rockhopper
02-19-2009, 09:39 PM
I found this old article but it was a good read.
How Fisheries Are Making Big Fish Disappear
BY JIM WILSON
Illustration by Paul DiMare
Published in the September 2003 issue.
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Click to enlarge (javascript:showImage('http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/tb_tuna-lg.jpg','Big%20fish%20are%20vanishing%20because%20 of%20fisheries%20practices%20that%20ignore%20basic %20science%2E');)
Big fish are vanishing because of fisheries practices that ignore basic science.
The best time to walk the beach in Falmouth, Mass., is a half-hour before sunrise. Night tides have erased evidence of the tourists who assault Cape Cod by day. Until the sun rises to draw the horizon, the ocean appears endless. This is how the world must have looked when it was new. It is as beautiful a sight as you will ever see. It is also quite instructive. Looking into the sheer vastness of the sea, it is easy to understand how we came to view the world's oceans as an endless frontier teeming with an infinite bounty. Now we know better.
"For centuries we have viewed the oceans as beyond our ability to harm and their bounty beyond our ability to deplete," says Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission. "The evidence is clear that this is no longer true." In June 2003, the independent and bipartisan Pew Commission released the results of its 3-year nationwide study of the condition of the oceans. The report, titled "Ecological Effects Of Fishing In Marine Ecosystems Of The United States," is the first detailed look at our vast marine resources in 30 years. Its findings are as chilling as the icy waters from which generations of New England fishermen once hauled 200-pound Atlantic cod.
The laws that we thought were protecting both our oceans and the fisheries industry have utterly failed. "If we are serious about saving our fisheries and protecting the sea's biodiversity, then we need to make swift and perhaps painful decisions to preserve and maintain the oceans' ecosystems," says Paul Dayton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. He is the lead author of the 144-page report.
Obsolete Laws
It has been said that the problems facing the seas are as difficult to sort out as a tangle of fishing line. What is rarely mentioned is that the line traces back to a single core problem: Politicians have listened to lobbyists when they should have been heeding scientists.
"The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act provides the broadest articulation of American marine fisheries policy," explains Pew Oceans Commission spokesman Justin Kenney. "Originally crafted in 1976, the law is based on three outdated principles." First, it emphasizes short-term economic gains for the fisheries industry over long-term conservation. Second, it leaves fish conservation and catch allocation up to the fisheries' industry-dominated councils. And third, it allows commercial fishing in areas where there are no fish conservation plans.
The net result is that stocks of grouper and Atlantic salmon are in danger of approaching critically low levels. The numbers of Pacific cod, wild shellfish and mahi-mahi are also dropping, but not as precipitously.
Happily, the stocks of Alaska salmon, Pacific halibut and striped bass are thriving. The reason these species can be eaten without a twinge of guilt is that their stocks have been well managed. The Pew Commission believes that applying similar scientifically sound management practices on a global basis will ensure a sustainable supply of more types of fish.
Sound Science
As simple and as logical as it seems, getting scientifically sound protection laws on the books has proved a near-impossible task. The chief obstacle is that restoring stocks means limiting the size of fish catches and setting aside productive fishing grounds as closed reserves. Both restrictions take money out of the pockets of individual fishermen and owners of commercial fishing vessels, who together constitute a powerful lobbying voice in Washington.
The collision between the scientists and lobbyists was predictable. "U.S. ocean policy is a hodgepodge of narrow laws that has grown by accretion over the years, often in response to crisis and is in need of reform to reflect the substantial changes in our knowledge," the Pew Commission concludes.
The commission's report outlines what it believes can be done to strike a balance between the economic needs of the fisheries industry and the more basic human need to maintain the sustainability of an important source of food. Part of the proposed solution is to go beyond traditional catch restrictions and regulate the way fish are caught. Among other things, the commission wants limitations on netting techniques that unintentionally kill undersize and unwanted fish. They also want controls on deep-sea fishing gear, such as the weighted nets that flatten the seabed as fishermen harvest wild shrimp. Killing the myriads of little critters found on the seafloor deprives those higher on the marine food chain of their dinner. Less food means fewer big fish survive.
At the very top of the Pew Commission list of proposed changes is a plan to create a new American mind-set toward commercial fishing. This, it says, will begin with the passage of a National Oceans Policy Act that makes the protection, maintenance and restoration of the seas a national priority.
