Global Fishing Issues

Organization 1. Introduction 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their

Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and

Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and

Management

1. Introduction and Organization

Fundamental Global Fisheries Problems of: 1. Excess fishing capacity 2. Degraded and overexploited ecosystems 3. Overfished resource stocks Inter-related problems Different disciplines emphasize different aspects But multi-disciplinary and multi-pronged

approaches required No single “magic bullet” solution

1. Introduction and Organization 1. Introduction and Organization 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 Sources: FAO “Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-

1999,” in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, Part 3 Pauly et al. “Towards Sustainability in World Fisheries,” Nature,

Vol. 418, 8 August, 2002, pp. 689-695 Daniel Pauly, * Villy Christensen, Johanne Dalsgaard, Rainer

Froese, Francisco Torres Jr., “Fishing Down Marine Food Webs,” Science,Vol. 279, February 6, 1998, pp. 860-863

Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Meeting on Management of Tuna Fishing Capacity: Conservation and Socio-Economics, Madrid, March 14-18, 2004

Big increases in effective fishing effort since WWII Increases in vessel numbers and sizes Rapid technological advances

Industrial-scale fishing Trawling, purse seining, long-lining

Small-scale or artisanal Shallow tropical waters for food fish and

shrimp Compete with industrial-scale shrimp trawlers

How large is the global capture fish market?

Current FAO global figures for fiscal 2000• 94.8 million tonnes landed globally*• First-sale value = $81billion US*

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* Source: FAO SOFIA 2002 report (table 1).

Global landings slowly declining since late 1980s, by about 0.7 million tons per year (Pauly et al.)

Global consumption of seafood products has doubled over the past 30 years, driven by population growth and rising income levels.

The United States, European Union, and Japan are the "Big Three" consumers for 80% of all seafood traded internationally.

In the past 35 years, the number of people fishing in the world has doubled and most of the growth has taken place in Asia due to the growth of aquaculture and poor government enforcement of restrictions on over-fishing.

An annual average of 7.3 million tons of fish is thrown back into the sea dead or dying because they are damaged, of the wrong species, under the legal landing size, or over a vessel's quota of fish.

This figure is believed to underestimate the number of marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds also caught as by-catch.

Aquaculture has become the fastest growing food production sector in the world

Now accounts for over 30% of all fish consumed.

Most of the increase has occurred in Asian countries, with China producing 70% of the global total of farmed fish.

It takes up to 3 pounds of wild anchovies or mackerel to feed and create 1 pound of farmed salmon or shrimp.

Based on 2000 estimates, ocean-related activities directly contribute to more than $117 billion to the American economy and support well over 2 million jobs, including maritime trade, offshore oil and gas operations, and the fishing industry.

Global trends vis-à-vis MSY since 1974 (FAO)

Percentage of stocks at MSY level slightly decreased

Percentage of stocks exploited below MSY decreased steadily

Percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY has increased From about 10% in early 1970s to nearly 30%

in late 1990s Many stocks without information

Global trends vis-à-vis MSY since 1974 (FAO)

Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Increasing proportion of stocks exploited beyond MSY until late 1980s or early 1990s

In North Atlantic, situation has improved and stabilized in 1990s

In North Pacific, situation has remained unstable

Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in tropical (Central and Southern) Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in tropical (Central and Southern) Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Growing percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY in both tropical oceans

Deteriorating situation, with possible exception of tropical Atlantic, where stabilization might have started

Status of Stocks in 1999 (FAO)

Status of Stocks in 1999 (FAO)

In 1999, vis-à-vis MSY 4% of stocks underexploited 21% moderately exploited 47% fully exploited 18% overexploited 9% depleted 1% recovering In sum, 72% of stocks at or above MSY level

Myers and Worm (Nature 2003) claim that the world’s oceans have lost over 90% of large predatory fish as compared to their pre-1970’s levels.

