Centuries of Overfishing Push Ecosystems to the Brink

Scripps Institution of Oceanography ^ | Mario Aguilera

[altayann]

Gee, maybe the scientists should collect more data! first, and then generate a Hypothesis based on Facts not voo doo environmentalism.

Maybe you should try doing the same thing.

The reason the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking is because during the 90's, governments banned the use of CFC's, which were largely responsible for creating the hole in the first place.

[PrairieDawg]

You wrote:

Read 'How to Lie With Statistics'. It's a real eye-opener.

I'll second that recommendation - the book was written near 1950, but is chock full of examples of how to misrepresent data using statistics, and is very readable for the math challenged.

Now, how about some pix of these massive trout you're talking about? :-)

FRegards, PrairieDawg

[BJungNan]

What we need is more gil nets strung across the river.

[SteveSenti]

As I said... And your data?

Oh, I thought it was all the carbon monoxide... No, that's what it is now.

[wbill]

Uhhh......you'll need to take my word for it. I swear, though, I'd take the trout out of the stream and the hole it left in the water would take five minutes to fill back in! My friend took a picture and the negative weighed two pounds! I mean, these were some really big trout!

:-)

[SteveSenti]

Neither are Oysters or shrimp and We eat Billions alone in this Country.

More worthless data to create more overfunded goverment agenecies to give some communications major with a few evironmental credits a job.

LOL!

[No Truce With Kings]

There was an article in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday December 22, 2002, about a man who plans to fence the waters around three abandoned Gulf oil platforms, and raise fish in the fenced area. Seems like a reasonable approach towards privatization.

[SauronOfMordor]

It would take quite a few hatcheries to impact ocean populations, but those could easily be spread around the various fishing nations to share the load. And while governments may pay the cost of original construction, operating costs could be paid by a fee tacked onto commercial fishing licenses.

For it to work, we need to establish ownership over stretches of ocean. The owners can then establish hatcheries with confidence that they can get back their investments from fishing. The owners would have to have the right to defend their areas against poachers.

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Odd that sensitive ocean species like lobster and sea scallops are still about $10.00/lb (here in Indiana... think shipping costs). If the ecosystem was failing, they would be among the first to decline. If they declined, their prices would increase (darn those greedy capitalist pigs!).

One fallacy in your thinking is the assumption that only one variable is changing. You touched on another variable in play, shipping costs, which have declined as transportation, storage and inventory management have become more efficient. The capture techniques have also become more efficient, so more ground can be covered, with a greater than 1 to 1 ratio in $ returned for $ expended. These two items will mask the rising cost due to scarcity, regardless of species.

The other fallacy is to use lobsters as your comparison species. Lobstering is well regulated, since most of it occurs in the territorial waters of various countries, which have a vested interest in keeping the breeding stock viable. The article above refers to fishing in the open ocean, which is regulated via treaty with a multitude of competing nations, all of which have reasons to push for maximum usage of the common resources. Many nations also turn a blind eye to ships that violate the fishing treaties. This, as a previous poster mentioned, is the tragedy of the commons.

Unlike timber harvesting, which involves companies often planting more trees than they take, this is a real problem with ramifications to the ecosystems involved. The evidence is available to anyone interested, and is more concrete than that offered by the global warming crowd.

LTS

[Willie Green]

Finding a way to stop exploitation of natural fisheries is alot more economically feasible than your idea of building tanks so large or numerous that they could actually have a significant affect on the world's ocean fish population.

What are you? A PETA/Sierra Club/Greenpeace whacknut liberal?

The LAST thing I want to do is put natural resources off limits.
Hatcheries are a means of supplementing natural fish reproduction.
Big fish eat little fish.
So you build tanks where you can hatch, protect and raise little fish until they're big enough to have a better chance of survival out in the wild with the big fish.
It's a pretty straightforward suggestion that's not very complicated or expensive.

[-YYZ-]

Shrimp are relative close to the bottom of the food chain. Oysters are another regulated coastal industry.

The virtual disappearance of the nothern cod stocks is not a figment of anyone's imagination. The average size of halibut caught is down to about a half now of what it once was. Some of you seem to have some difficulty believing that it's possible for humans to significantly impact the stocks of fish in the ocean. Believe it.

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Check your food chains. An abundance of small invertebrates and microbes (food) will lead to an abundance of 'higher' predators. As food is easier to obtain, reproduction and survival rates for predators increase. It's seen all the time in nature.....cycles for rabbits and bobcats mirror each other, for instance.

What you say is true in closed systems. However, an outside agent in the form of humans is removing the predators, leading to exactly what the article mentions, a glut of prey species. Instead of rabbits and bobcats, think deer and North American predators; without as many as there used to be, the deer population has soared enough to become a dangerous nuisance.

Will too many microbes and small invertebrates become a problem? Perhaps an overabundance could cause a die-off and ocean dead zones. Who knows? Not me, since I'm not a biologist. But what will happen is, at the rate things are headed, someday we'll all be stuck eating tilapia, instead of tuna.

