The rise and fall of a popular fish

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Too few fish?
August 15, 2001

People around the world eat more fish than any other type of animal protein. Fish have been around for over 400 million years, and never before has their existence been threatened as much as it is today.

Soon, you may not be able to get your favorite fish at restaurants or supermarkets, and fish are becoming more expensive than ever before.

Why?

There are too many fishermen in the world, and not enough fish.

A well-intentioned plan

Since the 1950s, governments worldwide have pumped billions of dollars into the fishing industry in order to encourage more people to become fishermen and to make the industry more efficient.

Fifty years ago, the fish supply seemed endless and plentiful, and with more fishermen and better technology available, the governments could stimulate the fishing industry and turn a handsome profit. By 1994, ocean fishers worldwide were catching 4 times more fish than they were in 1950.

That sounds great at first, but actually the number of fish in the ocean has begun to go down. At least 60 percent of the world's fish species are overfished or fished to the limit, which means that fishermen are catching them at faster rates than the fish can reproduce.

A study by the Environmental Defense Fund said that if decisive actions aren't taken soon to curb overfishing, the fish populations will collapse.

What started out as a well-intentioned plan has turned into a maritime disaster. Fisheries boomed, and now they have bust.

The Fishing Boom

In the middle of the twentieth century, the widespread belief was that a boom in the fishing industry would help provide jobs and food security in coastal regions worldwide. In order to help stimulate the fishing boom, governments made fishing a much more attractive and profitable business.

Governments gave fishermen tax breaks and low-interest loans to encourage them to build boats and buy equipment. They offered free port facilities, cheap fuel and reduced insurance so fishermen would have fewer costs.

New technology allowed fishermen to catch fish more quickly. Computers helped fishermen guide their nets accurately through a school of fish, while bigger and faster boats gave fishermen more options. High-tech devices allowed fishermen to locate fish far below the surface, where people had never fished before.

In the 1990s, 20-25 percent of the fish caught worldwide are a direct result of various government subsidies.

One of the biggest contributors to this trend was the United States government, which wanted to make the United States one of the world's leading fishing nations.

In 1976, the government extended U.S. territorial waters from 12 miles to 200 miles, making it illegal for non-American ships to fish within 200 miles of U.S. shorelines. U.S. ships therefore had exclusive fishing rights in these waters, and didn't have to worry about foreign competitors taking their fish.

With government incentives and a monopoly over a greater ocean area, the U.S. fishing industry has become a $3.5 billion business, and the United States is the fifth largest fishing nation in the world.

Supply vs. Demand

What the world's governments did not consider was that there is a limited supply of fish in the oceans. The reproductive capacity of fish could not compete with the improved technology and abundance of fishermen, so as more fish were caught, less were left to reproduce.

Modern fishing boats and crews can catch twice as many fish as the ocean can sustain.

The problems that result from this overfishing are devastating and possibly irreversible.

While the aim of the government incentives was to create more jobs, overfishing has led to thousands of job cuts as fisheries collapse and competition becomes too fierce. In Eureka, a coastal city in northern California, one of the largest West Coast fishery plants has eliminated 70 percent of its workforce over the past 15 years.

The environment has also suffered from overfishing. According to a 1998 World Bank study, only five percent of all government fishing subsidies are used to help the environment. Most of the government funds are used to develop technologies to catch fish more quickly, which can often have negative environmental consequences.

Techniques to catch massive amounts of fish can accidentally also catch albatrosses and sea turtles in large numbers, killing animals that the fishermen did not mean to kill. Bottom trawlers, boats that sweep nets over the sea bottom to catch fish that don't bait, often scrape the ocean floor, damaging coral, sponges, rays, and rocky reefs that are supposed to shelter many kinds of fish.

Less and less fish

But perhaps the most shocking effect of overfishing is the degradation of the fish populations. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said 114 fish in U.S. waters are endangered or threatened.

These threatened fish include such seafood staples as red snapper, flounder and swordfish. Fish account for 18 percent of the United States' endangered species list.

The most depleted fish species today is the bluefin tuna, a popular eating fish. The number of bluefin tuna in the Western Atlantic Ocean has dropped 90 percent since 1970, making them much harder to fish and buy in supermarkets.

The North Atlantic swordfish is also becoming scarce. In 1998, chefs at many prominent restaurants dropped swordfish from their menus in order to protest the near depletion of that species.

The few popular fish that are available have become very expensive. A single bluefin tuna can bring a fisherman as much as $20,000 at U.S. docks! That's the law of supply and demand. As the fish becomes more rare (low supply), and people still want it (high demand), the fish becomes more valuable and can therefore be sold at a higher price.

In addition to skyrocketing prices, the depletion of popular eating fish has forced fishermen to turn to other types of fish. Fish like Skate, which wasn't popular before, are now finding themselves on our dinner plates because they are the only types that are plentiful in the ocean.

Fixing the Problem

There have been various efforts to reverse the damage that overfishing has caused. In recent years, the U.S. government has imposed stricter regulations on fishermen, setting limits on the number of fish caught and restricting the use of environmentally-destructive equipment.

In New England, 'pair trawls,' two boats dragging a net to catch cod, have been outlawed. In other areas, net holes must be large enough for small fish to escape. The Coast Guard patrols the coasts and sometimes inspects vessels to enforce these fishing laws.

Other efforts include controlling the number of fishing boats in the ocean. Fishing industry leaders are calling for a national program to buy back the fishermen's boats that the government originally encouraged them to build.

In February of 1999, representatives from the world's fishing nations agreed to a voluntary United Nations plan to stop adding new fishing boats to their fleets. In a few years, as the old boats die, this plan will help reduce the fleets.

Environmentalists want the government to establish underwater national parks, areas where fishing would be prohibited. They also want to use government subsidies to promote environmentally friendly fishing techniques.

Another possible solution to the overfishing problem is to build fish farms, where farmers raise fish just to be eaten, like cattle and chickens. Today, 15-20 percent of our seafood comes from fish farms, which mostly produce salmon and shrimp.

But fish farming has its own problems. First of all, it depends on wild fish to supply it with breeders, so if the wild fish population dwindles, farming will go bust. Also, the farmed fish feed on smaller fish, so as farmers go out into the ocean to catch smaller fish, they deplete the resources for the wild fish that also depend on the small fish for food.

Fish farming has also has been known to harm the environment. Coastal habitats for wild fish are wiped out and replaced with shrimp ponds. Shrimp-farm runoff and salmon manure pollute coastal waters and spread diseases from the crowded pens to the wild waters. Even antibiotics used to control these diseases can leak out of the pens and create drug-resistant disease organisms in the water.

The only type of fish farming that does not create these problems is inland fish farming, which steers clear of the coastlines.

The fishing industry provides work for about 30 million people around the world, making a solution to this problem very important.

What do you think? What do you think we should do to save the fish, people's jobs, and the environment?

-Submitted by Alexia Elejalde