FAO takes a much more conservative view, but agrees that “an increasing number of fisheries are either fully exploited or over-exploited.”

Fishing Down Food Webs The mean trophic level of the species groups

reported in Food and Agricultural Organization global fisheries statistics declined from 1950 to 1994. 

Globally, trophic levels of fisheries landings appear to have declined in recent decades at a rate of about 0.1 per decade,

This reflects a gradual transition in landings from long-lived, high trophic level, piscivorous bottom fish toward short-lived, low trophic level invertebrates and planktivorous pelagic fish.

Fishing Down Food Webs This effect, also found to be occurring in

inland fisheries, is most pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere.

Fishing down food webs (that is, at lower trophic levels) leads at first to increasing catches, then to a phase transition associated with stagnating or declining catches.

These results indicate that present exploitation patterns are unsustainable.

Status of Tuna Stocks (FAO)

Global Catches (mt) of Tunas

0

1000000

2000000

3000000

4000000Yea

r

1955

1961

1967

1973

1979

1985

1991

1997

mt Global Tunas

Trends in the catch of the principal market species of tunas by ocean

Trends in the world catch of tunas by species

Trends in the catch of tunas from the Pacific Ocean

Integrated models

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

7,000,000

Adu

lt bi

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s (t)

YellowfinBigeyeAlbacore

Japanese longline CPUE

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

CPU

E (k

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r 100

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ks)

YellowfinBigeyeAlbacore

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

F/Fmsy

Adult biomass

0.00E+00

2.00E+05

4.00E+05

6.00E+05

8.00E+05

1.00E+06

1.20E+06

1.40E+06

1.60E+06

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Abundance of Pacific Tunas

Trends in the catch of tunas from the Atlantic Ocean

Trends in the world catch of bluefin tunas

Organization 1. Introduction and Organization 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their

Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and

Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and

Management

3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity Source: Pauly et al.

Organization 1. Introduction and Organization 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their

Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and

Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and

Management

4. Aquaculture

Organization 1. Introduction and Organization 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their

Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and

Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and

Management

5. Root Causes of Problem 1. Expanding derived demand for resources

and increased productivity of exploitation Ultimately, excessive population, advanced

state of technology for resource exploitation, and demand for high standard of living

Until tackle these ultimate sources of high derived demand for resources, will have terrestrial and oceanic environmental problems

Are addressing symptoms in some sense

2. Ill-structured and incomplete property rights Open access Incomplete international institutions External costs and market failure Don’t pay full economic costs of resource

exploitation • Including user cost of resource stocks• Including ecosystem services

Leads to excess capacity, ecosystem degradation, overfishing

Economic concepts of opportunity costs, trade-offs, and all costs and benefits

Trade-offs between between oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems for level of resource exploitation and ecosystem “health” No free lunch Opportunity cost to preserving oceans lies on

greater reliance on terrestrial ecosystems

Monoculture, simplistic terrestrial food webs, genetically modified foods, pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers to raise yields Great grain-growing areas of world, like Great

Plains, have devastated ecosystems as bad anything facing oceans

Human diets comprised more of plants and less of animals Eating lower on the terrestrial food chain to reduce

derived demands for resources

Organization 1. Introduction and Organization 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their

Resources: 1974-1999 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and

Biodiversity 4. Aquaculture 5. Root Causes of Problem 6. Comprehensive Conservation and

Management

6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management No single answer for multi-faceted

problem of excess fishing capacity, ecosystem degradation, and overfishing

Also case-by-case

Individual or effective common property On catches, resource stocks, fishing effort, or

areas Catches: flows from resource stocks Areas: TURFs in most developed form

Largely developed countries More difficult with complex multispecies fisheries Critically difficult to apply in developing countries Enforcement and monitoring key problems

1. Property rights when appropriate

2. Strengthen international environmental agreements for high seas and straddling stocks

Problems derive from common stocks, which migrate over expansive areas of the world’s seas

