Complete collapse of North Atlantic fishing predicted

New Scientist ^ | 10:30 18 February 02 | Kurt Kleiner, Boston

[semper_libertas]

Complete collapse of North Atlantic fishing predicted

The entire North Atlantic is being so severely overfished that it may completely collapse by 2010, reveals the first comprehensive survey of the entire ocean's fishery.

"We'll all be eating jellyfish sandwiches," says Reg Watson, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia. Putting new ocean-wide management plans into place is the only way to reverse the trend, Watson and his colleagues say.

Concentrations of biomass of "table" fish have disappeared

North Atlantic catches have fallen by half since 1950, despite a tripling of the effort put into catching them. The total number of fish in the ocean has fallen even further, they say, with just one sixth as many high-quality "table fish" like cod and tuna as there were in 1900. Fish prices have risen six fold in real terms in 50 years.

The shortage of table fish has forced a switch to other species. "The jellyfish sandwich is not a metaphor - jellyfish is being exported from the US," says Daniel Pauly, also at the University of British Columbia. "In the Gulf of Maine people were catching cod a few decades ago. Now they're catching sea cucumber. By earlier standards, these things are repulsive," he says.

Off limits

The only hope for the fishery is to drastically limit fishing, for instance by declaring large portions of the ocean off-limits and at the same time reducing the number of fishing ships. Piecemeal efforts to protect certain fisheries have only caused the fishing fleet to overfish somewhere else, such as west Africa.

"It's like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic," says Andrew Rosenberg, at the University of New Hampshire. He says the number of boats must be reduced: "Less is actually more with fisheries. If you fish less you get more fish."

Normally, falling catches would drive some fishers out of business. But government subsidies actually encourage overfishing, Watson says, with subsidies totalling about $2.5 billion a year in the North Atlantic.

However, Rosenberg was sceptical that any international fishing agreements currently on the table will turn the tide in a short enough timescale. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the OECD have initiatives but these are voluntary, he says. A UN-backed monitoring and enforcement plan of action is being discussed but could take 10 years to come into force.

Pauly says only a public reaction like that against whaling in the 1970s would be enough to bring about sufficient change in the way the fish stocks are managed.

The new survey was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2002 annual meeting in Boston.

Kurt Kleiner, Boston

10:30 18 February 02

[Washington-Husky]

However, one way capitalism IS helping in this regard is that "fish farms" are booming.

Interesting comments, Mark. Question... Are fish farms booming? Any data on the rate of growth of the fish-farming business? What with it being (to my mind, anyway) hugely more efficient than at-sea, boat-based fishing, I think it would be "growth industry" defined!

[semper_libertas]

I'll be out til later this evening, I'll answer your question then. It's more related to the different types of vessels, and fleet operations.

[Mark Bahner]

I think it's a shame that people are not being arrested for spreading false information like this.They are making claims with no proof at all just as they have about every known subject for the last 35 to 40 years.IGNORE IT!DROP YOUR LINE IN THE WATER AND CAST YOUR NETS!

This is not some sort of rumor or story. This is fact. The cod fishery off the Grand Banks has collapsed. Fishermen are going further and further down the economic ladder, pulling in fish that used to be considered economically unattractive. Discussion of the Northern Cod collapse

[chemicalman]

I can see the fish holding up signs..."Eat more chicken"

[jwalsh07]

Icelandic Quotas and Property Rights to fish in the North Atlantic

[Snuffington]

In fact, I believe that the ocean fisheries can one day be more abundant than they were in the wild state.

I'd like to believe so too. But I have very little knowledge of this subject. Could you explain how you think the ocean fisheries can become so abundant?

[tm22721]

Let them eat chicken. Can't overfish that.

BUMP

[Mark Bahner]

Interesting comments, Mark. Question... Are fish farms booming? Any data on the rate of growth of the fish-farming business?

I don't have the actual numbers in front of me. You can find them in some issues of Worldwatch Institute's "Vital Signs" series...but not the 2001 issue, which is what I have now.

But they're SOMETHING like this: Currently, aquaculture provides 20 million tons per year of fish...or about 20% of the world's output (the other 80 million being "wild" fish). As little as 20 years ago, aquaculture was only a few percent (maybe 2-5%).

In the last decade, wild fish catches have almost completly plateaued at 80 million tons per year, where aquaculture has increased by from 10 to 20 million tons per year.

