DEEP TROUBLE IN THE DEEP BLUE For most Americans, a craving for seafood is easily satisfied at our local grocery without a second thought for the process that brings it to our table. But behind every steaming plate of shrimp or grouper is a way of life tipping toward extinction in America and a fierce debate among biologists, fishermen, ecologists and bureaucrats about the health of the oceans and the best course of action for successful management of this important resource. Statistics are tricky things, and in assessing the veracity of a study, it’s useful to know who paid for it and who conducted it. And large-scale, long-term, multi-pronged research is hardest to manipulate. That’s why a four-year analysis funded by the National Science Foundation in partnership with the University of California and UC-Santa Barbara is critically important. This project examined data from 32 controlled experiments, observation studies from 48 marine protected areas, and global catch data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization from 1950 to 2003. It also evaluated historical archives, archeological data, sediment cores and fishery data from 12 sensitive coastal regions. The stunning results of this broad-based analysis, reported in the November 2006 issue of the journal Science, forecast a complete collapse of all of the world’s commercially-fished species by 2050 unless drastic changes are made in our stewardship of marine resources. Many fishermen insist that it’s not fish depletion but the draconian restrictions on their trade that are strangling their way of life. “The fish are out there,” says Florida commercial captain Jimmy Hull. “They just won’t let us catch ‘em.” Hull, who owns a seafood market, complains that he must buy fish caught by out-of-state or foreign fisheries just to keep his store stocked. “The locals are all out of business. Fifteen years ago, there used to be twenty grouper boats out of here (nearby Ponce Inlet, Florida). Today there are only two, and one of them’s about to go under.” U.S. commercial fishermen must follow stringent regulations on fish size, weight, number, gear to be used, fishing area and season, even while market prices fall due to competition with a thriving import trade. Fishing seasons are often shortened or closed with little warning by regulatory agencies desperate to show they’re Doing Something about the crisis. Fishermen must also compete with foreign fisheries, which may or may not have any conservation measures—or enforcement—in place. And in fact the industry has shown that some of the rules imposed on fishermen by their own international regulatory agency (the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT) have been based on flawed or questionable statistics. Even catch data don’t accurately reflect species population health, as catches obviously decline with quota restrictions and are influenced by variables such as weather and location. But the trip logs show over decades that fishermen have had to go farther and stay out longer in order to catch their limit. Long Island commercial tuna fisherman Joe McBride acknowledges that “where we used to go fifteen miles, now we go thirty, forty, fifty miles for the same fish. And there are fewer of them.” The existing science is, in fact, unequivocal: we’re losing the fish. Research has been conducted over decades confirming that whole populations of fish have declined in staggering numbers during the time it took to conduct the study. According to the National Resource Council, the population of the prized giant bluefin tuna, once a mainstay of a lucrative international fishery, has declined roughly 75% over the past 15 years. In the early ‘90’s the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) presented a study showing that the commercially valuable North Atlantic swordfish had declined nearly 80% between the 1970s and 1990s. By 1990, in fact, nine out of ten swordfish caught by commercial boats were juveniles which had never spawned. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate the effect this will ultimately have on a population, but it took nine more years and a boycott to push through constipated bureaucracies the harsh restrictions on swordfishing which provided the species a chance to recover. John Jewett, who lived among the Moachat Nootka on what is now Vancouver Island for two years after being taken captive in 1803, wrote of salmon at the time: “Such is the immense quantity of these fish…that I have known upwards of twenty-five hundred brought into Maquinna’s house at once.” Marine biologist and author Dr. Carl Safina estimates that native fishermen on the Columbia River caught something like eighteen million pounds of salmon per year before white faces appeared—far more than have been caught in any of the last fifty years. Today’s fishermen are paying a hefty price for the excesses enjoyed by previous generations. The federal government estimates that fish depletion costs us eight billion dollars a year, and three hundred thousand jobs. And it touches every region of the country. In the Pacific Northwest, where salmon have supported human life for thousands of years, entire communities have vanished with the fish. In 2006, the Pacific salmon harvest suddenly plummeted by 88%. