This Fisherman Wants Us To Use The Oceans To Fight Climate Change

As a fisherman who has been working on the high seas since he was 14, Bren Smith has seen just how precarious life in and around the ocean can be.

He was 20 when the cod stocks in Newfoundland, Canada, collapsed in 1992, leaving more than 30,000 people without work and devastating the fishing village where he grew up. Smith was spared because he was working in Alaska at the time. Still, the experience shook him. He left commercial trawling behind and switched to oyster farming.

Then in 2011, Hurricane Irene came, Smith said. And Hurricane Sandy the next year. Intense storm surges, fueled by global warming , buried his bivalves and destroyed his equipment.

Discussions about climate change have often focused on its terrestrial impacts: the killer heatwaves , wildfire , desiccated forests and depleted farmland. But global warming is affecting the oceans as well, heating them up and changing their chemistry so rapidly that its diminishing seafood supplies and triggering stronger, wetter tropical storms, United Nations scientists recently warned .

I was told climate change would be a slow lobster boil, said Smith. After the storms, I realized it was already here. Its here and now.

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So Smith became one of a growing number of activists, policymakers and climate scientists working toward a plan that aims not only to protect the oceans but also to help slow the snowballing effects of global warming that threaten to wreck the planet. Along the way, they want to create more jobs in ocean conservation, offshore energy and seaside tourism. Modeled after the Green New Deal , these conservationists are calling their plan a Blue New Deal for the ocean.

The thing is, were either looking at the ocean as a problem space, Smith said, or we see it as the victim of acidification, of overfishing, of changing water temperatures, of bleached coral reefs.

His version of a Blue New Deal reimagines the ocean as a protagonist and as a place where we can build real climate solutions, Smith said. The proposal, which Smith drafted along with marine biologist Ayana Johnson and Chad Nelsen of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, emphasizes restoring and replanting coastlines.

Wetlands, seagrasses and mangroves can absorb up to five times more carbon per acre than a rainforest, Johnson explained. And wouldnt that be a great opportunity for a jobs program? she said. We could have a conservation corps of young people that just go out and plant stuff.

The plan also champions a model of ocean farming that Smith developed after losing all his oysters. The aquatic gardens he rebuilt off the coast of Connecticut include seaweed, which absorbs carbon, and shellfish, which absorb nitrogen. Besides absorbing greenhouse gases, he said his gardens are good for the climate because they help to restore the wider marine ecosystem. And theyre good business, he said, because they can float and bob through storms

Smith now runs the nonprofit GreenWave , which helps fishers across the country and around the world plan their own ocean gardens. He recounts his meandering journey from trawl fisherman to ocean entrepreneur in his 2019 book, Eat Like a Fish .