An Interview With Marine Ecologist Dr. Rod Fujita
by Sherry Flumerfelt
Rod Fujita is a Senior Scientist at Environmental Defense in Oakland, California. Dr. Fujita has dedicated his career to understanding and protecting coral reefs and the ocean. He obtained his doctorate in marine ecology in 1985 from the Boston University Marine Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and has been a staff member at Environmental Defense since 1988. Dr. Fujita has worked on a wide variety of issues including acid rain, ozone depletion, global climate change, and protecting marine ecosystems. In 2000, he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation to explore emerging issues in marine conservation, and to write his recently published book Heal the Ocean (2003).
Q: How did you become interested in coral reefs?
Well, I started off as an academic scientist in the ivory tower, doing basic research trying to understand how seaweeds use nutrients in the natural world. It was fascinating. You know, the thrill of scientific discovery, getting to hang out at cool places by the ocean doing good research.
But it changed for me when I did this one project in the Florida Keys when I was a postdoctoral student at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. In the pursuit of this line of research I felt like it was really important to monitor a coral reef very intensely over 24–hour cycles, because my previous research indicated that a lot of the sampling that had been done was at the convenience of the researcher. For example, monitoring was done in the summertime when it was nice out, or during daylight hours when we were working. But it turns out that with seaweeds in the natural world, it doesn’t work that way. They have their own time scales. And a lot of the algae that I’d been studying had very rapid time scales where they could cue in on little clouds of nutrients that were only present for a couple seconds, or a few minutes. That would create a supply that they could store and use for a long time. So that was the general idea of the research. The concept was to hook up this coral reef to a sensor and look for pulses of nutrients and observe the life on the reef to see if I could detect patterns and figure out how these turf algae were producing nutrients amidst an environment that didn’t have any detectable nutrients in the water column.
So in 1987 I got permission to live on this old lighthouse about 5 miles off shore from Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Actually, at the time it was just the Key Largo Marine Sanctuary. I was three years out of graduate school and it was a great adventure. It was also a time in my life when I felt like I had to do something fun and exciting. I’d been in a real grind. Working in Oregon was really rewarding but harsh, with really cold water, big tides and lots of waves. It was just hard to do this kind of work in the field. I had been to coral reefs before on vacation and I thought, “This is an ecosystem that is transparent.” You could see the life happening instead of murky water and difficult diving conditions.
So, I went up there for about three weeks at a time and brought all this gear up there, and often during those three weeks off and on, it was just me by myself, and sometimes with a research assistant or a friend. There was really nothing to do out there except to dive and snorkel.
The lighthouse was a platform that was about a hundred feet tall and it was an old Coast Guard lighthouse with a kind–of a living unit perched above the water. 
There was no land, only shallow water, and it had this level that we could live on. It was all bombed out, rusted uninhabited for many, many years. We made a little camping area there and then we’d string hammocks way up above the water overnight, which was great. We could see the sharks coming. It was quite thrilling when a squall would come through and you’d be out on this metal tower watching it come from miles away.
So, after weeks and weeks of this sort–of thing, I started to bond with this ecosystem in a way that I hadn’t with any others. Living in it for so long, you got to know the individual barracuda by how many hooks it had in it’s mouth and stars on its back. You could see similar groups of squid and cuttlefish and you’d notice the patterns by which the fish would move around the reef. And because you were in the water so much you could see things that were fairly rare, like groups of eagle rays. It felt like instead of an observer, you were really participating in the life of the reef to some extent, and being accepted as a member of this ecosystem. Our lives on the reef were really dictated by natural cycles because we didn’t have power, and we didn’t want to run our generators all the time. We just had to rise with the sun and go to bed when it got dark, and I think that helped us feel like we were part of this community.
Well, one day near the end of this fellowship I had an amazing experience out on the reef. Living and working out there with nothing to do but dive and snorkel, I came to feel like just another member of the reef’s biological community, in tune with nature’s cycles. When I came back to the Key Largo Sanctuary office, though, I walked into a seminar about the possibility of drilling for oil off the Florida Keys. The incongruity of allowing industrial exploitation of this ecosystem, juxtaposed to this kind–of peak experience that I was coming off of jarred me somehow. It jarred me out of complacency and prior to that time I really hadn’t been politically active in any way. I didn’t belong to any environmental groups. I didn’t really understand what was going on in the world in terms of threats to the environment. But it suddenly came home to me that this is the place that I love and it was under threat. And so it activated me and caused me to re–think my career track. Very soon after that is when I applied for a job with Environmental Defense.