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce was forced to declare a commercial failure for the entire Pacific salmon fishery, a move necessary to release federal emergency aid to the thousands of people affected. In the Northeast, fishermen struggle to overcome widespread unemployment caused by the sequential collapses of cod, haddock, flounder and other commercially valuable species over the past two decades by re-fitting their boats to catch whatever is left that is commercially salable and legally open. In the Florida Keys, docks lie vacant as both commercial and recreational fisheries relocate north, seeking better harvests and lower expenses. Overfishing is only a part of the problem. Logging, road-building, development, irrigation, pesticide and fertilizer runoff and grazing all play a part as well, and all of this is wrought with management which has long managed for short-term sustenance over long-term sustainability. But the fact remains that many of our valued food fish mature late and reproduce slowly, a biological combination which means they simply cannot adapt to the pressures of human technological advances in fishing methods. To put this in real perspective, in 2000, more than eight tons of tuna were yanked from the world’s oceans each minute. We’re not talking cane-pole fishing here. We’re talking longliners that troll 40 miles of line with thousands of baited hooks. We’re talking seiners who scoop up literally tons of fish in one set of the net. Of course, if fishing were restricted to single-hook pole fishing, a California roll would cost a car payment. And the truth is that even if we miraculously learn how to preserve and manage the fish, most “capture fisheries” (those who catch wild fish, as opposed to aquaculture fisheries, or “fish farming”) face extinction themselves. UN experts say the world must double its food production in the next 50 years to sustain the projected world population at that time. Efforts are under way in agriculture and natural-resource management to meet this challenge. But it is clear that the historic capture-fishery methods will not suffice to feed this burgeoning population, and will in fact decrease the available food resource if not managed to recovery and then only to maximum sustainable yields. Carefully-managed aquaculture will be an important part of the world’s food future, but presents its own difficulties. At present, many “farmed” fish are raised in environmentally sensitive coastal estuary waters which often suffer degradation from high concentrations of fish wastes and from the heavy doses of fungicides and antibiotics required to keep the confined fish healthy. Open-ocean net “pens” may provide a better alternative and are being attempted with some of the free-swimming ocean fish which have proven difficult or impossible to “farm” by other means. And aquaculturists are using selective breeding and genetic engineering to create hardier, more disease- resistant species of farmable food fish. The future of food aquaculture depends on the industry’s ability to preserve both the species they depend upon and the environment upon which we—and the food fish—depend. There have been encouraging signs in response to changes in our behavior. In 2002, ICCAT reported the North Atlantic swordfish was back to 94% of its normal healthy stock just four years into a ten-year recovery plan (this following 1999’s Give Swordfish A Break campaign, during which more than 500 top American chefs refused to serve swordfish until a recovery plan was in place). And the National Science Foundation study also suggests that it's not too late to turn things around, finding that where habitats are preserved or restored or when fishing is restricted in sensitive areas like spawning and nursery grounds, species under stress have begun to recover—often more quickly and vigorously than anticipated. As a consumer, there are things you can do to help preserve this resource: Support local fishermen by buying local seafood, or at least American, whether farmed or wild-caught, fresh or frozen. Foreign fisheries may or may not “play by the rules” created by international resource-conservation bodies, and overseas conservation enforcement is spotty at best. U.S. fisheries are held to those conservation rules by law, and deserve our dollars in support. Check out www.audubon.org or www.blueoceaninstitute.org for a free, downloadable wallet card ranking the overall health of many of your favorite seafood species. Avoid the at-risk and poorly-managed species and spend your money on a healthier choice. Tell your grocer and your congressional representatives that you’d like to see seafood labeled as “sustainably harvested” where appropriate, so you can make an informed purchase. Ask your retailer where that fish on the ice came from. E-mail chain restaurants like Bubba Gump’s and Red Lobster, and seafood giants like Gorton’s and Mrs. Paul’s, to ask what measures they’re taking to ensure a sustainable seafood supply. If it matters to you, it will become important to these merchants too. Contamination is a big problem in the sensitive coastal regions which serve as nurseries for young fish. Do your part to reduce contamination and improve water quality in your area: don’t litter, and don’t pour chemicals down drains or on the ground. Demand and support clean-water initiatives in your community. Think upstream and down. Most importantly, realize that time is of the essence. During a single human lifespan, twenty or thirty generations of fish may be born, each suffering the unresolved problems of the generations before, just like us. We must make changes now to preserve this precious and diminishing resource, which is not simply a food source but part of an integral barometer of our planet’s health. ### |