These are just my general recollections...

[Washington-Husky]

Thanks!

[Mark Bahner]

Yes, no system is perfect. And it would be reasonable to start with a system whereby the people that are granted the initial permits have to pay for them (rather than getting them for free).

But many of the criticisms of this article (that the fish end up being provided by a few big trawlers, that don't employ many people) are actually signs of economic efficiency. The most fish are being provided at the least cost. Yes, that ends up with very few people having fishing jobs, but it's great for consumers!

Mark

P.S. I have to go, to finish a global warming web page, for a class of mine. I'll be back tomorrow or Wednesday.

P.P.S. Many of the criticisms in this article remind me of a U.S. economist who was in China. He saw people digging ditches with shovels, and said, "Geez, with a backhoe you could do this a lot faster." The Chinese guys said, "Yes, but that would leave a lot of people unemployed." The economist responded, "Oh, well...if you're trying to get the maximum possible number of people employed, why don't you give them spoons?" :-)

[jwalsh07]

Perhaps, but the economist did not suggest giving them ownership of the ditch and all that was in it.

[Mark Bahner]

I'd like to believe so too. But I have very little knowledge of this subject. Could you explain how you think the ocean fisheries can become so abundant?

OK, just this one thing. Then I REALLY have to go, to work on my global warming webpage. :-)

There are many ways to make oceans more productive. Large areas of the oceans (particularly the southern oceans, near the Antartic) have deficits of iron. Traces of iron are needed to make algae bloom more efficiently. (Of course, algae growth can be overdone, resulting in algal blooms!) These areas of the ocean have (properly) been called "deserts of the sea." There is far less life in these areas.

Also, in the Gulf of Mexico, various states (Mississippi? Alabama?) are now letting people sink their own artificial reefs (some out of garbage, like tires and other junk). These artificial reefs, just like natural reefs, really boost fish populations. (A problem is that most people want to "hide" their reefs, because other people will come steal the fish.)

As I wrote before, the oceans are really suprisingly unproductive, at least for us humans. (Oceans cover 2/3rds of the planet, but only provide about 1% of our food. Which is a real shame, because fish are a tremendously nutritious food.)

[Mark Bahner]

"Perhaps, but the economist did not suggest giving them ownership of the ditch and all that was in it."

Yes, I agree that it would probably be better to SELL the permits initially, rather than giving them away. But like I wrote before, most of the complaints about the system seemed to be that it destroyed too many jobs. That's a sign of economic efficiency...a large number of goods provided with few jobs. It's painful for producers (at least those forced out of jobs) but it's great for consumers.

[arthurus]

Most of the overfishing problems here in Florida result from government programs and subsidies and government efforts to fix problems caused by government subdidies and regulations. Case in point- When the government recognized Mexico's claim to the Campeche fishing grounds it put them off limits to American fishermen. Most of the fish in the Gulf reside in the Campeche neighborhood. The big oceangoing fishing and shrimp boats all came home to fish "inshore" along the coast of the US. The result was overfishing and thinning of the ranks of the industry. Boats with large crews were no longer cost-effective because of the reduced catch and rising costs.

Uncle Sam had a large investment at risk in the government subsidized loans it had made to the fishing industry over many years. As the industry contracted, boats were docked and companies folded and loans didn't get paid back so the GOVERNMENT pushed a different method that would preserve the loans, long-lining, whereby miles of line with baited hooks is strung out along the bottom. The longline vessel needs only a crew of 2 or 3 instead of 5-15 and is thus more cost effective but it really does damage the coral beds as the older railrig method did not and reduces fish habitat. Ergo production declines resulted and louder calls (many of them from the government agencies) for banning the cruel slaying of fish.

[Justa]

Your analogy to whales is excellent. Many marine fish require a certain population density to survive. As long as that density is maintained somewhere the fish has a chance of rebounding. If it's uniformly reduced the fish faces extintion. Even after 7 decades of a fishing moratorium the whale populations of the North Atlantic remain miniscule. Imo migratory pelagic species like the cod and bluefish are most at risk. They can't survive in pods.

Here's a snippet from my past experience with a fishery collapse. It should help to explain why they call it a collapse. On one afternoon in 1993 I caught 26 5-7 lb. (mature) bluefish from a school of several hundred. They were from deep ocean and it was a lucky catch because bluefish had been declining in the area since the mid-1980s. In years after that I never caught more than one bluefish per trip. The schools of bluefish I saw were substantially smaller and made up of younger fish. The last school of blues I saw was in 1998, it was made up of about 5 2-lb.ers.