And what do the fiercely independent Cape Cod fishermen who have fought government regulations tooth and nail think of such a sweeping reform? I'll tell you after I talk to the guy setting up the hot dog concession on the beach. He used to be a commercial fisherman.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/law_enforcement/1280941.html?page=2
How Fisheries Are Making Big Fish Disappear
BY JIM WILSON
Illustration by Paul DiMare
Published in the September 2003 issue.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/images/s.gif
http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/tb_tuna-lg.jpg (javascript:showImage('http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/tb_tuna-lg.jpg','Big%20fish%20are%20vanishing%20because%20 of%20fisheries%20practices%20that%20ignore%20basic %20science%2E');)
Click to enlarge (javascript:showImage('http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/tb_tuna-lg.jpg','Big%20fish%20are%20vanishing%20because%20 of%20fisheries%20practices%20that%20ignore%20basic %20science%2E');)
Big fish are vanishing because of fisheries practices that ignore basic science.
The best time to walk the beach in Falmouth, Mass., is a half-hour before sunrise. Night tides have erased evidence of the tourists who assault Cape Cod by day. Until the sun rises to draw the horizon, the ocean appears endless. This is how the world must have looked when it was new. It is as beautiful a sight as you will ever see. It is also quite instructive. Looking into the sheer vastness of the sea, it is easy to understand how we came to view the world's oceans as an endless frontier teeming with an infinite bounty. Now we know better.
"For centuries we have viewed the oceans as beyond our ability to harm and their bounty beyond our ability to deplete," says Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission. "The evidence is clear that this is no longer true." In June 2003, the independent and bipartisan Pew Commission released the results of its 3-year nationwide study of the condition of the oceans. The report, titled "Ecological Effects Of Fishing In Marine Ecosystems Of The United States," is the first detailed look at our vast marine resources in 30 years. Its findings are as chilling as the icy waters from which generations of New England fishermen once hauled 200-pound Atlantic cod.
The laws that we thought were protecting both our oceans and the fisheries industry have utterly failed. "If we are serious about saving our fisheries and protecting the sea's biodiversity, then we need to make swift and perhaps painful decisions to preserve and maintain the oceans' ecosystems," says Paul Dayton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. He is the lead author of the 144-page report.
Obsolete Laws
It has been said that the problems facing the seas are as difficult to sort out as a tangle of fishing line. What is rarely mentioned is that the line traces back to a single core problem: Politicians have listened to lobbyists when they should have been heeding scientists.
"The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act provides the broadest articulation of American marine fisheries policy," explains Pew Oceans Commission spokesman Justin Kenney. "Originally crafted in 1976, the law is based on three outdated principles." First, it emphasizes short-term economic gains for the fisheries industry over long-term conservation. Second, it leaves fish conservation and catch allocation up to the fisheries' industry-dominated councils. And third, it allows commercial fishing in areas where there are no fish conservation plans.
The net result is that stocks of grouper and Atlantic salmon are in danger of approaching critically low levels. The numbers of Pacific cod, wild shellfish and mahi-mahi are also dropping, but not as precipitously.
Happily, the stocks of Alaska salmon, Pacific halibut and striped bass are thriving. The reason these species can be eaten without a twinge of guilt is that their stocks have been well managed. The Pew Commission believes that applying similar scientifically sound management practices on a global basis will ensure a sustainable supply of more types of fish.
Sound Science
As simple and as logical as it seems, getting scientifically sound protection laws on the books has proved a near-impossible task. The chief obstacle is that restoring stocks means limiting the size of fish catches and setting aside productive fishing grounds as closed reserves. Both restrictions take money out of the pockets of individual fishermen and owners of commercial fishing vessels, who together constitute a powerful lobbying voice in Washington.
The collision between the scientists and lobbyists was predictable. "U.S. ocean policy is a hodgepodge of narrow laws that has grown by accretion over the years, often in response to crisis and is in need of reform to reflect the substantial changes in our knowledge," the Pew Commission concludes.
The commission's report outlines what it believes can be done to strike a balance between the economic needs of the fisheries industry and the more basic human need to maintain the sustainability of an important source of food. Part of the proposed solution is to go beyond traditional catch restrictions and regulate the way fish are caught. Among other things, the commission wants limitations on netting techniques that unintentionally kill undersize and unwanted fish. They also want controls on deep-sea fishing gear, such as the weighted nets that flatten the seabed as fishermen harvest wild shrimp. Killing the myriads of little critters found on the seafloor deprives those higher on the marine food chain of their dinner. Less food means fewer big fish survive.
At the very top of the Pew Commission list of proposed changes is a plan to create a new American mind-set toward commercial fishing. This, it says, will begin with the passage of a National Oceans Policy Act that makes the protection, maintenance and restoration of the seas a national priority.
And what do the fiercely independent Cape Cod fishermen who have fought government regulations tooth and nail think of such a sweeping reform? I'll tell you after I talk to the guy setting up the hot dog concession on the beach. He used to be a commercial fisherman.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/law_enforcement/1280941.html?page=2