The problems of Earth: Overfishing

Overfishing is the taking of wildlife from the sea faster than stocks can replenish.

 

Commercial fishing (Wikipedia 2020). 

 

The number of overfished stocks has tripled in half a century. Highly disruptive to the food chain, what had been isolated and regional depletions became a global and catastrophic impact by the late 20th century due to multinational fishery companies. Today, one-third of the world’s assessed fisheries are pushed beyond their biological limits, meaning that they have already collapsed. The 90% of the fishing stocks are overexploited or exploited to their top capacity.

 

 

  

State of World fisheries (Environmental progress, 2018).

 

A study published in 2006 in the journalSciencepredicted that by 2050 fish populations will crash. Faced with the collapse of large-fish populations, commercial fleets are going deeper in the ocean and farther down the food chain for viable catches. Today, 90% of all large ocean hunters have disappeared. With their absence on top of the food chain, the whole ocean is changing.  

 

From 1950s to 2014 only the 5% of the Pacific Bluefin tuna population, the 10% of worldwide shark population and the 5% of the North Atlantic cod remain. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Bluefin tuna population in the North Atlantic declined 90%. Some other overfished species are sharks, cod, halibut, anchovies, herring, sardines… and the list goes on. 

Bluefin tuna at Tsukiji market (lastwordonnothing.com, 2011).

 

“By-catch”is another side-effect of aggressive fishing. By-catch is the term that defines all living organisms –other than the species targeted– caught by fishing equipment. One of the most famous examples are the dolphins that die in tuna nets. Around 300.000 whales and dolphins die every year due to entanglement in fishing gear. Only in the Atlantic coast of France, 6.000 to 10.000 dolphins die annually because of by-catch, much more than in the infamous slaughters of Taiji or Faroe Islands.

 

 

Dolphins caught by fishing nets (seashepherd.fr, 2019).

 

For each kilo of shrimp caught with trawling nets, there is up to 6 extra kilos of by-catch, including turtles and dolphins. Some fishermen use underwater explosions to kill fish –so that the fish surfaces and it is easy to catch– but they destroy the whole ecosystem underneath.

 

By-catch (WWF, 2008).

 

Fishing sharks for their fins is known as finning. Finning is a barbaric practice which consists in catching the sharks, having their fins cut and then throwing their finless bodies alive back in the ocean to die. 100 million sharks are killed every year just to make shark fin soup.Shark finning is a very lucrative business and though most of Europe has legislature in place limiting and prohibiting shark finning, it remains one of the leading exporters and makes millions off of it every year. 

 

Countries with legislature on shark finning (International Sharks, 2020).

 

Hong Kong is the largest importer and market for shark fins in the world. In 2008, the first exporter to Hong Kong was Spain, exporting more than 2,6 million kg of dried product that year. Nowadays, Spain is still finning. Clearly, seeing the map above, when we read “Other forms of management” it actually means no proper management –the law is easily fooled by the finning industry. Thus, we must seek the “Exceptional protection” status. 

 

Countries that export shark fins to Hong Kong (International Sharks, 2020).

 

Taiwan fishing vessels deliberately hunt dolphins to use as bait for sharks. On just one vessel, a crew member reported that 70 dolphins were intentionally killed on a four-month trip in 2019. The use of dolphin meat as bait by distant water fishing fleets is a potentially serious and hidden conservation threat, since the dolphin meat itself is never landed or traded. Without cameras on board, it's very difficult for authorities to collect evidence or impose sanctions when ships have already returned to port. 

 

(Common dolphins butchered inside a fishing vessel, EJF 2020) 

 

Another problem is illegal fishing (INDNR, which stands for illegal non declared and non regulated). Often, INDNR comes from fleets that have a license for fishing a specific amount of a determined species in a delimited area, but they happen to fish a bigger amount, catch different species and in a different area than they are allowed to. Overfishing is driven by fleets operating illegally in other countries’ waters.  22% of the world’s seafood harvest is stolen every year, amounting to23,5 billion USD robbed from coastal communities and countries. For instance, in the western coast of Africa –in Gabon–European fleets are harvesting African waters for fish. Illegal fleets are often run by organized criminal groups that also smuggle arms, drugs and people. 

