The following is a features essay written by Daniel Pauly in the most recent Save Our Seas Magazine. Below he describes the effects of industrial fishing on the oceans over the last 130 years — and how marine protected areas are needed to help conserve and restore what has been lost.

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Industrial fishing began in the 1880s, when steam trawlers started to be deployed along the coasts of the British Isles. Frighteningly efficient, they soon liquidated coastal stocks of bottom fish – fish that had previously been exploited by subsistence and artisanal fisheries for centuries, even millennia, but had persisted.

The steam trawlers then had to expand their range into the open North and Irish seas and subsequently beyond, all the way into North Atlantic and Icelandic waters. The same expansion, but shifted a decade or so later, occurred with the nascent industrial fisheries of France, Germany, Russia, the United States and Japan. It’s a recurring pattern: the introduction of industrial fishing begets expansion because trawlers and other industrial fishing vessels (such as purse seiners) generate a pressure that generally cannot be tolerated by the species being targeted at a given fishing ground – and even less by the by-catch species, which are, by definition, subjected to unregulated fishing. Thus, one stock disappears after the other, and new stocks in previously unfished areas have to be found.

This depletion–expansion dynamic prevailed through much of the 20th century, albeit with the interruption of two world wars, which radically reduced industrial fishing and allowed fish to recover – if only temporarily – especially in the North Atlantic. In some areas, when this effect was strong, like in the North Sea, the recovery after a temporary reduction in fishing established the principle not only that stock abundance was inversely related to fishing intensity, but also that overfished stocks could recover, and some within a few years. In the last quarter of the 20th century, some countries, for example the US and Norway, built on this to counter the depletion–expansion dynamic of their fisheries. They allowed the stocks they had overexploited to rebuild, which the stocks did and now support vibrant ‘new’ fisheries.

In most other countries, however, the depletion–expansion dynamic continued. Thanks to their onboard technology, trawlers and other industrial vessels could fish anywhere in the world, in deep or shallow waters or far from coastlines, and in conditions from tropical to polar. These developments meant that previous obstacles to fishing – depth, distance, ice cover and inclement weather – could now be overcome. We could fish everywhere, anytime we wanted. And we did.

As a consequence, essentially all fish resources in the world are being fished. Given that most of the world’s fisheries are not managed (or that their management is so ineffectual as to be non-existent), this also means that fish with characteristics that render them more vulnerable to fishing than other species, or which are highly sought after, are increasingly under the threat of extinction. This is particularly well illustrated by the sawfishes (Pritis spp.), whose long, saw-like rostra get caught in any net they encounter; by the manta rays now hunted because of the alleged curative value of their gill plates; or by the many species of large sharks being decimated by targeted fishing, driven by the high commercial value of their fins, which are used for shark-fin soup.

These species cannot withstand any fishery that is anything but extremely well managed (which is rare), and they will thus thrive only in the few places where they are left alone. Such places are marine protected areas or, more precisely, no-take marine reserves. Moreover, in addition to sheltering the biodiversity that sawfishes, manta rays and large sharks represent, marine protected areas safeguard thousands of other species – and the ecosystems in which they are embedded – from the depredations of industrial fisheries that are driven by an increasingly out-of-control demand, especially from East Asia and the rich countries of Europe and North America.

That marine protected areas are effective in protecting marine life is amply demonstrated in the scientific literature: within them, biomass and biodiversity are higher and individual fishes are larger, thus producing more eggs and larvae that can enrich surrounding areas. This is not surprising. After all, fishing removes fish from the ecosystem; thus ceasing to fish, given time, should reverse its effects.

There are obviously a number of factors that intervene in the effectiveness of the protection afforded by marine protected areas, such as the degree to which the regulations protecting biodiversity are enforced, the size of the protected area and the fishing activity surrounding the protected area. Nevertheless, the principle holds that marine protected areas, and especially no-take marine reserves, are our best defence against the depletion–expansion dynamic that characterises industrial fisheries, especially now that they are operating in all ocean areas.

It is thus encouraging that the fraction of the oceans that was protected by a motley collection of small, often ineffective marine protected areas, and whose growth had long been anaemic, has increased massively in recent years. This occurred through the creation of very large marine reserves around uninhabited islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The constructive example that these reserves provided has even jump-started a debate about the feasibility of protecting the High Seas, or at least some parts of the oceans currently beyond national jurisdiction, which we must do if they are not to be transformed to a seascape with more plastic than fish.