Q: Do you know how the reef is doing now?
Probably as a result of that experience, one of the first projects I embarked on was to try to create a national marine sanctuary in the Keys. A large coalition of environmental groups, the dive industry, recreational fishing interests, and others succeeded in getting special legislation passed to establish the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The Florida Keys are still messed up. It’s not a pristine environment. But I do think those reefs have the best cover and the good thing about that sanctuary in particular is that not only is it one of the only ones in the country that has no–fishing zones, but it also might be the only one with a mandatory water quality protection program and a relatively well–funded monitoring and research program.
Q: What motivated you to write Heal the Ocean?
Well, I had been at Environmental Defense for over ten years. The environmental movement is a frenzied movement. There are just so many things going on all at once. I felt like me and all my colleagues were constantly struggling to keep our heads above water, so there was really no opportunity to look out over the trenches and see what’s coming on the horizon in terms of new issues. And it occurred to me that that’s a real liability, because when you’re always reacting to things, you’re often catching things late in the game, and by then inertia has set in and big investments have been made, so you’re trying to turn this huge ship around. Whereas if you catch things early you might not have to do jujitsu, it’s a smaller effort.
So, I wrote to the Pew fellowship program as I got this idea to take a break and read the literature, talk to scientists who think about current trends and issues, and try to find the next seven big fishing issues that might befall us are, so that we are prepared.
So, the Pew Folks said yes and they gave me a fellowship. I spent three wonderful summers researching emerging issues near the sea in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, studying traditional Hawaiian resource management on the north shore of Kauai, and writing things up at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in la Jolla. This resulted in two peer–reviewed publications, one on renewable energy from the ocean, which I think is a big emerging issue, and the other was deep sea mining. While I was at Scripps, I realized that very few people were going to read these papers, and that I needed to reach a broader audience. So I decided to write a book about people succeeding in their efforts to protect the ocean, and about how to go about winning environmental protection. My book, Heal the Ocean, came out in December, 2003.
Q: How long did it take you to write it?
It’s kind–of like that old Chinese story of the famous master artist who is commissioned by the emperor to paint a fish. And the emperor’s people keep coming back day after day asking when it’s going to be done. And he keeps saying it’s not done. Then one day the emperor’s man comes by and asks him for his painting and he says, “I’m ready”. And he takes out a piece of paper and he paints the fish in about two seconds. And the man says, “what have you been doing these last several years when we’ve been asking you for this painting?” and the artist says, “I’ve been preparing”
That’s sort–of like what this writing process was like, just thinking about it a lot, reading a lot of literature, talking to a lot of people. Suddenly the concept arose and the writing came in leaps and bounds.
Q: Looking forward, what is your ideal situation in 50–100 years?
For coral reefs, I’m afraid the outlook is fairly grim. It’s hard to even think about it because of the threat of climate change. But I think that we have to remain optimistic that these natural forces that have shaped things in the last millennium will carry reefs through if we back off a bit. Now climate change is a difficult one to put the breaks on because of the way the climate system works, but I think the best–case scenario for coral reefs is if we humans succeed in reducing our impacts. It’s a triage, you know – this patient is hemorrhaging and it’s also got a chronic disease. So, we’ve got to stop the hemorrhaging first so it doesn’t die, and then we’ve got to treat the chronic disease. So the immediate threats like raw sewage, destructive fishing, dynamiting reefs, is clearly the first order of business. And there’s progress around the world. Coral reefs are coming back. We have to buy time for this ecosystem so that whatever we can get in terms of reductions in greenhouse gases will have positive results.
Q: When people ask you what they can do to help, what do you say?
