When John Cabot first sailed to North America in 1498 he wrote that fish were so plentiful (in the area now known as the Grand Banks off Newfoundland) by merely lowering a basket into the ocean one could catch the teeming fish. Fish stock today on the Grand Banks are almost eradicated ... most of the overfishing having occurred in the last 50 years. Canadian fisheries have banned most, if not all, fishing in the Grand Banks area within the jurisdiction of Canada.
The problem, from what I remember, are the Europeans. A long time ago, the waters around western Euope were overfished to the point where there wee no viable fish stocks left. Then the Eurpean fleets moved off the African coast, overfished and removed all the viable stock there, too. Now they've migrated to off the North American coast and are doing the same thing. Several years ago, the Canadian navy seized one of these European ships (Spanish I believe) and found they were keeping two sets of logs. One for information to government agencies, and another, truthful set for themselves. THey were taking much more than their quata, taking species that aren't supposed to be fished and they completely ignored the size limits, too. It is quite conceivable that when they are done raping the fisheries off the north Atlantic coast, they will move to the waters off Florida and do the same thing there.
Raise chickens that taste like fish. Problem solved.
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
RE: The idea that supply and demand will manage this, I'm not so sure.
1. You don't have private ownership of the stock. Therefore there is no applicability of of ideas relative to enlightened use of the resources from an owners POV.
There is no private ownership, but there is a COST of ownership which is the important factor. As resources become more scarce the cost of ownership increases, it takes more time and energy to acquire the same amount of fish as previously. Because costs increase, prices must also increase but in a constrained environment because initially you will have the same number of boats chasing fewer fish. Therefore, fish yields per boat will decrease, costs/fish increase and even though prices must go up the less efficient fishing operations will be driven out of business by intolerably low profit margins or negative cash flow.
2. Your idea that it will self regulate assumes (though I don't think you are aware of it) a random distribution of the resource throughout the sea. But that is not the case. There are a few spots, that can be found where the fishing is still very good, those spots are fewer and fewer, but those who find them can still fish them to death.
No doubt. The fisherman who can consistently yield more fish will defeat the lesser capable fisherman who must cease operating. Once the lesser capable fisherman have ceased operating then total number of fishing vessels decline and less surface area of the ocean is scoured. Previously low-yield regions will be freer to regenerate, and indeed may even remain untouched for long periods since there will be fewer boats "scouting" new territories. Opportunity will exist to repopulate.
3. I doubt COd or Haddock will become totally extinct, but without some sort of private ownership of the entire habitat or regulated management of it, they will be useless. NOte most regulation doesn't work. Depending on the type of fish, you need to be very smart and apply different forms of regulation. For some fish, those that live real deep, a size limit is meaningless, because once you bring them up from that deep, if they are too small and you let them go, they just die. For those situations you need totally ban on fishing for a season. I'm sure you are familiar with the situation with striped bass. They are back, for real, and they really were gone. And it would seem difficult to make a case that that isn't a good thing, or that the government didn't do it.
The striped-bass is a different situation than primary sea-yields such as cod, plaice, haddock etc. There are no alternate fish to replace cod, plaice, haddock etc. The government can prematurely drive the cost of ownership higher to drive out less efficient operations, and price the products higher so that demand synthetically decreases. If done intelligently it would encourage the accelerated development of salt water fisheries. That's good. But the government does very little intelligently, the free-markets will find the best solutions. If the government merely accelerates a truly inevitable situation perhaps that's not so bad. But we must still confirm the true nature of the situation, and somehow guarantee that government regulation does not do more harm than good by omnibus loading of biased regulations. (biased by political preference, corporate preference and religious preference (envirodoctrinairians)). I have no confidence we can manage the government regulation succesfully.
4. Fish farming is the what the market is proposing to solve this problem. More fish cheaper. As the techniques improve and the ocean stock is reduced, certain varieties will become more prevalent as a farmed fish. As long as we are O.K. with getting our fish from a controlled genetic pool and having no sport fishing to speak of this might work. The market is brutal, it will solve particular problems. But if one of those problems is the idea that the sea should be full of fish that sport fishers can catch cheap, that could become prohibitively expensive to solve. But the consumers of that 'good' have experienced it their whole lives and don't see why it can't continue to be so. The market doesn't gurrantee any problem will be solved at the price we'd all like it to be solved at.
