LEAP Panel Addresses Marine Ecosystem Health

The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) hosted New York University’s Dr. Jennifer Jacquet, University of Washington’s Dr. Tabitha Mallory, and University of British Columbia’s Dr. Daniel Pauly for a webinar discussion of the future of marine ecosystem health in the face of climate change and industrial overfishing.

Their September 2, 2020 talk, “Shrinking, Gasping, & Disappearing Fish,” was cosponsored by the Yale Sustainable Food Program, the Yale Environmental Law Association, the Yale Animal Law Society, the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, and the Environmental Protection Clinic at the Yale Law School. Chris Ewell ’22 a LEAP student fellow, served as moderator. The panel was the first installment in LEAPS’s 2020-2021 speaker series, “One Health: The Inseparable Fates of Animals, Humans, and the Planet.”

Pauly, who runs the Sea Around Us project at UBC, discussed the ways that climate change is altering the physiology and ecology of fish. As water heats up, the amount of dissolved oxygen in it falls, even as fishes require more oxygen to maintain their bodyweight. The gap between the necessary amount of oxygen and the available oxygen shrinks the fish — and rather than suffer that shrinkage, marine life will flee warmer waters to seek their ideal temperatures. In the current period of ocean warming, “essentially, they leave the tropics.” Already, fish that used to have habitats in Florida have moved northwards to New York. The future, Pauly concluded, will see coldwater species near the poles disappear as fewer and fewer fish occupy the tropical bands of the ocean.

Jacquet, who studies large-scale cooperation dilemmas including marine animal exploitation, opened her talk by noting that the event contained three generations of teacher and pupil: Pauly advised Jacquet in graduate school, and Jacquet had advised Ewell at NYU. Tying that anecdote into the larger theme of her talk, she outlined the landscape-level shift in the field that has occurred over the course of these relationships, from a focus on “fisheries science” to what she refers to as “marine animal systems studies.” “It’s no big secret,” she explained, “Fisheries science is really an extension of the fishing industry.” By contrast, marine animal systems studies understands the human-fish relationship as just one kind of predator-prey interaction in an ecosystem, instead of the management of a protein resource.

Mallory, who runs the China-Ocean Institute in addition to her university appointment, presented on China’s distant-water fishing policies. Distant water fishing in China is newer than in other countries, but the country’s fleet has grown rapidly to become the largest in the world, helped by the fact that China is also the largest subsidizer of distant water fishing. Recent years have seen a strengthening of its observer programs. In the moderated discussion, Mallory and Pauly talked about how to fight the xenophobia that so often accompanies discussions about Chinese policy.

Pauly received his Masters and Ph.D from the University of Kiel in Germany. In addition to running the Sea Around Us project, he helped develop ELEFAN and FishBase, both of which advanced the understanding of global fish populations. He advocates for the abolition of fishing subsidies, serves on the board of Oceana, and was awarded the Chevelier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government in 2017.

Jacquet is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU. She is interested in globalized cooperation dilemmas, such as climate change and the exploitation of wild animals via fishing and the Internet wildlife trade. She is the author of Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool (2015). Jacquet received her Ph.D. in Natural Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2009 working with the Sea Around Us Project, her M.S. in Environmental Economics from Cornell University in 2004 and her B.A. in Economics/Environmental Studies, Western Washington University in 2002.

Mallory is an affiliate professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and is also the founder and CEO of the China-Ocean Institute. In that capacity, she has consulted for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the World Wildlife Fund. She received her B.A. in International Studies and Mandarin Chinese from the University of Washington and her Ph.D. in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.

The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) is a new initiative at Yale Law School that leads and coordinates a diverse program of activities. It seeks to contribute to defining, expanding, and advancing the field of animal law. Upcoming LEAP events include a panel on fighting the exploitation of America’s meatpacking workers and talks by Peter Carstensen, Austin Frerick, Brooke Jarvis, and Tom Philpott.