When I lived in North Shields, a fishing port the the North East of England, I was careful not to get involved in potentially heated debates with the men who worked in the fishing industry. However, I was interested to talk to these men to discover what their problems are too. As while I do hold strong views on the way that our seas are being over fished, it is only by discovering the reality and detail of an industry and community that relies on fishing can solutions be found.
At that time the government were paying fishermen to decommission their boats and leave the industry. But the real problem was and still is the fact that boats from other nations have free access to the United Kingdom waters. Therefore it is only via Europe wide agreements that any action is taken. That unfortunately leads to the science being ignored and economic need to retain jobs being given priority.
Therefore, for years the European Unions Common Fisheries Policy has been a complete mess. With the long standing quota system setting limits on the numbers of a particular species that can be landed, this inevitably lead to the sickening sight of dead fish being thrown overboard as the boat did not have the quota to land the fish.
This has added to the decline of important fish stocks such as Cod, Herring, Place, to name but a few. Further this has all added to the decline in the breading stocks of these species preventing any real recovery in the stocks the measures were intended to create.
Following the second world war, as fishing had been all but impossible, the numbers of Cod and Herring were very abundant and this greatly helped feed the starving peoples of Europe following the war. Now had there been a moratorium on fishing back in the 1980s when the problem first became acute then we would not have the difficulties now. But as with so many of the really difficult problems, governments refused to take the difficult decisions for fear of being unpopular.
Thus we have the current situation where on the important food species of fish the stocks are ninety percent gone. Even ten years ago when I lived in North Shields the fishermen were saying that they never see any of the big mature fish. Yet it was these fish that fetched this best prices in the market. By taking the smaller fish the fishermen acknowledged that they had to catch a greater volume of small fish to earn the money required to pay wages and the costs of running the boat. What's more the older fishermen agreed that this was completely unsustainable.
As one retired fisherman told me, the younger men never saw the abundance of fish there was in the past so do not realise just how depleted the stocks are. Also with the advent of technology such as fish finders, it is possible to hover up the fish leaving nothing for tomorrow.
A major aspect of the current problem is that the boats are much larger now, and the fishing industry has become nothing more than a business. If we could see the losses of fish in the same way we are able to see deforestation on the land, I have no doubt that there would be a serious out cry.
All this also has a serious effect upon the rest of the ecology of the seas, creating imbalances. Off the coast of Maine in the US, there is currently an abundance of Lobsters. So much so that people are being asked to eat Lobster instead of Turkey for thanksgiving. This imbalance is a direct result of overfishing of species like Cod in the Grand Banks where the fishery has collapsed. As Cod feed on Lobster Fry, more young lobsters are surviving to maturity and hence the current glut. But this glut is not all good news, as for the fishermen the price is falling, making it harder to make a living. Also environmentally this increase in the lobster population is seriously impacting other species in the natural food chain.
My thanks to one of my readers for alerting me to that one. Also I need to thank another reader for alerting me to the plight of the Orca Whale. Often called the killer whale, populations of these whales appear to have collapsed all along the Pacific's coast. While the exact cause has not been highlighted yet, the evidence strongly points towards over fishing yet again. In one report that I heard from a Canadian radio station, one pod of thirty six was now only six individuals. And similar numbers are being reported as lost all down the coastline of Canada and America.
In the first episode of the Oceans programme (A BBC Discovery Channel co Production), they were in the Sea of Cortez looking for the Hammerhead Shark, but were unable to find any. As this sea off the California Coast was a real hot spot for the Hammerhead Shark, it shows the effect of overfishing. The sharks are hunted for their fin, and just their fin, for shark fin soup. The rest of the fish is discarded. As well as being an environmental waste it is shear criminal destruction.
Just yesterday the European Union agreed to increase quotas on fishing the Blue Fin Tuna. Against scientific advice. Thus another seriously endangered species will become seriously endangered or even extinct. As it is the fish that are being caught are only about 500lbs and are not sexually mature. A mature Blue fin Tuna is 1000lbs or more. So we fail to learn any lessons from the past and are hell bent on fishing out the seas until no fish and almost no life is left in them.
If we were to stop fishing for ten years then there will be a fishing industry, if we continue as we are, in ten years or less there will be no fishing industry at all.
When we have extinguished life from the seas what then? It will not be the case that we can shrug our shoulders and say we should have done more sooner. As without life in the oceans and the complex ecosystems they have, we will have an even greater effect from greenhouses gases. Plankton in the oceans absorbed more of the CO2 than do trees and plants on land. If we loose the life in the seas then it will be like a doubling of CO2 emissions overnight. We are already seeing a cascade effect from climate change. The loss of the summer Sea Ice in the Arctic is just one of the obvious signs. The loss of the Mountain Glaciers is another. Yet its clear that politicians are shirking their duties by allowing and increasing the very activities that have resulted in this mess we are in.
I personally long ago stopped eating Tuna and Have now stopped eating any fish as there are no sustainable fisheries in the world now. I genuinely wish that it were not this way, but we will see some major environmental shocks in the next few years that make the economic one seem like a walk in the park. Unfortunately it will take those shocks to get the majority of people to realise the folly of ignoring the environmental degradation we are causing.
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I am not sure that there is an overabundance of lobsters in the ocean, as much a market glut. I heard last summer that it had been discovered that the tamale of the lobster, or the green liver, had the possibility of containing the red tide organism.(paralytic shellfish poisoning) I think I also heard that this news hurt the Japanese market for lobster.
