Original subtitles

It's only in the last 50 years with the invention of the aqualung that we've

been able to get underwater and see some of the animals that live there.

We all love dolphins.

They're the playful, popular face of the ocean.

But most of what lives underwater is out of sight, and so out of mind.

Even in the 20 -odd years that I've been diving, there have been big changes in

our seas.

It's clear that our oceans are now in real danger.

Flying over miles and miles of ocean, you get the impression that things

too bad.

But below the surface, there's a multitude of man -made problems.

Of all of them, probably the most destructive is fishing.

And it's the way we catch fish that's the problem.

Bluefin tuna, king of the sea.

They are exquisitely designed for the open ocean.

They can grow up to three quarters of a ton and can swim at 50 miles an hour,

faster than any other creature in the sea, apart from us.

They have few natural predators when fully grown.

It is believed that these bluefins are now endangered.

There's no place in the ocean where we can't pursue them.

They just can't escape us.

Fishing has become incredibly high -tech, so much so that we can pretty

capture anything anywhere in the world nowadays.

These bluefin tuna boats beneath me have every mod con.

They have incredibly big engines, they're using depth sounders, GPSes, and

they've even got spotter planes in the air.

spotting the fish for them. Yeah, Paul, I had about eight fish over here.

They just went down.

They're on my left side.

So the bluefin tuna, travelling at 50 miles an hour, hasn't really got much of

chance. The moment it comes to the surface, somebody's going to spot it.

Come left.

Yeah, there you go. 12 o 'clock, five or six boats.

Here they're being hunted on one of their major migration routes.

It's thought they swim from the Gulf of Mexico up the eastern seaboard of the

United States to Canada each summer.

Their routes are so predictable that fishermen can catch them year after

While these fishermen are still catching them, There are scientists who are

tagging the fish, trying to discover how many separate populations there are,

what their movements are, and just how many fish are left.

Marine scientist and keen sports fisherman, Carl Safina, fishes off Long

New York.

He loves fishing for bluefin, but these days he has to target other species.

I've been fishing offshore since i was 12 with my fathers and my uncles and we

used to see lots of bluefin tuna a lot of small ones and a lot of big ones now

uh there aren't so few tuna that people sport fish for sharks now

safina is so concerned

by the decline in numbers that he started a campaign with the National

Society to try and save these tuna.

What we do know about bluefins in the western part of the Atlantic, in other

words, the part of the Atlantic off the U .S. and Canada, is that from the mid

-1970s until the late 1990s, the population has declined by roughly

85%.

In New England, where most of the Western Atlantic bluefin are caught

commercially, fishermen just don't believe these government figures.

They claim there are consistent mistakes in the analysis.

So they're naturally very skeptical about the quotas the government imposes

them.

Scientific research in the ocean is expensive, and the politics surrounding

fish are complicated.

But one thing is indisputable.

These fish sell for vast amounts of money.

The bluefin tuna was worth a few cents a pound and often sold as cat food until

some people realized that if they airlifted them to Japan, if they sent

Japan in airplanes, the price would go from a few cents to many dollars per

pound.

Tsukiji Market in Tokyo is the biggest push market in the world.

Before I came to Japan, I'd heard a lot about it, but I just wasn't prepared for

the scale of it.

This warehouse is just the frozen section.

In another section, there are rows and rows of fresh tuna, and amongst these

a frightening quantity of bluefin.

The Japanese are by far the biggest importers of bluefin tuna in the world.

This is big business.

These bluefin are fetching £60 a kilo.

So in today's auction, a dealer would expect to get £12 ,000 for this one fish

alone. But the market fluctuates madly, and there have been bluefin here that

have fetched more than £100 ,000.

Tuna fishermen don't accept the bluefin numbers are right down, but most

scientists firmly believe that they are.

Many people want bluefin tuna listed as slightly dependent one.

In other words, a total ban on all fishing of them.

Unless this is done, there is no way the fishermen, the wholesalers, everybody

involved in the market will give up. There's simply too much in it for them.

This market is not just about tuna.

There's every conceivable type of fish here.

Nearly 50 % of the food eaten in Japan comes from the sea, compared to the

world's average of about 15%. They eat enormous quantities of fish, every

species imaginable.

But unfortunately, some of those species are in deep trouble.

This is a swordfish. In the Atlantic, its numbers have more than halved since

the 1960s. As a result... Many restaurants have now taken it off the

Marlin are a favourite amongst game fishermen, and some species are down by

While shark meat is on sale

in many Japanese markets, by far the biggest trade is in shark fins, and that

trade is Asia -wide.