Saving coral reefs and saving the ocean is not something that an individual can have a great deal of impact on. It’s not like changing the light bulbs in your house to compact fluorescents. That sort–of behavior will help to the extent that it effects climate change. And those acts of kindness towards the environment can – even if they feel ineffectual –actually help transform individuals into stewards. That sort–of ethic can spread through society like a virus, if in addition to taking actions, people communicate with other people, and build communities around these kinds of things. So, it’s not so much the individual action, but it’s more individuals caring enough to work with other people to make change. And for coral reefs this often happens on a local level. When community–based management works well, it’s usually because it’s connected with traditions of caring for the environment and treating the environment with respect, or even a spiritual connection to the environment. You work with what’s already there and encourage a revival, as is happening in Hawaii with the restoration of ancient ahupua’a, traditional land–sea stewardship areas. This has been a marvelous combination of a social justice movement, a renaissance of old traditional values and lifestyle, and the resurrection of a traditional environmental ethic that’s often tied to island cultures.
Q: So what keeps you going in this business?
The way I keep the work sustainable for myself is to make sure that it comes from passion for the environment and a love of ideas and breaking new ground and trying to find solutions, rather than being motivated constantly by frustration and anger and fear. These emotions have their place, and can be powerful motivators for action. But I think for an activist to persist for years or decades in this kind–of work, it’s really important to balance that with more positive aspects of activism. For me, it’s the excitement of trying to find the innovative solution that’s going to meet human interests as well as protect the environment at the same time. It’s an exciting intellectual challenge. And when it works, it can really be transformative.
One great thing that has happened is that we have collaborated with the Pacific Coast Federation Of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) based in the Presidio. It’s been a great project. Basically, what we’re doing is the PCFFA recommends master fishermen for us to interview – people who have lots and lots of experience at sea and know the fisheries well. We go to them with the geographical information system, which maps all the habitats in California. It has overlays and navigational charts on it, and it also has all the marine protected areas that are currently in place on it. So, we go to these fishermen and ask them what they know about the natural history of certain areas so that we can add to the scientific data that we already have and confirm where we think the habitats are based on sample. Fishermen have this intense personal knowledge of the ocean that scientists don’t. And so, it’s an opportunity for us to gain their local knowledge. And I think almost as importantly, it provides an opportunity for the fishermen to feel engaged. They often feel like their knowledge is discounted or not considered at all in the big decisions and processes. This project called “Ocean Map”, is an attempt to fill both of those gaps – to get their knowledge and also to make them feel better about the process.
And once we get into it we ask them more sensitive questions like, “where are your most important fishing grounds?” The intent of these questions is to try to put marine reserves in places that have high biological value and meet scientific criteria. But, because there’s multiple sites that might protect a kelp forest, or a rocky reef, or a bolder habitat, if you could choose one of those sites that has the same ecological value but a lower cost to the fishermen because they don’t fish there – it’s far from port or it’s just not as productive – then you choose that site to minimize the costs. Why hurt people if you don’t have to? That’s the ultimate goal of this project is to create a, socioeconomic information base for California so that when we start to implement things like the Marine Life Protection Act to put in marine reserves and create a network that it calls for, that we can do so in a way that’s sensitive to the economic, social and cultural concerns of these fishermen.
Environmental Defense, NRDC and the Nature Conservancy have made a long–term commitment to really try to understand these fishers. So, it’s not the old way of environmentalism where you kind–of stay on the outside and throw rocks at the system. This new way is to really get involved, serve on advisory committees, do the hard work of understanding this very complicated system. If you’re an observer and you’re far away from an issue, it can look really simple. Those guys are bad. These guys are good. This issue is bad. This issue is good. When you get in there in the skunkworks and really hear what people’s concerns are, – I’ve got to make a boat payment. I’ve got to get my kids through school. I’ve got to feed my family – It really hits home. And I think the natural response of any compassionate human being is to really work hard to find ways to make your interests also accommodate theirs at the same time. So, I think it’s a very healthy trend and the whole environmental movement can benefit from that mode of more and more constructive dialogue with the industries.
Q: Where is your favorite coral reef diving spot?
That’s a tough one. I’ve got to say that Bonaire ranks up there. It’s not the most diverse reef, it’s not the clearest water, but I’ve just had so many wonderful experiences there with the people. That’s part of the whole diving experience. It’s a fun place to dive, it’s very easy. I’ll never forget that dive we took through the sponge reef out there at Red Slave Huts. So that’s one of my favorites because of the human context there.
For sheer natural beauty, some of the dives I took in the Cook Islands or Fiji were mind blowing, beautiful. In Indonesia also, right off the beach off of Lombok Island, I had one of my first encounters with Indonesian coral reefs and it knocked my booties off. I couldn’t believe it. Because, all of my other diving was in the Caribbean and the Acropora are gone. So all of a sudden there’s these thickets of basket corals in blues and purples.