Farmed fish are great capitalistic solutions. Forestry and fresh-water fish are excellent precedents. I'm not worried about genetics, that is easily managed, should it become problematic, through replenishment of the gene pool.
Sport fishing is irrelevent. One fish per millions.
For instance, we might have more elephants today if we allowed them to be aggressively bred in captivity so that we might harvest their tusks (provided the market in ivory justifies the expense). However, we let the government attempt to solve the problem by abolishing demand entirely. Instead leaving an underground market, and the killing of wild elephants with much more devastating results to their population. Farm bred elephants would have eliminated the success for wild-kills by driving the price of ivory down, and making it more available. Wild poached elephants would have ceased much quicker and effectiv ely. There is no reason we couldn't breed elephants for profit as we do other cattle, except for romantic notions. Now, there is no profit in breeding elephants. pity.
Be careful about applying "free market" assumptions when there is no private ownership.
The cost of ownership is the determing factor. The cost increases as supplies decline, thus free-market principles will work smoothly. Nothing regulates markets more effectively than the $$ and the cost of ownership versus the margin of sales.
Regards,
PS: Can you detail more about the striped-bass situation? Is it truly analagous?
One of the greatest tasting fish ever the Toutouva was wiped out in the Gulf of California by overfishing. They are gone. The factory ship concept has been a disaster for fish populations.
Not true. Many of the countries doing the overfishing are subsidizing the fleets and the price in the market. Once the fish are gone it may be a long time before they come back. And the biggest offenders will never cooperate anyway.
The people who think the free market is the answer to everything are as silly as the Marxists who think the govt. is the answer to everything.
In the US fish are eaten for a change from meat or health reasons. In many countries the opposite is true. Fish are eaten in one form or another every meal. That is where the fish are going not McD's for 3x5s.
Here is a more balanced article. Notice that they admit the stocks are making a recovery. Which in fact they are from my personal involvment in fishing for cod and haddock. Many more fish around now than 10 years ago.
This is a complicated matter,and this gloom and doom article is about 10 years behind the curve. - Tom
N. Atlantic fish stocks fading, study finds By Beth Daley, Globe Staff, 2/17/2002
New England's fabled cod and haddock, along with many other fish species, will all but disappear within a decade from the North Atlantic if drastic measures aren't taken to stop overfishing, according to one of the most comprehensive reviews of fishing ever conducted.
While some New England fish species seem to be increasing in numbers, the report, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and released yesterday in Boston, said their recovery is not telling the whole story: North Atlantic fish stocks are so depleted that there are barely enough mature fish to produce another generation.
The collapse of fish populations is occurring, said the study, because the population of fish that people eat diminishes while commercial fishing rises.
The North Atlantic has about one-sixth the number of fish it had in 1900 and is being fished eight times as intensively, scientists say. Fishermen are also chasing species ever lower on the food chain as bigger fish are depleted.
''With few exceptions, we are going to lose most fisheries in the next decade if we don't quickly mend our ways,'' said Daniel Pauly, a University of British Columbia scientist who headed the study. The group announced its results at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
''It may sound like a doomsday scenario, but the decline is actually accelerating. Even where stocks are doing better, they are still hovering at the bottom of a pit,'' Pauly said.
The group of 10 scientists and about 50 consultants undertook the 21/2-year analysis after becoming frustrated by the lack of any oceanwide fisheries information. The group is composed of fishery scientists, biologists, and economists from research institutions in Europe and North America.
Most researchers and regulators tend to focus on only one species or geographical area and little of the information has been pieced together.
The scientists, however, did just that, synthesizing millions of numbers regarding fish species, catches, and populations over generations to come up with a model of the North Atlantic.
While the scientists do not have any power to make policy, their study is expected to weigh heavily with regulators as decisions are made in coming months to further protect New England's fish.
Their proposed solutions are sure to be considered drastic by many fishermen: Thousands of square miles set aside as ''no-take'' zones where fish are as protected as bears are in a national park; large reductions in fishing fleets; and abolition of most subsidies to industrial fishing fleets.
Fishermen, many of whom say stocks aren't nearly as imperiled as scientists claim, have faced increasing restrictions in the last seven years as regulators attempt to rebuild scallop, flounder, and other species off New England. A patchwork of closures, limited fishing days, and fishing gear that let more fish escape are now in place.
