The last thirty years have seen a huge increase in man’s exploitation\n of the world’s fisheries. As the annual catch has escalated far beyond \nsustainable levels in many areas, we are provided with yet another \nreminder that capitalism is a huge obstacle to any kind of rational \nplanning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Facts <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1995, the Food and Agricultural Organisation acknowledged that\n 70% of the world’s fish stocks were “either fully exploited, \nover-fished, depleted or are rebuilding from previous overfishing.”(1) The Ecologist<\/em>(2)\n explained that nine of the world’s seventeen major fishing grounds are \nnow in precipitous decline and four are “fished out” commercially. Scientific American<\/em>(3) reported that fish stocks have gone past the sustainable threshold in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Industrialisation and the Drive for Profit<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fishing technologies developed rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s\n and a strong drive towards industrialisation followed. The world catch \nrose sharply between 1974 and 1989\u2014from 60 million tonnes to\u201486 million \ntonnes.(4) In 1992, FAO recorded 16 major fishery species whose global \ncatch had declined more than 50% over the previous 3 decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Governments, aware of the potential for short-term profit, have \ncontinued to direct huge subsidies towards the large corporations. \nEuropean Union subsidies, for example, amount to $500 million per year, \nnot including fuel, tariff protection and local government subsidies. In\n spite of the calls from environmentalists for protection of small scale\n fishing, development agencies such as the World Bank have<\/p>\n\n\n\n focused primarily on the purchase of equipment, with the major \nobjective being to increase production for export and generate foreign \nexchange. Traditionally, more than 60% of the total went toward \ndevelopment of large-scale fisheries, including large vessels, fishing \nharbours, onshore fisheries, technical assistance, and marketing and \nprocessing capacities.(5)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The interests of transnational corporations and their worldwide \nnetworks of large-scale fleets are now dominant. Yet environmentalists’ \nanger at this is somewhat misplaced. The development of large-scale \ntrawlers has been an inevitable result of their greater \ncost-effectiveness. They will usually be more profitable, as can be seen\n by comparing the incomes of those who work on them:-<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that \nthe crew on the largest boats earn about $15,000 per person annually, \nwhile small-scale fishers may take in less than $500 per person per \nyear;(6)<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, is it the huge fishing trawlers that are to blame for the \ncurrent crisis, or the economic system that forces them into unceasing \ncompetition for profits?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unsustainable <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So what about the long term implications of this crisis for \nmarine ecosystems? John Beddington (Professor of Population Biology at \nImperial College, London) has argued that<\/p>\n\n\n\n if fishing continues at today’s levels, marine ecosystems will be \nradically altered, becoming less biologically diverse.” He observes that\n the top predators (e.g. cod and tuna) are disappearing and that lower \norganisms are now more dominant. This means a loss of food for higher \nspecies, including marine mammals.(7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This threat to sustainability has also jeopardised long term profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If fish populations were restored and properly managed, about 20 million tonnes could be added to the world’s annual catch.(8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Quota ‘Solution’ <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quotas involve international agencies setting limits on the fish \nthat may be caught within a certain area. They are favoured by many \neconomists as an attempt to solve the problem of over-fishing, although \ntheir history has been one of failure. Quotas, have been around in \ninternational law since the 1950s when the concept of ‘maximum \nsustainable yield’ (MSY) was introduced. This is a conjectural highest \namount of fish that can be caught in each season without preventing \nstocks from regenerating. As can be seen from the current crisis, it is \none thing for such common sense principles to exist in legal documents \nand quite another for them to be enforced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are several fundamental problems which have undermined the \n‘quotas’ policy within capitalism. Firstly, it is costly to monitor \ntheir success and it is not clear that governments are prepared to meet \nthis cost. For example, the British government spent only \u00a319 \nmillion\/per year on fisheries research\u2014less than 4% of the \u00a3500m British\n annual catch.