Marine Pollution Bulletin 88 (2014) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Marine Pollution Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul
Editorial
Suffer the little children. . .! In 1982 I was invited to spend a month in Tsingtao (now Qingdao), Shantung Province, northeast China. My host was the First Institute of Oceanology – China’s premier marine institute – and I was going to investigate, illustrate and write up the marine life of the rocky shores around the institution and, in the process, teach local students something of shore ecology. I also wanted to compare that temperate/boreal ecology with that of Hong Kong’s subtropical. There are many stories I could relate about the month’s sojourn in Tsingtao, but one stands out. Working one day on the rocky shore right in front of the institute, I was joined by a grizzled granddad with his granddaughter – the latter about four I would guess although maybe she was older. And I could tell that they were both obviously undernourished, the little girl with spindly legs and a potbelly. With my (very) few words of Putunghua we communicated and, afterwards, I watched as they gleaned their way along the shore picking up the smallest of crabs (Gaetice, Hemigrapsus), mussels (Xenostrobus), gastropods (Thais), even Ligia, which the little girl was especially adept at catching. They were going to make a soup with what they had found. This, remember, was just post-Red Guard Cultural Revolution and the country was on its knees. One thing struck me though: what I was seeing on these shores and would eventually describe (Morton, 1990) was not natural. It was as impacted ecologically as any polluted beach in the modern world. This was the first time I understood not just the meaning of poverty but also the impact of ordinary people on marine life and on our interpretation of ecology. I returned, chastened, to Hong Kong where such intertidal gleaning was, generally, no more and, certainly not a necessity. Here, the problem was simply one of pollution although I had mentally re-defined and broadened the meaning of that word. I now jump forward nearly ten years. In 1989, the Swire Marine Laboratory (now the Swire Institute of Marine Science) of the University of Hong Kong was founded and, deliberately, situated on the remotest peninsula, Cape d’Aguilar, on Hong Kong Island. Deliberately because, here, marine scientists and students would have access to Hong Kong’s cleanest waters (but this is now known not to be the case) and undisturbed shores of many types. The latter too being the reason they were established as Hong Kong’s first marine reserve in 1995. Working on the shore one day (with a permit to do so, I hasten to add), a man and his family came onto the reserve’s shores from the adjacent village of Hok Tsui but with a shovel. ‘Strange’ I thought! But then, to my astonishment, the man began shovelling all the barnacles (Tetraclita), oysters (Saccostrea), mussel’s (Septifer) and gastropods (Thais) off the reserve’s rock platforms while his wife and two kids loaded them into plastic bags. Incensed, as the institute’s director, I ordered him off the reserve and University
land. He told me to ‘f⁄⁄⁄ off’, my understanding of Cantonese being better than Putunghua, as ‘he had every right to do what he was doing’ he said. At that, I simply told him I was calling the local police whose dedicated number I had. Seeing how serious I was, he left, grumbling and muttering dark threats. Once again, I had seen for myself, but this time in the context of an affluent society, how things are not, ecologically, what they seem. Once again, I jump forward but, this time, almost twenty years. Post-retirement I have returned to my roots and the simple pleasures of children and grandchildren. Occasionally I go with them to one of the local eco-farms and see the lambs being suckled, cows milked, chickens fed, eggs collected and goats petted. On sunny days too, we join local holidaymakers crab-fishing from the path along the side of my local river – the Arun. In fact, it is a pastime that has become almost a tradition for Littlehampton with even an annual public contest. One summer day, sitting enjoying the early morning peace of the river, with a cup of coffee nearby and newspaper in hand (London’s Metro, 27 June 2014), I read how at the Japanese whaling village of Minamiboso, local whalers, having just killed a Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei) (whaling in Antarctica having been banned in March 2014 [The Times, 2 June 2007] by the International Whaling Commission), were demonstrating to a group of primary school children how to flense it. Followed by how to fry and eat the butchered pieces of meat. In 1965, I was invited to visit a whaling factory on the island of Pico in the Açores where a sperm whale (Physter macrocephalus) was being processed and the stench was just overpoweringly awful. The industry died a death in 1987 following virtually unanimous local condemnation of the practice. After that experience, I could simply never allow my own children to watch a whale being butchered. But, I also remember visiting the old whaling station (now a museum) at Albany in Western Australia in the late 1990s and seeing members of a Japanese tour group being physically sick as the local guide showed grainy, 1950s, film-images of a whale being flensed. But then, just as I was pondering the newspaper report of the Japanese whale butchering class, an Asian man arrived at the walkway alongside the river at Littlehampton with a suitcase. He opened this on top of a riverside bench and from it took out five lift nets (50 cm in diameter) into which he proceeded to put bits of meaty bait. Once done, one by one, the nets were lowered into the water until they reached the riverbed and then secured to the river-wall’s handrail. I continued to watch – intrigued. After ten minutes, he pulled up the first net and tipped its crab (Carcinus maenas) contents into a polythene bag and put the net back in the river. Then, one-by-one, he did the same with the other four nets and continued the cycle for another hour. Until, no more crabs could be caught. Then, he moved along the river with his suitcase to the next bench and repeated the process. I continued to watch
