CHAPTER FOUR

Dayton, P. et al. 1995. Environmental effects of marine fishing. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 5: 205-232 (hard copy only)

Safina, C. 1995. The world’s imperiled fish. Scientific American 273: 46-53 (hard copy only).

Habitats

     States Dayton (1995), "Coastal wetlands and bays are probably the world's most endangered habitats and are especially vulnerable to human disturbance and habitat destruction because they are often near population centers and locations where inputs are not rapidly dispersed." 60% of global population lives with 100 km of coast. As  result, about 50% of the Earth's have been mangroves lost and native species in coastal habitats have been impacted heavily by exotics. In addition, fishing has disturbed much of the bottom to the point where many marine bottoms are like "oceanic dust bowls" (Dayton (1995) cites a particularly appalling example in Italy [Fanelli et al. 1994]).

    The world's fishing fleet, estimated to have twice the capacity and technology available than what is needed to harvest the same amount of product, is one severely impacting oceanic and benthic ecosystems and modifying habitats. Bottom dredging scrapes and plows the ocean bottom to depths as great as 15 cm. Besides the direct destructive impact on organisms themselves, increased turbidity kills many species outright or changes benthic communities. Near bottom trawling produces a huge amount of by-catch.

    The areas of habitat affected by towed fishing gear is astounding. The 800 km² Bay of St. Brieuc, France is trawled over as many as 7 times a year; Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound 3 times a year; several North Sea habitats 3-5 times a year; and one author reported that 70% of the Dutch North Sea had visible trawler tracks (Dayton 1995). States Safina, "(scientists) have pointed out that the vast majority of shallow shelves have been scared by fishing, whereas large untouched tracts of rainforest still exist."

State of the World's Coral Reef Habitats

Jameson et al. (1997) State of the Reefs

Pollution from ships and ports

    The types and quantities of wastes have increased with increased economic growth, and the establishment of "export processing" and "free trade" zones. While the revenues of these areas have skyrocketed, governments and donors have done little or nothing to rescue these environments and the peoples who depend on them. Marine trash is becoming a threat to life even in the most "pristine" areas: In 38 days, one Faroe Island fishing boat caught 26 porbeagle sharks fouled with packing bands (Dayton 1995).

Overfishing

        There are different types of fisheries resource exploitation:

Underfishing: many fish die of "old age" because production is greater than removal by fishing.
Sustainable fishing: using the ocean's "surplus capacity", e.g. where natural recruitment in balance with fishing effort.
Overfishing: fishing to the level where natural recruitment cannot replace the catch.
Biomass fishing: investing in small mesh nets to catch everything to make fish meal and oils for chicken, pig and aquaculture feeds. In 1950, one half of the world's marine fish were distributed fresh; this percentage dropped to 20% by 1982.
Malthusian overfishing: a desperate attempt to fish to survive where fishers destroy the environment that the fish (and they) depend on for survival using poisons, dynamite, etc.

    Fisheries have been managed for over 100 years on the concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSY). Fisheries production increases with fishing up to a theoretical MSY and then declines as additional harvesting removes more fish than the population can replace. MSY has been replaced in many fisheries by the concept of optimum yield (OY) which is the MSY modified by economic, social or other ecological factors (McEvoy 1988).

    It is amazing to contrast the information on marine fisheries from just 30 years ago with today. Emery and Iselin (1967, p. 1281) compared developed of food resources on land and oceans in 1967 and concluded that "the development of marine food resources is in a more primitive stage than the development on land. Progress in inhibited by political factors... and industrial factors (conservative design of fishing boats and equipment, and preference of American fishermen for small independent boats rather than the large factory ships used by the Soviets and Japanese".

    Compare those comments about the "primitive" nature of fishing with the information given by Dayton (1995), Safina (1995), and Botsford et al. (1997). Between 1970 and 190 the world's fishing fleet grew at twice the rate of global catch. Safina (1995) reviews the technological marvels now used to catch fish, sonar, helicopters, drift nets, pair trawls, etc., etc., calling it a "war on fishes". He states the world's fish cannot survive this technological and monetary onslaught. To catch $70 billion of fish the fishing industry spent $124 billion; the $54 billion balance came from taxpayers.

