguda. Son casas de xubilados na costa oeste da Florida. Un amigo e eu fixemos isto en Hollywood, chamámoslle noite do océano de Hollywood. Eu estaba tentando pensar como explicar aos actores o que está a suceder. E dixen: "Entón, imaxinen que están nunha película chamada 'Fuxindo de Malibú", porque todas as persoas bonitas mudáronse a Dakota do Norte, onde está limpo e seguro. E as únicas persoas que están alí son as persoas que non se poden permitir afastarse da costa, porque a costa, no canto de ser un paraíso, é prexudicial para a saúde."
And then this is amazing. It was when I was on holiday last early autumn in France. This is from the coast of Brittany, which is being enveloped in this green, algal slime. The reason that it attracted so much attention, besides the fact that it's disgusting, is that sea birds flying over it are asphyxiated by the smell and die, and a farmer died of it, and you can imagine the scandal that happened. And so there's this war between the farmers and the fishermen about it all, and the net result is that the beaches of Brittany have to be bulldozed of this stuff on a regular basis.
E logo isto é incrible. Foi cando estaba de vacacións a principios do outono pasado, en Francia. Esta é da costa da Bretaña, que está a ser envolvida neste lodo verde de algas. O motivo que atraeu tanta atención, ademais do feito de que é repugnante, é que as aves mariñas que a sobrevoan son asfixiadas polo cheiro e morren. Tamén morreu un labrego, imaxinade o escándalo que causou. E por todo iso hai esta guerra entre labregos e mariñeiros. O resultado é que téñense que limpar as praias da Bretaña para quitar este material con maquinaria e regularmente.
And then, of course, there's climate change, and we all know about climate change. I guess the iconic figure of it is the melting of the ice in the Arctic Sea. Think about the thousands and thousands of people who died trying to find the Northwest Passage. Well, the Northwest Passage is already there. I think it's sort of funny; it's on the Siberian coast, maybe the Russians will charge tolls. The governments of the world are taking this really seriously. The military of the Arctic nations is taking it really seriously. For all the denial of climate change by government leaders, the CIA and the navies of Norway and the U.S. and Canada, whatever are busily thinking about how they will secure their territory in this inevitability from their point of view. And, of course, Arctic communities are toast.
E logo, naturalmente, está o cambio climático, e todos sabemos do cambio climático. Coido que a súa figura emblemática é a fusión do xeo no Mar Ártico. Pensemos nos miles e miles de persoas que morreron tentando atopar o Paso do Noroeste. Ben, o Noroeste xa está aí. Paréceme gracioso, está na costa de Siberia. Quizais os rusos van cobrar peaxes. Os gobernos do mundo están tomando isto mesmo en serio. Os militares das nacións do Ártico o están tomando mesmo en serio. Para todos os que negan o cambio climático direi que os líderes de goberno, a CIA e as Mariñas de Noruega, E.E.U.U. e Canadá, nembargantes, están ocupados pensando en como van protexer o seu territorio, ante o que é inevitable, dende o seu punto de vista. E, claro, as comunidades árticas están perdidas.
The other kinds of effects of climate change -- this is coral bleaching. It's a beautiful picture, right? All that white coral. Except it's supposed to be brown. What happens is that the corals are a symbiosis, and they have these little algal cells that live inside them. And the algae give the corals sugar, and the corals give the algae nutrients and protection. But when it gets too hot, the algae can't make the sugar. The corals say, "You cheated. You didn't pay your rent." They kick them out, and then they die. Not all of them die; some of them survive, some more are surviving, but it's really bad news. To try and give you a sense of this, imagine you go camping in July somewhere in Europe or in North America, and you wake up the next morning, and you look around you, and you see that 80 percent of the trees, as far as you can see, have dropped their leaves and are standing there naked. And you come home, and you discover that 80 percent of all the trees in North America and in Europe have dropped their leaves. And then you read in the paper a few weeks later, "Oh, by the way, a quarter of those died." Well, that's what happened in the Indian Ocean during the 1998 El Nino, an area vastly greater than the size of North America and Europe, when 80 percent of all the corals bleached and a quarter of them died.