I didn't really care about the warning as I never eat the nasty tomale and scrape off the worst and then rinse the rest in clarified butter with a squirt of lemon. :D
the tamale is in the body cavity and there is usually a bit on the end of the tail when it is snapped off. I do pick the body, as well to toss into a lobster roll-which is a butter/grilled bun filled with lobster tossed in mayonaise, seasoned with salt and pepper and a squirt of lemon. A nice leaf of lettuce, too...yumm-there I have done my part for the lobster industry as all your readers dash off to the market. LOL
Tree
While it's always sad to see the plight of anything on this planet it's also worth pointing out that 99.9% of all species of life that has ever been on this planet is now extinct. This is the NATURAL order of things, the how is the only real debatable part.
Eat lobster until that too is gone? The real problem here isn't that the oceans are over fished, the land over farmed and that livestock is over grazing... but rather that the demand is there for these things. But simply no longer buying Blue Fin Tuna products, the demand will be untouched. Heck if 1million people stopped it would hardly be noticed.
While it may seem very defeatist to simply say that there is little we can do... the large unknowing masses are the ones that really need to change their mindset. Ever notice how starving countries breed quicker than any of the others? No wonder they are starving.
On the other hand. No matter what we do to the planet life, in one way or another, will continue. We might not be here to see it. But rest assured that the planet will continue to spawn life.
Robert, while it is true that in the four and half billion years that the Planet we call Earth has existed, ninety nine percent of all the species that ever existed has gone extinct, the mass extinction that is happening now is man made and not natural.
When interventions are made to save an individual species it works, locally I have the great pleasure of seeing Red Kites most days in the Sky. Yet twenty years ago this magnificent bird was on the verge of extinction in Britain. Just to hammer home the point, that meant there was only one breeding female left. Locally we have over one hundred here now. The point is we can save species and we do not need to loose any to man made extinction.
What is lacking is the political leadership to tell the truth about the state of the seas and to take the action that is needed. Quite simply you are wrong to say that the problem is not over fishing. By taking more of any species than its ability to breed reduces numbers. Thus what is needed is a ban on taking these species so that numbers can recover. Also you say that demand is the problem, that is partially true. In the UK thirty percent of all the food reaching the shops is wasted, it gets dumped in to the rubbish, mainly landfill. If we look at what food is produced then the figures are even worse as just under fifty percent of all the food produced is just thrown away.
Further don't under estimate the power of public to bring about change via their buying power. The wine industry in Apartheid era South Africa all but collapsed because no one from outside the country would buy the products. Equally, there is a strong market for Fair Trade Coffee here in Britain, the result of consumer demand for something better, fairer and less environmentally damaging. In fact most of the main stream producers are now following and are including a percentage of fair trade coffee in all their products.
It is very defeatist to say that there is nothing we can do, especially when there is much we can do. Again it comes back to the lack of political leadership, if politicians told the truth about the real state of the environment and the ecology of the seas then people the majority of people will understand. That is where changing the mindset of the majority of people will come from.
Then there is that old Chestnut of the developing world breeding like rabbits. In the developing world the child mortality rate is very high. Most children born in Africa will die before the age of five. That used to be true in Victorian England too, but here and in the rest of the developed world better health care has prevented most of those deaths. Thus in developing countries to even hope to have one child survive, many need to be born. Also, contraception is all but non existent. Further, under Bush, American aid has strings and no money goes to any development project or organisation that talks about and educates people about contraception Thus many of the people you are talking about don't even have the means or information to plan their families.
What you are doing in your blanket statement is blaming the poor for being poor. That's like blaming someone for being Black: “Oh if only you had been born to a nice White Middle class family in another country you would be fine” Deeply racist and ill-informed.
I fully concur that life will continue on the planet if humans don't survive.
The problem is that for much of the last century and into this one, we have been conned by politicians to believe we can have it all and just take from the environment without consequence. Now just like the financial debts of the credit crunch, we are now paying the environmental price for that debt.
I apologize for making another comment on lobster when this post was about tuna. I just wanted to respond to Robert.
Lobster are different than tuna. They crawl around and hide and have to be tempted into a trap. Maine regulates a minimum size measured from eye socket to carapace meeting tail. Some lobstermen might risk being caught with shorts, but most obey the regs and toss them back. That is to ensure a breeding population.
Any egg carrying females have their tails notched, and it is prohibited to take egg bearing females or those that have been notched.Although that only lasts until their next shed. I have eaten females that had eggs, but had not released them, so this system is not infallible but helps retain more females for future generations.
Striped bass were nearly over=fished here and stringent regulations were enforced regarding size minimums for keeping-I suppose they are recovering, but I hear more of bass undersized being caught and released than keepers.
Lastly, I hate to be a doomsayer (we are all doomed-lol mouse) but how do we know that our actions won't turn Earth into another Venus or Mars? To say that life will always exist on Earth is only a hypothesis yet to be proven.
:)
Agreed it is very defeatist. Um... but that's exactly what I said.
I take exception to the statement:
That's like blaming someone for being Black: “Oh if only you had been born to a nice White Middle class family in another country you would be fine” Deeply racist and ill-informed.
Mostly because I never blamed the poor for being poor. I simply stated that that was the case. While the mortality rate in very poor and rural areas is quite high in children the numbers continue to increase.
Again, I don't blame the politicians. They really have very little effect on this one (I'm mostly speaking from an African point of view). The people are hungry and need to eat. You mention buying power. That really has little to no effect here. Those that actually have a buying choice are a vast minority. The vast majority are simply forced to buy the cheapest... usually that which is mass produced/harvested... ect. Do you have any idea what the average wage in South Africa is? And we are rich in comparison to the rest of Africa. The sobering realization is that they simply don't have the luxury of a choice of to go "green" or not.
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