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Why Cover Overfishing

Seafood is the primary source of animal protein for as much as onesixth
of the world’s population. In the U.S. alone, commercial and
recreational fishing annually amounts to a $50 billion industry.
Throughout much of the developed world, fresh, affordable fish are
plentiful in grocery stores and supermarkets and on restaurant menus.
Per capita fish consumption has been increasing - among Americans,
up from 12.5 pounds per person in 1980 to 15.6 pounds in
2000.

Consumption is increasing, but fish stocks are declining worldwide
as a result of environmental pressures and growing demand for
seafood. In 1998, more than 1,600 scientists from around the world
issued a joint statement entitled "Troubled Waters." They say the
most pressing threats to ocean health result from human activities,
and that the threats are exacerbated by commercial activities and
coastal population growth. In their view, the primary threats to ocean
health include species over-exploitation, habitat degradation, pollution,
introduction of alien species, and climate change.

Worldwide, 80-90 percent of the global fish catch takes place
along the world’s coastlines and in upwelling systems where nutrient-
rich deep-water currents run up against continental margins.
Nearly 40 percent of the world’s population lives within 60 miles of
a coastline. Nutrient-rich conditions that favor fish production along
coasts lead also to increased vulnerability to risks posed by human
activities.

In reporting on some fisheries issues, for instance the virtual disappearance
of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, overfishing in effect is
the story. More often than not, though, it is an important part of a
larger and more complex story. Along with other natural and human-
caused factors, overfishing alters coastal and ocean ecosystems,
and contributes to the decline of fish stocks worldwide. Reporters
covering issues related to food, nutrition, and diet inevitably end up
at some point also covering overfishing.

Story Ideas

1. What are the sources of the seafood consumed in your area? How
much of it is farm-raised? Which species have been designated as
either "threatened" or "endangered"? What do area restaurant chefs
and patrons think about the quality and availability of fish? Do they
see trends?
2. Are local environmental and consumer interests active in encouraging
sustainable fishing practices? What are their techniques, and
how are they working?
3. Are fish stocks in your area threatened? And if so, what recovery
efforts are under way at local, state and federal levels? How do commercial
fisheries view these efforts and the impact on their livelihood?
What are the impacts of recreational fishing?
4. Is aquaculture or "fish farming" a viable alternative to exploitation
of wild fish populations in your community? Is fish farming
practiced in your area? What environmental issues are associated
with fish farming?

Background and Context

Fishing practices and the overall health of the world’s fisheries are
"not on the radar screen" for many people. The public remains largely
unaware of declining supplies. In some advanced societies, few people
make their living from fishing, or know the source of their seafood,
so regulations and fishery policies often are seen as directly affecting
relatively few. Furthermore, fish farming and advances in fishing
technology have combined to help control costs, and aquaculture
now supplies one-third of the world’s seafood supply. That may
lead to complacency on the part of the public, and perhaps also of
editors.

The Pew Oceans Commission defines overfishing as a level or rate of
fishing mortality that reduces the long-term capacity of a marine population
(that is, an identifiable separate group within a species) to produce
maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis.

Overfishing and the consequent decline of fish species are not
new phenomena: By the beginning of the 19th century there were
already reports of severely depleted fish stocks, and fleets were ranging
ever more distant from home ports in the Grand Banks and North
Sea. Even so, there were those like Thomas Huxley, British biologist
and advocate of Darwinism, who in 1883 still viewed the world’s
fish stocks as inexhaustible.

Until recently global fish yields remained fairly steady, notwithstanding
the advent of increased levels of fishing and mechanized
harvesting. Overfishing initially attracted widespread attention in
the U.S. in the mid-1990s, with reports of the collapse of prominent
fish stocks such as Atlantic cod and haddock. In 1998 came the initial
reports of a worldwide decline in the supply of fish. Earlier reports
of sustained yields were later to be proven inaccurate. Market
researchers reported in 1999 that commercial catches of seafood had
declined for the sixth straight year, and there were credible reports
that decades of misreported catches had obscured declining yields.

The U.S. responded by legislating tougher controls over the U.S. fishing
industry, and the United Nations declared 1998 "the International
Year of the Ocean" to try to draw more attention to the problem.

Environmental Issues/Costs

Fishing-induced ecosystem impacts. The results of overfishing can
be seen not only in the absolute numbers but also in quality and size
of certain species of fish available to consumers. One phenomenon,
known as "fishing down the food web," involves the systematic removal
of the largest top-level predators, usually the most valuable
fish species in a system. As a result, smaller, less valuable species
(typically prey or forage species) increasingly are caught.

Another phenomenon, known as "serial depletion," involves the
shift from commercially prized species to related, but perhaps less
valuable, species, as prized species decline in abundance.

Marine ecologists point to research showing that the combined
effects of overfishing, bycatch, habitat degradation and fishing-induced
food web changes can alter the composition of entire ecological
communities.

Bycatch is the incidental catching, discarding, or damaging of
living marine resources when fishing for targeted species. Worldwide,
annual bycatch is estimated at nearly 60 billion pounds - roughly 25
percent of the overall catch.