O outro tipo de efectos do cambio climático este é o branqueamento do coral. É unha fermosa foto, Todos eses son corais brancos. Só que se supón que deben ser marróns. O que acontece é que os corais son unha simbiose e teñen estas pequenas células de algas que viven dentro deles. As algas dan azucre aos corais e os corais dan ás algas nutrientes e protección. Mais cando vai máis calor, as algas non poden producir o azucre. Os corais din: "Estafáchesme. Non pagaches o aluguer". As expulsan, e entón elas morren. Non todas morren, algunhas sobreviven. Algunhas están sobrevivindo, mais é realmente unha mala noticia. Para tentar entendelo, imaxinade que vai a un campamento en xullo nalgún lugar en Europa ou América do Norte, e espertades pola mañá, mirades ao voso redor e vedes que ao 80 por cento das árbores, na medida do que podedes ver, caéronlle as follas e están espidos. Volvedes á casa e descubrides que ao 80 por cento de todas as árbores de América do Norte e Europa caéronlle as follas. Unhas semanas máis tarde, ledes no xornal oh, a propósito, un cuarto deles morreu. Ben, foi iso que pasou no Océano Índico durante "El Niño" de 1998, nunha superficie moito maior que o tamaño de América do Norte e Europa, cando o 80 por cento de todos os corais branquearon e un cuarto deles morreron.
And then the really scary thing about all of this -- the overfishing, the pollution and the climate change -- is that each thing doesn't happen in a vacuum. But there are these, what we call, positive feedbacks, the synergies among them that make the whole vastly greater than the sum of the parts. And the great scientific challenge for people like me in thinking about all this, is do we know how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I mean, because we, at this point, we can protect it. But what does that mean? We really don't know.
O realmente aterrador de todo isto, da sobrepesca, a contaminación e o cambio climático, é que cada cousa non acontece nun baleiro, senón que hai o que chamamos retroalimentación positiva. As sinerxias entre eles fan o todo moito maior que a suma das partes. O grande reto científico para persoas coma min, pensando en todo isto, é : saberemos recompoñer o ovo a partir dos pedazos? Quero dicir, porque nós, neste momento, podemos protexelo. Mais que significa iso? Realmente non o sabemos.
So what are the oceans going to be like in 20 or 50 years? Well, there won't be any fish except for minnows, and the water will be pretty dirty, and all those kinds of things and full of mercury, etc., etc. And dead zones will get bigger and bigger and they'll start to merge, and we can imagine something like the dead-zonification of the global, coastal ocean. Then you sure won't want to eat fish that were raised in it, because it would be a kind of gastronomic Russian roulette. Sometimes you have a toxic bloom; sometimes you don't. That doesn't sell.
Entón, como van ser os océanos en 20 ou 50 anos? Ben, non haberá ningún peixe excepto peixiños, e a auga estará moi porca, e todo ese tipo de cousas, e cheo de mercurio... As zonas mortas medrarán máis e máis e empezarán a fusionarse. Podemos imaxinar algo como a zona morta costeira do océano global. Entón non ides querer comer os peixes nacidos nela, porque sería unha especie de ruleta rusa gastronómica. Ás veces tes unha floración tóxica, ás veces non. Iso non vende.
The really scary things though are the physical, chemical, oceanographic things that are happening. As the surface of the ocean gets warmer, the water is lighter when it's warmer, it becomes harder and harder to turn the ocean over. We say it becomes more strongly stratified. The consequence of that is that all those nutrients that fuel the great anchoveta fisheries, of the sardines of California or in Peru or whatever, those slow down and those fisheries collapse. And, at the same time, water from the surface, which is rich in oxygen, doesn't make it down and the ocean turns into a desert.
O realmente aterrador, porén, son as cousas físicas, químicas e oceanográficas que están acontecendo. A medida que a superficie do océano quéntase cada vez máis e a auga é máis lixeira canto máis quente, faise cada vez máis difícil mesturar a auga do océano. É dicir, faise máis fortemente estratificado. A consecuencia diso é que o fluxo de todos eses nutrientes que alimentan a gran pesquería da anchoveta e da sardiña de California, ou do Perú, ou onde queira que sexa, desacelera, e as pesquerías se colapsan. E, ao mesmo tempo, a auga da superficie, que é rica en osíxeno, non baixa, e o océano se transforma nun deserto.
So the question is: How are we all going to respond to this? And we can do all sorts of things to fix it, but in the final analysis, the thing we really need to fix is ourselves. It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. So the question is: Will we respond to this or not? I would say that the future of life and the dignity of human beings depends on our doing that.
Entón a pregunta é: Como é que todos nós imos responder a iso? Podemos facer todo tipo de cousas para corrixilo, mais na análise final, o único que realmente precisamos corrixir é a nós mesmos. Non se trata do peixe, non se trata da contaminación, non se trata do cambio climático. Trátase de nós, da nosa avaricia, da nosa necesidade de crecemento e a nosa incapacidade de imaxinar un mundo diferente do mundo egoísta no que vivimos hoxe. Entón a pregunta é: Imos responder a iso ou non? Eu diría que o futuro da vida e da dignidade dos seres humanos depende do que fagamos.
Thank you. (Applause)
Grazas