While the rest of the blogging world spent its time watching the Lamont-Lieberman race (I count myself amongst them -- Go Ned!), an op-ed in the
Washington Post on Monday may have caught your eye. It was Dr. Sylvia Earle's piece
"Deep Threats on the High Seas", which attempts to document the losses of biodiversity in the truly inhospitable environs of the meso- and bathypelagic world, or between 200-1000m and 1000-4000m, respectively. As a marine fisheries biologist, I have a couple of thoughts and links for those interested.
More below the fold...
Let's start with a disclaimer: I have worked as a commercial fishing deckhand and all of my master's and doctoral research was done aboard a commercial pelagic longline vessel. I still work with commercial fleets and their captains, although NOT as a paid (or even unpaid) lobbyist.
That being said, let's take a couple of things from Dr. Earle and take a closer look:
At sea, indiscriminate, careless, completely unsustainable fishing techniques are increasingly employed. They destroy the habitats that produce and replenish the resources. Commercial fishing has caused significant damage to largely unknown ecosystems in the sea; depleted numerous species of fish, seabirds and marine mammals; and doomed many others to extinction.
Let's be a little careful with the bathwater and the baby. While there are some problems, the are still many
commercial fisheries that are alive and well, especially in the United States where fisheries
management is tightly controlled through a combination of state and federal management and (gasp!)
constituent participation. The main law for fisheries management is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Management and Conservation Act (reupped as the Sustainable Fisheries Act, or SFA).
[Dr. Earle:] With the depletion of many coastal fish stocks worldwide, such as the northeastern U.S. cod fishery, the fishing industry has moved on to the high seas -- the 64 percent of the ocean that extends beyond national jurisdiction.
The collapse of the northwestern Atlantic cod fishery is an extreme example that had to do more with factory trawling by foreign fleets (i.e., non-United States or Canadian, the two countries within whose EEZs the cod stocks are generally located) than by coastal overfishing, although that might have played a part. My point is, not all coastal fisheries are like cod - let's be careful with our choices of examples.
The boundaries of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are set at 200 nautical miles from the coastline, although this is affected by local geography; when two countries abut EEZs, the general (but not exclusive) practice is to "split the difference" between the zones. The Caribbean and Central American EEZs are a living example of creative EEZ drawings. Still, there's only so much encompassed by EEZs, and the planet's got lots of water, so without checking it, the 64% sounds reasonable.
[Dr. Earle:] Fishing operations target the seamounts, oceanic ridges and deep-ocean plateaus where ownership and responsibility do not lie with any nation.
As long as we're being clear which fisheries we're talking about, then sure - let's talk seamount fisheries. However, there are mechanisms for management in international waters. They're collectively called Regional Fishery Management Organizations, often abbreviated to simply RFMOs. Made up of the constituent countries, many of these operate at the international level to manage harvests sustainably. The one for the mixed groundfish fishery (including cod) I'd mentioned is the Northwest Atlantic Fishery Organization
(NAFO). Another one for Atlantic tunas, marlins, and swordfish is the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). In the Southern Ocean, where many of these deep-water fisheries target those seamounts, there is the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources(CCAMLR).
These deep-water fisheries do, in fact, often target seamounts and similar features. If you've ever had an aquarium, you know that if you take a fish in an empty tank, then place in a small pebble, the fish is almost always going to hang out near that pebble, no matter the size difference. Similar idea. Main gear types include vertical longlines, bottom trawling with nets, and (to a lesser extent) fish pots/traps. Trawling gear does cause damage to the local environment that it passes through/over.
From Michael Elvin on the FishSci listserver:
I think you're missing something. Dragnet trawling is just too efficient at scooping up everything in its path. There are photos on the web of before and after scenes, and trawling does indeed transform areas rich in benthic life into barren deserts.
This is a common view, and in some cases, there are serious impacts from bottom trawling. It's not really accurate, though, and developments in gear, such as "rock-hopper" wheels and larger or differently-shaped net openings, have contributed much to the development of much more bottom-friendly fishing equipment. Saying this sort of hyperbole isn't very productive, but it does resonate with the public. Dr. Trevor Kenchington has a
list of resources available about the development of gears to reduce or eliminate the impact to the bottom.
More importantly, not all of these slow-growing species fisheries are unsustainable. The orange roughy fisheries in Australia and New Zealand attest to that. However, for every orange roughy, there's a Patagonian toothfish (better known as "Chilean Sea Bass"), which has had a horrible time getting managed.
Back to Dr. Earle:
Last month the U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea released a report reviewing measures to protect the high seas. Ordered by the General Assembly in 2004, the report says that extremely vulnerable deep-sea habitats require protection but that fishing on the high seas often proceeds unregulated to the point of serious harm.
It notes that deep-sea bottom trawling is of particular concern, due to its tendency to result in the overfishing of both target and non-target species and to damage vulnerable ecosystems that provide critical habitat for marine life. The report cites an "urgent need" in some cases for interim steps such as a moratorium on deep-sea bottom trawling until formal conservation and management systems can be arranged.
True enough, and the report is here.
[Dr. Earle:] To date, the [proposed United Nations] moratorium is supported mostly by developing nations that do not have the financial resources to deploy costly deep-sea gear. It is opposed chiefly by a handful of countries with fleets of very large fishing vessels.
See Spain, Portugal, and Taiwan, but mostly Spain. Note that in most RFMOs now, Spain is represented by the European Community.
[Dr. Earle:] The United States has indicated that it wants to limit further expansion in high-seas bottom trawling for now, with the possibility of a moratorium in 2009. But three more years of trawls razing the deep-sea floor could cost us thousands of years of marine life in the making.
...
What especially sets the high seas apart from all other marine areas is the nearly complete lack of protection for any of this natural heritage. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to change that. Through the leadership of the United Nations, it could soon happen.
I'm not holding my breath for John Bolton to say anything. Good thing we have dedicated, professional career folks who are making sure the U.S. lead in this isn't lost.
The take-home message? Read op-eds like this carefully for half-truths about commercial fishing, but this one is generally okay. The proposed U.N. moratorium is probably a great idea, especially in the light of some groups, like the European Community, which are attempting to use deep-water fisheries to replace those coastal ones lost through years of mismanagement. Finally, get some research funds to promising young fisheries researchers to document what's there, what's likely missing, and how to be sustainable with our fisheries.
Update 1: I realized that I should add more to the part about fishing impacts to the bottom. See the note about Dr. Kenchington's website.