Subject:  #587: Oceans Without Fish
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>
>OCEANS WITHOUT FISH
>
>The destruction of life in the oceans has progressed farther than
>anyone had suspected, according to a new report in SCIENCE
>magazine.[1] The causes are overfishing and pollution,[2] but the
>focus of the new report is overfishing alone.  SCIENCE is the
>voice of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
>(AAAS).
>
>The world's catch of ocean fish peaked in 1989 and has been
>declining since.[3]  In the early 1990s, scientists reported that
>13 of the world's 17 major fisheries were depleted or in steep
>decline.[2] Typical is the Grand Banks fishery off the shallow
>coast of Newfoundland in the north Atlantic.  There, after 350
>years of commercial exploitation, the haddock, cod and flounder
>have all but disappeared and the fishery was officially closed a
>few years ago.
>
>The depletion of the world's most popular fish species has set
>off three trends, each of which is adding to the oceans'
>troubles: (1) fisherman are adopting new technologies that (2)
>allow them to fish in deeper waters, and (3) they are fishing
>lower on the food chain.
>
>New Technologies
>
>** Don Tyson, the Arkansas chicken magnate and supporter of Bill
>Clinton, has gone into the fishing business in a big way.
>Commercial fishing can be very profitable if conducted on a grand
>scale.  In 1992, Tyson bought the Arctic-Alaska Fisheries
>Company, and three other fishing companies.  They operate a fleet
>of industrial super-trawlers that each cost $40 million to build
>and reach the length of a football field.  These trawlers pull
>nylon nets thousands of feet long through the water, capturing
>everything in their path --400 tons of fish at a single netting.
>These super-trawlers stay off-shore for months at a time,
>processing and freezing their catch as they go, thus giving them
>a major advantage over smaller land-based boats.
>
>Approximately 40 percent of what these super-trawlers catch is
>considered trash and is ground up and thrown back into the ocean.
>They call it "bycatch" and, according to investigative reporter
>Jeffrey St. Clair, it can include endangered sea lions, and
>seals, as well as unwanted fish.[4]  (In the northeast Atlantic
>alone, the bycatch in a year's time amounts to 3.7 million
>tons.[1])
>
>** Trawlers are now using technology developed by the military to
>fish waters as deep as a mile, catching species that few would
>have considered edible or useful a decade ago.  Now that the
>shallow fisheries are in serious decline, trawl nets fitted with
>wheels and rollers are dragged across the bottom of the deep
>oceans, removing everything of any size.  Squid, skate, rattails,
>hoki, blue ling, black scabbard, red crabs, black oreos, smooth
>oreos, deep shrimp, chimeras, slackjaw eels, blue hake, southern
>blue whiting, sablefish, spiny dogfish, and orange roughy are now
>being harvested from the deep ocean and sold in seafood stores,
>cooked into "fish sticks" at McDonald's, or processed into fake
>"crab meat" for seafood salads.
>
>Part of the problem is consumer ignorance.  For example, orange
>roughy began to appear in fish stores and on the menus at fancy
>restaurants in the U.S. just a decade ago.  Yet in that short
>time the species has become threatened with extinction.  The
>orange roughy lives up to a mile deep in cold waters off New
>Zealand.  Now scientists have learned that species living in
>deep, cold waters grow and reproduce very slowly.  The orange
>roughy, for example, lives to be 150 years old and only begins to
>reproduce at age 30.  Recently, the principal stocks of orange
>roughy around New Zealand collapsed.  Still, today in Annapolis,
>Maryland, fish stores, orange roughy is available for $8.99 per
>pound, and there's no sign telling consumers that the species is
>threatened. "People wouldn't eat rhinoceros or any other land
>creature that they knew was threatened with extinction.  But
>they're eating fish like orange roughy without a clue to what's
>happening," says Greenpeace fisheries expert Mike Hagler in
>Auckland, New Zealand.[3]
>
>Radar allows ships to operate in the fog and the dark; sonar
>locates the fish precisely; and GPS (geographical positioning
>system) satellites pinpoint locations so that ships can return to
>productive spots.  Formerly-secret military maps reveal hidden
>deep-sea features, such as mountains, which are associated with
>upwelling currents of nutrient-rich water, where fish thrive.
>Combined with larger nets made from new, stronger materials,
>modern fishing vessels guided electronically can sweep the oceans
>clean --and that is precisely what is happening.  As a result,
>the ocean's fish are disappearing, and so are the family-scale
>fishing operations that used to dominate the industry.
>
>** Because modern fishing equipment is immensely expensive, the
>stakes are high.  With big money on the line, the fishing
>industry has curried political favor.  As a result, modern
>fishing factories like Tyson's are subsidized by federal and
>state governments.  Tyson's company has received more than $65
>million in low-interest loans from the federal government, to
>help build 10 of these super-trawlers.  According to Jeffrey St.
>Clair, the Seattle-based factory-trawler fleet has received $200
>million in federal subsidies.
>
>Furthermore, because so much is at stake, deep-water factory
>trawlers cannot afford to let up.  They must keep fishing until
>the last fish is gone.
>
>But it gets worse.  The new report in SCIENCE shows that humans
>are now fishing not only in deeper waters, but also lower on the
>food chain.[1] This has ominous implications, because as the
>lower levels of the food chain decline, the chances of revival at
>the top of the food chain are diminished even further.
>Scientists are now discussing the "wholesale collapse" of marine
>ecosystems.[5]   "It is likely that continuation of present
>trends will lead to widespread fisheries collapses...," says
>Daniel Pauly, the author of the new study.[1]  "If things go
>unchecked, we might end up with a marine junkyard dominated by
>plankton," he says.[6]
>
>Pauly's new study examined the diets of 220 fish species, then
>gave each species a numerical ranking in the food web, between 1
>and 5. Those assigned a 1 are plankton --tiny floating plants
>that photosynthesize, using the energy of sunlight to convert
>water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, thus forming the
>bottom of all aquatic food chains.  Level 2 is zooplankton --tiny
>floating animals that eat plankton.  Top predators, such as the
>snappers inhabiting the continental shelf off Yucatan, Mexico,
>receive a ranking of 4.6.
