For several years now I’ve been arguing with my fish eating friends –including several socalled vegetarians to whom fish isn’t meat — about the ecological impact of their food choice. Whereas everybody is more or less convinced about the evils of factory farming (though few are prepared to give up cheap meat), eating fish is still seen as a sustainable, healthy alternative to meat, the idea that the oceans are rapidly being drained of fish just not believed. It doesn’t help when you have television chefs like Rick Stein championing the fishing industry, arguing against government interference while presenting a romantised image of fishing completely at odds with reality. You’ll see some Cornish fisher going out in a coracle catching one mackarel as opposed to a Taiwanese factory ship for the coast of Somalia slaughtering everything in a fifty mile radius…
This issue has been known for decades, with some governmental action over the years, especially here in Europe, where fishing quotas for the North Sea have long been a fact of life. But it hasn’t been enough, which is why it’s good to see New Republic pay attention to this with an excellent article by marine ecologist Daniel Pauly. It’s a bit surprising, since The New Republic usually is a farily neoliberal, business friendly magazine, more culturally than politically/economically leftist. Pauly is outspoken and forceful, coming straight to the point about the dangers of overfishing:
Unfortunately, it is not just the future of the fishing industry that is at stake, but also the continued health of the world’s largest ecosystem. While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people–even those who profess great environmental consciousness–continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice. But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee. In the past 50 years, we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent. One study, published in the prestigious journal Science, forecast that, by 2048, all commercial fish stocks will have “collapsed,†meaning that they will be generating 10 percent or less of their peak catches. Whether or not that particular year, or even decade, is correct, one thing is clear: Fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we.
Pauly makes it clear that there’s only one solution to overfishing, that neither aquafarming nor consumer initiatives will alleviate this situation, but that it has to be concerned governmental action:
The truth is that governments are the only entities that can prevent the end of fish. For one thing, once freed from their allegiance to the fishing-industrial complex, they are the ones with the research infrastructure capable of prudently managing fisheries. For another, it is they who provide the billions of dollars in annual subsidies that allow the fisheries to persist despite the lousy economics of the industry. Reducing these subsidies would allow fish populations to rebuild, and nearly all fisheries scientists agree that the billions of dollars in harmful, capacityenhancing subsidies must be phased out. Finally, only governments can zone the marine environment, identifying certain areas where fishing will be tolerated and others where it will not. In fact, all maritime countries will have to regulate their exclusive economic zones (the 200-mile boundary areas established by the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty within which a nation has the sole right to fish). The United States has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world, and it has taken important first steps in protecting its resources, notably in the northwest Hawaiian islands. Creating, or re-creating, un-fished areas within which fish populations can regenerate is the only opportunity we have to repair the damage done to them.