In "Rocking the Bluefin Boat," conservation biologist Molly Lutcavage teams up with commercial tuna fisherman to gather data about the giant bluefin tuna. As unlikely as this collaboration seems, the fisherman who work with Lutcavage know that good scientific data is crucial to their livelihoods. Reliable data means effective management, without which the vast majority of wild fish are rapidly disappearing from the world's oceans.
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People have been fishing for food since the dawn of human history. After World War II, however, the increasing industrialization and globalization of commercial fishing has led to the depletion of several important fisheries.

The out-of-whack numbers indicated that the Chinese could only have been catching about half of what they were reporting. Why the dramatic inflation?

"We've seen fisheries fail on the East Coast of America, we've seen them fail in the North Sea, we've seen them fail off the Grand Banks," says Dr. Reg Watson, senior research fellow at the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia. "So, our expectation is that things are not right in the world of global fisheries."

Data bears out this expectation. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations began collecting global fish-catch statistics in 1950. Ever-larger fishing fleets and increasing technological sophistication allowed the total global catch to increase as much as 6% each year until 1969, tripling from 18 million tons caught to 56 million.

About one-third of all fish caught ends up as feed for cattle or fertilizer for crops.

But despite bigger and faster boats, better fish-finding technology and better refrigeration, total global catch rates increased by just 2% each year throughout the 1970s and '80s. Global fish catch leveled off in the 1990s, as regional fisheries like the cod stocks off New England crashed. But one region seemed impervious to overfishing. In 2000, the FAO noted that "China has reported increases of fish production and shows little sign of slowing down."

What's different about China?

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Photos: NOAA ;EPA