Q: How do you feel when you are diving on a coral reef?
I meditate a lot in the morning and for me diving is just another meditative experience. It’s really about breath, focus, and awareness. I learned from Ned DeLoach that you can have a really quality diving experience with just staying in the same place and just looking very deeply. And that’s a very strong metaphor for me, because it parallels the meditative experience where you’re looking deeply at things, and you don’t necessarily have to look at everything. You just focus your awareness. So, that’s what’s going on for me a lot of times when I’m underwater.
Also, I used to really like cruising around on flats and looking at lots of organisms, but in recent years I mostly move off the reef and look out into the abyss. It’s a really tranquil experience and once in a while you see something big.
Q: Do you have any favorite reef creatures?
Oh yeah, my favorite is the reef squid, because I had so many great experiences with it in Bonaire particularly. It’s one of the reasons I love Bonaire. Even in really shallow water they form these lines and they really look at you. It’s one of the few creatures that I know who have as much curiosity about us as we have about them. While we’re doing our reef check and looking at fish, they’re looking at us or that’s sort–of the feeling of these very intelligent creatures. There’s something about their stare that’s really wild.
Q: Any final stories or anything that you would like to say?
Just spread the news, spread the passion. As Charles Seaborn always says, “You’ve gotta have the passion.” He’s a good example of a guy who loves his work and loves the ocean. In the book I talk about the Tipping Point that we used in the Channel Islands to get the marine reserves set up. When you don’t have a big advertising budget, you have to find ways to spread your ideas and concepts in a low–cost way. This can mean finding particular kinds of people who are especially good at certain kinds of things. The key is to find key people in the community, infect them with your idea, get them together, and it will spread like wildfire. And that’s exactly what happened with us. We found this very energetic young guy who was very charistmatic and passionate about the issues, and he went to hundreds and hundreds of clubs and organizations and told the story. Before you know it there were thousands of activists at our door. It was great. I think that is really the power of the environmental movement.
Sherry Flumerfelt is a Program Coordinator for the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) in San Francisco, California.
An Interview With Marine Ecologist Dr. Rod Fujita
by Sherry Flumerfelt
Rod Fujita is a Senior Scientist at Environmental Defense in Oakland, California. Dr. Fujita has dedicated his career to understanding and protecting coral reefs and the ocean. He obtained his doctorate in marine ecology in 1985 from the Boston University Marine Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and has been a staff member at Environmental Defense since 1988. Dr. Fujita has worked on a wide variety of issues including acid rain, ozone depletion, global climate change, and protecting marine ecosystems. In 2000, he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation to explore emerging issues in marine conservation, and to write his recently published book Heal the Ocean (2003).
Q: How did you become interested in coral reefs?
Well, I started off as an academic scientist in the ivory tower, doing basic research trying to understand how seaweeds use nutrients in the natural world. It was fascinating. You know, the thrill of scientific discovery, getting to hang out at cool places by the ocean doing good research.
But it changed for me when I did this one project in the Florida Keys when I was a postdoctoral student at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. In the pursuit of this line of research I felt like it was really important to monitor a coral reef very intensely over 24–hour cycles, because my previous research indicated that a lot of the sampling that had been done was at the convenience of the researcher. For example, monitoring was done in the summertime when it was nice out, or during daylight hours when we were working. But it turns out that with seaweeds in the natural world, it doesn’t work that way. They have their own time scales. And a lot of the algae that I’d been studying had very rapid time scales where they could cue in on little clouds of nutrients that were only present for a couple seconds, or a few minutes. That would create a supply that they could store and use for a long time. So that was the general idea of the research. The concept was to hook up this coral reef to a sensor and look for pulses of nutrients and observe the life on the reef to see if I could detect patterns and figure out how these turf algae were producing nutrients amidst an environment that didn’t have any detectable nutrients in the water column.
So in 1987 I got permission to live on this old lighthouse about 5 miles off shore from Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Actually, at the time it was just the Key Largo Marine Sanctuary. I was three years out of graduate school and it was a great adventure. It was also a time in my life when I felt like I had to do something fun and exciting. I’d been in a real grind. Working in Oregon was really rewarding but harsh, with really cold water, big tides and lots of waves. It was just hard to do this kind of work in the field. I had been to coral reefs before on vacation and I thought, “This is an ecosystem that is transparent.” You could see the life happening instead of murky water and difficult diving conditions.
