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While China was not the only nation to over-report its catch,
because its numbers accounted for almost a fifth of the world
total, the inflation obscured the reality of what was happening
to global fish.
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Millions of dolphins, turtles, and other non-edible fish
are caught and killed by commercial fisherman each year.
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"On
the global level, what the statistics were telling us is that
the fisheries were stable and in fact possibly even increasing,"
says Watson. "When you take away this inflation from the global
total, you're left with a figure that has been dropping since
1988."
Watson
hopes that this more accurate - if bleaker - picture of the
world's oceans will jolt governments and commercial fishermen
out of their complacency and bring about stricter fisheries
policies. The ever-declining numbers of fish, combined with
the well-documented decrease in average size and age of fish
caught leave little scientific doubt that "we've had the best
of the world's oceans," says Watson. "Perhaps we should be
a little more conservative when we're building big fleets
to try to exploit what look like limited resources."
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"The sea has become the place
you go when you have no other income...It's going to be
a painful process... there isn't an unlimited resource
to be taken."
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Many
people believe that fish farming is the obvious answer; however,
many fish farms still depend on wild fish as feed. (Additionally,
the mere existence of domesticated fish can have a negative
impact on wild populations.) Even if you never eat fish,
about a third of the total global catch is ground up and used
as feed for cattle, poultry and farmed fish or as fertilizer
for crops. So much of the current global food supply depends
heavily on rapidly disappearing wild fish.
"It's
very interconnected and we've been coming at it from both
ends, as it were," says Watson. "It's nothing like we've over-fished
one type of fish. We've actually altered whole marine systems."
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No longer a solitary endeavor, international trade in
fishery commodities totaled 54 billion dollars in 1997.
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Like
most environmental issues, this one can't be solved with science
alone, but requires international cooperation among nations
and industry. To this end, Pauly, Watson and the journal Nature
are publishing a translation of their work in a Chinese oceanographic
journal in the hopes that Chinese scientists will be able
to nudge their nation's policies in the right direction.
But
Watson recognizes change will not come easily.
"The
sea has become the place you go when you have no other income,"
he says. "It's going to be a painful process. Anybody who
talks about reduction of catches around the world is not heartless,
but - as we and other people have shown - there isn't an unlimited
resource to be taken."
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Photos: NOAA ;US
Fish and Wildlife Service
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