BEN-YAMI COLUMN

WORLD FISHING, Sept. 2003

 

THE IMPERFECT OCEAN

In "Perfect Ocean: the State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean", (Island Press, 2003), Dr.Daniel Pauly, a fishery scientist of world renown and Jay Maclean, a marine biologist, assess fishery impact in the N.Atlantic Ocean.

It is the first in the Pauly edited ocean series financed by Pew Charitable Trusts. Their Environmental Program's director asked Pauly 6 questions: What are the true catches? What's their impact on the ocean's ecosystem, and what it's going to be if current trend continues? How was it before large-scale fisheries expanded? How healthy the ecosystems are now? How to improve the N.Atlantic ecosystem health?

The book answers those questions. Its "Introduction" is dramatic. It describes barren, scarred seabed peppered with empty cans, skinned sharks in agony, ghost nets strangling beautiful sea beasts, and football-field-size trawlnets taking whatever lies in their path. There's overcapacity of jumbo fishing fleets, manned by indebted fishermen, that burn more and more fuel to catch less and less fish, which is a pity, for before they started fishing in earnest, oceans were swarming with large fish, and other wonderful creatures. Since fisheries management was not heeded, say the authors, with 10 to 50% of the catch unreported, we've got a "massacre" of wildlife. Fishing has been moving down the food web, and we catch less and less large, predatory fish.

Well, with some poetic exaggerations allowed, there's much truth in the book, perhaps even nothing but the truth, but most certainly not all the truth. Evidently, the authors took a great care not to go beyond the Pew delineated framework for their book. For example, they quite rightly don't like the failed single-species biomass assessments. But weren't just such assessments the basis for the management that "was not heeded"? Shouldn't the question why it was not heeded be discussed as well? And would other assessment models do a better job?

While they write extensively on marine food web, primary production, and how fishing affects it all, I found only 30 lines about long- and short-term environmental processes, such as climate shifts that cause changes in the ocean's ecosystems. The authors fail to tell their readers how and how much such processes affect fish stocks, overall recruitment, and natural mortality.

For example, they mentioned on p.12 the post-1808, herring fishery collapse following migration pattern change, but left out of the discussion the question of why it happened. Wasn't it long before the expansion of the over-capacitated, super- efficient fishing fleets, and due to a climatic shift? The authors refrained from explaining the 1960 collapse of the spring- spawning herring fishery and its very slow recovery, and from mentioning possible non-fishing causes also with respect to fluctuations in some bottom fisheries. Not a word about all the pelagic fisheries that collapse and recuperate in historical cycles.

Although this book claims to "zoom" on whole large marine ecosystems, all it zooms on are the fishing industry's effects on ecosystem. For example, as Pauly and McLean write, the marine mammals populations, although lesser than in the 1950s, still consume in the N.Atlantic 55M MT of fish, of which, "only" 19M are targeted also by fishermen, who catch altogether some 16M MT. So the friendly marine mammals eat lots of fish, accordingly over 3 times the fisheries' catch. But the innocent reader shouldn't get nervous about it: the authors squint their "zoom" to say that the areas in which they feed only little overlap with fishing grounds. Exit the large marine ecosystems approach; enter conservation of marine mammals populations.

Which must be why the book is telling us about the WWF's (World Wildlife Foundation) recommendation to create large no-fishing sanctuaries for watching marine mammals. This is an economically and socially interesting approach: how many people can afford go whale watching? Tailored for well-to-do tourists, such sanctuaries would come on the expense of fishermen who otherwise might catch and sell to the less affluent consumers some of the prey fish that WWF and the authors of the "Perfect Ocean" would rather preserve for the performing mammals. Culling propositions only misinform the public, say the authors, for they're missing the "complex geography" whatever it means. For me it means that even where mammal feeding and fishing grounds don't overlap, schools of unruly fish that haven't read "In a Perfect Ocean" may be roaming the whole "large marine ecosystems" and create unlawful "overlaps".

To me the ridiculous aspect of this book is that a scientist like Dr.Pauly, who knows about all this, is telling us that he's "zooming on" the ocean ecosystem, but is leaving out a plentitude of factors other than fishing that influence and affect fish populations and other marine organisms: weather and climate fluctuations, mid-sea pollution by shipping and by offshore oil industry, seismic testing, explosion of over- protected populations of piscivorous mammals, flow changes in and diversion of rivers, degradation of the filtering capacity of estuaries, coastal pollution due to agricultural and municipal runoff, and to industrial waste, and the resulting loss of coastal habitats, including oceanic fishes' nursery grounds, and more. Fish eggs and larvae are extremely sensitive to pollution, temperature, amount of oxygen in water, etc., and so are many adult fishes. Ecosystems that consists of only fish and fishing simply don't exist, and a pity that the authors focus on "virtual" ecosystem prescribed by their sponsors, who excluded non-fishing related aspects.

Don't misread me; this is otherwise a well-written and informative book aimed at wide readership. But if the ocean ecosystem were run by Pauly's and McLean's fishing-oriented recommendations, would the objective of a healthy ecosystem be attained? Plenty of other recommendations are missing in this book. What about fighting coastal deterioration and pollution? And what about fishery management obsessed with mathematical models, which is not taking into account environmental fluctuations? Those who accept partial truths get biased advice. And let it be my word of warning to the book's readers.