LTS

[atlaw]

I think there's a scale problem with the tank/hatchery idea. It would take an awful lot of tanks to replenish an ocean fishery. However, I read recently about shrimp replenishment in the gulf (off Texas and Louisiana) accomplished by simply isolating swaths of ocean acreage. All shrimp takes were outlawed in the isolated areas, but outside the isolated areas, takes were permitted to continue as usual. It worked remarkably well. Seems the isolated areas acted as a breeding ground without the need for underwater fencing or any other kind of restriction on the movement of the shrimp. Just leave one area alone, and the areas around it were replenished on a pretty regular basis.

[atlaw]

I think there's a scale problem with the tank/hatchery idea. It would take an awful lot of tanks to replenish an ocean fishery. However, I read recently about shrimp replenishment in the gulf (off Texas and Louisiana) accomplished by simply isolating swaths of ocean acreage. All shrimp takes were outlawed in the isolated areas, but outside the isolated areas, takes were permitted to continue as usual. It worked remarkably well. Seems the isolated areas acted as a breeding ground without the need for underwater fencing or any other kind of restriction on the movement of the shrimp. Just leaving an area alone replenished the adjacent areas on a pretty regular basis.

[atlaw]

Sorry. Too much coffee too late in the day.

[No Truce With Kings]

"Odd that sensitive ocean species like lobster and sea scallops are still about $10.00/lb (here in Indiana... think shipping costs). If the ecosystem was failing, they would be among the first to decline. If they declined, their prices would increase (darn those greedy capitalist pigs!). Last month the grocer had a new tank full of lobsters for $7.50/lb. (We ate well that night.)"

According to the book "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World," by Mark Kurlansky, the disappearance of cod (due to overfishing) in the Newfoundland Banks lead to an explosion in lobster, shellfish, and other species that the cod fed upon.

Since the ground-trawling techniques used for cod do not work with lobster and scallops, they are relatively unaffected. OTOH, Cod used to sell for around $1.00/pound while you are buying lobster for $7.50/pound. Sounds like the consumer is paying more due to overfishing.

[wbill]

think deer and North American predators; without as many as there used to be, the deer population has soared enough to become a dangerous nuisance

I can't disagree with you there. Deer are far too abundant in many places, particularly in my home state of Maine.

However, there are multiple factors at work: The species has adapted to live in conjuction with humans - it's easier to eat in your garden than to forage for food. The number of predators in areas inhabited by humans is lower, as well, particularly as anti-hunting regulations eliminate humans as predators. Finally, the 20-year-cycle of winters, particularly in the North, is at a low ebb. There hasn't been an overly harsh winter in Maine since 1989.

I'm not sure if I just proved your point, or mine. :-)

I think what bothered me the most about this article was rather than using hard facts - the fish catch off the Grand Banks has decreased X% over the past Y years - it resorted to specious arguments and illogical reasoning. What does the biomass of animals in East Africa have to do with fish in the ocean?

[Willie Green]

about a man who plans to fence the waters around three abandoned Gulf oil platforms, and raise fish in the fenced area. Seems like a reasonable approach towards privatization.

I applaud the efforts of individual entrepreneurs to establish fish farms in the manner you mention. However, the "privatization" approach advanced by the Cato Institute (link provided by jdege in reply #20) appears entirely inadequate. As I read the proposal, all it does is esablish "property rights" or territorial boundaries to existing fisheries. Such a system would simply provide a means for large corporate entities to buy-up and consolidate ownership of the fisheries, eventually forcing smaller, independent fishermen out of business. And it doesn't appear to address the issue of overfishing and replenishing fish populations at all.

I don't like the Enviro-whacko approach to placing fisheries off limits.
Limited access isn't any more palatable simply because the fishery ownership has been "privatised".

If fish populations are dwindling due to overfishing, I still favor building hatcheries and dumping them into the open sea once they've grown large enough to have a better survival rate.

[jeremiah]

Cfcs had no effect on the ozone layer, for a heavier than air gas to rise high enough to destroy ozone is illogical. The reason for the change from the old to the new refrigerants was to enhance profits for those holding patents on the new, and assuage the tree-huggers teensy little minds.

[Willie Green]

I think there's a scale problem with the tank/hatchery idea. It would take an awful lot of tanks to replenish an ocean fishery.

Yeah, but a single hatchery can also produce a heckuva lotta fish.
And compared to most other government projects, the technology is relatively simple and inexpensive.
I'd wager that even most developing nations could afford just 1 hatchery along their coastline somewhere. A nation like ours should be good for 1 hatchery per coastal state. Then there are other more developed nations like Japan, Britain, Finland, Norway, Germany, Spain, France, etc. etc. etc. all oughta be good for at least 2~3 hatcheries each.
I don't know what magnitude effect it would have on the oceans, I fully admit I'm just winging the idea off the top of my head. But I figure if you get that many hatcheries dumping millions of fish into the oceans, the darn fish gotta start showing up somewhere!