THE GLOBAL FISHERIES CRISIS

Records kept by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also indicate that of the world's 15 main fishing regions, four are depleted and nine are declining. This global fisheries crisis is primarily a result of overharvesting. The world's marine catch has increased more than four times in the past 40 years -- from 18.5 million tons in 1952 to 89 million tons in 1989, but that growth is at great cost to the environment, and ultimately, perhaps to world food security.

Several decades of overfishing in most of the world's major fisheries has pushed many commercially important fish populations into steep declines Canada's northern cod collapse, for example. Catches are falling, despite the fact that expanding fleets are fishing harder, spending more time, effort and money than ever before in trying to maintain them. Some commercially important stocks are in such a critical state that all fishing has been shut down, or sharply curtailed. Hundreds of millions of people traditionally dependent on fishing for food and livelihoods face resource depletion, competition from industrial and distant water fleets, and loss of access to traditional marine food supplies.

The biological diversity of the world's oceans is threatend by the highly competitive race to catch enough fish to keep pace with rising international demand.

Rising demand and decreasing stocks have led to increased mechanization, over-capitalization of the industry and the buildup of excessive fishing fleets, particularly of the larger-scale fishing vessels that are responsible for the bulk of overfishing related problems worldwide. A modern 'factory' supertrawler can be longer than a football field and capable of catching and processing into various products up to 200 tons of fish daily. One of the world's biggest trawl nets could encircle more than a dozen "jumbo jet" Boeing 747 aircraft at its opening. Ships deploying such nets have a capture rate of about ten tons of fish per hour.

Since 1970, the world's fishing fleet has expanded twice as fast as world catches. The fishing fleet in China, the world's leading fish producer, is now around six times the size it was in 1979. As a result, excess fishing capacity has reached alarming proportions. There are about 3.5 million vessels boats currently fishing in the world's oceans. Intense competition between countries and rival fleets over access to fishing grounds has sparked numerous international disputes over fishing rights in recent years.

FISHING FOR PROTEIN

Since 1989 the world~s annual catch has been dropping. Many argue that this decrease is an indication that fishing has oversteppped natures~s limists.

The FAO warns that the rising demand for fish and fish products, combined with shrinking global catches from declining stocks, will soon lead to the point where there will be a shortfall of fish for human consumption of more than 20 million tonnes each year. Average annual consumption of fish caught in marine and inland waters could fall from 10.2 kilograms per person in 1993 to somewhere between 5.1 and 7.6 kilograms by 2050. This threatens the one billion people, mostly in developing countries, who rely on fish as a principle source of protein.

WASTEFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE PRODUCTION

The increased fishing pressure and the competition amongst fishing nations and their fleets severely stresses fish stocks and the marine environment. The widespread use of unselective fishing gear and indiscriminate practices result in one-quarter of the all the fish brought on board fishing vessels each year being discarded, usually dead or dying, back to the sea.

Commercial fishing vessels throw back on average about 27 million tons of unwanted fish annually. That amounts to about half of all the fish caught from the oceans each year that are consumed directly by humans. Along with these, millions of other marine animals are being incidentally captured and killed in fishing operations.

DESTRUCTIVE FISHING GEAR

Some fishing gear is particularly deadly for certain animals in some situations. Longline fishing boats kill many tens of thousands of albatross each year in southern hemisphere oceans. Driftnets indiscriminately killed millions of marine creatures, while targetting for just one or two commercially valuable species. Marine mammals are frequently killed in great numbers in trawls, set nets and purse seine nets. In addition there is severe damage caused by fishing operations that use destructive gear and fishing practices, like bottom trawling, that physically disturbs marine habitats such as the ocean floor, sea grass beds or coral reefs.

THE POLITICS OF OVERFISHING

Today, there isn't a fishing region in the world that does not suffer from fisheries management decisions designed to satisfy short-term economic or political objectives (or both) rather than protecting the marine environment and conserving fish populations. The bulk of the problems stem from twenty fishing countries whose fleets land 80 percent of the total marine catch worldwide.

1. China 2. Peru 3. Japan 4. Chile 5. USA 6. Russian Fed. 7. Thailand 8. Indonesia 9. Korea, Rep. 10. Norway

11. India 12. Iceland 13. Philippines 14. Korea, DPR 15. Denmark 16. Spain 17. Taiwan, Prov China 18. Canada 19. Mexico 20. Vietnam

Commercial fishing in most of these countries has been very poorly managed. Even in a few countries where relatively advanced fisheries management systems have been in place for many years they have, almost without exception, failed to control the conditions and stem the abuses that lead to overfishing and destructive environmental impacts. Indeed, in many countries, governments have played an important part in fueling the expansion of excessive fishing capacity and overexploitation by providing lucrative subsidies, taxpayer funded handouts. On a global scale, these destructive subsidies run up to $50 billion a year.

The chronic failures of fisheries management in European waters of the northeast Atlantic and North Sea are particularly noteworthy since this area has probably the longest standing and greatest single concentration of fisheries research and management institutions in world. Yet, Europe's fish stocks are plagued by overfishing, and massive excess fishing capacity.

The member countries of the European Union regularly ignore scientific advice when setting their annual catch quotas: when scientists from the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas recommended a 40 percent cut in the 1995 hake catch to protect the stocks, EU fisheries ministers agreed to a mere five percent cut. In the EU, as elsewhere, it seems that a fishery must be proven to be on its death bed before any remedial action is taken.

In the United States a similar picture of failed fisheries management prevails. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the federal agency overseeing U.S. fisheries, 80 percent of the known commercially valuable fish populations (122 aquatic species) are currently either fully or overexploited; 67 species of these, among them bluefin tuna, swordfish, oysters, hard-shell and soft-shell clams and red snapper -- are overexploited. A further 79 species continue to be exploited even though the status of their populations is unknown. Little wonder why this is so. The country's eight regional fisheries management councils are primarily composed of those interests who benefit directly from increased catches: commercial fishers and other industry user groups.

It does say much for fisheries management regimes elsewhere in the world , if the European Union and the United States are considered to be amongst the leaders in the field of fisheries conservation and management.

Quite simply, nature's limits have been breached by too many fishing vessels catching too many fish, very often in wasteful and destructive ways, and it cannot allowed to continue if the oceans and the human communities around the world that depend on them are to survive. Governments and industry are responible for ensuring swift action to bring about urgently needed reforms, including substantial fleet reductions and substantial cutbacks in allowable catches, the elimination of destructive subsidies, major reductions in bycatch and waste, and more stringent environmental controls over fishing operations. The full utilization of available fish stocks and profit maximization for industry have been the key goals of short-sighted fisheries development, while protection for the environment has taken a back seat. This has proven to be the formula for disaster in fishery after fishery, the world over, with the disastrous consequences for marine ecosystems and humanity already plainly visible around the world.