Overexploited
Tuna nigiri – stocks of the fish are severely depleted in European and Mediterranean waters.
Too few fish, too many fishermen – Europe plans to change its fishing quotas – By Ulrike Fokken
Everyone likes fish. The Spaniards consume 43 kilograms per person each year; the Japanese 30 kilos; Germans eat an average 17 kilos of fish annually. But the Baltic and North Seas off Germany do not produce enough to satisfy that appetite. And Spaniards currently consume around four times more than the fish stocks in the waters off their Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.
Two-thirds of the fish consumed in Europe are imported from Africa, Asia and America. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 85 percent of the world’s known fish stocks are either “fully exploited or overexploited.”
Expensive, economically lucrative fish such as tuna, cod or squid have seen their stocks severely diminished in the areas of the Atlantic Ocean close to Europe and in the Mediterranean. Some species such as bluefin tuna are in danger of disappearing altogether. Cod in the northeastern Atlantic could recover if it was fished a great deal less.
Cod, along with halibut, mackerel, sole, tuna and other expensive edible fish fall under a European Union fishing quota. For many years, European fisheries ministers set a quota that is 45 to 55 percent above the levels scientists recommend. And not every country limits its catch to the permitted quotas.
But even the act of setting quotas harms fish stocks. If fishermen have reached the quota for a given fish species – cod, for example – they can be fined for landing any more of that kind. So they throw the fish back into the sea. Fish that are too small also end up back in the water. Not all of these fish survive. Up to 40 percent of the catch can end up discarded at sea.
“The reason for discarding are EU and national legislation, not well suited for EU waters, where the majority of catches are from mixed fisheries, as well as financial interests of the fishing industry to keep only more valuable fish on board” – those words are part of a proposal to reform Europe’s fishing policies, put forward by European Commissioner for Fisheries Maria Damanaki. Her draft will go to the European Parliament in the middle of July and various committees will then debate it for the next year, before it becomes law in 2013.
One of her main goals is to restrict the amount of fish discarded. She proposes counting the entire catch toward the quota of one fish species within the catch. But fishermen will also be banned from landing mixed catches once they have reached the quota for one species in one catch.
“A simple ban on throwing fish back does not help – the first thing is to limit catching the unwanted fish,” said Peter Breckling, the chairman of the German Fisheries Association. He has called for advanced fishing technology that is more selective in the kinds of fish pulled from the water.
Highly industrialized fishing methods particularly damage the ocean and the sea floor. The vessels also pull turtles, seagulls, corals, dolphins and inedible fish from the water, damaging biodiversity.
But European countries also have different types of fishing fleets. Denmark has reformed its fisheries industry and reduced the number of boats at sea. The Netherlands has also overhauled its fleet – it is now more industrial in its approach, and the fishermen earn far more money. Germany, too, has reduced its fleet. Most fishermen there fish close to the coast – just nine of the 500 European fishing boats that ply the high seas fly a German flag.
Contrast that with Spain, which has deployed an armada of 420 ships to the world’s oceans. Its main goal in the negotiations to reform EU fishing policies is to achieve the highest quota possible.
The Spanish fishing industry is the country’s most important economic asset on the Atlantic coast – it nets the country €18 billion every year. And it is one of the few industrial sectors in Spain that is actually running smoothly.
One of Damanaki’s proposals works to Spain’s advantage: In future, fishermen would be able to sell their quotas to each other, under a system known as Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). Currently, countries and fishermen are allowed to trade quotas for different kinds of fish, swapping cod against sole, for example. In the future, quotas could be sold for money.
Breckling opposes the sale of fishing quotas because it will make Spain’s excess capacity permanent. Marine expert Nina Wolff, coordinator of the Pew Environment Foundation’s Ocean2012 campaign in Germany, also calls that proposal over the top. Trading fishing quotas, she believes, would only strengthen the industry and continue to promote damaging fishing.
Mauritania is a particularly stark example for what could happen if Europe continues to fish too much in its own waters. Some African countries have sold fishing rights to the EU – it in turn is passing these rights on to member states. Mauritania has signed the biggest such fishing treaty, which runs through the end of 2011 and is worth €97 million.
But that is a bad deal since the fish in Mauritanian waters are estimated to be worth €1.2 billion. Since the licenses are not subject to a quota the fishing grounds are quickly emptying out – and African fishermen are failing to catch enough fish for themselves.
“The entire supply chain is threatening to collapse,” said Francisco Mari, a fishing expert with Germany’s Protestant Church Development Service EED. A lack of fish also means that small businesses processing and selling fish are left without anything to sell. Fish is the biggest source of protein even for people who live far from the coast, and they could be facing severe food shortages.
Mari complains that the fish supply on the West African coast is not subject to scientific monitoring. He’s calling for the number of fishing licenses to be severely reduced to prevent the African fishing industry’s ecological and economic collapse. “The fish have to be distributed fairly,” he said.
Canada has already experienced what happens when the ocean is exploited to the hilt without oversight. For decades, the fishing industry caught excessive amounts of cod off of Newfoundland, while the Canadian government ignored the complaints of local fishermen. It banned cod fishing in 1994 – but by then the stocks had been entirely depleted. Some 40,000 people on Canada’s eastern coast lost their jobs while the entire fishing fleet was taken out of service. A few fishermen are now catching small fish along the coast once more. Cod has yet to return.