 

Even if you try to buy “sustainable” fish at your supermarket, you are not safe from buying INDNR because of transshipment. Transshipment is an illegal practice in which the catch of one vessel is moved to another and is one of the biggest factors that lead to lack of transparency in the global fishing, meaning that it is very difficult to trace the fish and to know exactly where it comes from and how has it been fished. Only in the USA, around 20-30% of the fish that is sold comes from INDNR. INDNR also makes it impossible to know the exact amount of fish removed from the stock of the area. 

 

Tuna-fishing vessels performing transshipment in the Indian Ocean (The Counter, 2017).

 

But what for? Is humanity this hungry? Do we need so much food? No. Us humans extract more than 100 million tones of marine life every year. But we feed our cats 2,8 million tones of fish. 40% of the fishing is used to feed cattle.Chickens are fed with menhaden, a [fish] whose population is declining dramatically. Menhaden is an important species because of its cleans the water and is prey for bluefish and thus significantly supports the food-chain. In Chesapeake Bay, fishing fleets lead by planes capture entire schools of menhaden in minutes, nothing is left.

 

Menhaden fishery in Chesapeake Bay (Coastwatch, 2018).

 

Subsidies and other aid provided to the fishing industry can lead to the overcapacity of fishing. Today’s worldwide fishing fleet is estimated to be up to 2,5 times the capacity needed to catch what we actually need. By the end of August of 2020, only in Norway, 481 Minke whales were hunted. It was 52 more than the previous year despite that their national demand of meat is dropping year after year. Norway exports whale meat to the Faroe Islands, Japan and Iceland. Whale meat and oil are also used in dog and other domestic animal food

 

Entanglementis another consequence of fisheries. Ghost nets –nets that have been abandoned or lost– float adrift fishing forever. Over 100 turtles were found dead in a single fishing net in the Mediterranean Sea the Summer of 2019. Other species of fish and marine mammals are also victims of ghost nets. 

 

Entangled death Minke whale (SMASS Orkney 2019).

 

Why is it important to preserve a healthy Ocean by preserving fish stocks? 

 

Somemarine ecosystemsare among the most productive places on Earth and support many types of life.As an example, coral reefs can account for a quarter of all ocean species. Overfishing can impact entire ecosystems by changing the size of fish remaining, as well as how they reproduce and the speed at which they mature. This creates an imbalance that can erode food web and lead to a loss of other important marine life. 

 

The fish food industry represents 362 billion USD globally. Millions of people depend on this industry for their livelihood and half of the world’s population relies on fish as a major source of protein. But yet it goes to a bigger scale: the link between marine ecosystems and land ecosystems is more important than what many may think. They are indispensable for life. They have crucial roles in regulating the rainfall, the temperature, the winds, and they produce more than the 50% of the oxygen and catch the 60% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Up to 90% of the living worldwide species rely on the oceans for surviving. “No water, no life. No blue, no green”as Sylvia Earle’s famous quote says. 

 

Stripped dolphins and Cory’s shearwaters feeding off fish in the Azores (Maria Serra, 2020).

 

A world without oceans is a planet a lot like Mars. Not a convenient life support system. Therefore, what we are doing to the Ocean, we are doing to the planet as a whole.

 

School of fish and a diver (Mission Blue 2014).

 

Changes to a species population have effects both up and down the food chain and disrupt the entire ecosystem. This was observed after dramatic declines of shark populations in the North Atlantic, which lead to an unbalanced food-chain because of the lack of the top predator regulator effect. Overfishing has resulted in many local extinctionsand it is a serious conservation problem.

 

What is done and what to do?

 

Most fish populations could be restored with efficient fisheries management and better enforcement of laws governing catches. Sustainable fisheries and protected areas as a reservoir would improve the global stocks, but while 12% of land is protected, only 1% of the Ocean is. With ⅓ of non-fishing protected zones along our coastal areas would be enough to improve the sustainability of the fishing industry.  

 

Illegal fishing can be stopped in the Pacific, say The Friends of Ocean Action –a group of 53 global leaders working to protect the ocean. There are satellites tracking illegal fishing vessels. Blockshain is tracing fish from their moment of capture to the supermarket shelf. 86 nations have pledged to keep illegal fish out of their ports. 

 

The researcher and educator Sylvia Earle is creating what she and her team call “Hope-spots”, –from the words hotspot and hope– because if we take action there are reasons for hope. Hope-spots are places on Earth where potential for increasing the biodiversity is identified and by fully protecting these spots a lot of re-wilding is done. Those protected areas are a backup for the non-protected ones. The biodiversity that is restored in the protected areas, leaks to the non-protected area which will also increase in biodiversity. It is a win-win.

