MINING vs. FARMING:
The International State of the
Fishes
The highest global fish harvest was recorded in 1996 at 121 million tons, a fivefold increase from 1950. Despite this record harvest, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has repeatedly noted that the predicted maximum production of marine resources from currently exploited regimes has been reached. Like all harvests, the 121 million tons of fish was composed of three main sources - marine-caught, aquaculture, and inland-caught. All harvests are comprised mainly of fish extracted from marine systems, while farm-raised fish and inland captures supply the rest. Yet, while the supply of fish grow from aquaculture, the marine component continues to decline in number and quality. In 2000, the FAO stated that 72% of the world's marine fish resources are either fully exploited or in decline. This state of overexploitation has led to practices in cascade fishing, where smaller, immature individuals or different stocks of lesser value and quality replace the former stocks that existed in higher trophic levels. Thus, leading to the current declining trend in fish harvest from high-value demersal fish to lower-value pelagic fish (WWF, WRI).
Fish
account for approximately 20% of all animal protein in the human diet,
with almost 1 billion people relying solely on fish as their primary source
of protein. Furthermore, seventy-five percent of fish eaten by humans
are marine-caught, as opposed to their freshwater and farm-raised counterparts.
Given these conditions, and declining stocks of marine fish, one study
suggests that the projected decrease in fish supply over the next two
decades will not meet the demands of a growing global population. From
1990-1995, an average of 84 million tons of marine fish were caught per
year. As global population increases, FAO estimates that demand will grow
to 110 to 120 million metric tons in 2010. This demand can only be met
under the most optimistic situation, where overfishing would be controlled
to allow stock recovery and aquaculture production would double (WWF,
WRI).
The decline in fish stocks over the past 50 years is a result of many factors, including the catchability of the fish in an open-access industry that more closely resembles mining than farming. Growing national claims on fisheries and economic development policies that promote employment and foreign earnings are also factors that have aided in building a fleet that is fishing at an estimated overcapacity level of 150%. Technological advances in navigation and tracking devices, fishing equipment, and on-board processing and freezing facilities, however, have provided the greatest change in the industry by improving detection of fish, increasing the catches to hundreds of tons a day, and lengthening stays at sea to weeks and months at a time.
**Visit the Oceana website to see a sobering time-lapse clip of North Atlantic fishery stock declines**