Posted on 07/29/2003 9:42:51 AM PDT by presidio9
ost of the earth's surface is covered by oceans, and their vastness and biological bounty were long thought to be immune to human influence. But no more. Scientists and marine experts say decades of industrial-scale assaults are taking a heavy toll.
More than 70 percent of commercial fish stocks are now considered fully exploited, overfished or collapsed. Sea birds and mammals are endangered. And a growing number of marine species are reaching the precariously low levels where extinction is considered a real possibility.
"It's an incipient disaster," said Richard Ellis, author of "The Empty Ocean."
A rush of recent studies, reports, books and conferences have described the situation as a crisis and urged governments and the industry to enact substantial changes.
Behind the assault, experts say, are steady advances in technology, national subsidies to fishing fleets and booming markets for seafood. Demand is up partly because fish is considered healthier to eat than chicken and red meat.
Directed by precise sonar and navigation gear, more than 23,000 fishing vessels of over 100 tons and several million small ones are scouring the sea with trawls that sweep up bottom fish and shrimp; setting miles of lines and hooks baited for tuna, swordfish and other big predators; and deploying other gear in a hunt for seafood in ever deeper, more distant waters.
Flash freezers allow them to preserve their catch so they can sweep waters right to the fringes of Antarctica. The trade is so global that an 80-year-old Patagonian toothfish hooked south of Australia can end up served by its more market-friendly name, Chilean sea bass, in a San Francisco bistro.
Seafood industry officials say overfishing and disregard for environmental harm peaked a decade ago. They point to the spreading adoption of gear that avoids unintended catches, acceptance of quotas and other limits, and agreements to conserve ocean-roaming fishes like tunas.
"We now have a better understanding of the limitations of the resources," said Linda Candler of the National Fisheries Institute, an industry lobbying group.
Federal fisheries officials note that although 80 American fish stocks have serious problems, restoration plans are in the works, and other stocks are rebounding. The North Atlantic swordfish is often cited as a sign of success. After limits were imposed four years ago, it has now largely recovered.
Pietro Parravano, who trolls for salmon out of Half Moon Bay, Calif., said fishery critics tended to overlook damage done by pollution and destruction of coastal wetlands. "It's not just our activity that's leading to this decline," he said. "If fishermen are doing something wrong, they're willing to adapt."
The Problems Experts Worry About Extinctions
Marine scientists have recently reported that improvements in fish stocks, where seen, are from depleted base lines that are a dim hint of the ocean's former bounty.
In the early 20th century, harpooned swordfish were routinely 300 pounds apiece. Swordfish caught on long-line hooks by the mid-1990's averaged less than 90 pounds, barely big enough to reproduce. Improvements since then, biologists say, hardly represent a resurgence.
Cod, which once could reach six feet in length, have essentially vanished off eastern Canada. Despite closures of fishing grounds, they may never come back, biologists say, because overfishing has so profoundly changed the ecosystem.
One consolation to biologists measuring such changes is knowing that commercial extinction — the point when a fishery is abandoned because of plummeting yields — generally comes before outright extinction.
Regional extinction appears to be possible, though. In 2000, the American Fisheries Society, representing fishery scientists and managers, reported that populations of 22 species, including various skates, sturgeons and groupers, had almost vanished.
As industrial fleets push into new waters, experts say, the danger and damage spread. The laws and international pacts that do exist can be circumvented, producing persistent illegal markets in coveted species.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Your prescription is the exact opposite of property rights. You're basically assigning the oceans to something like the U.N., which parcels them out in some highly political manner, and then those governments parcel the oceans out to ... whom, and how?
I have to imagine this would have been impossible before GPS.
I see who to blame! Let's find the wackos who told us to stay away from red meat and punish them! It's their fault the fish are being depleted. I resolve to never listen to their foolish advice ever again!
Right, that's why it would be difficult, but would also require structuring zones properly so that different nations had control based on fish patterns as opposed to straight geography.
Imagine how much red meats and poultry would cost if every bird and animal had to be hunted down and shot! Fish farming is producing a glut of almost all seafoods and the prices are coming down. So far only crab and lobster seem not to be farmable.
It's not the opposite of property rights to recognize government control over something. If you go and buy land in Canada, you are operating under the laws of Canada. All I am doing is proposing, in essence, the extension of natural borders out into the ocean.
Ideally, each country would auction off areas which may or may not have certain restrictions of them to commerical fishermen. If you have a better idea that is "real property rights" what is it? Somebody has to recognize that its your property, unless you plan on just heading out there with a shotgun and claiming it.
Well, if fish congregate in terretorial waters, that makes my plan easier to implement, as you don't have to worry as much about over fishing by one country impacting another. Enforcement would hopefully be by treaty, and ultimately by force.
I love this whole food production issue. It shows God's provision to see how many ways He has given us to come up with food, showing the overpopulation humanist crowd to be wrong generation after generation.
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