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How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish
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http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120920-are-we-running-out-of-fish/1
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1. Briefly summarize the article.
2. Explain why individual governments should set quotas based on stock levels in their
surrounding waters.
3. Explain how farmed fish affect the marine food chain.
Summarize the two other issues with farmed fish.
a.
b.
runningoutfish
11/10/2014
4. Explain why a decline in shark numbers has a significant impact on the marine ecosystem.
5. What are marine reserves?
What are mobile reserves?
Explain how strengthening and expanding protected marine reserves would go a long way to
conserving species.
6. How often does your family eat fish within a month?
What type of fish does your family consume?
What is your favorite marine species for consummation?
runningoutfish
11/10/2014
How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120920-are-we-running-out-of-fish/1
SMART PLANET | 21 September 2012
Gaia Vince
Global fish stocks are exploited or depleted to such an
extent that without urgent measures we may be the last
generation to catch food from the oceans.
It has been some time since most humans lived as hunter-gatherers – with one important
exception. Fish are the last wild animal that we hunt in large numbers. And yet, we may be the
last generation to do so.
Entire species of marine life will never be seen in the Anthropocene (the Age of Man), let alone
tasted, if we do not curb our insatiable voracity for fish. Last year, global fish consumption hit a
record high of 17 kg (37 pounds) per person per year, even though global fish stocks have
continued to decline. On average, people eat four times as much fish now than they did in 1950.
Around 85% of global fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted, fully exploited or in recovery from
exploitation. Only this week, a report suggested there may be fewer than 100 cod over the age of
13 years in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. The figure is still under
dispute, but it’s a worrying sign that we could be losing fish old enough to create offspring that
replenish populations.
Large areas of seabed in the Mediterranean and North Sea now resemble a desert – the seas have
been expunged of fish using increasingly efficient methods such as bottom trawling. And now,
these heavily subsidised industrial fleets are cleaning up tropical oceans too. One-quarter of the
EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas,
where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day. All West African
fisheries are now over-exploited; coastal fisheries have declined 50% in the past 30 years,
according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Catches in the tropics are expected to decline a further 40% by 2050, and yet some 400 million
people in Africa and Southeast Asia rely on fish caught (mainly through artisanal fishing) to
provide their protein and minerals. With climate change expected to impact agricultural
production, people are going to rely more than ever on fish for their nutritional needs.
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11/10/2014
The policy of subsidizing vast fishing fleets to catch ever-diminishing stocks is unsustainable. In
Spain, for example, one in three fish landed is paid for by subsidy. Governments, concerned with
keeping jobs alive in the fishing industry in the short-term, are essentially paying people to
extinguish their own long-term job prospects – not to mention the effect on the next generation
of fishermen. Artisanal fishing catches half the world’s fish, yet it provides 90% of the sector’s
jobs.
Protect Depletion
Clearly, industrialized countries are not about to return to traditional methods. However, the
disastrous management of the industry needs to be reformed if we are to restore fisheries to a
sustainable level. In the EU alone, restoring stocks would result in greater catches of an
estimated 3.5 million tonnes, worth £2.7 billion a year.
Rather than having a system in which the EU members each hustle for the biggest quotas – which
are already set far beyond what is sustainable – fisheries experts suggest individual governments
should set quotas based on stock levels in their surrounding waters. Fishermen should be given
responsibility over the fish they hunt – they have a vested interest in seeing stocks improve, after
all – and this could be in the form of individual tradable catch shares of the quotas. Such policies
end the tragedy situation whereby everyone grabs as much as they can from the oceans before
their rival nets the last fish, and it’s been used successfully in countries from Iceland to New
Zealand to the US. Research that managing fisheries in this way means they are twice as likely to
avoid collapse as open-access fisheries.
In severely depleted zones, the only way to restore stocks is by introducing protected reserves
where all fishing is banned. In other areas, quota compliance needs to be properly monitored –
fishing vessels could be licensed and fitted with tracking devices to ensure they don’t stray into
illegal areas, spot-checks on fish could be carried out to ensure size and species, and fish could
even be tagged, so that the authorities and consumers can ensure its sustainable source.
