Sunday July 30, 2006
Overfishing turns oceans into deserts
Our world faces a mass breakdown of intelligence. Or, in the words of George Monbiot, a featured columnist for the Guardian newspaper in England: “The human race is destined to take a great cognitive leap backwards.”
Because of the stupidity of our present fishing practices.
Let\’s back up a little. Oceans cover 70 per cent of the planet. But because the water surface reflects light like a mirror, most of us have less idea of what\’s happening down there in the water than we have of life on Mars.
And what\’s happening down there is xenocide – the extinction of whole species.
Drastic reductions
The collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery is but one isolated example. Professor Daniel Pauly, Director of the Fisheries Center at UBC, has extensively documented the world\’s overfishing. Scientific American named him one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world.
Pauly has built a database on more than 28,000 ocean species. Catches of the world\’s “commercially preferred” fish – cod, tuna, haddock, flounder and hake – have declined by half in the last 50 years, even while efforts to harvest them have tripled.
George Monbiot describes the process: “Governments help their fishermen to wipe out local shoals, then pay them to build bigger and more powerful boats so they can go further afield. When they have cleaned out their own continental shelves, they are paid by the taxpayers to destroy other people\’s stocks.”
Currently, fleets from the European Union are scouring the waters off Senegal and Angola in Africa. Monbiot says, “West African stocks are now going the same way as North Sea cod and Mediterranean tuna.”
Two other scientists, Ransom Myers and Boris Worm, published a study in Nature showing that global stocks of predatory fish have declined by 90 per cent.
The size of trophy fish caught on expensive fishing expeditions out of Miami has dropped by about half. The big fish are not there any more.
Wasteful usages
But fish restaurants continue to feature steaks from swordfish, sharks, and tuna, despite the fact that they are now about as endangered as the Siberian tiger.
Could you imagine any restaurant getting away with promoting giant panda burgers? Or barbecued burrowing owl? Or trumpeter swan omelets? But no one seems to care that they\’re doing the same with fish.
Modern fishing is simultaneously enormously efficient and enormously inefficient. Trawling nets scoop up everything in their path – including seahorses and dolphins. But only part of that “everything” is what they want to catch.
Amanda Vincent, UBC\’s Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation, offers an example: “In shrimp trawling, only about 5 per cent of the catch is actually shrimp.” The other 95 per cent is either thrown back into the sea – alive but damaged, or dead – or processed into fertilizer or fish meal, to feed cattle, pigs, poultry, or other fish.
Fish farms, Monbiot claims, produce only about half as much fish as they consume.
Essential oils
Unfortunately for us, we humans can\’t do without fish. Fish are the major source of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is already known to be a critical factor in preventing strokes and heart attacks. Now more and more research shows that omega-3 deficiencies – especially in the womb – also contribute to dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, and other neurological dysfunctions.
Researchers at Oxford University studied 117 children suffering from learning difficulties, disruptive behaviour, and social problems. The group receiving omega-3 supplements showed three times the improvement of the group receiving placebos.
John Stein, an Oxford professor of physiology, suggests that a diet high in fish oils may have enabled prehistoric humans to take their great cognitive leap forwards. During the Paleolithic period, he says, humans ate roughly equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Today, we eat 17 times more omega-6, derived mostly from vegetable oils, than fish-based omega-3.
Other studies suggest that in North America, we may ingest up to 50 times more omega-6 oils than omega-3.
The answer should be simple – eat more fish oils.
Except that there aren\’t any more fish to catch. The oceans cannot sustain the present level of plunder, let alone an increased demand.
In the words of the British Medical Journal: “We are faced with a paradox. Health recommendations advise increased consumption of oily fish and fish oils…. However, we probably do not have a sustainable supply of long-chain omega-3 fats.”
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One solution, advocated by UBC\’s Amanda Vincent and others, is marine sanctuaries. In the Phillipines, poverty-stricken villagers have taken the lead in establishing “no-take” areas.
“We find that villagers can usually identify the problems as quickly as we can,” Vincent says. “It\’s been strictly their baby. They\’ve policed it, they\’ve enforced it, and they\’re very proud of the rapid recovery of the fish. The fishing around the reserve appears to have gone up, and other villages are now asking for help to set up their own sanctuaries because they\’ve heard from their friends and seen with their own eyes how much difference it makes.”
However, Vincent warns, “Anyone who thinks that conservation is primarily about biology is wrong; it\’s first and foremost about changing human behaviour.”
That\’s because the principle underlying all human planning, since before recorded time, has been endless growth. Our families, our pension plans, our mortgages, our urban planning, our politics, our businesses, our churches – all assume that there will be more people around in the future to share the burden.
I\’ve yet to hear of any school of economics or social work based on the principle of steady decline.
But the oceans are telling us that we have unbalanced the planetary equilibrium. Human growth and industrial fishing techniques have outpaced the ability of 70 per cent of the earth to support us.
We need to develop a new mentality based on less rather than more.
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Copyright © 2006 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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