So, I went up there for about three weeks at a time and brought all this gear up there, and often during those three weeks off and on, it was just me by myself, and sometimes with a research assistant or a friend. There was really nothing to do out there except to dive and snorkel.
The lighthouse was a platform that was about a hundred feet tall and it was an old Coast Guard lighthouse with a kind–of a living unit perched above the water. There was no land, only shallow water, and it had this level that we could live on. It was all bombed out, rusted uninhabited for many, many years. We made a little camping area there and then we’d string hammocks way up above the water overnight, which was great. We could see the sharks coming. It was quite thrilling when a squall would come through and you’d be out on this metal tower watching it come from miles away.
So, after weeks and weeks of this sort–of thing, I started to bond with this ecosystem in a way that I hadn’t with any others. Living in it for so long, you got to know the individual barracuda by how many hooks it had in it’s mouth and stars on its back. You could see similar groups of squid and cuttlefish and you’d notice the patterns by which the fish would move around the reef. And because you were in the water so much you could see things that were fairly rare, like groups of eagle rays. It felt like instead of an observer, you were really participating in the life of the reef to some extent, and being accepted as a member of this ecosystem. Our lives on the reef were really dictated by natural cycles because we didn’t have power, and we didn’t want to run our generators all the time. We just had to rise with the sun and go to bed when it got dark, and I think that helped us feel like we were part of this community.
Well, one day near the end of this fellowship I had an amazing experience out on the reef. Living and working out there with nothing to do but dive and snorkel, I came to feel like just another member of the reef’s biological community, in tune with nature’s cycles. When I came back to the Key Largo Sanctuary office, though, I walked into a seminar about the possibility of drilling for oil off the Florida Keys. The incongruity of allowing industrial exploitation of this ecosystem, juxtaposed to this kind–of peak experience that I was coming off of jarred me somehow. It jarred me out of complacency and prior to that time I really hadn’t been politically active in any way. I didn’t belong to any environmental groups. I didn’t really understand what was going on in the world in terms of threats to the environment. But it suddenly came home to me that this is the place that I love and it was under threat. And so it activated me and caused me to re–think my career track. Very soon after that is when I applied for a job with Environmental Defense.
Q: Do you know how the reef is doing now?
Probably as a result of that experience, one of the first projects I embarked on was to try to create a national marine sanctuary in the Keys. A large coalition of environmental groups, the dive industry, recreational fishing interests, and others succeeded in getting special legislation passed to establish the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The Florida Keys are still messed up. It’s not a pristine environment. But I do think those reefs have the best cover and the good thing about that sanctuary in particular is that not only is it one of the only ones in the country that has no–fishing zones, but it also might be the only one with a mandatory water quality protection program and a relatively well–funded monitoring and research program.
Q: What motivated you to write Heal the Ocean?
Well, I had been at Environmental Defense for over ten years. The environmental movement is a frenzied movement. There are just so many things going on all at once. I felt like me and all my colleagues were constantly struggling to keep our heads above water, so there was really no opportunity to look out over the trenches and see what’s coming on the horizon in terms of new issues. And it occurred to me that that’s a real liability, because when you’re always reacting to things, you’re often catching things late in the game, and by then inertia has set in and big investments have been made, so you’re trying to turn this huge ship around. Whereas if you catch things early you might not have to do jujitsu, it’s a smaller effort.
So, I wrote to the Pew fellowship program as I got this idea to take a break and read the literature, talk to scientists who think about current trends and issues, and try to find the next seven big fishing issues that might befall us are, so that we are prepared.
So, the Pew Folks said yes and they gave me a fellowship. I spent three wonderful summers researching emerging issues near the sea in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, studying traditional Hawaiian resource management on the north shore of Kauai, and writing things up at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in la Jolla. This resulted in two peer–reviewed publications, one on renewable energy from the ocean, which I think is a big emerging issue, and the other was deep sea mining. While I was at Scripps, I realized that very few people were going to read these papers, and that I needed to reach a broader audience. So I decided to write a book about people succeeding in their efforts to protect the ocean, and about how to go about winning environmental protection. My book, Heal the Ocean, came out in December, 2003.