 

Great coral reef. (Google images). 

 

Australia is a leader in protection for the sea. Since the 1970s the government has been creating more and more protected areas for the Great Coral Reef. Coral reefs need the fish as the fish need the coral reefs. Unfortunately, coral reefs are suffering bleaching and dying around the world. 

 

Cabo Pulmo in Mexico is another good example –a small town with local fishermen that was invaded by industrial fishing and tourism because of sport fishing. By 1980s nothing of the marine animals was left, but in 1997 people created a 70 square km Hope-spot which has replaced fishing for ecotourism. Now over 220 species of fish live there. Sheltering more than 10 species of stony coral and innumerable species of algae and other invertebrates, Cabo Pulmo holds the longest coral reef of the Gulf of California and it is a famous spot for diving. Despite this growth, the area is suffering again as the increase of tourism is affecting the surrounding town planning and it too will have negative effects on the ecosystem.

Cabo Pulmo National Park. (Google images 2020). 

 

Governmental decisions are fundamental; therefore, it is important to push our governments to make the right decisions to protect the environment. For customers, it is a duty to examine the products we buy, looking for sustainably produced sources and amounts. In this case, local is better but we must also pay attention to the sizes of the fish and the species we are purchasing. Large predators such as tuna, swordfish or dolphin fish are more difficult to restore since they need a lot of smaller fish to feed off. Young individuals are also a bad choice since they cannot reproduce and contribute with more individuals to the stock to replace the catches, but it is a difficult thing to manage because bigger fish have better reproductive success. This is why fishery management is important and this is why aquaculture is important too. Land aquaculture is a good option since it constitutes an isolated system in which all the water and detritus are cleaned and it does not pollute the ocean like the in situ aquaculturedoes. 

 

The hard part of these issues is that the ocean could be empty and it would still look the same from the outside. It is very hard to convey what is happening, how it will affect you personally. And so as the ocean is being emptied, and as the ocean is dying, the surface looks the same, the waves look the same.

 

Flores Island. (Maria Serra 2020). 

 

“In this world, a species can only thrive, when everything else around it thrives too.” –David Attenborough. 

 

Maria Serra 

 

SOURCES

 

 

Attenborough, D. (2019). Our Planet. Netflix. 

 

Attenborough, D. (2020) A life on our planet. Netflix. 

 

Baum J. K, et al. (2003) Collapse and Conservation of Shark Populations in the Northwest Atlantic. Science Vol. 299(5605) pg. 389-392 DOI:10.1126/science.1079777

 

Environmental Progress (2018). Overfishing. Environmental Progress.https://environmentalprogress.org/overfishing

 

Harrison J. (2018) Menhaden: Big Questions About Little Fish. Sea Grant North Carolina Coastwatch. https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/coastwatch/previous-issues/2018-2/winter-2018/menhaden-big-questions-about-little-fish/

 

 

International Sharks. https://internationalsharks.weebly.com/countries-involved.html

 

National Geographic. (2010). Overfishing: Plenty of Fish in the Sea? Not Always. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/oceans/critical-issues-overfishing/

 

Nixon R. & Stevens F. (2014). Mission Blue. Netflix.

 

Norton C.L. et al. (2020). Overfishing. World Wild Life.https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing

 

Oceanographic staff. (2020). Norway’s 2020 whaling season deadliest in years. Oceanographic.https://www.oceanographicmagazine.com/news/norway-whaling-season-2020/?fbclid=IwAR0J2LRRhxzQClQ-aFyBTXpm7Ly2kQxFDPypkE_aduKHqE_WKTCYAeFCahI

 

Sea-shepherd (2020). seashepherd.es

 

Surferule (2016). Medidas contundentes para situaciones extremas. Surferulehttps://www.surferrule.com/medidas-contundentes-para-situaciones-extremas/?fbclid=IwAR1cjoZlPywwpUF9B6GC7wD6SHb_aohAM7DxzN1R1-0dRHsmxJKXnAB8puk

 

Zimmer K. (2017). How seafood’s “dark web” obscures fraud, fish laundering, and slavery on the high seas. The Counter.https://thecounter.org/seafood-dark-web-fish-fraud-transshipment/