    FAO (1998) figures show that the number of fishers worldwide have more than doubled since 1970, (from 13 million to 30 million in 1996); the growth rate is faster than in any other agricultural sector.  The rise is attributed primarily to growth in fishing fleets and aquaculture. Nearly 95 percent of fishers are in developing countries, and they provide roughly 55 percent of world's fish. The data is likely a gross underestimate given high degree of non-reporting.

Stump and Batker (1996) in their report titled "Sinking Fast" give the following disturbing facts about industrial fisheries:

1. Factory trawlers are 0.14% of the US fishing fleet but catch over 20% of total fish catches operating at only one third of total capacity;

2. The scale of factory trawlers is not sustainable, and their global mobility allows them to leave fishing grounds that have collapsed;

3. The first factory trawler was built by a whaling company, factory trawlers are designed after factory whaling ships, and they hunt like whalers (pulse fishing);

4. The Georges Bank and Grand Bank were overfished by factory trawlers in the 1960s-1970s. The fisheries were further overfished due to management failures.

5. The Japanese factory trawler fleet grew from 4 boats to 42 in less than a decade in the North Pacific and      overfished pollock.

6. The Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 extended US jurisdiction to 200 miles from the coast, mandated an end to overfishing and created councils to manage fisheries, but the Act failed to stop overfishing, did not require ecosystem management and the precautionary approach, and failed to stop conflicts of interest on the councils. The Act furthered the creation of a US factory trawler fleet - US factory trawlers increased from none in the early 1980s to over 50 in the early 1990s. Their overcapacity has lead to a massive waste of fish: over 580 million pounds of fish annually. They remove massive quantities of pollock, which has the largest biomass in the North Pacific and is at the core of the food web. Catches of pollock in the last 30 years are unparalleled. Three significant stocks of pollock have collapsed or declined in the North Pacific and the only large stock left is showing signs of stress.       Seabirds, fur and harbor seals, and Steller sea lions have all declined precipitously. This has corresponded to          factory trawler fishing. Bottom trawls destroy marine habitat and midwater trawls kill tremendous amounts of juvenile pollock (Dayton et al. 1995). Factory trawlers are not sustainable economically, many are bankrupt but continue to fish to avoid greater losses not operating. The industry being consolidated into fewer companies. American Seafoods and Tyson control most of the fleet. US factory trawlers are now moving to Russian waters with subsidies from the US government.

    In an OECD (1997) report called "Towards Sustainable Fisheries" the history of the global fisheries crisis is reviewed. Throughout the late 40's and 1950's scientists estimated that fish stocks could be exploited to levels of 200-1,000 million tons (the 1993 world yield with all our technology was 100.4 million tons). In addition, there was strong support for "Freedom of the High Sea" because fish were though inexhaustible. These scientific projections were terribly wrong, and by the end of the 1960's the number of heavily exploited fish stocks increased so dramatically that some scientists were calling for restraint. However, new technologies and massive government investments and subsidies flowed into capture fisheries in the 1970's-80's. "New fisheries could be developed so fast that time was not allowed to design management measures" (OECD 1997).

    OCED (1997) blames the following actions for the crisis:

high yield expectations
technical advancements in harvesting and processing
distant water fleet expansion
increasing aquatic protein demands
domestic political pressures
limited success of regulations
absence of well defined property rights.

    "On Oct. 3, 1997, NMFS announced the release of a report to Congress entitled Status of Fisheries of the United States identifying 86 species as overfished, 10 species as approaching an overfished condition, 183 species as not overfished, and 448 species of unknown status.  Regional Fishery Management Council are required to develop programs to end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.  This report states that these numbers probably understate the number of fisheries that will eventually be determined to be overfished". (Sustainable Fisheries Act, NMFS)

