Fishing about and about fishing

  

 

One may witness nowadays an avalanche of books, learned papers, and media reports that deal with our suffering seas and oceans, which mostly indicate the usual panacea of repressing fishing and seeding the oceans with MPAs (marine protected areas).

 

I was reading a recent Springer-published book, entitled: “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. It describes most of the perils that plague the oceans, but, unfortunately, follows the trite attitude that focuses on restricting fishing and aquaculture as the main medicine.

 

One example is the rather hackneyed statement that “76% of the oceans are fully or over-exploited with respect to fishing and many species have been severely depleted”. The statement, which is 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 the way how stocks should be exploited for the sake of the growing humanity), yields of 40% of stock 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. But, in Chapter 2 - Fisheries, the authors write: “In 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 “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 recognizing the fact that our whole civilization 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 long time ago, or to keep sea-bottom untouched. Fishing grounds, like farmed lands, represent modified environments.

 

 

IIsn't it funny that, in view of all these requirements set forth with respect to fisheries, there’s nothing 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?  No mention of oil rigs, and nothing specific about oil-spills prevention by, for example, marine areas closed to tanker shipping, and strict observation of double-bottom construction of all tanker ships?  And so on and on, I could continue this list for a whole page.

 

 don’t think that I should bother our readers with Greenpeace’s biased attitude towards fisheries, not because that I don’t agree with much what they’re writing, but because of their taking for granted every opinion and information critical of fisheries and omitting those that are not.

 

However, apart from Chapter 2, the book is rich with information respective other factors that affect marine ecosystems, some of them critical, such as pollution, climatic and hydrographic conditions and their changes.

 

 

It still is today with single skin hulls not being phased out until 2015