Overfishing

Graph showing shark catch from 1950 to 2006.

Overfishing occurs when fishing activities reduce fish stocks below an acceptable level. This can occur in any body of water from a pond to the oceans.

Ultimately overfishing may lead to resource depletion in cases of subsidised fishing, low biological growth rates and critical low biomass levels (e.g. by critical depensation growth properties). Particularly, overfishing of sharks has led to the upset of entire marine ecosystems.^[1]

The ability of the fisheries to naturally recover also depends on whether the conditions of the ecosystems are suitable for population growth. Dramatic changes in species composition may establish other equilibrium energy flows that involve other species compositions than had been present before (ecosystem shift). (For example: remove nearly all the trout, the carp take over and make it near impossible for the trout to re-establish a breeding population.)

Fish production and demand

A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks currently fished will collapse within fifty years. However, they also conclude that "available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible".^[1][2]

The FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 report estimates that in 2003, of the main fish stocks or groups of resources for which assessment information is available, "approximately one-quarter were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion (16%, 7% and 1% respectively) and needed rebuilding."^[3]

The threat of overfishing is not limited to the target species only. As commercial trawlers resort to deeper and deeper waters to fill their nets, they have begun to threaten delicate deep-sea ecosystems and the fish that inhabit them, such as the coelacanth.^[4] In the May 15, 2003 issue of the journal Nature, it is estimated that 10% of large predatory fish remain compared to levels before commercial fishing.^[5] Many fisheries experts, however, consider this claim to be exaggerated with respect to tuna populations ^[6].

From 1950 (18 million tonnes) to 1969 (56 million tonnes) fishfood production grew by about 5% each year; from 1969 onward production has raised 8% annually.^[7] It is expected that this demand will continue to rise, and MariCulture Systems estimated in 2002 that, by 2010, seafood production would have to increase by over 15.5 million tonnes to meet the desire of Earth's growing population.^[8] This is likely to further aggravate the problem of overfishing, unless aquaculture technology expands to meet the needs of human population.

Overfishing has depleted fish populations to the point that large scale commercial fishing, on average around the world, is not economically viable without government assistance. By the 1980s, economists estimated that for every $1 earned fishing, $1.77 had to be spent in catching and marketing the fish.^[9] Some species' stocks are so depleted that less desirable species are labeled and marketed under the names of more expensive ones ("species substitutions"). For example, genetic analysis shows that approximately 70% of fish sold as the highly-prized "red snapper" (Lutjanus campechanus) are other species.^[10]

Instances of overfishing

• Examples of the outcomes from overfishing exist in areas such as the North Sea of Europe and the Grand Banks of North America. In these locations, overfishing has not only proved disastrous to fish stocks but also to the fishing communities relying on the harvest. Like other extractive industries such as forestry and hunting, fishery is susceptible to economic interaction between ownership or stewardship and sustainability, otherwise known as the tragedy of the commons.

• The Peruvian coastal anchovy fisheries crashed in the 1970s after overfishing, following an El Niño season ^[11] which largely depleted anchovies from its waters.^[12][13] Anchovies had previously been a major natural resource in Peru; indeed, 1971 alone yielded 10.2 million metric tons of anchovies. However, in the following year, and the four after that, the Peruvian fleet's catch amounted to only about 4 million tons.^[7] This was a major loss to Peru's economy.

• The collapse of the cod fishery off Newfoundland, and the 1992 decision by Canada to impose an indefinite moratorium on the Grand Banks, is a dramatic example of the consequences of overfishing. ^[2]

• The sole fisheries in the Irish Sea, the west English Channel, and other locations have become overfished to the point of virtual collapse, according to the UK government's official Biodiversity Action Plan. The United Kingdom has created elements within this plan to attempt to restore this fishery, but the expanding global human population and the expanding demand for fish has reached a point where demand for food threatens the stability of these fisheries, if not the species' survival.

• Many deep sea fish are at risk, such as orange roughy, Patagonian toothfish and sablefish. The deep sea is almost completely dark, near freezing and has little food. Deep sea fish grow slowly because of limited food, have slow metabolisms, low reproductive rates, and many don't reach breeding maturity for 30 to 40 years. A fillet of orange roughy at the store is probably at least 50 years old. Most deep sea fish are in international waters, where there are no legal protections. Most of these fish are caught by deep trawlers near seamounts, where they congregate because of food. Flash freezing allows the trawlers to work for days at a time, and modern fish finders target the fish with ease.^[3]

Consequences

According to a 2008 UN report, the world's fishing fleets are losing $50 billion USD each year through depleted stocks and poor fisheries management. The report, produced jointly by the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), asserts that half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in catch. In addition, the biomass of global fish stocks have been allowed to run down to the point where it is no longer possible to catch the amount of fish that could be caught.^[4]

Acceptable levels

The notion of overfishing hinges on what is meant by an acceptable level of fishing. More precise biological and bioeconomic terms define acceptable level as follows:

• Biological overfishing occurs when fishing mortality has reached a level where the stock biomass has negative marginal growth (slowing down biomass growth), as indicated by the red area in the figure. (Fish are being taken out of the water so quickly that the replenishment of stock by breeding slows down. If the replenishment continues to slow down for long enough, replenishment will go into reverse and the population will decrease.)

