Overfishing? Not quite

If referred to in one of its proper contexts, it's fine with me. But why use it in cases of general impoverishment of a fish population where fishing might be hardly or only partly involved?

Most fish populations usually expand, shrivel and even collapse, sporadically or in cyclic or semi-cyclic time-series without the ‘help’ of fishing. They can also be impoverished due to coastal and upstream pollution or destruction of inshore habitats essential for some fishes' reproduction and growth. They can collapse due to exotic pests, as it happened over a decade ago in the Black Sea, by the invading Atlantic comb-jelly indiscriminately feeding on all fish eggs and larvae. Collapses or impoverishments of fish stocks result due to a combination of fishing and non-fishing factors.

Bias
Some uninformed people may misuse the term because of ignorance of such ecological processes and their effects on fish populations. But, if fishery scientists, managers and environmentalists misuse and overuse the term ‘overfishing’ it must be due to that or other bias, one of which being a well-cushioned agenda of drawing away public attention from the harm that various polluting industries are causing to fish stocks.

It's obvious today that the impoverishment of the Grand Banks’, Newfoundland's and Nova Scotia's cod stocks couldn't be attributed solely to overfishing. The same goes for the strongly fluctuating SW American anchoveta fishery, associated with El Nino-related changes in oceanographic conditions. Stocks assumed overfished may appear all of a sudden in force, as it happened some years ago on the Faroese Plateau, where fishermen gathered that the fish had been displaced by unfavourable environmental factors and migrated back when the conditions returned to normal.

Another example is the recovery of the North Atlantic cod stock approaching levels not seen for 30 or 40 years and recognised by ICES and EU fisheries management, but ignored by popular press influenced by environmental extremists using catastrophic language to promote overfishing fallacy.

The Icelandic herring fishery started dwindling after the 1950s, which was followed by the introduction of ITQ system. When it had recovered towards the end of the 20th century from a bust period into its boom semi-cycle with an almost ten-fold increase of catches, and its biomass greater than at any time since the 1950s, some economists piggy-back rode on this swing, claiming (how not): “thanks to Iceland's ITQ-quota system…”

This was a lame claim, for the herring’s recovery had been rather due to a favourable shift from the mid-century bust period to an upward trend of a cycle. This fitted the climate-fisheries fluctuation patterns outlined some years earlier inL.B. Klyashtorin'sFAO Fish.Tech.Pap. (410), followed by a 2005 book by L B Klyashtorin and A A Lyubushin, published by VNIRO, Moscow. Management or not, when the time comes, the herring stock will slide again on the downward slope of its cycle.

Top academic
I recently received for reviewing a book entitled: Overfishing: what everybody needs to know, written by Ray with Ulrike Hilborn (Oxford University Press, 2012). Professor Ray Hilborn, who teaches fishery science at the University of Washington in Seattle, has been a member of several US national bodies, including the American Academy of Sciences. No doubt, he's one of the top academic authorities on fisheries in the USA.

The Hilborns wrote their book to react to the apocalyptic reports in the press, in popular literature, and in Science and Nature, prophesying collapse of the world's fisheries. Although almost all of the doomsday predictions had been initially rebuked by serious scientists, and later disavowed by the pretending prophets themselves, those disclaims hardly gained headlines comparable to the sensational ones that accompanied the vociferous reports dooming fishermen for destroying the ocean’s resources.

Both in this book as well as in his teaching programme, Professor Hilborn is reasoning a need for changes in objectives of fisheries management, namely, more concern about ecosystems and profitable fishing industries. His emphasis is on the many successful sustainable fisheries in the world from which fisheries managers can learn. While there are many problems, most of these fisheries are producing at near maximum potential, while losses due to overfishing are small.

Overfishing is written in a popular style, bringing to readers a much more balanced version of the problem than that fed to them by journalists brain-washed by extremist environmentalists and fallacious science. Although it devotes only seven pages to the ‘Climate and Fisheries’ chapter, the following quotes illustrate the spirit of Professor Hilborns' approach.

"Traditionally, fisheries management agencies have ignored climate variations, considering year-to-year variability in productivity to be the major factor in abundance".

"Fisheries managers around the world scratch their heads over this question (whether a fishery is declining because of climate or fishing pressure).

"There's general acceptance now that fish productivity is a result of both climate and overfishing".

"Considering (climatic) regime shifts, we can harvest a higher percentage of the stock during good regimes than during bad ones".

"…climate and fishing act together. What seems a safe level of fishing in good times can be disastrous when times are bad".

Pollution
Unfortunately, there's even less in the book about the consequences of pollution, habitat degradation, and eutrophication on fish production and survival. This is a pity, because it should be obvious what many honest scientists, such as Dr Tim Adams, a scientist and fishery manager from the Pacific, has been saying for a couple of decades now: "there are a lot more things affecting fish stocks than just fisheries" and that "the impact on coastal fisheries from contamination is massive - far greater than all the commercial and recreational catches combined."

There are many examples, a recent one being what the pollution at the Gladstone harbour in Australia has done to marine life and humans alike.

I'll dedicate next month’s column to the so often hushed problem of pollution and fisheries.