Alison Sudol

22 October 2000

“Imagine this: what if you had a little house on a large plot of wild, beautiful untouched woods. Although you loved to look out of your window and look at the trees, you rarely wandered out into it. You have a TV, what would be the point? And so one day some folks came to your door and asked if they could hunt for geese on your grounds- they’d pay you handsomely for it. Well, you take that money and watch as they roll massive machine guns down your driveway and disappear into the thicket. Day after day, they emerge with truckloads of geese- did you know there were so many geese in there? No, you didn’t. And then one day, the trucks stop coming and going so often, and then finally they stop coming altogether. So you decide to go look into these woods of yours and see what else you didn’t know was there.

And as you walk, you suddenly come upon piles and piles of animals and birds you’ve never seen. They are heaped everywhere, carelessly, shocking, the casualties of a war you didn’t realize was happening right in your backyard. And worse still, you realize that not only are these animals and birds you’ve never seen, they’re lifeforms that no one has ever seen. And so you walk around your wood, and wonder why it’s so quiet… until you realize it’s because the sounds of the life are no longer there. Your woods are empty. And the grasses are trampled, trees felled because they were in the way, trees that might have been there for thousands of years… And all you can think is, ‘I wish I had done something to stop this…’ and then, worse still, ‘I could have done something to stop this…’ That is what’s happening in our oceans as we speak. Welcome to deep-sea bottom trawling.

You can do something to stop it. We all can. Let’s not wait until it’s too late.”