Researchers find that shrimp trawling, for instance, leads to discards
of five pounds of shrimp for every pound caught. Other fish
with high rates of bycatch include Patagonian toothfish (Chilean
seabass), trawl-caught Atlantic cod, haddock, monkfish, and dredged
scallops. Bycatch is generally less for hook-caught fish such as rod- and
reel-caught yellowfin tuna, pole-caught skipjack tuna, and trolled
albacore tuna.

Declines in one species can alter the relationships of prey to predators
and thereby pose risks to entire ecosystems. As an example,
overfishing of reef-dwelling triggerfish and pufferfish resulted in an
explosion of the sea urchin population, which in turn damaged Caribbean
corals by over grazing protective layers of algae. Other examples
abound.

Fewer numbers of adult species can also mean less genetic diversity
among spawning populations and reduced ability to adapt to
future environmental changes. Disruption of prey to predator relationships
also can increase ecosystem vulnerability to invasive species.

Bottom fishing and other destructive fishing methods can scour
vast areas of seabed, crushing and burying bottom dwelling species.
Species extinction. Marine species were once assumed to be virtually
immune from extinction. This is no longer the case.

A November 2000 report by the North American Fisheries Society
lists 82 species as either "vulnerable, threatened, or endangered"
in North American waters. Another 22 species are categorized as
vulnerable, threatened, or endangered with global extinction. The
list includes several species of sharks, sawfish, skates, sturgeons,
Pacific coast smelts, cod, seahorses and pipefishes, rockfishes,
snooks, groupers, and gobies, along with Atlantic salmon and Atlantic
halibut. Fish species that reproduce slowly, such as sharks, sturgeons,
and groupers, generally are at most risk.

In its 2000 report, "The State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture"
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says
half of the world’s marine stocks are fully exploited, and it warns
against overfishing on the high seas. "About 47 percent of the main
stocks of species groups are fully exploited and are therefore producing
catches that have reached, or are very close to, their maximum
sustainable yields," the UN-FAO report says. It points to aquaculture
as the fastest growing food production sector.

To the Ocean Conservancy, a U.S.-based citizens organization,
overfishing poses the greatest single threat to the world’s oceans,
"with a more profoundly negative impact on our oceans than all other
human impacts, including pollution."

The group’s July 2002 "Health of the Oceans" report warns of
failing health of the world’s oceans. "Because the oceans look fine
on the surface, people assume that, underwater everything is fine
too, but it’s not," says Roger Rufe, Ocean Conservancy President.
"When they don’t catch fish, or the ones they catch are small, many
people assume it’s bad luck, but it’s not." The group recommends an
ecosystem-based management approach to fisheries, with a focus
on entire ecosystems and not just on individual species.

More recently, research released in the May 15, 2003, issue of
Nature reported a 90 percent decline in large predatory fish biomass
from pre-industrial levels, with the reductions occurring throughout
the global oceans and posing "potentially serious consequences for
ecosystems."

In that research - which prompted front-page coverage from leading
newspapers worldwide - Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm reported
that an 80 percent decline from pre-exploitation levels typically
occurs within 15 years of the onset of commercial fishing of a
species. The researchers describe that estimate as "conservative"
because, in part, substantial declines in stock occur in the early years
of exploitation, before surveys are begun. Remedial efforts often are
initiated only after industrialized fishing has begun, they write, "and
only serve to stabilize fish biomass at low levels."

Ransom and Worm say their research is the first to show "general,
pronounced declines of entire communities across widely varying
ecosystems."

Debate over root causes and remedies. While fishing industry
representatives and conservationists agree that some species have
declined, agreement on root causes and corrective strategies remains
elusive. Some in the fishing industry cite causes largely outside their
individual control, such as global warming, natural ocean cycles,
and changes in ocean currents.

The Pew Oceans Commission maintains that fishery declines often
involve some combination of environmental and fishing effects, saying
"while it is academically interesting, the continued debate over
which is more important only delays implementation of precautionary
policy."

Some in industry have been critical of environmental interests
for, from their perspective, sounding the alarm prematurely and filing
disruptive lawsuits that further complicate fisheries management.

In the U.S., these interests point in particular to the large number of
lawsuits filed in connection with the Endangered Species Act.

Protagonists agree on the need for improved technology for oversight
and increased productivity and on the need for better data for
fisheries management. Experts point also to a desire to build trust
between regulators and fisherman, who often distrust government
statistics on fish populations.

Fishing bans and marine refuges. In the U.S. there have been some
notable successes in restoring depleted fish stocks. The National
Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department’s
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has
long-term plans to rebuild 75 fish species.

Groups such as the Ocean Conservancy are calling for large areas
of ocean to be declared as marine reserves, similar to national
parks and off-limits to fishing, to allow stocks to rebound. In recent
years, Florida, the Virgin Islands and Hawaii have created these refuges.

Despite the growing popularity of these reserves, less than one
percent of ocean waters is protected worldwide.

Marine ecologists Ben Halpern and Robert Warner from the University of
California, Santa Barbara, in a recent review of 81 studies of "no
take" reserves, came to some striking conclusions.

