- Marine predators are on the verge of extinction, yet
the fishing industry is ripping the environment to shreds - and with impunity
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- If these animals lived on land there would be a global
outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon
no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have
the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still
we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity
chefs to teach us how to cook them.
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- A study in this week's edition of the journal Science
reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean's megafauna. The great sharks
are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip
sharks has fallen by 93 percent, tiger sharks by 97 percent and bull sharks,
dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99 percent. Just about every population
of major predators is now in freefall.
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- Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows
that more than 90 percent of large predatory fish throughout the global
oceans have gone.
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- You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts
of bear paws and tiger meat. But this is no different, as far as conservation
is concerned, from eating shark's fin soup or swordfish or steaks from
rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and
North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes
in the color supplements of respectable newspapers.
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- In terms of its impact on ecology and animal welfare,
shark fishing could be the planet's most brutal industry. While some sharks
are taken whole, around 70 million are caught every year for their fins.
In many cases, the fins are cut off and the shark is dumped, alive, back
into the sea. It can take several weeks to die. The longlines and gillnets
used to catch them snare whales, dolphins, turtles and albatrosses.
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- The new paper shows that shark catching also causes a
cascade of disasters through the foodchain. Since the large sharks were
removed from coastal waters in the western Atlantic, the rays they preyed
on have multiplied tenfold and have wiped out all the main commercial species
of shellfish.
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- Much of this trade originates in east Asia, where shark's
fin soup -- which sells for up to US$200 a bowl -- is a sign of great wealth
and rank, like caviar in Europe. The global demand for shark's fin is
rising by about 5 percent a year.
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- THE SPANISH CONNECTION
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- But if you believe that this is yet another problem for
which the Chinese can be blamed and the Europeans absolved, consider this:
The world's major importer -- and presumably re-exporter -- of sharks is
Spain. Its catches have increased ninefold since the 1990s and it has resisted
-- in most cases successfully -- every European and global effort to conserve
its prey.
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- The Spanish defend their right to kill rare sharks as
fiercely as the Japanese defend their right to kill rare whales. The fishing
industry, traditionally dominated by Galician fascists, exerts an extraordinary
degree of leverage over the socialist government.
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- The Spanish government, in turn, usually gets its way
in Europe. The EU, for example, claims to have banned the finning of sharks.
But the ratio it sets for the weight of fins to the weight of bodies landed
by fishermen is 5 percent. As edible fins make up only 2 percent of the
shark's bodyweight, this means that two-and-a-half finless sharks can
be returned to the water for every one that comes ashore.
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- Even this is not enough for the Spanish, whose members
of the European Parliament have been demanding that the percentage is raised.
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- Northern European civilization doesn't come out of this
very well, either. In 2001, the British government promised to protect
a critically endangered species called the angel shark, whose population
in British waters was collapsing. It ducked and dithered until there was
no longer a problem: the shark is now extinct in the North Sea.
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- Why do we find it so hard to stand up to fishermen? This
tiny industrial lobby seems to have governments in the palm of its hand.
Every year, the EU sets catch limits for all species way above the levels
its scientists recommend. Governments know that they are allowing the
fishing industry to destroy itself and to destroy the ecosystem on which
it depends. But nothing is sacred, as long as it is underwater.
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- In November, the UN failed even to produce a resolution
urging a halt to trawling on the sea mounts at the bottom of the ocean.
These ecosystems, which are only just beginning to be explored, harbor
great forests of deepwater corals and sponges in which thousands of unearthly
species hide. But we can't summon the will to stop the handful of boats
that are ripping them to shreds.
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- FISHING LOBBY
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- The power of the fishermen's lobby explains the lack
of protection for marine predators. Though fish species far outnumber mammal
species, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species protects
654 kinds of mammal and just 77 kinds of fish. Trade in only nine of these
is subject to a complete ban.
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- The rules that do get passed are ignored by fishermen
and governments. Last Sunday, I stood with a fisheries manager on the banks
of a famous sea trout river in Wales. Perhaps I should say a famous former
sea trout river in Wales. For the past four years, scarcely any fish --
sea trout or salmon -- have appeared. He was not sure why, but he told
me that trawlers in the Irish Sea land boxes of what appear to be bass;
hidden under the top layer are salmon and sea trout.
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- No one seems to care enough to stop them: Government
monitoring appears to be non-existent. The pressure group Oceana walks
into European ports whenever there's a public holiday and finds hundreds
of kilometers of illegal drift nets stowed on the boats. Where are the
official inspectors?
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- Of course, governments plead poverty. Which makes you
wonder why they decided last year to allocate 3.8 billion euros (US$5.1
billion) to the destruction of the marine environment. This is what you
and I are now paying in subsidies to keep the ocean wreckers afloat. The
money buys new engines and boats for young fishermen hoping to expand their
business. For the same cost you could put a permanent inspector on every
large fishing vessel in European waters.
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- If we don't act, we know what will happen. Another paper
published in Science suggests that on current trends we'll see the global
collapse of all the species currently caught by commercial fishermen by
2048. Yet, if we catch the ecosystems in time -- with temporary fishing
bans and the creation of large marine reserves -- they can recover with
remarkable speed. I hope British ministers, now drafting a new marine bill,
have read this study.
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- But beyond a certain point the collapse is likely to
be permanent. Off the coast of Namibia, where the fishery has crashed as
a result of over-harvesting, we have a glimpse of the future. A paper in
Current Biology reports that the ecosystem is approaching a "trophic
dead- end." As the fish have been mopped up they have been replaced
by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one. The jellyfish eat
the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably irreversible.
We have entered, the paper tells us, the "era of jellyfish ascendancy."
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- It's a good symbol. The jellyfish represents the collapse
of the ecosystem and the spinelessness of the people charged with protecting
it. This story has been viewed 624 times.
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