    Globally about half of fish stocks are fully exploited and 22% are overexploited (Botsford et al. 1997). Fisheries remove about 8% of global primary production but 24-25% of production in coastal areas. But this removal is not limited to products for consumption or economic use. The level of waste in industrial fishing operations (called "bycatch") is threatening the very basis of the ocean's food web. In a number of fisheries, bycatch exceeds the catch actually utilized, and the "throwbacks" change the form and functioning of the marine food web. Discards cause aggregations of predators, oxygen depletions and changed behaviors of marine animals. Jones (1992) shows where decomposing discards caused a disease which eliminated a scallop fishery. Shrimp bycatch can be as high as 125-830% (Safina 1995). Australian data show that 3000 tons of living animals were discarded for each 500 tons of shrimp (Dayton 1995). Fishing threatens a wide variety of marine mammals that are caught as bycatch (Dayton 1995). And the bycatch is not only restricted to aquatic creatures. Tuna longliners have been implicated in the annual kill of 44,000 wandering albatrosses. NOAA (1998) announced an action plan to battle the twin threats of overfishing and bycatch.

    Fisheries employ about 200 million people and account for 19% of total human consumption of animal protein, producing revenues of $70 billion per year. No country has a successful fisheries management strategy in place or plans for recovering the bounty and beauty of the world's oceans. A fish war nearly erupted in the early 1990's between Spain and Canada because of illegal overfishing and fraud on the high seas. Canadian military seized a Spanish ship on the high seas. The boat had two sets of log books, illegal size fish and nets. Distant water nations fished 16 times the quotas of fish set for the Grand Banks from 1986-92 (Safina 1995).

     The ocean commons is clearly at an end but this will be very difficult for governments to do. Many nations will have to move thousands of people out of fishing and dramatically cut subsidies for fishers. Governments will have to apply the "precautionary principle" (Botsford et al. 1997, p. 514). Botsford et al. (1997) state, "The challenge for the next century lies in crafting new local and regional institutions, not just in filling the scientific gaps. The best hope for greater sustainability of marine ecosystems is to insulate management from pressure for greater harvest while attempting to reduce uncertainty through a comprehensive ecosystem view." Dayton (1995) goes further, stating "We point out that in almost all cases the situation is so desperate that we cannot afford to wait for more research but must begin strong risk aversion management now. The traditional view is that resource exploitation is a right rather than a privilege and that restrictive management cannot be justified without conclusive evidence of adverse effects. A scientific hypotheses are never proven, only disproved, conservative management is very difficult because exploiters can always point out uncertainties about the causal relationships between exploitation and environmental degradation. We suggest that the burden of proof more properly lies with the exploiter."

    As late as 1992, the world's fishing fleets were still increasing. The number of vessels in 1992 was 3.5 million, an increase of 136,000 since 1989 (FAO 1995). 70% of the world's fish stocks are now regarded as fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. Greenpeace has called for a 50% cut in the world's industrial fishing fleet (Greenpeace 1998). FAO warns nations to constrain production to rehabilitate stocks, or else stock collapses may become permanent. Waste reduction, habitat rehabilitation, and development of sustainable aquaculture must also be a part of creating a sustainable future for the blue planet.

Exotic Species

    Oil spills are able to be cleaned up but "biological pollution" from the impacts of non-native species into new ecosystems are forever. Each year about 21 billion gallons of ship ballast water (40,000 gallons a minute) is discharged by ships into US waters. This ballast water contains a "cocktail" of new, non-native species that can cause tremendous ecological harm and economic loss to the receiving nation. 42% of the listed endangered species of the US are significantly impacted by exotic species. Over 4,500 new species have been introduced to the USA.
 

    Several non-native species of salmonines have been introduced to the various lakes and tributaries of the Great Lakes basin since the late 1800's, including:

Atlantic salmonines
- Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) other than in Lake Ontario.
- Brown trout (Salmo trutta)

Pacific salmonines
- Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)
- Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch)
- Rainbow trout/steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss)
- Sockeye/kokanee (Oncorhynchus nerka)

The objectives for such introductions varied with species, location and era, however most early stocking programs were intended to compensate for declining fisheries for native species (food, commercial, and recreational) caused by overfishing and habitat degradation.  Most of the early salmonine introductions were unsuccessful in their attempt to
establish wild-reproducing, self-sustaining populations.