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.09.042 0025-326X/Ó 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
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Editorial / Marine Pollution Bulletin 88 (2014) 1–2
and after four hours he had fished out all the crabs from this, at present, accessible 500-metre stretch of the river. At around five-o-clock, his suitcase full of bags of crabs, such that he could only just lift it, he packed his nets into another bag and left. It is not illegal to catch Carcinus maenas but the Arun’s riverside walk is famous for ‘crabbing’ using the local method this chap had obviously adopted and intensified. Every summer, Mum, Dad, Gran and the kids come at weekends and holidays from, mostly, London and have a great time eating lunches of fish and chips followed by ice creams for the kids and catching crabs, which are kept in buckets of river water until day’s end. Then, after being counted and compared with their neighbour’s catches, the crabs are returned alive to the river. Until the next weekend. In fact, when my grandchildren come and see me, the first thing they want to do is go crabbing. And they are coming in a week’s time. On this occasion, however, they will be sorely disappointed, as will all the other holidaying families, until such time as crab stocks recover from one person’s selfishness. I read an article recently, which said that, today, over 70% of our human population now lives by the sea, or the rivers that nourish it. More and more land has thereby been released from human
habitation – possibly providing more space for agriculture to feed our burgeoning city societies. It also means, however, that greater and greater pressures will be placed on the coastal plain and, especially, its margin. Traditional seasides, as well as marine parks and reserves will have to be better protected from the casual extraction of communal resources from the sea without a permit. The Metro of 25 July 2014 also made the interesting point that the modern lack of inshore fishery resources has driven itinerant coastal workers and, more importantly, their children, inland to harvest land-based food resources, thereby fostering the child slave trade. Reference Morton, B., 1990. The rocky shore ecology of Qingdao, Shandong Province, The People’s Republic of China. Asian Mar. Biol. 7, 167–187.
Brian Morton School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Marine Pollution Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul
Editorial
Suffer the little children. . .! In 1982 I was invited to spend a month in Tsingtao (now Qingdao), Shantung Province, northeast China. My host was the First Institute of Oceanology – China’s premier marine institute – and I was going to investigate, illustrate and write up the marine life of the rocky shores around the institution and, in the process, teach local students something of shore ecology. I also wanted to compare that temperate/boreal ecology with that of Hong Kong’s subtropical. There are many stories I could relate about the month’s sojourn in Tsingtao, but one stands out. Working one day on the rocky shore right in front of the institute, I was joined by a grizzled granddad with his granddaughter – the latter about four I would guess although maybe she was older. And I could tell that they were both obviously undernourished, the little girl with spindly legs and a potbelly. With my (very) few words of Putunghua we communicated and, afterwards, I watched as they gleaned their way along the shore picking up the smallest of crabs (Gaetice, Hemigrapsus), mussels (Xenostrobus), gastropods (Thais), even Ligia, which the little girl was especially adept at catching. They were going to make a soup with what they had found. This, remember, was just post-Red Guard Cultural Revolution and the country was on its knees. One thing struck me though: what I was seeing on these shores and would eventually describe (Morton, 1990) was not natural. It was as impacted ecologically as any polluted beach in the modern world. This was the first time I understood not just the meaning of poverty but also the impact of ordinary people on marine life and on our interpretation of ecology. I returned, chastened, to Hong Kong where such intertidal gleaning was, generally, no more and, certainly not a necessity. Here, the problem was simply one of pollution although I had mentally re-defined and broadened the meaning of that word. I now jump forward nearly ten years. In 1989, the Swire Marine Laboratory (now the Swire Institute of Marine Science) of the University of Hong Kong was founded and, deliberately, situated on the remotest peninsula, Cape d’Aguilar, on Hong Kong Island. Deliberately because, here, marine scientists and students would have access to Hong Kong’s cleanest waters (but this is now known not to be the case) and undisturbed shores of many types. The latter too being the reason they were established as Hong Kong’s first marine reserve in 1995. Working on the shore one day (with a permit to do so, I hasten to add), a man and his family came onto the reserve’s shores from the adjacent village of Hok Tsui but with a shovel. ‘Strange’ I thought! But then, to my astonishment, the man began shovelling all the barnacles (Tetraclita), oysters (Saccostrea), mussel’s (Septifer) and gastropods (Thais) off the reserve’s rock platforms while his wife and two kids loaded them into plastic bags. Incensed, as the institute’s director, I ordered him off the reserve and University