>
>These data were combined with Food and Agriculture Organization
>(FAO) data on fish landings worldwide.  The result is an estimate
>of the average place in the oceanic food web (the average
>"trophic level") where humans are harvesting fish.  The new study
>reveals that the average trophic level has been steadily
>declining for 45 years, meaning that humans are progressively
>taking fish from lower on the food chain. The steady decline has
>been about 0.1 trophic levels per decade. "Present fishing policy
>is unsustainable," says Pauly.  Of the 220 species studied, at
>least 60% are being overfished, or fished to the limit.[6]
>
>Pauly believes that the true situation is somewhat worse than his
>study indicated, principally because many countries under-report
>their fishing harvest.
>
>Even if a fishery does not collapse completely, fishing down the
>food chain can have serious consequences.  In the north sea, the
>cod population has been so depleted that fishermen are now
>concentrating on a second-level species called pout, which the
>cod used to eat.  The pout, in turn, eat tiny organisms called
>copepods and krill.  Krill also eat copepods.  As the pout are
>removed, the krill population expands and then the copepod
>population declines drastically.  Because copepods are the main
>food of young cod, the cod population cannot recover.[5]
>
>Fish farming might seem like a way out of this problem, but it is
>not --at least not as presently practiced --because farmed fish
>are fed fish meal made from unpopular fish such as herring or
>menhaden.[6]  It would seem to be only a matter of time before
>the herring and menhaden too are depleted.
>
>Dr. Pauly believes that in 3 or 4 decades, many oceanic fisheries
>will "collapse in on themselves."  The result will be a loss of
>high-quality protein for humans, even before the fisheries
>collapse completely. Humans eat somewhere between trophic levels
>2.5 and 4.  Lower then that, there isn't much that people eat.
>"There is a lower limit for what can be caught and marketed, and
>zooplankton [at trophic level 2] is not going to be reaching our
>dinner plates in the foreseeable future," Dr. Pauly wrote in
>SCIENCE.
>
>Solutions?  Government could limit the kinds of fishing
>technology that are allowed --to give the fish a chance --but
>this would put "the public interest" up against the likes of Don
>Tyson.  In today's political climate, with private money
>dominating our elections, Don Tyson would win because he's
>wealthy and he supports all the right politicians. Dr. Pauly
>believes there is an urgent need to create protected areas where
>fishing is simply not allowed.  He sees no-fishing zones as
>easier to implement and enforce than fishing quotas, limiting
>fishing time at sea, restrictions on allowable fishing gear, and
>controls on pollution --though these steps, too, are needed, he
>believes.  No-fishing zones can be created quickly and can be
>enforced.  In Britain, the fishing industry has begun to accept
>no-fishing zones as a way to save the industry in the face of
>declining fish stocks.[7]
>
>The most important idea, proposed in SCIENCE magazine February
>6th, would be to shift the burden of proof onto the fishing
>industry.[8] Those who profit from public resources such as the
>oceans should have to demonstrate, before they can begin fishing,
>that their activities will not harm the public resource.  At
>present, it is assumed that fishing will not damage life in the
>oceans, and the burden is on the general public to prove
>otherwise.  At this point, abundant evidence has come to light
>indicating damage, so it is definitely time to shift the burden
>of proof onto the fishing industry.  For example, owners of
>super-trawlers should have to show that their yield will be
>sustainable before their ships can put to sea.
>
>Here again, it seems unlikely that the present Congress
>--snuffling around in a trough of filthy lucre, as it is --will
>act to protect the public interest.  Therefore, it is urgent that
>we get private money out of our elections completely.  Elected
>officials need to be answerable to the people who elected them,
>not to wealthy benefactors.
>
>Otherwise our children will inherit oceans without fish.
>
>                                                --Peter Montague
>                (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
>===============
>[1] Daniel Pauly and others, "Fishing Down Marine Food Webs,"
>SCIENCE Vol. 279 (February 6, 1998), pgs. 860-863.
>
>[2] Timothy Egan, "U.S. Fishing Fleet Trawling Coastal Water
>Without Fish," NEW YORK TIMES March 7, 1994, pgs. A1, B7.
>
>[3] William J. Broad, "Creatures of the Deep Find Their Way to
>the Table," NEW YORK TIMES December 26, 1995, pgs. C1, C5.
>
>[4] Jeffrey St. Clair, "Fishy Business," IN THESE TIMES May 26,
>1997, pgs. 14-16, 36.
>
>[5] William K. Stevens, "Man Moves Down the Marine Food Chain,
>Creating Havoc," NEW YORK TIMES February 10, 1998, pg. C3.
>
>[6] Susan Diesenhouse, "In New England, Battle Plans for Survival
>at Sea," NEW YORK TIMES April 24, 1994, pg. F7.
>
>[7] Nigel Williams, "Overfishing Disrupts Entire Ecosystems,"
>SCIENCE Vol. 279 (February 6, 1998), pg. 809.
>
>[8] Paul K. Dayton, "Reversal of the Burden of Proof in Fisheries
>Management," SCIENCE Vol. 279 (February 6, 1998), pgs. 821-822.
>
>Descriptor terms:  fish; fishing industry; fishing technology;
>oceans; grand banks fishery; newfoundland; don tyson; ar; science
>magazine; daniel pauly; burden of proof; precautionary principle;
>atlantic ocean; orange roughy; new zealand; fao; studies;
>
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