• Economic or bioeconomic overfishing additionally considers the cost of fishing and defines overfishing as a situation of negative marginal growth of resource rent. (Fish are being taken out of the water so quickly that the growth in the profitability of fishing slows down. If this continues for long enough, profitability will decrease.)

• A more dynamic definition of economic overfishing may also include a relevant discount rate and present value of flow of resource rent over all future catches.

The Traffic Light colour convention, showing the concept of Harvest Control Rule (HCR), specifying when a rebuilding plan is mandatory in terms of precautionary and limit reference points for spawning biomass and fishing mortality rate.

Harvest control rule

A current model for predicting acceptable levels is the Harvest Control Rule (HCR), which is a variable over which management has some direct control as a function of some indicator of stock status. Constant catch and constant fishing mortality are two types of simple harvest control rules.^[5]

Input-output models

Fishing capacity can also be defined following an input or an output orientation.

• An input-oriented fishing capacity is defined as the maximum available capital stock in a fishery that is fully utilized at the maximum technical efficiency in a given time period, given resource and market conditions (Kirkley and Squires 1999).

• An output-oriented fishing capacity is defined as the maximum catch a vessel (fleet) can produce if inputs are fully utilized given the biomass, the fixed inputs, the age structure of the fish stock, and the present stage of technology (Vestergaard, et al. 2003).

Technical efficiency of each vessel of the fleet is assumed necessary to attain this maximum catch. The degree of capacity utilization results from the comparison of the actual level of output (input) and the capacity output (input) of a vessel or a fleet.

Mitigation

With present and forecast levels of the world population it is not possible to solve the overfishing issue; however, there are mitigation measures that can save selected fisheries and forestall the collapse of others.

In order to meet the problems of overfishing, a precautionary approach and Harvest Control Rule (HCR) management principles have been introduced in the main fisheries around the world. The Traffic Light colour convention introduces sets of rules based on predefined critical values, which could be adjusted as more information is gained.

The "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea" treaty deals with aspects of overfishing in articles 61, 62, and 65.^[14]

• Article 61 requires all coastal states to ensure that the maintenance of living resources in their exclusive economic zones is not endangered by over-exploitation. The same article addresses the maintenance or restoration of populations of species above levels at which their reproduction may become seriously threatened.

• Article 62 provides that coastal states: "shall promote the objective of optimum utilization of the living resources in the exclusive economic zone without prejudice to Article 61"
• Article 65 provides generally for the rights of, inter alia, coastal states to prohibit, limit, or regulate the exploitation of marine mammals.

Overfishing can be viewed as a case of the tragedy of the commons; in that sense, solutions would promote property rights, such as privatization and fish farming. Daniel K. Benjamin, in Fisheries are Classic Example of the "Tragedy of the Commons", cites research by Grafton, Squires, and Fox to support the idea that privatization can solve the overfishing problem^[15]:

According to recent research on the British Columbia halibut fishery, where the commons has been at least partly privatized, substantial ecological and economic benefits have resulted. There is less damage to fish stocks, the fishing is safer, and fewer resources are needed to achieve a given harvest.

Another possible solution, at least for some areas, is fishing quotas, so fishermen can only legally take a certain amount of fish. A more radical possibility is declaring certain areas of the sea "no-go zones" and make fishing there strictly illegal, so the fish in that area have time to recover and repopulate.

Controlling consumer behavior and demand is a key in mitigating action. Worldwide a number of initiatives emerged to provide consumers with information regarding the conservation status of the seafood available to them. The Guide to Good Fish Guides lists a number of these.

Fishing quotas

A model of the interaction between fish and fishers showed that when an area is closed to fishers, but there are no catch regulations such as individual transferable quotas, fish catches are temporarily increased but overall fish biomass is reduced, resulting in the opposite outcome than the one desired for fisheries.^[6] Thus, a displacement of the fleet from one locality to another will generally have little effect if the same quota is taken. As a result, management measures such as temporary closures or establishing a Marine Protected Area of fishing areas are ineffective when not combined with individual fishing quotas.

Individual transferable quotas

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are fishery rationalization instruments defined under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act as limited access permits to harvest quantities of fish. Fisheries scientists decide the optimal amount of fish (total allowable catch) to be harvested in a certain fishery, taking into account carrying capacity, regeneration rates and future values. Under ITQs, members of a fishery are granted rights to a percentage of the total allowable catch which can be harvested each year. These quotas can be fished, bought, sold, or leased allowing for the least cost vessels to be used. ITQs are used in New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Canada and the United States. Only three ITQ programs have been implemented in the United States due to a moratorium supported by Ted Stevens.

