What Ocean-Friendly Businesses Can Learn From the Spiny Dogfish

Two weeks later, beautiful weather prevailed and the Ocean Opportunity party finally got out into the warm Gulf Stream waters off Narragansett, RI. Conditions could not have been nicer, and a small group - including educators, students, underwater photographers, and one corporate type - went out on The Snappa, the only craft in the area offering shark cage diving.

To make a long story short, we had a nice boat ride but were unable to draw any of the handful of blue and mako sharks we spotted on the surface near enough to the boat for a decent interactive dive. Does this say anything about the depletion of sharks in the Atlantic? I suppose it must, to an extent, but I know that the previous weekend more than 15 blues hung around the same boat all day. We know they're out there, and I'll be back to look for them!

So, we snorkeled a bit and did some bottom fishing, which is where the story gets interesting. Captain Charlie cracked out a fishing rod so one of the kids on board could kill some time.

"Maybe you'll catch a cod," he said with the expression of a man who has lost the ability to deceive himself but keeps trying anyway, for the sake of the kids. The New England waters used to be thick with Atlantic cod before the stocks collapsed.

Needless to say, no cod were caught that day, but about two dozen spiny dogfish (a pretty bottom-feeding shark) were landed. They weren't even taking the bait - they were getting hooked in the fins, the gills, the flanks. The water 100 feet down must've been thick with them.

Which leads to the business lesson of the spiny dogfish: crisis for one is opportunity for another. Commercial fisherman and the fish-eating public exploited an abundant resource (the Atlantic cod) to near extinction, and the dogfish raced in to fill the niche thus opened up. The cod's (and cod fishermen's) crisis created opportunities for the dogfish and for fishermen in other parts of the world who could provide cod substitutes. Now, many of those substitutes are going the way of the cod. For the spiny dogfish, however, conditions could not be nicer.

The ocean is in crisis, and - whether they fully understand it or not - so are the industries that depend on the ocean for survival. Many of those industries will not survive. There will be regulation. Or, with growing consumer awareness of the problem, a backlash among the fish-eating population. Or the oceans will simply run out of fish. Who will fill the niche? Can they do so in ways that will provide long-term solutions, rather than simply driving another species or ecosystem to the brink?

One species looking to seize the opportunity is represented by Captain Charlie and The Snappa. As the world grows more aware of the plight of sharks through films like Sharkwater and anti-shark-finning campaigns by celebrities like NBA star Yao Ming, people will want to see and interact with sharks before they become too scarce. How soon until more Captain Charlies - men who used to take people out to catch and kill sharks and now take them out to dive with and observe sharks - start shifting their business models?

This will reduce pressure on local populations and, through competition, drive down the cost of getting out among sharks. It also will create a virtuous cycle of awareness and action. I am sure Frank (the 16 year old who got a very practical lesson on board the Snappa about how exploiting one species can affect an entire eco-system) will remember this experience and, as he grows into a full-fledged consumer, make different choices than previous generations did.

Will your business be ready for Frank?

At the Intersection of Activism & Commerce

Sometimes I wonder if all the signs I see of increased awareness of ocean-health issues are simply a function of my own interest in the subject. I had an interesting conversation with a young man this week that suggests the subject really is gaining traction.

"And now," this man in his early 20s said, somewhat skeptically, "we're supposed to stop eating fish because the oceans are running out. It's always something."

I contrast this young man's skepticism with a different kind of skepticism from my 75-year-old Dad. After sitting through the film The End of the Line, my Dad - a lifelong fisherman - said, "The problem with this kind of movie is that you're preaching to the choir. The only people watching it are people who already know and care about the problem."

Add to these two different brands of skepticism the fact that this week's Science study on the state of the world's fisheries is being reported on in mainstream news magazine Time (Can the World's Fisheries Survive Their Appetite?).

I don't know what exactly it all says, but I think it says something.

Maybe it says the marine-activist world has begun to make enough of a dent in our collective consciousness -- allowing the idea that the condition of our oceans IS a problem to start to take hold -- to believe we may be on the verge of a shift in values. When a new value emerges, the material expression of that value is: What will I pay for it?

For the activist, the cost of building awareness is time and energy -- the anticipated payoff tends to be far enough off that the activist may never see it in his or her own lifetime. The activist plants seeds for trees whose fruit and shade he or she may never enjoy.

Enter commerce: We are not yet selling social or environmental responsibility, but the IDEA of social or environmental responsibility. We are willing to pay for the belief or the perception that we are being responsible. Witness the oohs and ahhs over putting bamboo floors and hemp throw rugs in a 3,000-square-foot McMansion with two Hummers in the garage. Witness greenwash. Witness "body wash" (ie., liquid soap) in plastic bottles invoking the pure ocean on their labels.

But something is happening. Time finds overfishing worth writing about. The great Pacific garbage patch is becoming part of ordinary conversation. People seem to know about shark finning and the environmental damage it causes.

Concern about sustainability has even reached the sushi world.

Something's happening.

People's values are getting involved. When people value ocean friendliness, their economic behavior will shift. They will buy (or not) differently than they did (or did not) before.

Are you ready for this?

Ocean Friendly = Investment, not Sacrifice

One of the most important messages I took away from the book and film, The End of the Line is that saving the oceans (and, by definition, the planet) is not rocket science. At the most simplistic level, it is about what we put into the oceans and what we take out of it.

Overfishing depletes a finite resource (easy enough to understand when we talk about fossil fuels - why not when we talk about fish stocks?) and disrupts the ecological balance by removing the predators that keep populations in check at all levels. By depleting fish stocks, we also eliminate the fish waste that is essential to the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In other words, there is a direct connection between overfishing and the threat of global warming. If you care about climate change, you have to care about the health of our oceans.

On the inputs side: You don't need to visualize large-diameter pipes pouring sewage into the oceans. Think chemical fertilizer and livestock waste from factory farms running off into the streams and rivers and ultimately into the oceans. Think plastics, endlessly swirling in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, breaking down to plankton-size tidbits and becoming a permanent feature of the food chain. Think of all those Styrofoam peanuts that are such a pain in the ass to get off your living room carpet and multiply them a trillion-fold. Think of ghost nets clinging to rocks and reefs on the bottom of the sea, pointlessly and indiscriminately strangling all kinds of marine animals.

Ocean-friendly business is not some nice-to-do, warm-and-fuzzy fish-hugging thing. It is responsible stewardship of our planet. Pursuing ocean-friendly business practices is not a sacrifice - it is an investment in a niche market that will become mainstream as the planet's people become better educated. Do you want to be a leader and establish a sustainable advantage, or are you going to wait around and play catch-up?