Written by Christopher Bartlett | 01 October 2009

Eating fish is good for me, right? Well, sort of.

It is an excellent source of low fat proteins and in many cases high in omega 3.
In some cases, notably the longer living, larger fish species it can be a source of deadly heavy metals like mercury that the fish absorb over time from the waste we spoil the sea with. In March 2004 the United States FDA issued guidelines recommending that pregnant women, nursing mothers and children limit their intake of tuna and other types of predatory fish. However, if we continue to fish and consume fish as we do now, scientific studies point to all of today’s commercial fisheries being wiped by 2048. That's not good for anyone, especially as the oceans create 80% of our oxygen supply.

I was in a pub restaurant the other day and my three-year old said he wanted fish. Normally I don’t partake unless I know that the fish has been caught sustainably, but given the limited fish-friendly options on the menu (the waiting staff could not, unsurprisingly, tell me if the pork and chicken dishes had been reared on fishmeal) I enquired as to whether it was Pacific Cod. “Oooh, fussy eater are we?” replied the waitress. I limited my reply to “conscientious consumer of sustainably sourced food" was my limited reply, as further explanation would have been unwelcome and wasted on a busy afternoon.

Overfishing

Fish production and demand

A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks currently fished will collapse within fifty years. However, they also conclude that "available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible".The film The End of the Line predicts, based on scientific research and data, that this date is now 2048.

The FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 report estimates that in 2003, of the main fish stocks or groups of resources for which assessment information is available, "approximately one-quarter were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion (16%, 7% and 1% respectively) and needed rebuilding."

The threat of overfishing is not limited to the target species only. As commercial trawlers resort to deeper and deeper waters to fill their nets, they have begun to threaten delicate deep-sea ecosystems and the fish that inhabit them, such as the coelacanth. In the May 15, 2003 issue of the journal Nature, it is estimated that 10% of large predatory fish remain compared to levels before commercial fishing.

From 1950 (18 million tonnes) to 1969 (56 million tonnes) fishfood production grew by about 5% each year; from 1969 onward production has increased by 8% per annum. It is expected that this demand will continue to rise, and MariCulture Systems estimated in 2002 that, by 2010, seafood production would have to increase by over 15.5 million tonnes to meet the desire of Earth's growing population. This is likely to further aggravate the problem of overfishing, unless aquaculture technology expands to meet the needs of human population.

Overfishing has depleted fish populations to the point that large scale commercial fishing, on average around the world, is not economically viable without government assistance.  By the 1980s, economists estimated that for every $1 earned fishing, $1.77 had to be spent in catching and marketing the fish. Every penny or cent you spend on commercially caught fish is increasing your tax bill……

As we have severely depleted nearby stocks our tax contributions are spent buying commercial fishing rights in developing nations, particularly African ones, with serious and far-reaching repercussions on the lives of local subsistence fishing families. Without their age-old source of food and meagre income, they turn towards Europe and clandestine entry and employment to feed their families.

Some species' stocks are so depleted that less desirable species are labeled and marketed under the names of more expensive ones ("species substitutions"). For example, genetic analysis shows that approximately 70% of fish sold as the highly-prized "red snapper" (Lutjanus campechanus) are other species. For 1 kilo of prawns, there is 4 kg of wasted by-catch and for or every kilo of North Sea Sole caught by beam trawl up to 14kg of other species are killed, not to mention the destruction to the sea floor, with one passage of a beam trawler be in likened to sowing and planting a field seven times in one year.

• Examples of the outcomes from overfishing exist in areas such as the North Sea, the Grand Banks of North America ,and the East China Sea. In these locations, overfishing has not only proved disastrous to fish stocks but also to the fishing communities relying on the harvest.

• In the 1970s the Peruvian coastal anchovy fisheries crashed after overfishing, following an El Niño season which largely depleted anchovies from its waters. Anchovies had previously been a major natural resource in Peru; indeed, 1971 alone yielded 10.2 million metric tons of anchovies. However, in the following year, and the four after that, the Peruvian fleet's catch amounted to only about 4 million tons. This was a major loss to Peru's economy.

• The collapse of the cod fishery off Newfoundland, and the 1992 decision by Canada to impose an indefinite moratorium on the Grand Banks, is a dramatic example of the consequences of overfishing.

• The sole fisheries in the Irish Sea, the west English Channel, and other locations have become overfished to the point of virtual collapse, according to the UK government's official Biodiversity Action Plan. The United Kingdom has created elements within this plan to attempt to restore this fishery, but the expanding global human population and the expanding demand for fish has reached a point where demand for food threatens the stability of these fisheries, if not the species' survival.

• Many deep sea fish are at risk, such as orange roughy, Patagonian toothfish and sablefish. The deep sea is almost completely dark, near freezing and has little food. Deep sea fish grow slowly because of limited food, have slow metabolisms, low reproductive rates, and many don't reach breeding maturity for 30 to 40 years. A fillet of orange roughy at the store is probably at least 50 years old. Most deep sea fish are in international waters, where there are no legal protections. Most of these fish are caught by deep trawlers near seamounts, where they congregate because of food. Flash freezing allows the trawlers to work for days at a time, and modern fish finders target the fish with ease.