About 100 million sharks are caught every year.

Admittedly, this is the biggest market.

But there are hundreds of markets all over the world selling huge quantities

fish. And it's not just one day a week. It's day after day after day.

You might find some really strange creatures here, ones which are totally

unfamiliar to us.

But that's not the issue. It's often the more common species that are seriously

threatened. And those you can find on sale at home.

This is Billingsgate Market, the largest fish market in London.

Here you can buy all the familiar fish, which we love to eat.

But in the UK, every day we're eating fish whose stocks are dangerously low.

Most of us have no idea that these fish are in trouble, even the most common

ones, such as cod.

At the moment, the worst problem is with cod in the Irish Sea, which is really

in a very, very depressed state indeed.

The northeast Arctic stock off the coast of Norway is not in very good shape.

The Canadian stock is not in good shape. The North Sea stock is not in good

shape. About the only one that's doing reasonably well at the moment is that

Iceland. And if that one goes the same way...

There will be no Atlantic cod.

There simply will not be any cod for sale.

So is this a normal tide for a cod these days?

That's about an average side there, yeah. When you go and buy fish in the

supermarket or in the fish and chip shop, you generally as a consumer have

way to tell whether this has come from a stock that is overfished or a stock

that isn't. Where are these ones from? They're from Aberdeen.

Was it in the North Sea? We know that fish stocks do collapse and sometimes

recover. The herring collapsed and recovered.

There was a stock of mackerel in the North Sea in the 60s and 70s that

under very heavy fishing pressure by Perth seine and it has not come back. In

years it has not come back.

The sole and the place are fully exploited and could not really sustain

further. fishing pressure the herring also is fully exploited there's no room

for expansion now with so much fishing pressure in surface waters fishermen are

going deeper and deeper to find fish for the market we're seeing things here

that we would never even have heard of 20 years ago this is a black

scabbard and it lives at about a thousand meters so are these fish in

It's hard to say, really, because like everything else that lives in the deep,

very little is known about it. And that's the problem with deep -sea

The scientists don't really know what's going on down there, and they're only

just beginning to find out.

Scientists from Tasmania are now using high -tech cameras mounted on

submersibles to study the effects of fishing on the deep sea.

Only in the last 30 years have we had the technology to fish the deep.

But in many places, the fishing pressure has been very intense.

This particular fish is now on our menus.

These white fish are the fillets of a deep -sea fish called orange roughy. You

may have noticed them in your local fishmonger or supermarket recently.

They can live at up to depths of 1 ,500 metres.

And like a lot of deep -sea fish, they live a very long time.

These ones could have been born during World War II. They could even have been

around during the Victorian era.

It's believed that orange roughy can live to a staggering 150 years old.

As well as living longer, these fish mature later, at about 30 years old.

If you take them out before this age, they won't be able to reproduce.

There won't be a future generation of orange roughy.

For many years, the fishing pressure here was huge.

Thousands of tons were scooped up for the market and sold around the world.

At times, so many were caught, there wasn't even the market for them. They

just dumped.

Fortunately, the New Zealand and Australian fisheries recognise the

time. They now monitor the fish stocks carefully.

The fish may be safe, but the habitat they rely on isn't.

In the deep sea, there are animals so new to us and so strange, it's as if we

are in another world.

Despite its remoteness, the deep -sea habitat is now under threat.

And once again, it's the method of fishing that is causing the real damage.

Deep -sea fishing nets are huge.

They dredge up life indiscriminately.

Corals and sponges hundreds of years old are being ripped off the seabed and

destroyed.

What it's all actually done, particularly in the deep sea, where

is concentrated around seamounts, which are very hard rock, to protect the net

from the rock, they've got huge steel balls on them. Those balls are about a

half a metre in diameter, and they run along in a huge ground rope. Now that

is pulled along, it's like three knots, smacking into the rock. Smack, smack,

smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.

So this net basically comes along and it physically mows that thing down, just

rips it off, shoots it into the back of the net, it's history.

It's got no chance of living after that.

You can't see the damage done at that.

But if the same was done on land, you'd be horrified.

If we wanted to catch cows, for instance, we'd get a net and we'd hang

a helicopter and we'd drag that through the paddock. We would not only catch a

few cows, we'd catch the dog, we'd catch the car, we'd catch the farmyard, the

barn, we'd catch the farmer's wife, we'd catch all of the other stuff that we

weren't originally going for.

