Overfishing Responsible For Declining Fish Population (theguardian.com)

iONiUM send word of a new study into fishing practices around the world that found official reports have dramatically underestimated the number of fish caught over the past several decades. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, global catches peaked at 86 million tons in 1996, and began a slow decline after that. This study suggests the peak was much higher — around 130 million tons — and subsequent catch rates are falling three times faster. Significantly, they believe the decline is not due to less fishing activity, but rather the exhaustion of supply in many areas. One of the study's authors, Daniel Pauly, said, "I expect a continued decline because I don’t expect countries to realise the need to rebuild stocks. I don’t see African countries, for example, rebuilding their stocks, or being allowed to by the foreign fleets that are working there, because the pressure to continue to fish is very strong. We know how to fix this problem but whether we do it or not depends on conditions that are difficult."

Comments

Tomorrow in The Guardian

[Rik Sweeney]

Overeating responsible for obesity.

Re:Tomorrow in The Guardian

[ShanghaiBill]

It is unfair to blame the Guardian for a stupid Slashdot headline. The point of the study was not to show that overfishing caused fish stocks to decline (we already knew that), but to actually quantify the rate of decline. The Guardian's headline expresses that accurately, while the Slashdot headline is misleading.

Re:Tomorrow in The Guardian

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that climatologists take into account historical fluctuations. You don't actually seriously believe that you have some special bit of knowledge here that people who have dedicated their lives to studying climate, including anomalies and cycles, have?

Re:Tomorrow in The Guardian

[iONiUM]

Submitter here. The summary isn't even the article I submitted. Here is my submission: submission. And here is the actual article I linked as the main article main article.

The title there is "Oceans running out of fish as undeclared catches add a third to official figures."

People eat

[stabiesoft]

More people eat more. 7 Bellion people eat alot more. I do not see this ending well.

Re:People eat

[hey!]

Well, what you do in order to feed those billions makes a difference, doesn't it? Even if you feed them wild fish, how you harvest those fish makes a difference. Unlike, say, manufacturing widgets, unregulated extraction doesn't maximize output over the long term. Fishing isn't production, it's extraction, and since it's a renewable resource you want to extract in a manner which doesn't shift the system equilibrium -- you don't want to live on your environmental capital.

I once saw a presentation by a marine ecologist who modeled the impact of marine sanctuaries, and his model showed that long term fish catches were maximized by creating large marine sanctuaries and intensively fishing around the sactuaries' perimeters. Now this is just an idea, mind you, and a compelling argument isn't the same as proof; but this is the kind of idea we need to consider. You could say, "Screw it, we've got seven billion mouths to feed," and catch as much fish as you can in the short term, but that only makes your problem worse in the long term as you extract each fishery down to the point of collapse.

I thought the sanctuary idea was interesting because it would be way simpler to enforce than giving each fishing boat a quota. All you have to do is ensure fishing boats don't go into any no-go areas. Rather than trying to divvy up a total catch fairly, you simply maximize the system output and let market forces determine who stays in business; meanwhile you maintain completely pristine and maximally productive areas, extracting only the sustainable surplus they produce rather than eating your metaphorical seed corn.

Yeah, it's a big problem, but you only make it bigger by throwing up your hands in despair.

Old addage

[burtosis]

Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and the oceans will eventually be depleted.

Daniel Pauly is wearing blinders

[Okian Warrior]

We know how to fix this problem.

The implication is that we should dial back fishing in order to let the stocks replenish.

Which means, hypothetically, you need to take all the fishing boat owners in, say, Boston Harbor and say "30% of you have to stop fishing".

And with no plan for what to do with the out-of-work owners and their families and some deck hands and their families. Just "stop fishing", that's how to fix the problem.

We actually *don't* know know to fix the problem. We *should* ease up on fishing, but that presents other problems which must then be fixed.

Re:Daniel Pauly is wearing blinders

[serviscope_minor]

And with no plan for what to do with the out-of-work owners and their families and some deck hands and their families. Just "stop fishing", that's how to fix the problem.

Ah yes, the old assumption that doing nothing is somehow a sensible default option.

Thing is if you don't force 30% of those boats out of work, then the fish stock will collapse and force 100% of the boats out of work. And those who object to putting 30% out of work sure as hell have NO plan with what to do with the owners, deckhands and families when they're all out of work.

So yes, "just stop" is in fact a better plan than carrying on.

Re:Yet another political submission here at Slashd

[BarbaraHudson]

Studying overfishing is done by scientists, not fishermen. That should cover the STEM part. With better data on overfishing, we can make better policies, based on science, to try to reverse the problem. It was technological advances (sonar, etc) that allowed the cod fishery in eastern canadian waters to be overfished to the point that it collapsed.

Re:Really?

[Flavianoep]

There is no such a thing as "bleeding obvious". Overfishing *does* cause decline in fishing population, but one must ascertain the such "overfishing" did occur. The cause could be some other thing, though, like global warming. BTW, what is bleeding obvious for some is not for everyone, so I had to tell many people where I live that *anthropogenic* global warming is not the "bleeding obvious".