Overfishing and Fish Farming

When I was a child and living in London the local Fish and Chip shop had a wide range of fish on the menu, Cod, Skate and Place were normally there. As I was a vegetarian for twenty five years I never noticed that Fish and Chip shops stopped using all but Cod.

When I was vegetarian it was the one flesh food that I did miss, that and Duck. While I may have missed the narrowing of the fish menu that the majority of people were eating, my environmental instincts were fully aware of the raping of the seas that was going on.

While there are many aspects of environmental policy where Europe is a world leader, in Fishing and marine policy Europe is the worst offender. Having depleted our stocks to the point where they have collapsed, European boats sail to international waters across the planet and hover up the fish that is left.

Again going back to my childhood the Russian “Factory Ships” were being blamed for the depletion of fish stocks. When the reality was that British and European fishing boats were depleting the stocks via overfishing. Even now European fisheries policy is an incomprehensible madness. Where there is a quota system in place, and any fishing boat catching more than there quota of a species has to dump the dead and dying fish overboard. Therefore there is an known volume of fish that is killed over and above the tonnage that is deemed, by the politicians, to be sustainable.

The main difficulty is that the politicos are trying to preserve the fishing industries of the various member states, while failing to grasp the nettle that will ensure there are fish to maintain the industry at all.

I have spoken to retired fishermen who acknowledge that they were taking far more fish than was sustainable. Even in Economic terms back in the 1970s and 80s so much fish was being landed that prices were depressed. Basic supply and demand, so the fishermen just caught even more fish. This had the effect of speeding the collapse of the fish populations.

Scientists are now predicting that in forty years there will be no fish left for us humans to fish. That is simply based upon the rate of overfishing that exists already. Add into that the effects of acidification of the oceans and the imbalances of the food chain that overfishing is causing then the loss of fish in the sea could happen much sooner. I have heard credible estimates that could see the collapse of all fish stocks in ten to fifteen years.

Overfishing is not something new. While this bit may seem that I have gone off at a tangent, it illustrates the point perfectly. On television in Britain there is a genealogy programme called Who do you think you are. This takes well known people and helps them trace their family history. In one programme a local actor had his family history traced and one of his ancestors had owned and run a fish factory in North Shields. Yet later family members in the early twentieth century had apparently run the business into the ground. However the reality was, as a result of the research, that the Herring stocks that the business relied upon were declining back then and that was why the business shrank and finally closed down.

There really is a head in the sand attitude to this problem of overfishing and the decline of the fishing fleet. North Shields the local fishing port, still has a few boats there, but when you talk to the fishermen they will always tell you just how many more boats there used to be. Yet the fishermen never seem to make the link between the fewer boats, the smaller catches and the decline in fish stocks. They will tell you that they need more quota, but greater quota will not add fish to the sea. The greatest difficulty to overcome is the mindset that goes for the short term gain of high profits now rather than the long term future of the industry.

The whole of human history and the spread of humans across the planet the coast and fishing has been integral to our success as a species. Therefore, it is likely that the loss of all the fish will effect the ability of the human species to survive.

I have frequently spoken of the need for a new economic model to ensure that we keep the balance of our human needs now to the needs of future generations. It really does perplex me that humans can not understand the need to work with the natural world and natural systems rather than fighting them. After all as every gardener knows you do not pull up the whole tomato plant to harvest the tomatoes. So why take all the fish from the sea if you want fish tomorrow?

While I am not easily shocked by the stupidity of human ideas, the proposal by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee to resolve the problem of overfishing, really does take the biscuit. (American translation: Cookies) To resolve the problem of overfishing is to increase fish farming.

What do they think the Farmed Fish feed on? Too grow a ton of farmed fish requires two tons of wild caught fish. So the way to preserve the fish in the sea is to keep catching fish but feed them to farmed fish! Did someone switch off the thought processes?

Again this may seem that I am going off at a tangent, but when I moved to the village here three years ago, when BT (British Telecommunications) came to affix the phone line. They own the physical infrastructure of the telecommunications network. The engineer told me that BT had nearly sold off the physical infrastructure, but had changed their minds when there was a clamour of businesses wanting to buy the asset. The point being that BT did not and still do not understand the value of that asset. The problem being that graduates from universities and business schools are all taught to think about maximising short term returns from an asset but not to develop the skills to plan for the long term. As these people saturate the management of businesses like BT and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee, there is a lack of understanding about sustaining and growing a process in a way that ensures long term viability.

In the case of BT they failed to understand the investments and improvements that were needed ten to fifteen years ago, and BT became wedded to the century old technology of twin copper wires. Yet in Asia they have gone for fibre optic technology. Therefore as a nation Britain has lost the digital race, on the back of short term profits. It is the same philosophy that caused the American automotive industry to collapse.

With fishing the technology that has enabled fishing boats to harvest greater and greater tonnages of fish, a hundred tons plus per net is not uncommon. It makes profits yes, but only until the fish has gone. Farming fish may seem like a good idea but by not thinking through the whole system, it will only speed up the collapse of all fish species and the whole food chain of the oceans.

If I were a teacher giving out report cards on the some of these committees and businesses then I could use a stamp that just said “Must Try Harder”