land. He told me to ‘f⁄⁄⁄ off’, my understanding of Cantonese being better than Putunghua, as ‘he had every right to do what he was doing’ he said. At that, I simply told him I was calling the local police whose dedicated number I had. Seeing how serious I was, he left, grumbling and muttering dark threats. Once again, I had seen for myself, but this time in the context of an affluent society, how things are not, ecologically, what they seem. Once again, I jump forward but, this time, almost twenty years. Post-retirement I have returned to my roots and the simple pleasures of children and grandchildren. Occasionally I go with them to one of the local eco-farms and see the lambs being suckled, cows milked, chickens fed, eggs collected and goats petted. On sunny days too, we join local holidaymakers crab-fishing from the path along the side of my local river – the Arun. In fact, it is a pastime that has become almost a tradition for Littlehampton with even an annual public contest. One summer day, sitting enjoying the early morning peace of the river, with a cup of coffee nearby and newspaper in hand (London’s Metro, 27 June 2014), I read how at the Japanese whaling village of Minamiboso, local whalers, having just killed a Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei) (whaling in Antarctica having been banned in March 2014 [The Times, 2 June 2007] by the International Whaling Commission), were demonstrating to a group of primary school children how to flense it. Followed by how to fry and eat the butchered pieces of meat. In 1965, I was invited to visit a whaling factory on the island of Pico in the Açores where a sperm whale (Physter macrocephalus) was being processed and the stench was just overpoweringly awful. The industry died a death in 1987 following virtually unanimous local condemnation of the practice. After that experience, I could simply never allow my own children to watch a whale being butchered. But, I also remember visiting the old whaling station (now a museum) at Albany in Western Australia in the late 1990s and seeing members of a Japanese tour group being physically sick as the local guide showed grainy, 1950s, film-images of a whale being flensed. But then, just as I was pondering the newspaper report of the Japanese whale butchering class, an Asian man arrived at the walkway alongside the river at Littlehampton with a suitcase. He opened this on top of a riverside bench and from it took out five lift nets (50 cm in diameter) into which he proceeded to put bits of meaty bait. Once done, one by one, the nets were lowered into the water until they reached the riverbed and then secured to the river-wall’s handrail. I continued to watch – intrigued. After ten minutes, he pulled up the first net and tipped its crab (Carcinus maenas) contents into a polythene bag and put the net back in the river. Then, one-by-one, he did the same with the other four nets and continued the cycle for another hour. Until, no more crabs could be caught. Then, he moved along the river with his suitcase to the next bench and repeated the process. I continued to watch
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.09.042 0025-326X/Ó 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
2
Editorial / Marine Pollution Bulletin 88 (2014) 1–2
and after four hours he had fished out all the crabs from this, at present, accessible 500-metre stretch of the river. At around five-o-clock, his suitcase full of bags of crabs, such that he could only just lift it, he packed his nets into another bag and left. It is not illegal to catch Carcinus maenas but the Arun’s riverside walk is famous for ‘crabbing’ using the local method this chap had obviously adopted and intensified. Every summer, Mum, Dad, Gran and the kids come at weekends and holidays from, mostly, London and have a great time eating lunches of fish and chips followed by ice creams for the kids and catching crabs, which are kept in buckets of river water until day’s end. Then, after being counted and compared with their neighbour’s catches, the crabs are returned alive to the river. Until the next weekend. In fact, when my grandchildren come and see me, the first thing they want to do is go crabbing. And they are coming in a week’s time. On this occasion, however, they will be sorely disappointed, as will all the other holidaying families, until such time as crab stocks recover from one person’s selfishness. I read an article recently, which said that, today, over 70% of our human population now lives by the sea, or the rivers that nourish it. More and more land has thereby been released from human
habitation – possibly providing more space for agriculture to feed our burgeoning city societies. It also means, however, that greater and greater pressures will be placed on the coastal plain and, especially, its margin. Traditional seasides, as well as marine parks and reserves will have to be better protected from the casual extraction of communal resources from the sea without a permit. The Metro of 25 July 2014 also made the interesting point that the modern lack of inshore fishery resources has driven itinerant coastal workers and, more importantly, their children, inland to harvest land-based food resources, thereby fostering the child slave trade. Reference Morton, B., 1990. The rocky shore ecology of Qingdao, Shandong Province, The People’s Republic of China. Asian Mar. Biol. 7, 167–187.
Brian Morton School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region E-mail address: [email protected]