O'Shea is concerned about many of the animals that are being brought up from

deep, most of them unintentionally.

He's monitoring the damage being done from his lab in New Zealand.

One of the most spectacular things we've received in fisheries bycatch is this

large gorgonian.

It's like a black coral, it's very closely related to it, and this

specimen we've had aged at some 700 years old. So it's 700 years when the

came down and basically ripped it off the bottom of the sea.

It's dead, it's gone. When you add up the pieces together, you would have some

three metres in...

total height from the sea floor and that must be the equivalent of an underwater

forest. It's just tragic that something like this should be ripped from the

floor.

This particular species used to be very common between 700 and 1100 metres off

our coast but like everything that is very fragile and were we to put a steel

bobbin straight over that it would be crushed to pieces.

O'Shea has a particular fascination for deep -sea squid, but he's worried that

many of them are disappearing before we've even had a chance to see them

in the wild, let alone understand them.

This species used to be very common around New Zealand. Along the entire

Northland Beach coast, it's gone.

And the only reason why an animal like this is gone... It's so stupid, it's so

slow, it wasn't hurting anyone, it got attacked by a trawler net, and the

trawlers have been going back and forth the same area for so long, we've

basically made this animal extinct.

With every single dive to the deep ocean, scientists are discovering new

species. Some may have properties that could be invaluable to us.

Sponges are animals.

but they're rooted to the bottom and can't get away from something that's

to eat them or something that's trying to grow over them.

So they produce chemicals to ward off predators or other encroaching sponges.

It's these chemicals that interest marine scientists in Florida.

They collect sponges from the deep and take them back to the lab for analysis.

The challenge to us as drug discoverers and marine biologists is to figure out

why the organism is producing it and then apply that knowledge to try and

out what might be an appropriate drug target for that chemical compound.

Pomponi and her team have been using the chemicals from these sponges in a

series of trials.

They believe the chemicals will prevent the growth of cancer cells in humans.

Ideally we want something that will kill a certain type of cancer cell, so it

will be very specific for certain types of cancer.

And so far the results are very encouraging.

So, yes, we think that this will be useful as a treatment for certain forms

cancer.

So far, we've only explored 2 % of the deep.

We could be in danger of losing a treasure trove of species before we've

discovered them.

If we lose that biological diversity that occurs in

the deep ocean, and it does, then we lose that chemical diversity and we lose

the opportunity to discover new drugs.

It's not just the deep that's in danger.

Shallow water habitats like coral reefs are having a hard time too.

Part of the problem is the growing trade in reef fish, and it's often the market

demand for luxury fish like groupers, coral trout and wrasse that's behind the

problem. They're being fished out at an alarming rate.

Fish on coral reefs that were once a staple food for local people are now in

high demand as a delicacy for people in major cities around the world.

The majority goes to mainland China and cities like Hong Kong.

It's a huge market and some 30 ,000 tonnes of reef fish come into Hong Kong

every year.

But the fishermen are having to go to coral reefs further and further afield

stocks dry up.

Some now travel 3 ,000 miles on a single fishing trip to find reefs with fish.

People like their fish fresh, very fresh.

So much so that the cost of live fish is ten times the cost of fresh dead fish.

And the fish in the marketplace are getting smaller and smaller.

Dr. Yvonne Sadovi is worried about the amount of juveniles being sold here.

This beautiful animal is a humphead wrasse, and he's called humphead wrasse

because of his hump on his head.

And the other one is the giant grouper. This is the giant grouper.

There's several of them.

And these are juveniles.

This one is probably a late teenager.

but still not particularly old or well -developed fish.

And the majority that we see of these species are young juvenile fish.

Humphead wrasse should be able to live for more than 20 years, but they rarely

reach that age these days. They're taken out far too young.

If you have fisheries which take large numbers of juveniles, these animals have

not had a chance to reproduce.

So you start to wonder...

Where's the next generation going to come from?

If you take too many juveniles, slowly what happens is you don't get enough

adults in the next generation, and slowly the populations or stocks decline

numbers.

So that's what my concern is, that if this is part of a trend... that we're

seeing more and more juveniles being taken in this trade, then that does not

augur well for these particular species.

But much more serious than the possible loss of a few species is the loss of an

entire habitat, especially one which supports thousands upon thousands of

species.

reef are the most diverse communities in our oceans many of them have grown up

over hundreds sometimes thousands of years and over that time a fantastic

of animals and plants have evolved with them the intricate

structure built by the corals themselves provides animals with protection from

predators important breeding sites and endless feeding opportunities

But now the coral itself is under threat from man.