Strengthen the authority for regional tuna and other international organizations Give authority to deal with economic and social issues Including the authority to assume and assign property

rights in the fisheries Establish permanent global body to coordinate

regional commissions

• Start management with limited entry• Moratorium on fleet growth • Must deal with new entrants (allowed under int’l law)

• Strengthen management with annual vessel-level catch limits

• Assigned to individual vessels rather than to flag states

• Better if catch quotas are transferable property right• Their purchase addresses new entrant issue• Esp. coastal developing country nations

• Trade restrictions for compliance and enforcement• Vessel decommissioning scheme

3. Limited access (entry) programs “everywhere” there isn’t effective property rights regime

Highly attenuated property right Particularly exclusive use

Especially developing countries Difficult to apply property rights approach Complex multispecies fisheries in tropics where

output controls and rights ineffective Typically, combine with limits on one or more

inputs (e.g. vessel length)

4. Judicious use of vessel decomissioning and buy-back programs

In developed countries, more short- to medium-term measure to restore profitability People behave very differently when fishery is

profitable. Rights-based systems are not possible (e.g. number of

players is too high) When fishery (at industry level) is not profitable due to

excess capacity Good supplement to marine protected areas

In developing countries, more difficult to implement

5. Taxes on fisheries to raise cost of fishing and decrease input usage, fund management, vessel buy-backs, etc.

Opposite of subsidy Substitute for property rights solution in

some instances Especially high seas, complex multispecies

fisheries, international trade

6. Eliminate external costs to make consumers and producers bear full costs of consuming seafood

Eliminate subsidies Taxes on both producers and

consumers Incidence depends on elasticities

(relative strengths)

7. Comanagement Comanagement reshapes, “…the state

interventions so as to institutionalize collaboration between administration and resource users and end those unproductive situations where they are pitted against one another as antagonistic actors in the process of resource regulation.” (Baland and Platteau, p. 347)

Artisanal fisheries in developing countries

8. Judicious use of marine protected areas and marine reserves

Especially in critical habitats like spawning areas, rookeries, nursery and pupping grounds, coral reefs, beaches and nearshore for turtles, etc.

Provide insurance scheme for resource stocks and biodiversity

MPAs don’t address ill-structured property rights and excess capacity

8. Judicious use of marine protected areas and marine reserves

By themselves, MPAS tend to actually aggravate excess capacity problem in remaining open areas

Have to couple with programs to reduce fishing capacity

Controversy whether MPAs increase resource stock sizes outside and by how much and which species

9. Technology standards Improved gear Reduce incidental mortalities and bycatch (e.g. TEDs and circle vs. J hooks for sea

turtles) Reduce ecosystem degradation (e.g.

trawl) Mesh sizes and designs for escapement

10. Eco-labeling, certified fisheries, trade restrictionsUseful in some instancesMore case-by-case basis

11. Small-Scale / Artisanal Fisheries Eliminate harmful harvesting practices

Dynamite, cyanide Reserve nearshore fishing grounds and

keep out larger-scale Less destructive gear (e.g. mesh sizes) Create employment opportunities outside

of sector

11. Small-Scale / Artisanal Fisheries Create employment opportunities outside

of sector Enhance value-added from post-

harvesting activities Stop increasing investment and

technological change through aid programs, etc. Increases fishing effort on resource stocks

already over-exploited

12. Judicious reliance on aquaculture Not panacea Primarily only economically feasible for

high-valued species Derived demand for fish meal from fish

species lower down on food web E.g. anchovies, sardines

Recognize true opportunity costs, trade-offs, and costs and benefits Full costs include Ecosystem degradation for coastal shrimp aquaculture in

mangrove swamps Genetic mixing with wild species (salmon) Diseases Seed stock and feed still primarily from wild

Don’t substitute aquacultured for wild species Even feeding salmon soybean meal simply shifts problem to

monoculture agriculture in degraded terrestrial ecosystems