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Mark Powell and I are having a disagreement over on Blogfish. I read Blogfish daily, and in my Google reader it's in my folder for "science blogs". I would guess that most people who read Blogfish have a great deal of experience in science or in the ocean. But I know that isn't representative of the entire population.
I want to use a number of examples to illustrate the discussion, and the first one, oddly enough, will come from religion.
When I was an Orthodox Christian, I read a description of the three ways by which people come to a religious life.
1. Out of fear of Hell
2. Out of desire for Heaven
3. Out of love of God
The Church Father who wrote that went on to stay that most individuals were motivated by the fear of Hell, and although the love of God was the purest reason, either of the other two would get you there.
I'd say that people come to conservation efforts for the same reasons, more or less.
1. Out of fear or shame of doing wrong or fear of punishment
2. Out of desire for reward (having pretty coral or fish to look at on vacation, for example)
3. Out of love of the planet/ ocean.
One of the big things is that the vast majority of people really don't know what they're doing is destructive, or that they have some overwhelming reason to continue doing it.
In Florida, for example, Grouper is big business. Restrictions on fishing for Grouper gets the local fishermen pretty upset. Having lived in the fishing village of Madeira beach, I often heard the fishermen griping about closed seasons and restricted catches. Most of these men were simple individuals who were not really thinking ahead to the problems with overfishing. They were thinking about supporting themselves and their families. They knew that the restrictions had been put in place to prevent a future with low or no catches, but that was only an idea, and wasn't real to their immediate needs.
In this case, it was the law that prevented overfishing. It would be nice if these men loved the ocean enough to say "I don't want to fish for these fish even though it means a loss of income." But that's not terribly likely. What did work is saying "you're going to have your license taken away and pay a stiff fine if you don't obey these laws"
Sustainable fishing has used another version of this: "Consumers won't buy these fish so you're going to have to find some other livelihood."
The problem has been convincing the average consumer that they shouldn't eat these fish, which are readily available in season in Florida, and promoted quite a bit.
Now the average consumer doesn't understand the ecology of the ocean. Sure, I guess a lot of people who read Blogfish and the other ocean blogs DO, but they aren't representative of all people who eat fish.
Let me share some of my own ignorance. Most of my adult life, I had no idea that coral were living things, although I did know how long it took coral to "grow". I figured that coral was some sort of mineral deposit, and I don't think I was alone in thinking that. I didn't understand why you couldn't just make artificial reefs. After all, what do fish know if something is real or artificial? and it seemed to me that there was a whole heck of a lot of non-biodegradable materials you could toss in the ocean, which would solve two problems: It would create an artificial reef and it would free up landfill space.
Now I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads, and these days I am, too. But I really didn't understand the whole situation when my daughter stopped eating shrimp. It took "I don't eat shrimp. It's not good to eat shrimp because the way shrimp is harvested destroys the ocean floor. I don't support that." When I heard that, I felt pretty bad about eating shrimp, but it also motivated me to find out more about what was being destroyed and what that means.
Now the question is, is it a case of "moral superiority" or snobishness if you say "destroying a natural environment is bad"? well, perhaps in some cases. If you're taking out a forrest for farm land that is debatable. People have to eat, but they don't have to eat shrimp or grouper.
Let's take another example.
This photo upsets my children a great deal. It was taken at the LA zoo almost 2 years ago, and shows a cactus in one of the garden areas with a great deal of carving from zoo visitors. I'm sure David was not terribly concerned about the long term effects of declaring his love for Nessa on the plant... and his message remains (as do all the other declarations of love), as he no doubt intended at the time he wrote it.
Is what David did wrong? Should he feel bad about vandalizing public property? Should he feel bad about the damage he did to the plant?
Shame has become a dirty word in our vocabulary these days. Yet it's a human emotion, and a strong motivator. It's part of normal psyche, and when totally absent, marks mental illness. But these days it's considered taboo. Now David isn't mentally ill because he carved his love note in a cactus. But if he's caught and is incapable of feeling some shame for what he did when the wrongness of what he did is brought to his attention, there's something wrong.
This doesn't mean that the park ranger should grab young David by the neck and tell him that he's stupid and irresponsible and a rotten kid. Obviously that's not the way to teach young David. But by making him aware of the damage he's caused and by having some sort of way for David to make good, David will learn.
The better way would have been for David to know about cactus and the best would be for him to have an appreciation for natural beauty, but we can't expect that of everyone.