Today, dynamiting is commonplace.

It's an efficient way to kill all the nearby fish.

but just one blast will completely flatten a patch of reef.

And there are lots of other threats to reef right across the world.

Sometimes it's pollution, sometimes they get covered by sediment, and global

warming is certainly playing its part too.

Here in Southeast Asia, 80 % of reefs are either in danger of dying or are

A lot of it's been dynamited, but now a more sinister method of fishing is being

used. It's fast, it's effective, but it's highly illegal.

Fishermen are using the poison cyanide.

Fishermen squirt sodium cyanide into crevices where fish take refuge.

Cyanide starves the fish of oxygen, and so they come out into the open

temporarily dazed and much easier to catch.

Not all these fish are for food. Many of them are for the aquarium trade.

They're purely a luxury item.

The corals themselves die in just a few weeks, and the whole reef becomes

smothered in algae.

That was a reconstruction, but this is real life.

Members of the International Marine Alliance in the Philippines are trying

save their few remaining reefs.

They suspect these men have been fishing illegally.

They're trying to find out where and how they've been fishing, but the fishermen

are wary.

They're afraid to tell us where the places are because there might be some

retaliation.

from the other villagers in this village.

They hide the bottles underneath the boat and when another

boat approaches, they just ditch this so that nobody could see it.

These men know they could end up in jail.

It's so hard to police the coastal areas of the Philippines because it's...

It's a very long coastal area.

Another thing is that if you jail them, you don't have enough room in jail.

We were taken to a jail on the island of Coron.

These men have been arrested for illegal fishing and they're waiting trial.

They've been locked up for months, but the trader, the middleman, is still

I don't think we can lump in all the blames into the fishermen because first

that they do not know anything better.

They're afraid of being caught, but they say there's no other method to catch

fish.

When they've been squirted with cyanide, fish don't die immediately.

But the damage has been done, and their internal organs gradually pack up.

The trader has to move them fast as they will die in just a few weeks.

Cruz is sure that the importers know when cyanide has been used because the

mortality rate is so high.

But they simply choose to ignore it.

Importers would know immediately that there's something wrong with these

But yet they...

start and keep on importing from the same exporter in the Philippines or in

other countries.

The majority of tropical fish caught in Indonesia and the Philippines are

exported to America and here to the UK.

Fortunately, there are a lot of responsible importers, like the owner of

shop, who refuse to buy fish that have been caught by cyanide. But as a

customer, you can't tell how a fish was caught.

The responsibility lies with us to check with the shopkeeper.

And if you don't, it may only take a couple of weeks before your ornamental

is as dead as the reef it came from.

Really loud.

I'm wishing I could be that kind of fool. Shall I twist your arm? I'd say no

more work for mine.

Welcome to the club.

On my door I'd hang a sign.

Gone fishing.

Instead of just a wishing.

This abandoned net is made of tough nylon, which won't easily disintegrate.

If it isn't removed, it could carry on killing like this for years and years to

come.

If one small net on one reef can cause this much damage.

Imagine what fishing nets do on a global scale.

Our fishing methods today ensure that we catch more and more.

But a lot of what is caught is thrown away, simply chucked overboard, usually

dead.

Modern fisheries are very destructive.

They don't just catch what they're after. They catch everything else that's

there as well.

The United Nations tells us that up to 30 million metric tons a year are caught

by fisheries and simply thrown overboard, dead or dying.

That's one -quarter to one -third of the annual catch around the world.

I'm talking about not just non -target fish species, but sea turtles, marine

mammals, seabirds such as albatrosses and so forth, even whales on occasion.

No matter how magnificent no animal is spared in our hunt for food

But what's even

more ridiculous is that often the fish that we would eat are thrown away if the

boat is targeting a different species and There's one particular fishery

where the waste is phenomenal

Prawn or shrimp trawling is the worst example of destructive fisheries in the

world. Prawn and shrimp trawling is ubiquitous throughout the tropics. The

are dragged along the bottom. The shrimp live in the habitat along the bottom.

Those nets hoover up everything in their path.

Up to 15 pounds of other species are taken aboard and discarded for every one

pound of shrimp that's caught.

Worse still are the quantities of juvenile fish that get thrown away.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of young fish are discarded every year. Fish that

would otherwise grow to become an important and very valuable source of

And all this for just a handful of prawns.

The fishermen have recognized the problem and have asked for help.

So Dr. Steve Kennelly is now looking at the prawn fishing industry in New South

Wales, Australia.