Q: How long did it take you to write it?
It’s kind–of like that old Chinese story of the famous master artist who is commissioned by the emperor to paint a fish. And the emperor’s people keep coming back day after day asking when it’s going to be done. And he keeps saying it’s not done. Then one day the emperor’s man comes by and asks him for his painting and he says, “I’m ready”. And he takes out a piece of paper and he paints the fish in about two seconds. And the man says, “what have you been doing these last several years when we’ve been asking you for this painting?” and the artist says, “I’ve been preparing”
That’s sort–of like what this writing process was like, just thinking about it a lot, reading a lot of literature, talking to a lot of people. Suddenly the concept arose and the writing came in leaps and bounds.
Q: Looking forward, what is your ideal situation in 50–100 years?
For coral reefs, I’m afraid the outlook is fairly grim. It’s hard to even think about it because of the threat of climate change. But I think that we have to remain optimistic that these natural forces that have shaped things in the last millennium will carry reefs through if we back off a bit. Now climate change is a difficult one to put the breaks on because of the way the climate system works, but I think the best–case scenario for coral reefs is if we humans succeed in reducing our impacts. It’s a triage, you know – this patient is hemorrhaging and it’s also got a chronic disease. So, we’ve got to stop the hemorrhaging first so it doesn’t die, and then we’ve got to treat the chronic disease. So the immediate threats like raw sewage, destructive fishing, dynamiting reefs, is clearly the first order of business. And there’s progress around the world. Coral reefs are coming back. We have to buy time for this ecosystem so that whatever we can get in terms of reductions in greenhouse gases will have positive results.
Q: When people ask you what they can do to help, what do you say?
Saving coral reefs and saving the ocean is not something that an individual can have a great deal of impact on. It’s not like changing the light bulbs in your house to compact fluorescents. That sort–of behavior will help to the extent that it effects climate change. And those acts of kindness towards the environment can – even if they feel ineffectual –actually help transform individuals into stewards. That sort–of ethic can spread through society like a virus, if in addition to taking actions, people communicate with other people, and build communities around these kinds of things. So, it’s not so much the individual action, but it’s more individuals caring enough to work with other people to make change. And for coral reefs this often happens on a local level. When community–based management works well, it’s usually because it’s connected with traditions of caring for the environment and treating the environment with respect, or even a spiritual connection to the environment. You work with what’s already there and encourage a revival, as is happening in Hawaii with the restoration of ancient ahupua’a, traditional land–sea stewardship areas. This has been a marvelous combination of a social justice movement, a renaissance of old traditional values and lifestyle, and the resurrection of a traditional environmental ethic that’s often tied to island cultures.
Q: So what keeps you going in this business?
The way I keep the work sustainable for myself is to make sure that it comes from passion for the environment and a love of ideas and breaking new ground and trying to find solutions, rather than being motivated constantly by frustration and anger and fear. These emotions have their place, and can be powerful motivators for action. But I think for an activist to persist for years or decades in this kind–of work, it’s really important to balance that with more positive aspects of activism. For me, it’s the excitement of trying to find the innovative solution that’s going to meet human interests as well as protect the environment at the same time. It’s an exciting intellectual challenge. And when it works, it can really be transformative.
One great thing that has happened is that we have collaborated with the Pacific Coast Federation Of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) based in the Presidio. It’s been a great project. Basically, what we’re doing is the PCFFA recommends master fishermen for us to interview – people who have lots and lots of experience at sea and know the fisheries well. We go to them with the geographical information system, which maps all the habitats in California. It has overlays and navigational charts on it, and it also has all the marine protected areas that are currently in place on it. So, we go to these fishermen and ask them what they know about the natural history of certain areas so that we can add to the scientific data that we already have and confirm where we think the habitats are based on sample. Fishermen have this intense personal knowledge of the ocean that scientists don’t. And so, it’s an opportunity for us to gain their local knowledge. And I think almost as importantly, it provides an opportunity for the fishermen to feel engaged. They often feel like their knowledge is discounted or not considered at all in the big decisions and processes. This project called “Ocean Map”, is an attempt to fill both of those gaps – to get their knowledge and also to make them feel better about the process.