Just in the last year, the effort seemed to pay off with the re-opening of some scallop beds and cod so plentiful lobstermen were pulling them up in traps.
''It is unbelievable to suggest the stocks are about to vanish,'' said David Bergeron, coordinator of the Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership, an association of state fishing groups. ''There are more fish out there now than there has been in a generation. We already have so many closures [of areas to fishing]; how many more do they want?''
Once, fishing off New England's coast was the stuff of legend. Georges Bank, an ancient submerged island, was considered one of the most important fishing areas in the world. Cod, haddock, herring, clams, and lobsters thrived there. Europeans came to Massachusetts in part for the cod, and until the 1990s the supply seemed limitless.
But overfishing led to one fishery after another in the 1990s being declared exhausted. After cod and haddock were fished out, fishermen began harvesting ''trash fish'' they used to throw away, such as the spiny dogfish. Britain created a hot market for that whitefish, using it in fish and chip dinners.
Soon, however, those stocks also collapsed, and federal regulators came under fire for not doing their job to help all fish populations' recovery. Last month, US District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled regulators weren't doing enough to prevent overfishing, a finding that could lead to further restrictions.
Authors of the new study echoed the judge, saying regulators have ''largely failed'' to prevent overfishing in large part because they looked at fishing as a problem of individual species, not an oceanwide one.
''That's essentially moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic,'' said Andy Rosenberg, a University of New Hampshire dean who spearheaded the partial fishing closures on Georges Bank when he worked for the National Marine Fisheries Services.
In the last 50 years, the catch of popular fish species such as cod, tuna, and haddock has decreased by more than half despite a tripling in fishing across the North Atlantic, the study found. It is not just that there are more boats; sophisticated technology also makes the fish easier to catch. Countries spend $2.5 billion in taxpayer's money each year to ''search out the last fish left,'' in the North Atlantic, said Rashid Sumaila of the Michelsen Institute in Norway, who conducted an economic analysis as part of the study.
At the same time, fish gets more expensive every year, he noted. US seafood prices, especially for lobsters and shrimp, have increased 20-fold since 1950. New Englanders can continue to eat their favorite fish because much of the seafood is imported from developing countries, a practice that the scientists said should not be allowed to continue.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, one of the prime regulators of fishermen, declined to comment on the report, saying it had not yet seen it. However, Mike Sissenwine, director of the agency's Northeast Fishery Science Center, agreed regulators usually have not pushed for more stringent fishing restrictions because of ''economic and social backlash'' from the public.
The scientists yesterday said regulators must ignore political and social pressure and do what is best for the ocean. They suggest that many incentives and government aid for fishermen, whether a break on fuel tax or money for new boats, be abolished.
But it's the idea of creating large protected areas of the ocean that will upset fishermen most. While the report's scientists were unsure how large the ''no-take'' zones should be, they agreed each needed several thousand square miles to be effective.
''It's just like creating a park,'' said Rosenberg. ''The areas have to be large so you can get a vibrant habitat. That's just the reality of it.''
While closures do exist in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank, the scientists said they are too small.
Worldwide, less than 1 percent of ocean waters have such protection, according to the Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental agencies. That group and others recently conducted a poll that found 74 percent of New Englanders support protected zones.
But Pauly said that such closures work only if done in tandem with reductions in fishing pressure. And he warned against the urge to reopen closed areas after stocks make initial recoveries.
''We rebuild it again, reopen it, and then we fish it again,'' said Pauly. For example, he said, while New England cod stocks are larger than they were 10 years ago, they are still dramatically lower than in the 1960s.
''You may think we are making headway with a few individual stocks, but overall we are unequivocally losing the battle to manage fisheries in the North Atlantic,'' said Pauly. ''The problem is profound at an ocean-wide level.''
Teddy Roosevelt writes of hunting bear in the South (Georgia, I believe) around 1900 - that the were common then. Can you still do that now?
Re: Fish farming -- this has worked very well for salmon. But tuna are huge fish, and cod used to be. Farming massive fish is less practical. Property rights are indeed the best solution. Tradable fishing permits are a potential substitute.
So eat catfish. Higher price = lower demand = less fishing pressure = species recovers (until the price drops again).