Here the industry is huge.

They catch over a thousand tons of prawns a year.

Kennelly has invented a bycatch reduction device.

a BRD, which lets the smaller, immature fish escape from the net.

This is the cod end that actually gets towed along behind at the back of the

and right down the back of the whole operation, and all the catch that goes

a trawl net ends up in this bag, at the back of this bag.

We did some trials in flume tanks and other experiments, and we found that at

certain point in the cod end, just in front of where this...

cotton material changes, you get a back pressure of water and by putting in this

panel of open square meshes just at that point where that back pressure of water

is occurring, the water will tend to flow up and out through that square mesh

panel. Now little fish, as they're swimming along inside this net, feel

back pressure of water and their immediate escape response is to head

and out through the open square mesh panels.

Kennelly is experimenting with two different nets.

This first one is a conventional prawn fishing net.

Okay, this is the catch from the control caught in, that is from the

conventional caught in without any BRD in it.

As you can see, there's quite a large number of small fish in the catch, and

hopefully in the other caught in with the BRD installed, there'll be a lot

fish and still the same quantity of prawns.

This is the net with its bycatch reduction device in it. It's immediately

obvious that fewer fish have been accidentally caught.

So that's the difference in bycatch there.

Most of the smaller fish have escaped, so at least they should have a chance to

breed. You've just got to have a look for your own eyes and there's no doubt

that there's, I'd say there's at least... Probably a 60 % maybe even more

reduction in bycatch there.

Kennelly's device has gone a long way to reducing the waste.

But he knows that it's not the whole answer.

I don't think it's possible to ever have a situation where we can go out and

confidently only catch the things we're trying to catch.

Just about every fishing method you're going to catch undersized organisms of

the target species.

To get it down to the position where we don't catch any bycatch at all for

things like prawns and shrimp and so on, I don't think we're ever going to get

to that particular point, at least not in the foreseeable future.

But there is possibly another way, one where there may be no bycatch at all.

It's fish farming or aquaculture.

Already it's producing huge quantities of fish.

fish farming be the solution?

At the moment, one in every four fish that we eat is farmed. But over the next

25 years, it's thought that figure will double, that half the fish we eat will

be farmed. So is this the answer? Can we really protect our fish stocks, protect

the juveniles, protect the fragile marine habitats?

In fact, is fish farming the solution to all our fishing problems?

If aquaculture is one of the answers, then surely the people with the highest

incentive to get it right are the Japanese.

They're already very advanced in farming fish.

They're now even trying to raise large predatory fish like tuna, and in

particular, bluefin tuna.

Here in Kushimoto in western Japan, they're going for broke.

Swimming around beneath me in this enclosure, there are 50...

fully mature bluefin tuna these tuna were caught in the

wild and are now being fattened up for market they're being fed generously so

they'll be in prime adult condition when they're sold here they've taken tuna

farming to the next stage they're not just holding them they're actually

breeding these captive bluefin They hope that these fish will themselves breed

in three years time and so complete the whole life cycle in captivity Then

they won't have to take any more bluefin tuna from our oceans

Japan is

the largest tuna consuming nation in the world

And we're also very concerned about the diminishing stocks of bluefin tuna in

the wild.

Aquaculture has its own set of well -known problems.

The most worrying are pollution, as well as the mixing of captive -bred fish

with wild stocks.

But there's another issue.

These tuna are fed a staggering amount of fish every day.

They're being fed valuable protein, which should be food for the poorer

of Asia.

So now the Japanese are trying to develop a substitute feed, either from

vegetable matter or from animal products.

And we hope further development will enable us to use more and more

feed in the future.

But they haven't succeeded yet, and they still take huge quantities of low

-value fish to feed one big luxury fish.

In other parts of Asia, which are poorer than Japan, and where fish stocks are

already heavily depleted, they are also turning to agriculture.

And tiger prawns are the biggest money earner. More than half a million tonnes

of prawns are produced a year, nearly all of which are exported.

It's big business and it employs a lot of people.

But just like tuna, the prawns are carnivorous and they need to eat fish,

that have been ground into pellets.

And when they're farmed as intensively as they are here, they need a lot of

feed.

If you have three square meters of pond for one tiger prawn, that's extensive.

You don't have to feed anything. Nature will feed the prawn.

But if you have 30 of them in one square meter, then you have to provide some

kind of food.

Now, I think the latest figures are about two, two kilos of fish

to produce one kilo of prawn.

Substitute feeds may help, but they could come too late.