And once we get into it we ask them more sensitive questions like, “where are your most important fishing grounds?” The intent of these questions is to try to put marine reserves in places that have high biological value and meet scientific criteria. But, because there’s multiple sites that might protect a kelp forest, or a rocky reef, or a bolder habitat, if you could choose one of those sites that has the same ecological value but a lower cost to the fishermen because they don’t fish there – it’s far from port or it’s just not as productive – then you choose that site to minimize the costs. Why hurt people if you don’t have to? That’s the ultimate goal of this project is to create a, socioeconomic information base for California so that when we start to implement things like the Marine Life Protection Act to put in marine reserves and create a network that it calls for, that we can do so in a way that’s sensitive to the economic, social and cultural concerns of these fishermen.
Environmental Defense, NRDC and the Nature Conservancy have made a long–term commitment to really try to understand these fishers. So, it’s not the old way of environmentalism where you kind–of stay on the outside and throw rocks at the system. This new way is to really get involved, serve on advisory committees, do the hard work of understanding this very complicated system. If you’re an observer and you’re far away from an issue, it can look really simple. Those guys are bad. These guys are good. This issue is bad. This issue is good. When you get in there in the skunkworks and really hear what people’s concerns are, – I’ve got to make a boat payment. I’ve got to get my kids through school. I’ve got to feed my family – It really hits home. And I think the natural response of any compassionate human being is to really work hard to find ways to make your interests also accommodate theirs at the same time. So, I think it’s a very healthy trend and the whole environmental movement can benefit from that mode of more and more constructive dialogue with the industries.
Q: Where is your favorite coral reef diving spot?
That’s a tough one. I’ve got to say that Bonaire ranks up there. It’s not the most diverse reef, it’s not the clearest water, but I’ve just had so many wonderful experiences there with the people. That’s part of the whole diving experience. It’s a fun place to dive, it’s very easy. I’ll never forget that dive we took through the sponge reef out there at Red Slave Huts. So that’s one of my favorites because of the human context there.
For sheer natural beauty, some of the dives I took in the Cook Islands or Fiji were mind blowing, beautiful. In Indonesia also, right off the beach off of Lombok Island, I had one of my first encounters with Indonesian coral reefs and it knocked my booties off. I couldn’t believe it. Because, all of my other diving was in the Caribbean and the Acropora are gone. So all of a sudden there’s these thickets of basket corals in blues and purples.
Q: How do you feel when you are diving on a coral reef?
I meditate a lot in the morning and for me diving is just another meditative experience. It’s really about breath, focus, and awareness. I learned from Ned DeLoach that you can have a really quality diving experience with just staying in the same place and just looking very deeply. And that’s a very strong metaphor for me, because it parallels the meditative experience where you’re looking deeply at things, and you don’t necessarily have to look at everything. You just focus your awareness. So, that’s what’s going on for me a lot of times when I’m underwater.
Also, I used to really like cruising around on flats and looking at lots of organisms, but in recent years I mostly move off the reef and look out into the abyss. It’s a really tranquil experience and once in a while you see something big.
Q: Do you have any favorite reef creatures?
Oh yeah, my favorite is the reef squid, because I had so many great experiences with it in Bonaire particularly. It’s one of the reasons I love Bonaire. Even in really shallow water they form these lines and they really look at you. It’s one of the few creatures that I know who have as much curiosity about us as we have about them. While we’re doing our reef check and looking at fish, they’re looking at us or that’s sort–of the feeling of these very intelligent creatures. There’s something about their stare that’s really wild.
Q: Any final stories or anything that you would like to say?
Just spread the news, spread the passion. As Charles Seaborn always says, “You’ve gotta have the passion.” He’s a good example of a guy who loves his work and loves the ocean. In the book I talk about the Tipping Point that we used in the Channel Islands to get the marine reserves set up. When you don’t have a big advertising budget, you have to find ways to spread your ideas and concepts in a low–cost way. This can mean finding particular kinds of people who are especially good at certain kinds of things. The key is to find key people in the community, infect them with your idea, get them together, and it will spread like wildfire. And that’s exactly what happened with us. We found this very energetic young guy who was very charistmatic and passionate about the issues, and he went to hundreds and hundreds of clubs and organizations and told the story. Before you know it there were thousands of activists at our door. It was great. I think that is really the power of the environmental movement.
Sherry Flumerfelt is a Program Coordinator for the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) in San Francisco, California.