The UN Secretary General reported in 2006 that 95 percent of damage to seamount ecosystems worldwide is caused by deep sea bottom trawling

In Tasmania Sand-tiger sharks were overfished, allowing octopus to thrive, annihilating the lobster stock and related fishery.

97% of North Carolina's Tiger Shark population has been wiped out. This lead to an increase in cownose rays. They ate all the scallops and the 150-year old scallop fishery collapsed. When there were no more scallops for them to eat, the cownose rays died. The scallops used to eat juvenile sea urchins, so the urchin population rocketed. Young urchins eat algae, a photosynthesizing plant (consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen).

One-third of the fish landed from the oceans is fed to poultry and pigs, those reknowned marine predators. It is claimed by Paul Watson, the founder of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, that domestic cats worldwide eat more tuna than wild dolphins.... I want to see the moggy meets flipper match up to see who the real predator is.

It is also estimated that for every fish landed one is thrown back into the ocean dead.

 

Tuna

Years of poor management and over-fishing has left tuna in a perilous state. Of the 23 commercially exploited major tuna stocks identified nine are classified as fully fished, four are classified as overexploited or depleted, three are classified as critically endangered, three are endangered and three are vulnerable to extinction. All 23 stocks are heavily fished.

In August 2008 Greenpeace assessed John West, owned by private equity firm MW Brands, as the seller of the least sustainable tinned tuna sold in the United Kingdom.

Association with dolphins

Many tuna species associate with dolphins, swimming alongside them. These include yellowfin tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but not albacore or skipjack. The reason for the association is believed to be the avoidance of dolphins by sharks, which are predators of tuna. Swimming near dolphins is supposed to reduce the likelihood of the tuna being attacked by a shark.

Fishing vessels therefore search for pods of dolphins and encircle the pod with nets to catch the tuna beneath. The nets can entangle dolphins, injuring or killing them (dolphins are mammals and need to surface to breath). As a result of public outcry, methods have been made more "dolphin-friendly", now generally involving lines rather than nets. However, there are neither universal independent inspection programs nor verification of "dolphin safeness" to show that dolphins are not harmed during tuna fishing as dolphins are also carnivorous and are attracted by the baited hooks too. According to the Consumers Union, the resulting lack of accountability means claims that tuna that is "dolphin safe" should be given little credence.

 

Overfished Tuna Stocks

Nowadays, some varieties of tuna, such as the bluefin and bigeye tuna, Thunnus obesus, are threatened by overfishing, which dramatically affects tuna populations in the Atlantic and northwestern Pacific Oceans. Other areas seem to support fairly healthy populations of some of the over 48 different species of tuna —for example, the central and western Pacific skipjack tuna, Katsuwonus pelamis—but there is mounting evidence that overexploitation threatens tuna populations worldwide. The Australian government alleged in 2006 that Japan had illegally overfished southern bluefin by taking 12,000 to 20,000 tonnes per year instead of the their agreed 6,000 tonnes; the value of such overfishing would be as much as USD $2 billion. Such overfishing has resulted in severe damage to stocks. According to the WWF, "Japan's huge appetite for tuna will take the most sought-after stocks to the brink of commercial extinction unless fisheries agree on more rigid quotas". According to Charles Clover and the film “The End of The Line”, the Mitsubishi corporation, the world’s largest Bluefin trader, may be stockpiling frozen tuna and deliberately making the species extinct to control the dwindling market. The Chicago Tribune reported that some canned light tuna such as yellowfin tuna is significantly higher in mercury than skipjack tuna, and caused Consumers Union and other health groups to advise pregnant women to refrain from consuming canned tuna.

 

Aquaculture

Unfortunately farmed fish is yet to provide the answer as the species farmed are generally carnivorous. In the case of the popular and common salmon require between 1.7 and 5 kilos of fish protein to create 1kg of salmon protein. Why not just eat the fish caught to make fishmeal? Anchovy is the single most popular fish for fishmeal, but is also lovely grilled or filleted and marinated on olive oil and garlic. And is not giving growth hormones and injected with colouring. I will be looking into aquaculture in more detail in the near future.

How to eat fish responsibly

Don’t be sucked in by ambiguous labeling on supermarket fish packaging. Briefly (I will explain in more detail in a future article) pole-and-line caught fish is sustainable, line caught often means longline caught and that is so not sustainable as it leads to the deaths of an estimated 50,000 marine turtles, hundreds of thousands of sea birds, and tens of millions of sharks (not for much longer at this rate) annually. Look for Marine Stewardship Council approved products. Their website www.msc.org has an excellent database of retailers selling sustainably caught and approved products. Eat only pork and poultry products where the animal has been raised on a vegetarian diet. Look for rare-breed pork products and freedom food poultry. Watch or read “The End of the Line”. Tell everyone you know what we are doing to the oceans. Act and be part of the solution, not part of the problem.