On Tuesday, February 3rd, we were lucky enough to have Dr. Howard S. Schiffman, J.D., L.L.M., Ph.D. visit our class and give a speech on our topic. Daniela and Kiyomi had heard him previously, and invited him to speak to the class.

He started off by telling us about how even since he was a child, he wanted to work with marine life, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When he was older, he went to law school. In one of his first essays he decided for his thesis to be on the conservation of whales in environmental law, and that essay is what inspired him to work in the field of environmental law.

Dr. Howard S. Schiffman, J.D., L.L.M., Ph.D. started off by talking about overfishing and bycatch. He talked about the two fishing techniques that generate the most bycatch, long-line fishing and trawling. Long-line fishing is a fishing technique in which you stretch out a line that goes out for miles, with buoys marking it every so often. On the bottom of that line there hangs hundreds of fishing lines. The fishermen wait for a while, and eventually you draw it back in, along with not only the fish you wanted, but other fish, sharks, turtles, and other sea life. Trawling is a style of fishing in which the fishermen drag a huge weighted net that can span several football fields across the floor. Not only does this catch much to many fish, and also many fish and other marine life that you don’t need, but it is also destructive. It destroys anything on the ocean floor, such as coral. He also talked about how these fishing methods could be made less destructive.

He went on to talk about both ocean pollution and coral destruction, in which he gave us much useful information. After the presentation there were so many question that the teachers had to give out his email so that the kids would get to class.