This depressing study from Science has gotten a lot of press, which is a good thing. The data really speaks for itself:
So what do we do? The scientists note that increased regulation has actually been effective, which is surprising since many environmentalists assume that fisherman don't actually obey regulations. (Boats on the open seas are hard to monitor, and international disputes can often neuter governmental regulations.)
The researchers analyzed nearly 50 areas where restrictions had been imposed to stop overfishing and found that, on average, the range of species in the water increased by 23 percent within five years. That provides reason for optimism, because it means sound management can halt the decline of fish stocks worldwide.
But regulation alone won't be enough. After all, fish are an essential part of our food supply, especially in developing countries. We can't expect impoverished fisherman to care more about swordfish stocks than about feeding their families. The only long term solution, I'm afraid, is farmed fishing, which needs to become more common. I know it's a deeply imperfect practice - for one thing, most farmed fish just taste like mealy protein - but it strikes me as the only way we can feed ourselves while allowing wild fish stocks to regenerate. In general, environmentalists don't like fish farms, but they'll just have to compromise. In fact, we all will have to compromise: the taste of wild fish is something we'll just have to learn to taste a little less.
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HHMM< it ate my first attempt.
Something like a third of posters on a scottish newspapers website were of the opinion that it was more lefty-greenie-human hating-marxist propaganda designed to make us accept more gvt regulation. Which I found very sad, and none of them could come up with a sensible reason why the study was wrong.
I've been watching the headlines on this for a couple of days, and I finally saw one that gets right to the point:
Accelerating Loss of Ocean Species Threatens Human Well-Being.
It is not just the supply of food for humans; it's the entire food chain that we need to worry about.
I was particularly struck by a Scientific American article a year or two ago, detailing how some company is using deep-sonar to scoop up schools of manadchaen (sp?), a low-level feedstock for most of the larger "human-food" fish. They're too bony for people to eat directly, so what do they get used for? Fishmeal for animal food.... :-(
Complex biological systems also don't stand still.
A past issue of new scientist (can't remember ref sorry) had a study with some intereting obvservations on size regulations and the effect on some fish populations. Basically, our selection of the larger fish (or rather avoidance of 'under-sized' fish) was observably skewing populations towards smaller sized individuals that matured while still small. Durn, evolution resulting from our harvesting! A lot of thought needs to go into understanding these ecosystems and (re)designing harvesting , somtimes dynamically.
And we'll be annoying the dolphins. (So long and thanks for all the fish).
The NY Times did a good editorial about this - pointing out an oportunity to start fixing things with a temporary ban on unregulated high seas bottom trawling. But the UN couldn't agree on any measures with teeth so it's still basically business as usual. Greenpeace story is here.
About the fish farming, I am not against it in principle, but the way it is done is usually no good. Thanks for the link though. From that story...
...The situation is the much the same with other species (tuna for example), and shrimp farming has its own problems more often than not.
Hmm, that's a lot of negatives so I'll leave with something good: marine reserves.
-- Andrew
Defending Our Oceans web editor.
While the aquaculture industry likes to present itself as the solution to the current crisis facing the world's fisheries, the truth is that most fish farming is highly destructive to the marine environment.
probably the most fundamental problem with fish farming is the fact that carnivorous species such as salmon and shrimp require fish oil and fish meal in their feed and these are derived from wild caught fish. For example the total amount of wild fish used to make one tonne salmon is between 2.7 and 3.5 tonnes . To give an idea of scale between 1985 and 1995 the world's shrimp farmers used 36 million tons of wild fish to produce just 7.2 million tons of shrimp. In general, carnivorous species require 2.5-5 times as much fish biomass as feed as is produced.
Industrial fishing of small fish species to provide food for farmed fish further disrupts marine ecosystems and is helping drive fisheries for species fit for human consumption to collapse. Most fish farming is simply unsustainable.
thank you .