In the meantime, low -value fish are fed to prawns, which are then exported to

the West.

These fish should be feeding local people.

It's the little fish that's there that's being bought by

people, by Filipino families for their food, low -income families and middle

-income families.

That will not be available to these families.

But there's another issue.

Thousands of intensive farms have been built in coastal areas, destroying a

valuable marine habitat, mangrove forests.

Mile upon mile of mangroves have been cut down.

The coastline has been stripped of its natural protection.

And there are many important ecological reasons why mangroves should be

protected.

To many people, mangroves are just a mass of gnarled roots where the bottom

sludgy and muddy and yuck, and the air is full of mosquitoes.

But get underwater, and it's a very different world.

The intricate root system provides a natural nursery for young fish.

They spend their later life out on coral reefs or in the open sea.

The roots provide protection from predators which is vital for small,

fish.

In the shelter of mangroves, fish can feed and grow in relative safety.

Again, it's the habitat that's under threat.

We're carelessly destroying it without a thought for the animals that depend on

it.

Perhaps the answer might be to set aside some areas of the sea so that the

animals that live there, whatever they are, have a chance.

As soon as we recognise that land animals need protecting, we usually do

something about it.

The huge game reserves of Africa are a classic example, but for some reason we

treat our seas very differently.

This is the island of Skoma, a very beautiful reserve that offers excellent

protection for all the birds and plants that live here.

It also calls itself a marine nature reserve, one of only two in the whole of

Britain.

You'd think a marine reserve would offer total protection for all life under the

sea.

But amazingly, you can fish here. Even commercial fishermen can operate here.

In the time of our grandfathers, there were natural marine reserves,

inaccessible to fishing fleets.

There, the fish could grow to maturity undisturbed.

But with modern fishing technology, there's practically nowhere we now can't

fish. Only a tiny percentage of the ocean is a safe sanctuary.

Something like one -third of one percent of the oceans are currently within

marine protected areas.

That's a very tiny fraction, and it's equivalent to something like the size of

South Africa.

However, we're not really protecting those areas well enough at the moment,

only something like one -tenth -thousandth of the surface of the oceans

protected from all forms of fishing at the moment.

That's equivalent to the size of Holland.

It's a tiny fraction and it isn't nearly enough.

Roberts wants areas set aside which are totally protected.

There are some small areas where they've done this, like this reserve off the

North Island of New Zealand.

Since they stopped fishing 25 years ago, the stocks have recovered and the water

is now teeming with fish.

And it's not just fish, everything's doing well.

Lobsters are abundant again and they're getting a lot bigger.

Scientists monitor stocks carefully and keep a close eye on how all the animals

in the reserve are doing.

This five kilometre wide reserve produces the same number of lobsters as

hundred kilometre stretch of unprotected coastline.

Fishermen are allowed to fish right up to the boundaries.

The lobsters are now so abundant within the reserve, there isn't room, so they

spread out into the surrounding waters.

And so what these no -take zones provide to fisheries is an increase in the

replenishment to their fisheries. They're spawning stocks which are being

protected. They're like deposits in a bank account.

Even the behaviour of the fish has changed.

Once scared of man, the fish are now perhaps a little over -friendly.

Roberts believes that between 10 and 20 % of our oceans should become no -take

zones, that we should protect large areas of different marine habitats, the

sea, coral reefs, mangroves, as well as key spawning grounds.

That way, fish can grow bigger and older, and stocks will recover.

And he also believes that migration routes and feeding grounds should be

protected, particularly the routes taken by the largest marine animals of all,

the whales, as they circumnavigate the globe.

It's a simple idea, and one that Roberts believes, with the public's help, is

possible.

Once people realize what's going on, and they begin to bring to bear pressure on

the politicians and decision makers, then I think we'll see moves taking

to establish the areas that we need to set aside from fishing.

We can make that choice. We've done it before. We brought back some of the

whales from near extinction.

Most of them can now spend their entire lives free from the threat of a whaling

boat. But it took international cooperation, and that only came about

public realised how close the whales were to being wiped out.

Whaling was a huge industry right up until the 1970s.

Some species very nearly disappeared from our oceans altogether.

We recognised this just in time, so we did something about it.

We do now know what's happening in our oceans.

We know they're in trouble and that we're to blame.

We can't hide behind an out -of -sight, out -of -mind attitude anymore.

We know what's down there, the extraordinary diversity of life.

Our oceans are so precious, so vital to the planet.

If we care about that, then surely we can look after them.