The original article can be viewed here.

New research from the University of British Columbia finds that rogue fishing vessels are able to secure insurance including those that have been flagged by international watchdogs for unlawful activity.

“Restricting access to insurance could play a major role in ending illegal fishing, and right now, it’s a largely overlooked method,” said lead author Dana Miller, who studied illegal fishing and insurance while she was a postdoctoral fellow at UBC. Continue reading →

The latest research report from the Sea Around Us investigates the use of fish for feeding livestock and farmed fish. In this report, we document the country by country analysis of which fish are used for feed, and in what forms. This is the first time this type of research has been conducted on a global scale.

Nearly 20 million tonnes of fish are not used for human consumption each year – but rather, are mainly fed to other fish, often during the process of ‘fish farming.’ Given the importance of fish as a source of food for billions of people around the world, for its protein and its micro-nutrients, the use of fish for purposes other than human consumption could negatively affect global food security.

To better understand this, I used methods similar to those used in ‘catch reconstructions’ to find out how much fish each country catches to feed other fish.

This work required me to comb through national statistics, peer-reviewed literature, newspapers, press releases, and other sources to gather data on the use of different species for these different purposes. The goal was to find out the amount of fish that was eaten by animals (fish or livestock) and by humans – and then to do this for each country, fish species, and time period from 1950-2010.

Most of the fish used for fishmeal are small bony fish that live near the ocean surfacelike anchovies, herrings, and sardines. While these are often passed over in favour of high demand species like tuna and salmon, they have a high concentration of good quality protein and micro-nutrients such as Omega-3 fatty acids.

Not only is this work useful to understand how we use fish to feed people (either directly or indirectly), it can also add value to other projects we are involved in. This new data will be incorporated into the newest version of our price estimation to better evaluate the value of fisheries globally. As fisheries used for feed are often less valuable than fisheries used for human consumption, accounting for the end use of the fishery landings allows us to make better estimates of the value of fisheries and to understand fishing behavior as it is driven by prices.

There are major impacts of using fish for animal feed rather than for feeding people. This work begins to uncover these trends in how this use has changed over time for every country and every species. This allows us to understand these impacts in a better way, and to propose solutions of how we can fish sustainably while maximizing economic and nutritional benefits to human society.

To learn more about the use of fish for feed and its implications, read the report, or Tim Cashion’s blog (the lead researcher) Fishing For Feed.

You can also follow Tim Cashion on Twitter: @FishingForFeed

The total amount of marine fish caught in New Zealand waters between 1950 and 2010 is 2.7 times more than official statistics suggest, according to the best estimate to date.

Unreported commercial catch and discarded fish account for most of the difference.

Fish of little or no perceived economic value have been routinely dumped at sea and not reported. Bycatch – fish caught along with the target species – is common and unavoidable. They’re routinely dumped, if unmarketable, under the minimum legal size, or the fisher has no quota.

The extended reconstructed estimate for 1950-2013 reveals an estimated 24.7 million tonnes of fish was unreported, compared to the 15.3 million t reported.

“This study is part of a wider New Zealand research project aimed at informing seafood industry efforts to become as economically and environmentally sustainable as possible,” said lead researcher Dr Glenn Simmons, from the New Zealand Asia Institute.

“To maintain sustainable fisheries and seafood businesses themselves, you need to know how much fish is being caught. There was already strong evidence that we didn’t know that, because the official statistics are incomplete.”

“Unreported catches and dumping not only undermine the sustainability of fisheries, but result in suboptimal use of fishery resources and economic waste of valuable protein.”

Dr Simmons and his team were among 400 researchers worldwide who collaborated on a landmark, 15-year long global “Sea Around Us” project at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia that sought to fill in the gaps left by official catch data.

The global results were published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications in February. The New Zealand results have now been published by the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia.

Catch statistics that New Zealand and other countries report to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) do not include illegal or otherwise unreported commercial catches and discards. They also omit or substantially underreport fish taken by recreational and customary fishers.

The New Zealand researchers drew on an extensive body of documentation, including stock assessment reports, peer-reviewed literature, unpublished reports, and information obtained under the Official Information Act, as well as 308 confidential interviews with industry experts and personnel with first-hand knowledge and experience, of fishing and reporting practices. They combined this data with official catch data to statistically “reconstruct” a more comprehensive, robust catch estimate. The same method was used throughout the global series of studies.

