Unsustainable Fishing

 (bluefin tuna photo from Greenpeace via this site)

Earlier, I noted an article about red grouper, how scientists had discovered their constructive role in ocean ecosystems. When we over-fish red grouper, we don't just damage populations of that fish, we affect an entire community of creatures.

Of course, fishing interests objected. Right now, we're over-fishing pretty much everything, and if we stop, some people will lose their livelihoods. That's true. But if we continue, fisheries will collapse and everyone will lose - for years and years. So it's a no-brainer, right? Surely everyone realizes we must bite the bullet and start managing our fisheries so they're sustainable, with rebuilt populations and healthy ecosystems.

No, not at all. We're talking about human beings here, so of course we're less concerned about disaster in the future than our own pocketbooks right now. But I came across a couple of articles that show some of what we've lost already.

Cod are one species that used to be abundant, before they were over-fished. And they used to be much larger than those left alive today. I thought this excerpt from an article in The Boston Globe was interesting:

University of New Hampshire researchers studying 19th century schooner logbooks — some smudged with cod oil from the fingerprints of the Yankee skippers who kept them — established that New England fishermen landed 20 times more cod in 1860 than commercial fleets catch today.

“Even farther back, in early Colonial times, cod were so thick they would sometimes stop a vessel dead in the water,’’ said the UNH’s Karen Alexander, coordinator for the Gulf of Maine Cod Project. “It’s clear, when you pore through the archives, that commercial species were not only more abundant, they were physically bigger.’’

Meaner, too. Alexander cited a terse (and ungrammatical) 1866 log entry by Beverly fishing captain Samuel Wilson: “Rugh weather but plenty of fish [I] took a man’s foot out of a large codfish.’’

Unfortunately, even where cod fishing has been halted entirely, populations don't seem to be rebuilding very well. Removing one species almost entirely from an ecosystem tends to affect the whole ecology. These aren't just living things we're affecting, but living communities.

Incidentally, that article, which describes a new census of sea life, talks about some interesting discoveries from that, too:

Among other things, they have found tubeworms that imbibe crude oil; a crustacean so shaggy it might be answering a casting call for Broadway’s “Hair’’; and a sort of singles cafe for sharks where great whites cruise hungrily for sex.

I talk about other articles - and other species - below the fold.

The Washington Post says that the oyster war in Chesapeake Bay is heating up. But they're talking about the modern struggle against poachers - the second "oyster war."

The first time there was a war over the Chesapeake Bay's oysters -- in the 1800s -- it started because there were so many of the shellfish. For a share of the fortune on the bay's floor, watermen fought police and one another with rifles and cannons.

There were once so many oysters in Chesapeake Bay that you could get rich fishing for them. But now, they've declined by 99%. It's not just overfishing that's caused this, since pollution and disease have also played a part. But don't we all wish this had been managed sustainably?

Oh, sure, we made mistakes in the past, but isn't that all behind us? No, it's not. We're still raping the oceans, one species after another. Another article in The Washington Post talks about the disastrous Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that ended last week without protections for Atlantic bluefin tuna (which have dropped in number 72-82%) and six species of sharks (down 85%).

Aggressive lobbying from Asian nations led by Japan killed all efforts to protect marine species at a U.N. meeting, leaving environmentalists fuming Thursday that efforts to conserve bluefin tuna and sharks were undermined by commercial interests. ...

"This conference has been a disaster for conservation," said Oliver Knowles of Greenpeace. "Country after country has come out at this meeting arguing for business as usual and continued trade in wildlife species that are already devastated by human activity."

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, opened two weeks ago with calls from the United States and Europeans to give a lifeline to overfished oceans. But the meeting ended Thursday with little to show their efforts. 

In this case, the big problem was Japan. But I wouldn't pat ourselves on the back too much here (especially since we didn't actually accomplish anything). We are usually pretty bad ourselves, when economic interests oppose conservation.

But I really don't get it. "Sustainable fishing" just means that we take only what can be replenished naturally. Japan might not get as much tuna right now, or as many shark fins (that's a disgusting situation, anyway, as they cut fins from a living shark and throw it back into the ocean to die), but they'd still have these species 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years from now. Isn't that a decent trade?

We are - all of us - killing the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs. Have we forgotten our fables? How greedy, and how stupid, can we be?