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Jellyfish for dinner? Conservation alert
Article by Professor Daniel Pauly*
Scientist and author Daniel Pauly says that we have caught most of the big
fish, and now we are actually starting to eat the bait. Squid was just bait a
while ago and now it's on our plates and we call it 'calamari'. Eating jellyfish
may have seemed like a joke, but now it's reality. What we are seeing is a
depletion of smaller species as we "fish down the marine food - web"
or rather, eat our way down the fish food web - Ed.
It is difficult not to be a pessimist about fisheries, writes Daniel Pauly.
Global marine catches, which had increased rapidly since World War II, stalled
in the late 1980s then began a decline which will be difficult to halt.
This decline is due to an immense, sophisticated technology being thrown at
dwindling fish populations and to an increasing demand, driven by increased
human population and incomes. The declining supply has been so far masked in the
developed world, in part, by the availability of certain seafood products not
previously available, such as farmed salmon, and by massive fish imports from
developing countries.
Catching plankton
Overfishing, however, is occurring in the developing world as well, and thus
fisheries, globally, are due for wrenching changes in the near future.
One clear indication of this is 'fishing down the marine food web', the
increasing tendency of fisheries to land fish and shellfish from the bottom of
marine food chains, often the prey of the larger fish previously targeted.
Fishing down marine food web provides low quality substitutes for the high
quality fish we were accustomed to, and will inexorably lead us toward catching
plankton, especially jellyfish. Yes, jellyfish, which are now turning from a
specialty consumed around East Asian Seas into a product that is caught in the
Atlantic as well, and exported across continents.
The fishing industry is, on its own, incapable of turning the 'fishing down'
trend around, notwithstanding commentators who should know better than argue
that all is well. One of these is the now discredited Bjørn Lomborg, who in his
'Skeptical Environmentalist,' implied from increasing global catch figures
reported by the Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO) that the
underlying ecosystems must then be in good shape.
However, we now know that the apparent increases of global fisheries catches
in the 1990s were due to China massively over-reporting its catches to the FAO.
And we also know that catches can remain high (and in fact usually do) when
stocks collapse, as illustrated by cod off Eastern Canada, which yielded good
catches until the fishery had to be closed because there were literally no fish
left.
But excessive catches are not even the whole story. Many of the fishing gear
used to catch fish - bottom trawls foremost among them - literally tear up the
habitat upon which these fishes depend. Quite a strange way to run a fishing
operation, if you stop and think about it! Small wonder that some of the stocks
exploited in this manner do not seem to recover.
Is aquaculture a solution?
Aquaculture, the farming of fish and other aquatic organisms could in
principle help overcome the shortfall. However, the word 'aquaculture' covers
two fundamentally different kinds of operations; let's call them Aquaculture A
and B.
Aquaculture A, devoted to the farming of bivalves such as oysters or mussels,
or to freshwater fish such as carp or tilapia, relies on plants (plankton in the
sea, or in ponds, sometimes supplemented by agricultural by-products in the case
of freshwater fishes) to generate a net addition to the fish food supply
available to consumers. Moreover, because Aquaculture A is based predominantly
in developing countries (mainly in China, but also in countries such as the
Philippines, Bangladesh), it supplies cheap animal protein right where it is
needed.
Tofu tasting tuna
Aquaculture B is the farming of carnivorous fish such as salmon or seabass,
and increasingly, the fattening of wild caught tuna.
Salmon, seabass, or tuna eat flesh; they are, ecologically speaking, the
wolves and lions of the sea. When fed only vegetable matter, e.g., soy meal,
salmon do not grow well, and end up looking and tasting like tofu. As for tuna,
there is no point even trying to feed them with anything but fish.
What this means is that the more of aquaculture B is done, the less cheap
fish such as sardine, herring, mackerel and anchovies there will be for humans
to buy and eat. Aquaculture B does not reduce the pressure on wild stocks: it
increases it. It has led to massive imports, by developed countries, where
Aquaculture B predominates, of meal from fishes caught and ground up in
developing countries.
We won't elaborate on the coastal pollution and diseases emanating from the
uneaten food and feces of operations that match floating pig farms in all their
major features.
One reason why the practitioners of Aquaculture B can get away with all this
is that the public at large assumes their operations to be similar to those of
Aquaculture A, and to add to the global fish supply. Let's keep the differences
in mind when we evaluate 'aquaculture.'
There is still time
There is still time for fisheries, but only if they are reinvented not as the
source of an endlessly growing supply of fish for an endlessly growing human
population, but as provider of a healthy complement to grain-based diets.
Particularly, fisheries cannot remain a free for all for a pillaging distant
water fleet; they can however, become a regular source of income for communities
whose members act in accord with the finite nature of marine resources. One key
element of such reinvented fisheries will be their smaller size, and their
reliance on fishes moving out of marine reserves, the protected ocean areas that
we must establish if we are to allow marine ecosystems and the species therein
to rebuild some of their past abundance, and to share this with us.
Commentary to this article
Daniel Pauly is a respected fisheries scientist and a well known
commentator on the effects of fishing on marine ecosystems. His article,
although emotive is not alarmist. Pauly is correct in asserting that world
fisheries are in decline although the problem is a more complex than is
implied in his short commentary. The question is: "What is to be
done?".
Fisheries management as it is traditionally understood has failed to sustain
many fisheries.
Paradoxically, some of the most spectacular failures (such as the cod
collapse) have occurred in the Northern hemisphere where very
good data and population models of fish stocks exist. By contrast, fisheries
management in Southern hemisphere countries (South Africa, Australia,
New Zealand, Chile) where research capacity is less has successfully
sustained many commercial fisheries.
Why is this so? The answer lies not so much in the quality data collection
and science as in the areas of politics, economics, and law. For example, while
South Africa has a tradition of good fisheries science, control of fishing
effort by allocation of fishing rights to a select few under Apartheid
effectively prevented overfishing. The current trend to achieve sustainable
fisheries is towards "rights based management". If a fishing right is
secure, exclusive and transferable, there is an incentive to fish sustainably.
However, under an open access system, such as the "high seas"
fisheries example Pauly refers to, the "tragedy of the commons" is
inevitable (if I don't take the fish someone else will). In conclusion, we can
no longer regard fisheries as a "commons" (as is the case with air,
water and land and other natural assets) as this will lead to disaster. Our
challenge in "closing the commons" is to find ways to balance the
triple bottom line of ecological
sustability, social equity (who has a right to fish?) and economic efficiency.
Commentary by Professor Peter Britz, Rhodes University, South Africa.
What's your feedback?
* Professor of Fisheries, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, and Principal Investigator of the "Sea Around Us Project,"
devoted to studying global fisheries impacts on marine ecosystems.
He is the author of a new book, In a perfect ocean.
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