Their report in the May 2002 issue of Ecological Letters concludes
that overall, reserves boasted 20 percent to 30 percent more
species, with a comparable increase in the average size of fish and
invertebrates. Moreover, they said, populations were nearly twice
as dense, and the total amount of living matter was nearly three
times greater in reserves than in unprotected areas. They reported
also that benefits resulting from the reserves were realized quickly
and peaked within a few years.

Advocacy groups and market pressures. Efforts to shift demand
away from environmentally damaging products and extraction techniques
have met with some success. Several environmental groups
have compiled lists of over-fished species they urge the public to
avoid. Some from the fishing industry counter that the status of
fish stocks in a region is too complex for consumers to make knowledgeable
decisions about which species to fish and eat and which
to avoid.

The largest seafood trade association in the U.S., the National
Fisheries Institute, has expressed support for FAO-developed ecolabeling
standards. Eco-labeling refers to the certification and labeling
of fish and seafood harvested or raised in a sustainable
manner.

Success Stories

There are some remarkable success stories of
the recovery of once-overexploited populations. The mid-Atlantic
striped bass fishery, once threatened, took 15 years to recover.
This recovery was the result of fishing moratoria and increased
size limits (effectively raising the age of first capture from two to
eight years). Recovery of Atlantic sea scallops, now well under
way, can be credited to establishment of large area closures. Success
with rebuilding of northeastern groundfish has resulted largely
because of these same measures and also because of dramatic reductions
in fishing mortality.

Ongoing Research

Researchers in Census of Marine Life (CoML) pilot programs are
seeking to better understand how marine organisms use the marine
environment. Findings along these lines are expected to play
a major role in developing ecosystem-based management programs.
Scientists on the West Coast of North America, for instance,
are tracking salmon and large pelagic (open ocean) tunas, whales,
sharks, seals, sea turtles, and sea birds to better understand migration
and breeding patterns.

The Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) effort involves using
microprocessor-based satellite tagging technologies, with data
transmitted by satellite and by conventional radio signals to laboratories
on land. TOPP scientists expect to be able to track the
movements of up to 4,000 individual organisms and currently are
tracking elephant seals, sea lions, gray whales, albatross, turtles,
bluefin tuna, giant squid, and great white, blue, and salmon sharks.

The Pacific Ocean Salmon Tracking (POST) program implants
acoustic tags on individual salmon to track them for the duration
of their life on the continental shelf. The tags transmit information
on location and movement of juvenile salmon, and POST
scientists hope to draw conclusions on spatial and temporal distributions
of mortality rates, and also on salmon migration routes.

Some tags also transmit information on the temperature and depth
of tagged animals. With migration routes better understood, says
POST Principal Investigator David Welch, "scientists hope to be
able to better define where specific stocks of salmon go, and thus
be able to better protect weak stocks from fishing pressure."

Players/Sources

Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, "Rapid Wolrdwide Depletion
of Predatory Fish Communities," Nature, May 15, 2003, p. 280.
Ransom.Myers@dal.ca and bworm@dal.ca. website for full text
of article and supporting press materials: http://fish.dal.ca/~myers/
and http://ram.biology.dal.ca/~myers/depletion/

Pew Commission on Ocean Policy, a private foundation-funded
organization seeking to stimulate dialogue on policies needed to
restore and protect marine resources in U.S. waters. Formal recommendations
expected in report due in June 2003. Director of
Communications: Justin Kenney, (703) 516-0605, http://www.pewoceans.org

Pacific Ocean Salmon Tracking (POST), David Welch at
david.welch@kintamareseaarch.org or press officer Carla Sbrocchi
at sbroccc@vanaqua.org website http://www.postcoml.org.

Tracking of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP), Barbara Block at bblock@stanford.edu
or press officer Randy Kochevar at Rkochevar@mybayaq.org
website http://www.toppcensus.org/index.cgi?flash=1

U.S. National Ocean Policy Commission, authorized by the Oceans
Act of 2000, charged with providing recommendations to the President
and Congress on all aspects of U.S. ocean policy except national
security. Final recommendations to President and Congress
due in 2003. Phone: (202) 418-3442. Public Affairs Officer: Pat
Naughten, naughten@oceancommission.gov , web site:
http://www.oceancommission.gov/

Ocean Conservancy, membership organization with more than
900,000 members/volunteers dedicated to the protection of the
world's oceans. Conducts yearly "Health of Oceans" assessment
of ocean resources and ocean management. Media Manager: Tom
McCann, (202) 429-5609. http://www.oceanconservancy.org

National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in the U.S. Department
of Commerce, regulates the $50 billion U.S. fisheries industry.
Website http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov includes numerous reports on status
of fisheries and oceans, including listing of endangered species.

National Fisheries Institute, a leading industry trade association
for the fish and seafood industry, phone: (703) 524-8880
http://www. nfi.org

American Fisheries Society, membership organization of 10,000
fisheries scientists and managers with mission to promote conservation
and sustainability of fishery resources and aquatic ecosystems.
(301) 897-8616. Among publications available at website,
http://www.fisheries.org/, is "Marine Stocks at Risk of Extinction."