    Beginning in the mid-1960s, U.S. and Canadian fisheries management agencies initiated a new round of salmonine introductions at an unprecedented scale of operation.  Some of these modern salmonine introductions were intended to present a form of biological control for non-native alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and rainbow smelt (Osmerus
mordax), both of which were exhibiting high population levels at the time, and which were considered to be causing an ecological, economic and social crisis.

    The initial effect of the massive salmonine stocking programs superseded the expectations of the Great Lakes fisheries managers.  High survival and growth rates led to very large returns of adult fish, which in turn led to the explosive development of a large recreational fishery. Up until the early 1990's stocking rates of introduced salmonines in the Great Lakes basin increased dramatically.  More recently, the collapse of alewife populations in some of the lakes (e.g. Michigan, Ontario) has led to calls for a closer examination of the desired relationship between salmonine stocking
programs and the condition of the receiving ecosystems. Ther is a growing body of evidence that strongly cautions against the unplanned and undesirable ecological consequences of salmonine introductions (e.g.  Li & Moyle 1981, Krueger & May 1991). Given these warnings, it is disconcerting to learn that there have been no attempts to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the ecological effects of salmonines that have been introduced to the Great Lakes ecosystem.

    The mitten crab was found in San Francisco Bay in 1992 and is now present throughout the estuary. The crab burrows in dikes protecting agriculture and urban areas; damages rice plants by consuming new shoots and burrowing into the fields; competes with native crayfish; and damages fishing nets and catch.

    Due to the combined impacts of habitat loss, pollution, and exotics species, 67 percent of freshwater mussels and 65 percent of crayfish species are rare and imperiled; one in 10 mussels may have become extinct during this century alone; 37 percent of freshwater fish species are at risk of extinction; and 35 percent of amphibians that depend on aquatic or wetland habitats are rare or imperiled (see "Aquatic Biodiversity Crisis" Nature Conservancy 1997).

Hopeful Actions?

Asian Development Bank On Oct. 16, 1997 the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced a new fisheries policy moving to emphasis on "equity, efficiency and sustainability', and not increasing production. The new ADB policy seeks to encourage greater private sector involvement in fishery production and processing while fostering regional cooperation in long-term policies for sustainable fisheries management.

The Resurgence of the Striped Bass on the US East Coast  In late October 1997 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission made a formal declaration that the Albermarle Sound-Roanoke River striped bass population had recovered to historic levels. Similar determinations were made in 1995 for the Chesapeake Bay and New England striped bass populations.

Salmon Showdown (Cascadia Times, 1998)
Salmon Conflict Investigations
The Oregon Plan
 

Botsford, L. et al. 1997. The management of fisheries and marine ecosystems. Science 277: 509-515.

Dayton, P. et al. 1995. Environmental effects of marine fishing. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 5: 205-232.

Emery, K. and C. Iselin, 1967. Human food from ocean and land. Science 1279-1281.

McEvoy, A.F. 1988. Toward an interactive theory of nature and culture: ecology, production, and cognition in the California fishing industry, p. 219-225. In: D. Worster. The Ends of the Earth.

Roodman, D. 1997. Reforming subsidies, p. 132-150. Chapter 8 in State of the World. Worldwatch, Washington, DC.

Safina, C. 1995. The world’s imperiled fish. Scientific American 273: 46-53.

Other References

Fanelli, G. et al. 1994. Human predation along Apulian rocky coasts (SE Italy): desertification caused by fisheries. Marine Ecology Progress Series 110: 1-8.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 1995. State of the World's Fisheries. FAO, Rome, Italy.

Jones, J. 1992. Environmental impact of trawling on the seabed: a review. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 26: 59-67.

National Research Council. 1995. Understanding Marine Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 1997. Towards Sustainable Fisheries. OECD, Paris, France.

Economic Status of US Fisheries (1996)
Endangered Species Act of 1973: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Greenpeace Fisheries Campaign
National Fisherman Homepage
Treaty Rights - Understanding the Conflict