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Worldwide, about 13 million people make all or a major part of their living from fishing. Together with their immediate families they comprise some 50 million people directly dependent on fishing for their livelihoods. They all depend upon healthy oceans and abundant fish populations.
The northwest Atlantic cod stocks off eastern Canada once sustained one of the world's largest fisheries, and supported livelihoods for many generations of Newfoundlanders. The cod are now considered "commercially extinct", so the cod fishery was closed down in 1992 when the Canadian Government moved to protect what remained of overfished stocks. The devastating result -- 20,000 people involved in fishing and shore-based activities lost their jobs virtually overnight.
Despite the '92 ban on cod fishing, The stocks have continued a precipitous decline. By 1995, the Canadian Federal Department of Fisheries declared that the largest stock had declined from 400,000 tons in 1990 to only 2,700 tons at the end of 1994. Even more disheartening for Newfoundlanders was prediction that, even in the unlikely event that the population of northern cod started an immediate recovery, it would take at least 15 years before it may be healthy enough to withstand significant levels of fishing. Even worse, following the 1992 closure of Canada's east coast cod fishery, an additional 20,000 people were thrown out of work when the Federal Government closed several other fisheries due to the collapse of stocks of other species off Canada's east coast.
Off the coast of New England in the United States, the depletion of the groundfish stocks around the once fertile fishing grounds of Georges Bank has taken a heavy toll on the economy. By 1992, the reduction in annual fisheries landings by 55 thousand tons had cost $350 million US dollars and 14,000 jobs, according to a 1990 report from the Massachusetts Offshore Groundfish Task Force. But, by 1994 the New England Fisheries Management Council agreed that the stopgap measures imposed earlier to preserve fish numbers in the Georges Bank area weren't working. According to one regional fisheries manager: "We are catching the fish far faster than they can reproduce."
These are not isolated examples, but they illustrate how government support for the expansionist motivations of private investors in fisheries, who are compelled by short-term profits, often results in society at large ending up the long-term losers.
The profits from capital intensive, hi-tech, large-scale fisheries are privatized by investors during the boom years, while the costs of such irrational economic behaviour are socialized for years after the crash -- the taxpayer picks up the long-term bills. In Canada's case the social welfare bill in excess of a billion dollars for benefits to tens of thousands of displaced Newfoundland fishers and shore-based fishworkers may be only a portion of the total longer term costs to the Canadian public.
In many fisheries, reductions in fishing operations will need to be substantial if the area's fish populations are to rebuild to naturally abundant levels. In some cases, it may be necessary for fishing to cease entirely, perhaps even for a long time, as with Canada's cod fishery. In striving for recovery and the establishment of ecologically responsible fishing, countries will have to choose where the cuts in fishing effort are to be made: the medium- to large-scale, industrial-type, or small-scale, community-based fisheries.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and other observers have produced revealing data in this regard: reducing the large- and medium-scale fishing industry by half might eliminate several hundreds of thousands of jobs on fishing boats. Reducing the small-scale, artisanal fishing sector by half would eliminate several million jobs.
In comparing the world's two marine fishing industries -- large-scale vs. small-scale -- several important points can be made that also have bearing on cutbacks. Comparisons have shown that the small-scale, community-based fisheries actually provide about the same amount of marine fish for human consumption as the large-scale, company-owned fleets on a global basis (24 million vs. 27 million tons respectively). In producing its half-share of fish for human consumption, however:
* The small-scale, community based sector produces little or no damaging bycatch/discards, keeping almost all its catch for local consumption; whereas, the large-scale, industrialized sector discards range between 17 to 39 million tons of wasted fish annually.
* small-scale artisanal fisheries employ about 20 times more people to catch its near-equal share of fish for human consumption. The small-scale, artisanal sector also employs about 100 times more fishermen per million dollars of capital invested in fishing vessels than the industrialized sector.
* The annual consumption of fuel oil ranges one to two-and-a- half tons for the small-scale, artisanal sector, compared to 14 to 19 million tons for large-scale industrial fisheries.
* And the small-scale sector catches from 4 to 5 times more fish per ton of fuel consumed compared to the large-scale, industrial sector.
In the final analysis, overfishing is the principal threat to long-term employment in fisheries. Saving jobs means ensuring that fish populations remain abundant, and the oceans' health and productive processes are continuously protected.