In 2008 a large scale study of fisheries that used ITQ's and ones that didn't provided strong evidence that ITQ's can help to prevent collapses and restore fisheries that appear to be in decline.^{[7][8][9][10]}

Benefits of underfishing

Deliberately underfishing in order to increase long term fish stocks has been proposed as a way fisherman can maximize their yields in the long run.^[11]

Resistance from fishermen

There is always disagreement between fishermen and government scientists... Imagine an overfished area of the sea of the sea in the shape of a hockey field with nets at either end. The few fish left therein would gather around the goals because fish like structured habitat. Scientists would survey the entire field, make lots of unsuccessful hauls, and conclude that it contains few fish. The fishermen would make a beeline to the goals, catch the fish around them,and say the scientists do not know what they are talking about. The subjective impression the fishermen get is always that there's lots of fish - because they only go to places that still have them... fisheries scientists survey and compare entire areas, not only the productive fishing spots.^[12] – Fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly

• The fishing capacity problem is not only related to the conservation of fish stocks but also to the sustainability of fishing activity. Causes of the fishing problem can be found in property rights regime of fishing resources. Overexploitation and rent dissipation of fishermen arise in open-access fisheries as was shown in Gordon (1953, 1954).

• In open-access resources like fish stocks, in the absence of a system like individual transferable quotas, the impossibility of excluding others provokes the fishermen who want to increase catch to do so effectively by taking someone else' share, intensifying competition. This tragedy of the commons provokes a capitalization process that leads them to increase their costs until they are equal to their revenue, dissipating their rent completely.

Removal of subsidies

A group of scientists have called for an end to subsidies paid to deep sea fisheries. In international waters beyond the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones of coastal countries, many fisheries are unregulated, and fishing fleets plunder the depths with state of the art technology. In a few hours, massive nets weighing up to 15 tons, dragged along the bottom by deep-water trawlers, can destroy deep-sea corals and sponge beds that have taken centuries or millennia to grow. The trawlers can target orange roughy, grenadiers or sharks. These fish are usually long-lived and late maturing, and their populations take decades, even centuries to recover.^[13]

The fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly and economist Rashid Sumaila examined subsidies paid to bottom trawl fleets around the world. They found that $152 million US are paid to deep-sea fisheries. Without these subsidies, global deep-sea fisheries would operate at a loss of $50 million a year. Most of the subsidies are for the fuel the fishing vessels burn travelling beyond the 200 mile limit and dragging weighted nets.^[13]

• "There is surely a better way for governments to spend money than by paying subsidies to a fleet that burns 1.1 billion litres of fuel annually to maintain paltry catches of old growth fish from highly vulnerable stocks, while destroying their habitat in the process" – Pauly.

• "Eliminating global subsidies would render these fleets economically unviable and would relieve tremendous pressure on over-fishing and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems" – Sumaila.

Consumer awareness

Main article: Sustainable seafood

Sustainable seafood is a movement that has gained momentum as more people become aware about overfishing and environmentally destructive fishing methods. Sustainable seafood is seafood from either fished or farmed sources that can maintain or increase production in the future without jeopardizing the ecosystems from which it was acquired. In general, slow-growing fish that reproduce late in life, such as orange roughy, are vulnerable to overfishing. Seafood species that grow quickly and breed young, such as anchovies and sardines, are much more resistant to overfishing. Several organizations, including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSG), and Friends of the Sea, certify seafood fisheries as sustainable.

The MSG has developed an environmental standard for sustainable and well-managed fisheries. Environmentally responsible fisheries management and practices are rewarded with the use of its blue product ecolabel. Consumers concerned about overfishing and its consequences are increasingly able to choose seafood products which have been independently assessed against the MSC's environmental standard and labelled. This enables consumers to play a part in reversing the decline of fish stocks. As of September 2008, 34 fisheries around the world have been independently assessed and certified as meeting the MSC standard. Their where to buy page lists the currently available certified seafood. Fish & Kids is an MSC project to teach schoolchildren about marine environmental issues, including overfishing.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program, although not an official certifying body like the MSC, also provides guidance on the sustainability of certain fish species.^[14]: Some seafood restaurants have begun to offer more sustainable seafood options. The Seafood Choices Alliance is an organization whose members include chefs that serve sustainable seafood at their establishments. In the US, the Sustainable Fisheries Act defines sustainable practices through national standards. Although there is no official certifying body like the MSC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has created FishWatch to help guide concerned consumers to sustainable seafood choices. See also a guide to good fish guides.

