The Dead Seas: Net effect: The depletion of coastal fish stocks has prompted commercial fisheries to build bigger trawlers and venture into deeper waters. But it has also spawned indiscriminate fishing that is pushing some species to the brink of extinction
Edmonton Journal, 24 August 2003

Most of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans and their vastness and biological bounty were long thought to be immune to human influence. But no more. Scientists and marine experts say decades of industrial-scale assaults are taking a heavy toll.

More than 70 per cent of commercial fish stocks are now considered fully exploited, overfished or collapsed. Sea birds and mammals are endangered. And a growing number of marine species are reaching the precariously low levels where extinction is considered a possibility.

"It's an incipient disaster," said Richard Ellis, author of The Empty Ocean.

A rush of recent studies, reports, books and conferences have described the situation as a crisis and urged governments and the industry to enact substantial changes.

Behind the assault, experts say, are steady advances in technology, national subsidies to fishing fleets and booming markets for seafood. Demand is up partly because fish is considered healthier to eat than chicken and red meat.

Directed by precise sonar and navigation gear, more than 23,000 fishing vessels of more than 100 tonnes and several million small vessels are scouring the sea with trawls that sweep up bottom fish and shrimp; setting kilometres of lines and hooks baited for tuna, swordfish and other big predators; and deploying other gear in a hunt for seafood in ever deeper, more distant waters.

Flash freezers allow them to preserve their catch so they can sweep waters right to the fringes of Antarctica. The trade is so global that an 80-year-old Patagonian toothfish hooked south of Australia can end up served by its more market-friendly name, Chilean sea bass, in a San Francisco bistro.

Seafood industry officials say overfishing and disregard for environmental harm peaked a decade ago. They point to the spreading adoption of gear that avoids unintended catches, acceptance of quotas and other limits, and agreements to conserve ocean-roaming fishes like tuna.

"We now have a better understanding of the limitations of the resources," said Linda Candler of the U.S. National Fisheries Institute, an industry lobbying group.

Federal fisheries officials note that although 80 American fish stocks have serious problems, restoration plans are in effect, and other stocks are rebounding. The North Atlantic swordfish is often cited as a sign of success. After limits were imposed four years ago, it has now largely recovered.

EXPERTS WORRY ABOUT EXTINCTIONS

Pietro Parravano, who trolls for salmon out of Half Moon Bay, Calif., an hour's drive south of San Francisco, said fishery critics tended to overlook damage done by pollution and destruction of coastal wetlands. "It's not just our activity that's leading to this decline," he said. "If fishermen are doing something wrong, they're willing to adapt."

Marine scientists have recently reported that improvements in fish stocks, where seen, are from depleted base lines that are a dim hint of the ocean's former bounty.

In the early 20th century, harpooned swordfish were routinely 135 kilograms apiece. Swordfish caught on long-line hooks by the mid-1990s averaged less than 40 kilograms, barely big enough to reproduce. Improvements since then, biologists say, hardly represent a resurgence.

Cod, which once could reach two metres in length, have essentially vanished off eastern Canada. Despite closures of fishing grounds, they may never come back, biologists say, because overfishing has so profoundly changed the ecosystem.

One consolation to biologists measuring such changes is knowing that commercial extinction -- the point when a fishery is abandoned because of plummeting yields -- generally comes before outright extinction.

Complete regional depletion appears to be possible, though. In 2000, the American Fisheries Society, representing fishery scientists and managers, reported that populations of 22 species, including various skates, sturgeons and groupers, had almost vanished.

As industrial fleets push into new waters, experts say, the danger and damage spread. The laws and international pacts that do exist can be circumvented, producing persistent illegal markets in coveted species.

The various fleets from around the world are sustaining harvests only by moving into untapped resources, said Dr. Daniel Pauly, a marine scientist at the University of British Columbia and co-author of In a Perfect Ocean, a detailed analysis showing enormous drops in North Atlantic catches over the last century.

"It is like a ring of fire burning through a piece of paper," he said. "Since the 1970s, when the big fishing areas of the Northern Hemisphere saw catches drop, you've had this front moving out, with a massive effort off West Africa, in Southeast Asia, the southern Atlantic."

Moreover, scientists said, global fishing is spreading so fast that it is devastating marine ecosystems before scientists study them or get a rough idea of the size of populations. Off the coasts of North America and Australia, for example, biologists probing ridges and seamounts have found areas where trawls have uprooted communities of cold-water corals and other bottom dwellers that are centuries old.

Recent studies have estimated that stocks of many fishes are now one-tenth of what they were 50 years ago. As prized species have diminished, fleets have gone further down the food chain, for smaller fish, more squid, even jellyfish and shrimplike krill.

