Filthy oceans and misinformation

There’s an avalanche of books, learned papers, and media reports that deal with our suffering seas and oceans, and many of these editorials indicate the usual panacea of repressing fishing and seeding the oceans with MPAs (marine protected areas).

Most recently, I read a Springer-published book, ‘State of the World’s Oceans’, authored by M Allsopp, R Page, P Johnston, and D Santillo, all of Greenpeace UK. The bulk of the quite informative text is about protection of marine ecosystems, species and their populations and biodiversity. Although it quite fairly describes most of the perils that plague the oceans, it couldn’t fully avoid the trite attitude that focuses on restricting fishing and aquaculture as the main medicine.

One example is the hackneyed statement that “76% of the oceans are fully or over-exploited with respect to fishing and many species have been severely depleted”.

But adding overfished to fully exploited stocks, presents to the innocents a disturbing and slanted picture. The fact is that according to one FAO report “some 35% of 200 major fisheries resources were showing declining yields. A further 25% were mature (or fully exploited), 40% were still developing and there were none that remained at a low-exploitation level”.

Now, here’s how I’m reading this information: 25% of stocks are fully exploited, which in my opinion is how stocks should be exploited for the sake of the growing population of the planet. Yields of 40% of stocks can still be increased, and 35% are overfished to that or other degree.

The figures quoted by the authors (FAO, 2005) give 22% of the stocks depleted/overfished and 52% fully exploited, which leaves 26%, which can be further developed.

Again, if one is not biased against full exploitation of a resource, the situation is far from distressing.

The bigger picture

In Chapter 2 - Fisheries, the authors wrote: “In the majority of cases it is overfishing that has led to stocks becoming over- or fully-exploited.” Now, wait a minute. This means that in the authors’ opinion overfishing occurs even before stocks are fully exploited.

I also found in this chapter all the clichés, some of them outright fallacious as the unqualified one about bottom trawling as a “particularly unsustainable fishing method”, or the nonsensical and widely dismissed Myers and Worms’ 2003 conjecture that an estimated 90% of the world’s predatory fish have been lost.

But marine ecosystems in which physical conditions, aquatic plants and animals, including commercial fish, fishing and other human activities meet and interact in on-going, dynamic processes, are constantly affected and modified by fisheries.

Even the most fervent environmentalists should be recognising the fact that our whole civilisation has been based on man-modified ecosystems both on land and in water, and that further modifications are required in view of the badly mishandled needs of the expanding human population and the sustained destitution of many.

As long as we keep fishing, no management can bring back ecosystems and their commercial fish populations, their prey and predators to what they used to be a long time ago.

My criticism is not because I don’t agree with much what Allsopp et al. have written, but because of their taking for granted every opinion and information critical of fisheries and omitting more unbiased ones.

Notwithstanding, this book is rich with information about other factors that affect marine ecosystems, some of them critical, such as pollution, climatic and hydrographic conditions and their changes.

Chemical pollutants

Chapter 4 is all about pollution. It specifies the various sorts of filth produced by human activities that are poured into the seas and oceans: chemical pollution, radioactive pollution, enrichment by nutrients, oil, plastic debris and more.

The inventory of chemicals is quite extensive and covers synthetic chemicals and brominated flame retardants. Those, when present in the marine food chain, cause bio-accumulation in fish and marine birds and mammals, and hence jeopardise consumers’ health. Some are directly toxic.

Sediments in certain areas were found to be sufficiently contaminated with radionuclines to be described as radioactive waste. What I’d like to see is something specific about what to do with the unmentioned polluting chemical industries, refineries, oil-powered power plants, and other heavy industries, as well as such upstream polluting activities as logging and pulp industries.

Heavily populated coastal areas represent sources of nutrients that enrich coastal waters and cause algal blooms that in some cases are toxic to fish and create “dead zones”.

Dead zones also occur as result of death and sedimentation of algae and other micro- and macro-plankton, development of bacteriae on the bottom and creation of anoxic (oxygen-less) bottom layers.

The book speaks of dead zones in the Baltic that extend over an area of 84,000 sq.km, Gulf of Mexico (21,000 sq km), and Black Sea (40,000 sq km), as well as many smaller ones.

Another menace is oil spills. There is seemingly a continual leakage of oil from industries, numerous small spills and, from time to time, major environmental disasters, such as the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the 2002 Prestige spill off Spain.

Oil pollution can be both immediately fatal to birds, fish and even marine mammals, and toxic to marine life later in the future.

One recommended and widely accepted solution is to make double-skin tanker hulls obligatory, but it appears that single-skin hulls are not going to be phased out until 2015. What’s missing is a recommendation to close sensitive marine areas to tanker shipping.

Then there’s the plastic and other marine debris that contaminates surface waters, sea bottoms and beaches. Apart of the aesthetic and health problems, this debris is dangerous to many marine animals, some that ingest plastic; some get entangled in derelict “ghost” fishing gear.

The book deals broadly with ocean warming and acidification, and with establishment of marine reserves, three controversial subjects, which need a separate treatment. Notwithstanding, it carries a wealth of information, some useful recommendations, and 27 pages of references.