The main New Zealand findings were:

– New Zealand’s reconstructed marine catch totalled 38.1 million tonnes between 1950 and 2010, which is 2.7 times the 14 million tonnes reported to the FAO.
– Since the Quota Management System (QMS) was introduced in 1986, the total catch is conservatively estimated to be 2.1 times that reported to the FAO.
– Unreported commercial catch and discards account for the vast majority of the discrepancy.
– Recreational and customary catch was 0.51 million tonnes, or 1.3 percent
– Only an estimated 42.5 percent of industrial catch by New Zealand flagged vessels was reported.
– 42 percent of the industrial catch was caught by foreign-flagged vessels, which dominated the catching of hoki, squid, jack mackerels, barracoota and southern blue whiting – some of the most misreported and discarded species.
– The extended reconstructed estimate for 1950-2013 is 40 million t, comprised of 19 million tonnes nationally reported, 5.8 million tonnes of invisible unreported landings, 14.7 million tonnes of unreported dumped commercial catch, and 549,000 tonnes of customary and recreational catches.

The findings also reveal how the QMS, despite its intentions and international reputation, actually undermines sustainable fisheries management by inadvertently incentivising misreporting and dumping, the researchers wrote in their report.

“A striking finding was the extent of misreporting to avoid deemed value penalties – at sea and on land. This highlights a weakness of the QMS, which relies on full and accurate reporting, yet, in practice, incentivises misreporting, which undermines the sustainability of fisheries. Fisheries management and stock assessment officials must spend more time talking and listening to the fishers themselves, observers and compliance officers.”

The evidence shows the QMS is in need of a robust critical review, along with consideration of alternatives to ensure the latest information, processes and technology are being utilized.

“Improving the transparency and reliability of fisheries data reporting is essential,” the researchers conclude in the report. “The future sustainability and certification of fisheries will depend on how the government addresses the under-reporting problems, which have long been a cause of concern.”

The researchers conclude that “Maori ought to play a greater role in fisheries management…they have a critical role to play in terms of Kaitiakitanga…over all New Zealand’s fishing sectors – recreational, customary, and commercial.”

Click here to view the paper.

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NOTES TO EDITORS
– Landmark international study, led by Professor Daniel Pauly from the University of British Columbia, published in Nature Communications in February, ”reconstructed” estimates of global marine fisheries catches from 1950-2010, taking into account types of catches that are omitted or substantially underreported in official figures collated by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

– It found global catches peaked at 130 million tonnes in 1996, which is 51 per cent higher than the FAO figure of 86 million tonnes

– It also found a sharp decline from this peak, at more than three times the rate suggested by FAO figures

– Dr Glenn Simmons, of the New Zealand Asian Institute at the University of Auckland Business School, led a team of researchers who collaborated with Professor Pauly on the New Zealand research. Their report on New Zealand’s “reconstructed” catch is published on the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia. The full list of authors is: Glenn Simmons*, Graeme Bremner, Hugh Whittaker, Philip Clarke, Lydia Teh, Kyrstn Zylich, Dirk Zeller, Daniel Pauly, Christina Stringer*, Barry Torkington, and Nigel Haworth* (* from the University of Auckland Business School)

On Tuesday May 17th Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller from the Sea Around Us will conduct a webinar through OpenChannels.org to discuss catch reconstructions, their recent paper in Nature Communications, and upcoming projects.

Event Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC

To register, click here.

How much fish are we really catching from the world’s oceans? Catch data are important in fisheries research, but the availability of reliable and comprehensive catch data is often taken for granted. In a large number of countries, reliable catch data are not available, and the catch data these countries submit to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are incomplete and highly variable. Given the role of FAO in world fisheries, this means that many of the “big numbers” cited when talking or writing about global fisheries are erroneous. We present a “catch reconstruction” approach that we have applied to all maritime countries of the world to overcome this situation. (Read about this effort in the Nature Communications journal article “Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining”.)

In this webinar, we will present our scientific approach, results from several countries illustrating the issues and problems, and the global results as presented in our recent paper. All materials and data for all maritime countries in the world (plus a wide variety of additional data and information items) are freely available for download at www.seaaroundus.org. We always welcome communications and feedback on our work and the data we present.

Webinar co-sponsored by MEAM, OpenChannels.org, and the EBM Tools Network.