Fishing for trouble

BY ALEX TOLKIN

Fishing is often associated with leisurely activities shared by grandparents and grandchildren at a lake, but in reality, it has become a primarily commercial enterprise. According to thecoastalside.com, this commercialization has put the world’s fishing stocks at risk, creating a significant challenge for those responsible for regulating the industry and ensuring that the oceans do not become depleted of fish.

Overfishing occurs when an ocean ecosystem becomes destabilized by the removal of too many fish. Once an ecosystem is damaged, it can take decades for it to recover. In the 1970s, anchovy fishing was a core part of the Peruvian economy. Unfortunately, years of huge catches destroyed the anchovy population and then fishermen’s livelihoods. Their catches decreased from 15 million tons of fish in 1971 to only three million in 1973 because the anchovy population was so devastated. By the 1980s, when the Peruvian government banned all anchovy fishing, less than 2 million tons of anchovies remained off the coast and 50,000 people had lost their jobs. While the Peruvian fishing industry has returned, though never to its former peak, overfishing has permanently destroyed some fisheries. And Peru is not a unique case. In the 1940s, North Sea herring were caught far faster than the fish reproduced, and neither the population nor the European fishing industry has ever recovered.

Governments have recognized the dangers of overfishing and have sometimes made progress protecting fish stocks. In 2006, President Bush enjoyed bipartisan support when he strengthened the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act regulating U.S. fisheries. The combination of strict catch limits and tradable credits appears to have helped fish populations recover. While almost half of U.S. fisheries were overfished in 2000, that percentage dwindled to 22% in 2010. However, other nations have struggled to impose effective regulations. For example, for over a decade New Zealand fisherman caught fish in regulated waters despite fines that were supposed to prevent the practice. Between 1995 and 2007, fisherman paid seven million dollars worth of fines for 16 million dollars worth of fish. Fishermen simply factored the fines into the cost of the fish. Fine-based systems for rare fish have to incorporate very harsh or variable fines. As rarer fish become increasingly scarce, they also become increasingly valuable. If fines do not keep pace with rising fish prices, fishermen will simply ignore them. Indeed, as fish become more and more scarce, fishermen have to try harder and harder to get a sufficient catch, meaning that legislation needs to have very strict penalties to be effective. It also means that fishermen are in a constant arms race over steadily dwindling resources, using more and more boats to catch less and less. According to a 2008 U.N. report, half of the world’s fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in overall catch.

Regulating overfishing is also difficult because offshore fishing can be challenging to monitor and sometimes takes place in contested waters. From 2000 to 2011, China underreported the amount of fish its fleets caught by a factor of twelve. Despite such wildly inaccuracy, this deception was difficult to notice because much of the overfishing occurred off the coast of West Africa, where many governments fail to report fishing totals or have minimal or zero fishing regulations. Regulations are also often not ambitious enough to cause significant change. Many overfishing regulations aim merely to ensure that fishing stocks do not deteriorate further. More ambitious plans aim to restore stocks to their levels a decade earlier. However, the sea has undergone such dramatic transformation over the past century that even the amount of fish present a decade ago is pitiful compared to the amount in 1900. Restoring the oceans to anything resembling their natural state would take a massive, concerted, and likely multi-decade effort that would effectively halt most fishing for years. Getting support for such a policy appears very unlikely, and effectively enforcing it would be even harder.

To help combat the dismal state of the oceans, consumers can keep track of which fish are overfished and which are at sustainable levels. A variety of aquariums offer wallet-sized cards that list common fish on menus and their current status in the wild. When ordering unmarked fish, one can ask a waiter or grocery worker where the fish is from. These consumer choices only put a band-aid on a gaping wound, however. In the long run, international regulation is required to halt, and slowly repair, the damage humans have inflicted on the ocean.