Generally, when faced with their own ignorance, people will experience a moment of shame or embarrassment. No one likes to find out that they've been wrong, but it's often a starting point for growth. Most people wouldn't have problems making value judgments on people's behaviors when it comes to community laws or behaviors that harm other humans, but stand short of extending those judgements toward behaviors harming what they see as lesser animals or ecosystems. While I agree that labeling people "bad" or "good" is problematic, I think there are points where we have to discern between "bad" an "good" behaviors.
The sustainable seafood movement has thus far been utilizing a basic strategy: that it's "bad" to eat certain fish. I don't have a problem with that... While I think the "higher" strategy would be to provide sufficient education and experience to the general population to foster a love of the ocean, I don't think that's a totally attainable goal... at least not in the near future. To go back to psychology, sometimes it's most important to stop the behavior first, then go back and evaluate the whys and find alternative behaviors.
4 comments:
Good explanation Dorid. I'm going to have to think a bit about your examples and reasoning before I can offer a good response. I see the seeds of it now, but nut much more than that.
I put up another blogfish post on SEE Turtles, an ecotourism program that has replaced fishing for some fishermen that used to kill a lot of turtles and gotten them invested in saving turtles. They're now doing conservation not because they're forced, or not because the love turtles, but because their self-interest and ethics are aligned. That's the sweet spot for conservation.
That's more what I'm talking about, not shifting from guilt to love as a motivator for doing the same things. I'm talking about reconfiguring what we ask of people, in order to avoid having to use guilt (which mostly doesn't work anyway for seafood).
But I do need to think more about your examples. Thanks for that.
Mark, that's the number 2 thing: desire for reward. I agree that's also a "sweet spot" but it only holds for people immediately involved in the industry, not the public at large.
There's been some cry against ecotourism, although I personally find it the best compromise, for a number of reasons.
While I think you've been thinking mostly of the fishermen, I've been thinking mostly of the consumer. I'm not sure that in the case of sustainable fishing that fishermen will be able to make a better living if consumers continue to demand certain seafood items. Money tends to be a pretty strong motivator.
I'm not sure that grouper (for instance) and turtle are in the same category when it comes to income.
Self interest is the hard part. Sometimes there is little way to align self interest with ethics, especially when tradition is involved. Now I'm not nay saying that... just pointing out that perhaps the most effective way to deal with the problems is on all three levels.
I think you're right that guilt or shame makes a good wake-up call. I was focusing more on what happens after the wake-up call. I think guilt won't work beyond the initial wake-up call.
I'm not a big supporter of "just say no" to shrimp or most other seafood. There are a few examples, perhaps, where the "dont' buy" approach might work, but not many. And shrimp isn't one of them.
I don't want to get lost in the weeds, but did you know that some shrimp are certified as sustainably caught? And some are caught in traps, so bottom damage is minimized. Boycotting all shrimp will be destructive to the good work done by some shrimpers.
I'm not arguing that everyone needs to become an expert, I know that's impossible. This muddled situation is why I don't think consumers can do the heavy lifting of saving our oceans by selective buying. It's just too hard to be precise enough to reward the good shirmp producers and punish the bad ones.
And for consumer pressure to work, it has to reward good shirmp and punish bad shrimp. Simply punishing all shrimp won't do anything. And, in case you don't know, shrimp tops the list of seafood eaten in the US. That means that the "don't buy shrimp" efforts are failing to even dent the marketplace. Why? Because people's desires for shrimp more often than not outweigh their guilt over buying it, even when they know about the problems with shrimping.
So what is the solution? What can we do? Support efforts by me and others to get major seafood buyers engaged in fixing our fishery problems. They have the political clout to make a difference, and they're savvy enough to punish the bad shrimp and reward the bad shrimp. Join our political effort to pressure selected buyers at the right time and place, so they do the heavy lifting. It's smarter, and it's working.
I agree that the "punishment" is only effective in immediate relief, and more needs to be done to solve the problem long term.
For myself, I don't know how to trust when shrimp is caught sustainably, so I eschew all shrimp. I imagine one good step would be to require labeling. The rest I personally find a bit confusing. I did know that some shrimp was caught in ways that did little or no damage, but know when I go to the supermarket, usually the people behind the counter have no idea how the shrimp were caught.
I think you know from my previous responses that I absolutely support your work and your approach.
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