(9) Lack of data means that we only have sufficient \nknowledge about the stocks of 39 of the 103 species for which the \nEuropean Union sets quotas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the available information about the size of the catch comes \nfrom the fishing industry itself\u2014the European Commission, for example, \nrelies on a system of voluntary reporting. It is, of course, in the \ninterests of fishermen to not declare their whole catch. As an example, \nScientific American(10) reported that the Canadians found Spanish \nfishermen faking log books for this very reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agreed quotas tend to be too high anyway, as profits come before the \nadvice of scientists. For example, the European Union member states \nregularly ignore scientific advice when setting annual quotas. \nScientists from the International Council for Exploration of the Seas \nrecommended a 40% cut in 1995 hike catch, while European Union ministers\n agreed to a mere 5% cut.(11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quotas have also created a strong incentive to discard smaller and \nless valuable fish. This ‘by-catch’ can then be excluded from the \nofficial catch so that fishermen can maximise their revenue from a \nquota. The by-catch, which is of course entirely wasted in terms of \nmeeting human needs, often exceeds the target catch. Annual global \ndiscards in commercial fisheries have been conservatively estimated at \n27 million tonnes\u2014equivalent to one third of the weight of all reported \nmarine landings in commercial fisheries worldwide.(12)<\/p>\n\n\n\n A famous example of a by-catch were the 400,000 dolphins killed \nannually by tuna fishers in the Pacific. A dolphin-friendly method was \nthen introduced due to a public outcry and this figure is now down to \n50,000. Yet such public anger is all too often followed by half-adequate\n ‘solutions,’ sufficient only to detract the glare of the media \nspotlight. The dolphin-friendly method does not protect other species \nand the by-catch of which has increased sharply as a result of the \ndolphin-friendly method.(13)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quotas intensify the need for fishermen to get ahead of the \ncompetition as they try to get as large a share as possible of the \nquota. The quota ceiling will be hit all the more quickly and if it is \nleft unenforced the problem intensifies. Indeed the dependence upon \nnations to agree to implement quotas has been the major stumbling block.\n As the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) point out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a country does not wish to comply with restrictions imposed by an agreement, it can refuse to participate.(14)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The regional commissions have consistently failed to implement quotas over the past two decades\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 1986\u201392, distant water fleets on the international part of \nGrand Banks off Canadian coast, removed sixteen times the quotas for \ncod, flounder and redfish set by NWAFC (North West Atlantic Fishing \nCommission).(15)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The European Commission Common Fisheries Policy is failing to meet \nits conservation goals:\u201475% of their fish stocks are exploited at \nunsustainably high levels. An European Union survey found European \nefforts to crack down on illegal fishing by national fleets to be \n“woefully inadequate. “(16)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some regions have not established any restrictions. The North East \nAtlantic Fisheries Commission, for example, abandoned it’s restrictions \nin 1977 after three years of failure to implement them. The South \nPacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) is another which does not set any \nlimit to the catch.(17)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This WCMC report concludes that<\/p>\n\n\n\n no country can be viewed as generally successful in fisheries \nmanagement. International cooperation has been even harder to come \nby.(18)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations Law of the Sea (written in 1982 and finally \nenforced in 1994) requires states to “maintain harvested species at \npopulation levels sufficient to produce an MSY,” accounting for \nassociated and dependent species. Yet the task of enforcing restrictions\n on fishing remains with the same regional commissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Driftnets <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations are facing difficulties implementing their \n1990 ban on high seas drift nets, estimated to have tangled 42 million \nanimals annually. Italy, France and Ireland are known to have flouted \nthe ban on nets longer than 2.5 km.(19) While the Italians face a \npossible trade ban the Italian government protest that the \nmafia-controlled fleets are beyond their control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aquaculture <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Aquaculture, the farming of fish both inland and in coastal \nenclosures, is a growing industry and now accounts for approximately 13%\n of the world’s total fish production (United Nations Environment \nProgramme, 1994\u20135) It is largely agreed to have compounded the problem \nof over-fishing rather than representing a solution to it since the \nindustry relies on the catch from wild populations to use as feed. \nOften, this catch are juvenile and so the capacity for species to \nreproduce is restricted. Other forms of environmental damage are caused \nby aquaculture. Construction of pens along the coast often requires \necologically valuable mangroves to be cut down. According to the Worldwatch Institute<\/em>, aquaculture is one of major reasons why half of the world’s mangroves are now destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n