Addendum

It is almost as though we use our military to fight the animals in the ocean. We are gradually winning this war to exterminate them. And to see this destruction happen, for nothing really – for no reason – that is a bit frustrating. Strangely enough, these effects are all reversible, all the animals that have disappeared would reappear, all the animals that were small would grow, all the relationships that you can't see any more would re-establish themselves, and the system would re-emerge. So that's one thing to be optimistic about. The oceans, much more so than the land, are reversible... – Daniel Pauly^[15]

See also

• Bottom trawling
• Catch and release
• Environmental effects of fishing
• Population dynamics of fisheries
• Factory ship
• Fisheries management
• Fishing capacity
• Sustainability
• Biodiversity
• Natural environment
• Growth overfishing versus recruitment overfishing
• Jellyfish blooms
• Marine Protected Area
• Marine Stewardship Council
• Maximum sustainable yield
• Resource depletion
• Shark finning
• Sustainable seafood
• Tragedy of the commons
• World Ocean Day

Notes

1. ^  "'Only 50 years left' for sea fish", BBC News. 2 November 2006.
2. ^  "The Status of the Fishing Fleet," The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture: 2004.
3. ^  "Dinosaur fish pushed to the brink by deep-sea trawlers", The Observer Newspaper, 2006.
4. ^  "Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities," Nature. 2003.
5. ^  "Decline of Pacific tuna populations exaggerated," Nature 434:E1-E2, 28 April 2005.
6. ^  "World Review of Fisheries and Aquaculture," The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture: 2000.
7. ^  Text of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Part V
8. ^  Aquaculture, MariCulture Systems. 2004.
9. ^  Benjamin, Daniel K (2001). "Fisheries are Classic Example of the Tragedy of the Commons," PERC Reports, 19(1).
10. ^  "Peruvian Anchovy Case: Anchovy Depletion and Trade," Trade and Environment Database, 1999.
11. ^  "Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1982," Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1981.
12. ^  "Peru - Fishing," Federal Research Division of the U.S. Library of Congress.
13. ^  "Shark Declines Threaten Shellfish Stocks, Study Says", National Geographic News. 29 March 2007.
14. ^  "Scientists Find 75 Percent Of Red Snapper Sold In Stores Is Really Some Other Species, Sciencedaily.com. 2004.
15. ^  Platt McGinn A (1998). "Promoting Sustainable Fisheries," State of the World, pp.59-78.

References

• Allan, J David; Abell, Robin; Hogan, Zeb; Revenga, Carmen; Taylor, Brad W; Welcomme, Robin L; Winemiller, Kirk (2005) Overfishing of inland waters. BioScience, 5 December.
• Clover, Charles (2004) End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. Ebury Press, London. ISBN 0-09-189780-7
• Costello, Christopher; Gaines, Steven D and Lynham, John (2008) Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse? Science Vol 321, No 5896, pp 1678–1681.
• Kurlansky, Mark. (1997). Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1326-2.
• Loder, Natasha. 2005. Point of No Return. Conservation in Practice 6(3):28-34. On overfishing as an evolutionary force and the "Darwinian debt" for future generations.
• Gordon, H. S. 1953. An Economic Approach to the optimum utilization of Fishery Resources, Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 10(7), 442-57.
• Gordon, H.S. 1954. The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery, Journal of the Political Economy, 62, 124-42.
• Jacquet, J (2007) Silent water: a brief examination of the marine fisheries crisis Environment, Development and Sustainability. Springer.
• Kirkley, J.E. and Squires, D. (1999) Capacity and Capacity Utilization in Fishing Industries, Discussion paper 99-16, Department of Economics, University of California, San Diego.
• Moustakas, A., Silvert, W. and Dimitromanolakis, A. (2006) A spatially explicit learning model of migratory fish and fishers for evaluating closed areas Ecological Modelling, 192: 245-258.
• Roberts, Callum (2007) The Unnatural History of the Sea Island Press. ISBN 9781597261029
• Vestergaard, N., Squires, D. and Kirkley, J.E. 2003. Measuring Capacity and Capacity Utilization in Fisheries. The Case of the Danish Gillnet Fleet, Fisheries Research, 60(2-3), 357-68.

External links

• FAO Fisheries Department and its SOFIA report
• Seafood Watch from Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Greenpeace facts about overfishing
• National Geographic
• Periods of Peak Fishery Catches and Declines Since the Peak Year (2000) World Resources Institute.
• Biomass distributions for high trophic-level fishes in the North Atlantic, 1900–2000
• Newfoundland Crisis
• The Starving Ocean
• Fishing
• Fished Out: The Rise and Fall of the North-American Cod Fishery (CBC Archives)
• Marine Stewardship Council
• New science sheds light on rebuilding fisheries
• Atlas of the Oceans
• Fishing Capacity
• Blue Planet Society
• New Scientist: Guaranteed fish quotas halt commercial free-for-all
• Microdocs: City vs.village fishing

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