Fishing for answers: the missing questions
The state of fisheries, whether worldwide or in individual areas, has become a fashionable subject of both learned articles in scientific journals and separate publications.
From time to time a new catchphrase pops up in the arena in which the various players (‘stakeholders’) bicker over fisheries management. The latest buzzword, now substituting the former ones (sustainable development and precautionary principle) is ecosystem management, also called ecosystem approach to fishery management. One of the problems that accompanies this permanent hullabaloo is that while the titles change the contents remain more of the same.
The title of the beautifully designed, glossy 140 page book is ‘Fishing for Answers: Making Sense of the Global Fish Crisis’. The authors are: Y. Kura, C. Revenga, E. Hoshino and G. Mock. It was published in 2004 by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, D.C., and is a pleasure to look at. It contains plenty of information on problems of fisheries and their management.
Chapters One to Four describe the importance and character of world fisheries, and how badly off the world’s fish stocks are. There’s little news on depletion of such stocks as the NW Atlantic cod, haddock and Northern bluefin tuna, and on overfishing of others. Those species are replaced in landing by others, often lower in the marine food chain and formerly less exploited, which only in recent years started gaining importance. Since the early 1990s, the world catch stagnates at around 90 mn mt, while the growth comes solely from fish farming.
The importance of small-scale fisheries and how they are encroached and endangered by large-scale fleets is exposed in Chapter Five and in the last part of Chapter Ten. These texts and accompanying graphs are fundamental for the understanding of the problems involved, and contain serious information, apart from one statement that “the need for management and protection of small-scale fisheries” is gaining recognition “only recently”. Well, nobody looks up ‘old stuff’ nowadays, which must be why the earliest of the 39 FAO references quoted by the authors is from 1995. However, FAO was working hard and already publishing on those problems in the early 1970s, and IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) since 1980s.
Chapter Six is devoted to aquaculture, including the pros and cons of marine cage farming, and Chapter Seven to the impact that fishing is making on ecosystems. Management on all levels is discussed in Chapters Nine and Eleven.
The WRI President, J. Lash, and W. D. Ruckelshaus, its Chairman Emeritus, wrote in the Foreword: “Many of those involved in fishing – fishers, industry, policy-makers, and environmental organizations – are already acutely aware of the rapid depletion of key fish stocks and degradation of the marine and freshwater systems they live in”. And there’s plenty in the book about the poor state of fish stocks and the degradation of their habitats. But, apart from blaming fishing for everything that happens in the ecosystem, no questions are asked on what else degrades habitats and, consequently, no answers are given.
A section about ecosystem approach to fisheries management solely discusses managing fishermen so they don’t do harm to the ecosystem. In the five-page Executive Summary, the authors represent the idea of ecosystem approach to fishery management as “limiting fishing’s impact on ecosystems as much as possible and sustaining the ecological relationships between the species being fished and other ecosystem inhabitants”. How? By “reorienting fisheries management”, etc. All this boils down to dealing with ecosystem without ecology. Well, I found four lines mentioning pollution and infrastructural development, though. All of four lines – 25 words. Even for lip service it’s highly inadequate!
And this is only one example. The formerly huge population of cod on the N. Atlantic Grand Banks has not been brought back, in spite of more than decade of manipulating fishing, including total moratorium. And it won’t – not before beneficial physical oceanographic and biological conditions occur that would encourage cod stocks revival throughout every one of its life stages, from spawning conditions, through egg development, and larval and juvenile survival.
The last chapter of the book (Chapter Twelve) is entitled ‘How do we produce fish sustainably?: Findings and Recommendations’. It sets forth seven priority actions. They all deal exclusively with fishing and with its impact on the environment. The fact that this environment is also affected by a multitude of other factors is not mentioned either in the book’s findings or in its recommendations. The forcing of physical factors on marine biota, starting with primary productivity, through algae and plankton all the way up the food chain to end with large predatory fish and marine birds and mammals is not even mentioned throughout the book. This is tunnel vision at its best.
The authors managed to write a whole book on ‘global fish crisis’ without addressing pollution of coastal waters that stems from longshore, inland and upstream sources. There is nothing on the increasing number and areas of ‘dead zones’ in coastal waters and on destruction of inshore habitats by longshore property development. The WRI headquarters are located not too far from the heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay. Its pollution has been heavily affecting fishery resources in the Bay itself and in adjacent waters – an excellent example of a habitat and fisheries that cannot be revitalised by manipulating fishing alone.
I can’t stop wondering what brings intelligent and knowledgeable people to deal with, write about, and even campaign for the health of aquatic ecosystems, including inland and coastal habitats, and their living resources, while practically ignoring everything that’s not fishing. I’m still fishing for answers to this question.
I’d suggest that WRI publishes a second edition of this well designed and produced book. But this second edition should comprise a few more chapters that would round up the picture by dealing with all the non-fishing factors affecting marine habitats, and thus result in a more objective and truthful account of what really is going on in aquatic ecosystems.
benyami@actcom.net.il