Industry calls it "biomass extraction" and turns the harvest into everything from fish sticks to protein concentrates for livestock or pellets to feed cage-raised salmon.

International agreements protect some species, like tuna and swordfish in the Atlantic. But most fisheries in international waters are rarely monitored.

Declining catches have led to fast growth in fish farming and other aquaculture. But these activities have exacted an ecological price, as well. Salmon and shrimp farms expanding in coastal waters from the Bay of Bengal to the Bay of Fundy displace ecosystems that are nurseries for much sea life, or they threaten local species through releases of nutrient-loaded waste, non-native species or diseases.

The result has been a profound transformation of the oceans that is terrifying, said Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, formerly chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Fleets of squid boats can be seen by astronauts," she said. The lights attract the big-eyed cephalopods. "And with the demise of these creatures," she said, "the ecosystems upon which they're dependent become unravelled."

Experts say the industry expansion has been driven by growing populations and prosperity around the world. Almost a billion people now rely primarily on fish for protein.

A host of scientists and groups have recently sounded alarms and proposed solutions. Last summer, nations at an environmental summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, agreed to manage fisheries in a sustainable fashion by 2015.

But long before then, ocean scientists and policy-makers say, the continued fishing threatens to damage the ecological foundations of fisheries in ways that may last for generations. In June, the Pew Oceans Commission -- with a nonpartisan membership including fishermen, scientists and elected officials -- recommended "a serious rethinking of ocean law, informed by a new ocean ethic."

This fall, a federal oceans commission, after three years of study, is to issue a comprehensive report recommending new policies.

"What I find encouraging is that a great many people now seem to understand that we're utterly dependent on the ocean and that we have the power to undermine the way the ocean works," said Earle, who holds positions with Conservation International and the National Geographic Society.

Already, partnerships between boat owners and government and university scientists are producing innovations in gear to reduce unwanted catches while increasing the harvest of desired fishes.

If nations shifted billions of dollars from subsidies to programs to buy out boats and retrain their crews, experts say, the industry could shrink without exacting too great a cost in jobs.

BEST SOLUTION IS TO FISH LESS, SAY EXPERTS

The most important recovery strategy of all is simply to fish less, experts say. This can be accomplished in many ways.

Harvest limits can be set, with quotas allotted to individuals in a fishery who can then trade them. Iceland has set the standard for this approach, which has also been adopted in a few American fisheries.

By limiting the overall catch and allowing people to buy and sell their fishing rights, the system encourages some to leave the business, said William Hogarth, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Environmental and conservative groups support the practice.

Fishing pressure can also be cut by creating marine reserves or closing some ares to create nurseries. Some biologists have proposed that 20 per cent of the oceans be set aside, although experts say that monitoring such vastness against piracy will be impossible.

Reserves in coastal waters have already proved their worth, with rising catches in nearby areas. A notable success has been in St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, where reserves established in the mid-1990s increased nearby catches up to 90 per cent.

Some closures in U.S. waters have led to sharp recoveries, said Hogarth, of the fisheries service. After a shutdown of bottom fishing in 1994 in New England, he said, "scallops came back to record levels" and overall abundance soared.

Parravano, the salmon fisherman who heads the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, called closing areas "a solution that does not fit for all fisheries." In some cases, he said, repairing damaged coastal habitats could better aid breeding and population recoveries.

Nelson Beideman, who owned a long-line vessel that was lost at sea with its crew in 1993 and is now executive director of Blue Water Fishermen's Association, said fishermen deserved credit for some of the initiatives. "These are the fish that our livelihoods depend on," he said. "Doing the right thing is only natural."

Experts clash on the likely outcome of the flurry of activity.

Hogarth sees ample reason for optimism if sound practices can spread before irreversible damage occurs. Overall, he and others said, fish can be extraordinarily resilient if their surroundings are not degraded too severely.

Still, Hogarth added, change requires a big shift in consciousness. "There's been too much short-term vision. You look at all that water and think, 'There's no way you could overfish it.' "

Dr. Patrick M. Gaffney, a marine biologist at the University of Delaware, said the biggest problem was that science trailed the fishing fleets. "Oftentimes," he said, "you only start studying a species in its death throes or terminal decline."

Ellis, the author of The Empty Ocean, argued that the crisis would abate only when people better understood the threat and were persuaded to appreciate and protect the seas.

"Worldwide awareness," he said, "is the root of the solution."

Graphic/Diagram: illustration by Frank Ippolito, The New York Times /(See hard copy for illustration).