http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070604gd.html
Monday, June 4, 2007
MARINE ECOCIDE
Oceans being emptied of fish
By GWYNNE DYER
LONDON - When the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission opened
in Alaska last Monday, Japan declared that it planned to kill 50 humpback
whales as well as the usual minke and fin whales next year in its "scientific"
whale hunt (catch them, count them and sell them as food).
The plan was "highly provocative," Australian Environment Minister Malcolm
Turnbull said. It was also carefully calculated, as Japan's real goal was to
restart commercial whaling. Japan offered to drop the plan to kill humpbacks if
the IWC approved a return to "limited commercial whaling" by four Japanese
coastal villages - just four little villages, for now, and strictly limited
numbers of whales. But the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling would have
been broken.
The pro-moratorium countries at the IWC understood Japan's tactics and didn't
make the deal, reckoning that the lives of 50 humpbacks were less important
than the principle of no commercial whaling. On Thursday, the final day of the
meeting, fierce opposition forced Japan to scrap its "community whaling"
proposal. The IWC then approved a nonbinding resolution to continue the
temporary ban on commercial whaling.
The killing of 50 humpbacks is regrettable, but it will not endanger a species
that has gradually recovered to perhaps 60,000 to 70,000 since 1986, when the
humpbacks were heading for extinction.
Which is not to say that the humpbacks have really recovered from the carnage
of the whaling era. The IWC estimates that there were only 115,000 humpbacks
before whaling began, but in a 2005 study marine biologist Steve Palumbi of
Stanford University examined genetic diversity among humpbacks, which is
directly related to the size of the ancestral population, and concluded that
there used to be between 750,000 and 2 million of them. At best, humpback
whales have only recovered to 8 percent of their former numbers, and it may be
as little as 3 percent.
We care about whales now (call it mammalian solidarity, if you like), but the
fish of the oceans benefit from no such sentiment, and they are now going as
fast as the whales once were. In fact, according to a report last year in
"Nature," the scientific journal, 90 percent of the really big fish - tuna,
marlin, swordfish and the like - are already gone, and the middle-size fish are
following.
The codfish are gone on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, once the richest
fishery in the world, and show little sign of recovery despite an absolute ban
on cod-fishing for the past 15 years. They are declining rapidly in the North
Sea, too. In the 1980s the annual catch was about 300,000 tons. The European
Union quota for codfish was cut to 80,000 tons in 2005 - and EU fishermen only
managed to catch two-thirds of that quota. Nevertheless, they will probably
keep on fishing, with gradually reducing quotas, until the stock is completely
eliminated.
The problem is global. As human numbers have soared and fishing technologies
have been industrialized, fishing has been mutated from the maritime equivalent
of slash-and-burn agriculture to a process more like strip-mining. The schools
of fish are located electronically, few individuals escape the huge nets, and
no area of the ocean is left alone long enough for the stocks to recover.
"At this point, 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed; that is,
their catch has declined by 90 percent," explained professor Boris Worm of
Dalhousie University late last year. "It is a very clear trend, and it is
accelerating." If the trend continues, he predicted, all fish and seafood
species that are fished commercially will collapse by 2048.
Individual fishermen, up to their ears in debt for their high-tech boats and
equipment, cannot reverse this trend because they have to go on fishing.
Governments could cut the huge subsidies they give to their fishermen, and
above all to the bottom-trawlers that are systematically turning the floors of
the world's oceans to mud, but they are unwilling to face the political
protests of well-organized fishing lobbies. The systematic destruction of the
world's fisheries will continue unless some body equivalent to the
International Whaling Commission takes charge, and how likely is that?
Not very. Or at least, an International Fisheries Commission with global
regulatory authority is only likely to be accepted, as the IWC was, when all
the commercial stocks have already collapsed. Yet fast-breeding fish can
recover far faster than whales: As little as five years would allow most fish
stocks to recover if a moratorium is imposed before total population collapse
occurs. And you don't have to do it in every area at once; most stocks are
quite local.
A major human food source - the principal source of protein for one-fifth of
the human race - is going to collapse in the next generation unless drastic
measures are taken. The world's fishing fleet needs to be reduced by at least
two-thirds, bottom-trawling must be banned outright, and widespread fishing
moratoriums for endangered species and even for whole areas need to be imposed
for periods of five or even 10 years.
Unfortunately, the minimum measures needed to prevent ecocide in the oceans
would cause major short-term disruption and throw millions out of work, so they
probably won't be taken. It will be much easier politically to ignore what is
happening now and let the collapse happen later, on somebody else's watch.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are
published in 45 countries.