The ocean is big, fish need schools to feed, breed and survive. Bluefish feed in schools. They are quite intelligent and sophisticated hunters. When an area dies-off schools have to come from somewhere else to replenish stocks. The schools grow, then split-off into smaller schools. They don't grow from small groups. Unfortunately within the last 10 years foreign fisheries have 'discovered' bluefish and value it for it's high protein and fat content.

[Exit148]

"I would check it after about 20 minutes. I cook many kinds of fish that way and it has never taken more than about 30 minutes."

Fish - As a rule, cook 10 minutes to an inch. Some say that when fish flakes easily, it may be too well done. Fish continues to cook when it is taken from the heat.

When I was a kid, in Massachusetts, haddock was everywhere and cheap. It's hard to believe the change! Probably fish farms are an answer. Are there such a thing as salt-water fish farms?

[arthurus]

demand will drop and number of fishing vessels will drop accordingly.

This is, of course, a natural and inexorable process except as modified by the government having to raise subsidies in order to keep another industry from "going under", another inexorable process.

[Richard Kimball]

Bump for later.

[Justa]

Pelagic species don't farm. There's one guy in Japan that's managed to grow a few bluefin in a harbor-sized farm and they revere him like some god since everyone else has failed.

[Saturnalia]

Now HERE is a good idea: Saltwater farming.
In Africa, a new idea for sustainable farming: saltwater By Kurt Shillinger, Globe Correspondent, 3/13/2001

MASSAWA, Eritrea - Imagine a farm where water is never in short supply and each crop leaves the soil more fertile. Now imagine that farm offering a solution to the most vexing environmental issues of our times: global warming, declining water tables, loss of arable land, collapsing fisheries, and shrinking biodiversity. Finally, imagine that farm making money - real wealth, not just enough to pay the bills.

After more than 30 years of restless research, Carl Hodges, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, no longer imagines such a farm. He's built one, and his secret might sound surprising: irrigating with saltwater.

Seawater Farms, a joint venture with the government of Eritrea on the Red Sea, is the first commercial-sized saltwater farm in the world. The project is still being constructed, but Hodges expects it to produce $10 million in shrimp, fish, and products from an edible succulent called salicornia in its first harvests this year. By 2005, he and Eritrean fisheries officials estimate, the returns will increase tenfold.

For decades, saltwater agriculture has been a prospect as tantalizing as it is forbidding. The world's supply of saltwater is virtually unlimited, but salt stifles conventional crops and spoils topsoil.

At Seawater, not only is Hodges tapping this resource at almost no expense, he's trying to challenge the assumption that human activity inevitably makes the environment worse. The farm's production value will become clearer over time, but one result is evident. A coastal plain made barren by deforestation and desertification is springing to life with vital economic activity, new mangrove wetlands, and nearly 150 bird species.

''Environmentalists always talk about sustainability, but that only means things don't get worse,'' said Hodges, standing on a sandy berm above a field of tender green shoots. ''But things are getting worse. Sustainability is not adequate. It is important to get the planet on a pathway to environmental enhancement.''

In 1967, Hodges, then 30, looked ahead and started to worry about how the world could feed a rapidly growing population. Just 3 percent of all water is fresh, and only half of that is attainable. He established the Environmental Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona that year and began looking for solutions. Desalination, he soon realized, might never be economically viable. That conclusion set him thinking in a new direction: Why not see what grows in saltwater?

A practical answer to that question, some scientists have suggested, would mark a great step forward in human welfare. ''The single most important biological contributions to world peace will be to produce plants which grow effectively in quite salty water,'' the British mathematician Jacob Bronowski argued nearly half a century ago. Hodges agreed. The world has 25,000 miles of desert coast. ''If we could develop the coasts,'' he reasons, ''we could feed billions.''

Over the next 30 years, he ventured into shrimp farming in Mexico and Saudi Arabia. He also studied more than 1,000 salt-tolerant plants both for their economic properties and environmental impact. His search ended with salicornia, a speared, woody-stemmed halophyte.