The other option is to take humanity's usual method of dealing with food shortages, and move
from hunter-gathering to farming.
Already, more than half of the fish we eat comes from farms – in China, it’s as high as 80% – but
doing this on an industrial scale has its problems. Farms are stocked with wild fish, which must
then be fed – larger fish like salmon and tuna eat as much as 20 times their weight in smaller fish
like anchovies and herring. This has led to overfishing of these smaller fish, but if farmed fish are
fed a vegetarian diet, they lack the prized omega-3 oils that make them nutritious, and they do
not look or taste like the wild varieties. Scientists are working to create an artificial version of
omega-3 – current synthetic omega-3 versions are derived from fish oils.
Fish farms are also highly polluting. They produce a slurry of toxic run-off – manure – which
fertilizes algae in the oceans, reducing the oxygen available to other species and creates dead
zones. Scotland's salmon-farming industry, for example, produces the same amount of nitrogen
waste as the untreated sewage of 3.2 million people – over half the country's population. As a
result, there are campaigns to ban aquaculture from coastal areas.
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Farmed fish are also breeding grounds for infection and parasites that kill off large proportions
of fish – escapees then frequently infect wild populations. Farmers try to control infestations
with antibiotics, but usually only succeed in creating a bigger problem of antibiotic resistance.
Dangerous Predator
Humanity is not limiting its impacts to fish most commonly found on menus. Exotic sea creatures
from turtles to manta ray to marine mammals are being hunted to extinction. Shark numbers, for
example, have declined by 80% worldwide, with one-third of shark species now at risk of
extinction. The top marine predator is no longer the shark, it’s us.
A decline in shark numbers has a significant impact on the marine ecosystem: it can lead to an
increase in fish numbers further down the food chain, which in turn can cause a crash in the
population of very small marine life, such as plankton. Without the smallest creatures, the entire
system is threatened.
One of the repercussions, which I have discussed before, is an increase in jellyfish numbers, but
overfishing, pollution, climate change and acidification also affect the marine ecosystem. Warmer
waters are pushing species into different habitats, causing some to die off and others to adapt by
creating entirely new hybrid species. Meanwhile, trawlers are netting by catch that include
marine mammals and even seabirds – as many as 320,000 seabirds are being killed
annually when they get caught in fishing lines, pushing populations of albatrosses, petrels and
shearwaters to the edge of extinction.
Some solutions are easier than you might think. Seabirds can be protected by using weighted
lines and scaring off birds with lines that have flapping streamers attached – these methods
alone have reduced seabird deaths by more than 85-99% where they are used.
Conservation Plea
Strengthening and expanding protected marine reserves would also go a long way to conserving
species. Currently, less than 1% of the ocean is protected, although by 2020, the international
community has agreed to raise this to 10%. Reserves, when properly patrolled and monitored,
do protect marine life, and nation after nation is stepping up to the plate. The tiny Pacific islands
have banded together to create a giant protected area of 1.1 million square kilometres, for
example. Not to be outdone, Australia has created the world’s biggest protected area, and
countries around the world from Britain to New Zealand are joining the effort.
But useful as they are, marine reserves – often around points like coral reefs or rock islands – are
only effective if governments have the resources to patrol and protect them. Also, many marine
creatures, from whale sharks to whales, are migratory – they don’t stay in the protected areas,
making them easy prey for fishermen. What’s needed, many argue, are mobile reserves that
follow migratory animals, and those that shift habitat due to currents or climate phenomena like
El Nino.
The zones need to be well-targeted and needn’t impact on fishermen’s livelihoods. For example,
one study found that designating just 20 sites – 4% of the world’s oceans – as conservation zones
could protect 108 species (84%) of the world’s marine mammals.
runningoutfish
11/10/2014
The rivers in many European cities were so overfished, polluted and dammed up by the mid 20th
century that they emptied of fish, and many species went locally extinct. But thanks to clean-ups,
riverbank restoration and fishing restrictions, fish are returning to waterways, even in inner
cities. A decade ago, few people would have imagined that salmon would return to my local river,
the Thames. If it is possible to bring back fish to 'dead' rivers, there is surely hope for the world's
oceans.
runningoutfish
11/10/2014