''It is a phenomenal thing,'' said Hodges. ''It germinates in seawater, grows in seawater, takes nutrients out of seawater, captures carbon from the air very efficiently, and gives us oxygen.'' Nicknamed ''sea asparagus,'' salicornia has crunchy tips that trendy European restaurants put in salads or alongside fish. Hodges and his colleagues have also developed salsas and relishes with the salty succulent. Most of the plant's potential value, however, comes from its seeds and stem. Each plant produces thousands of seeds that can be ground into high-protein meal or pressed into cooking oil. At Seawater, the fibrous stalks are used for livestock fodder, and will soon be made into fire bricks and building materials. Hodges projects that his salicornia fields could ultimately produce as much money as the shrimp and fish.

''This has a long horizon,'' said Christer Salen, a Swedish venture capitalist who has followed, and at times funded, Hodges's work since 1984. (He has no financial connection to the farm.) ''The world's edible oil market is tremendous, and salicornia produces a premium quality oil. But no one really knows about it yet.''

Seawater Farms is slated to cover more than 10,000 acres. Currently half that size, it unfolds like a kind of environmental connect-the-dots. It starts with a deep channel cut inward from the beach, allowing the Red Sea to flow into a manmade river 3 miles long. At the first stage of the farm, water is diverted - either directly or through sand filters - into large circular tanks teeming with millions of shrimp.

Most commercial shrimp farms dump the water from their tanks back into the ocean. Hodges returns it to his river, where the nutrient-rich effluent travels onward to large ponds of tilapia, a light-fleshed fish that sells in seafood markets around the world, and whose skin can be made into a durable leather.

The ponds drain back into the river, the river winds on, and water is siphoned off again, this time onto vast fields. Here, the fecal matter left by the shrimp and tilapia fertilizes furrows of salicornia. Finally, the river drains into manmade wetlands planted with thousands of indigenous mangroves, where herons and flamingos forage. From the wetlands, the water seeps into the soil, ultimately returning clean to the sea.

Because his farm is just off the beach, Hodges gets his water almost for free. Two pumping stations lift the flow a few meters and gravity does the rest. Electricity consumes only 9 percent of the operation's budget.

Salt accumulation, which has ruined farmers in the Aral Sea basin and California's Imperial Valley, isn't a problem. The plain and underground water table are already salty, and the constant flushing of irrigation, Hodges says, ensures that the fields won't exceed the salinity of the water. Nutrients from the effluent, meanwhile, do build up, improving soil fertility over time.

Everything on the farm is recycled. Old motors left behind from Eritrea's liberation war have been turned into pumps. The shrimp tanks - there will be 300 when the farm is finished, each able to hold about 200,000 adult crustaceans - are built with clay cement produced on the site. Bones and innards from the tilapia and other fish, ground up with seaweed and salicornia seed, feed the shrimp.

And sitting as permanent fixtures in the wetlands are three rusting military tanks, remnants of the war that once crossed this plain - and, for Hodges, reminders that human intelligence can be put toward better uses. ''The tanks are exclamation points to the whole project,'' he said. ''Over the next 30 years, the iron molecules will disperse into the water, to be converted by the mangroves into a new useable form.''

There are other punctuation marks as well. Hodges's office sits in the beach palace of former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salassie. The imperial tennis court is now the foundation slab for a new shrimp hatchery shed. Aloes growing off the palace porch soothe the occasional sunburn. And just in case the mosquitoes flare, a breeding ground for dragonflies provides natural pest control.

''The innocence of the project is also the beauty of it,'' said Ned Daugherty, a landscape architect from San Diego who is helping to build the farm. ''Everything has a purpose.''

The farm employs more than 300 Eritreans, as well as experts from seven other countries; it also serves as a working lab for marine biology students at the University of Asmara, in Eritrea's capital. Some, handpicked by Hodges, have gone overseas to earn advanced degrees to ensure the farm's future. The government and Seaphire, a group of investors established by Hodges, each put in about $4 million. The state plans to privatize its half. Eventually, Hodges will walk away, too, leaving behind what he hopes will be a model for a new era of agriculture.

Standing alongside an irrigation sluice, he watches a seeder slowly cross a new salicornia field. With the Red Sea out of view, the scene could be any farm in the Midwestern United States.

''The human species is on the path to becoming the intelligence of the universe,'' Hodges said, satisfied that his farm marks a forward leap in that process. And then, pulling a metaphor from a favorite novel, ''The Bridges of Madison County'': ''We're traveling out of Iowa.''