Monday, May 01, 2017

Degrading the Oceans, One Species at a Time.




Climate change as a distraction. Interesting idea but, sadly, true. We give a good bit of attention to climate change or the major impacts - droughts, heavy floods, severe storm events on increasing frequency, intensity and duration. Bad stuff, already killing plenty of victims in poor and vulnerable nations, plenty more to follow. But what are we missing?

In a world of woes we're vulnerable to allowing one issue to obscure others. Climate change seems to distract us from other looming catastrophes, especially mankind's excess consumption of Earth's resources. One of these essential resources now teetering on the edge of exhaustion is the global fishery.

Around the world industrial fishing fleets are "fishing down the food chain." This entails harvesting the most desirable species to "commercial extinction" before moving on to the next, slightly less desirable, species and repeating the same process.

For a long time the fishery-villains were the Europeans who sent their fleets north, west and south in pursuit of whatever they could bring in. Now, according to a New York Times report, China's industrial fishing fleet is piling on.


Overfishing is depleting oceans across the globe, with 90 percent of the world’s fisheries fully exploited or facing collapse, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. From Russian king crab fishermen in the west Bering Sea to Mexican ships that poach red snapper off the coast of Florida, unsustainable fishing practices threaten the well-being of millions of people in the developing world who depend on the sea for income and food, experts say.

But China, with its enormous population, growing wealth to buy seafood and the world’s largest fleet of deep-sea fishing vessels, is having an outsize impact on the globe’s oceans.

Increasingly, China’s growing armada of distant-water fishing vessels is heading to the waters of West Africa, drawn by corruption and weak enforcement by local governments. West Africa, experts say, now provides the vast majority of the fish caught by China’s distant-water fleet. And by some estimates, as many as two-thirds of those boats engage in fishing that contravenes international or national laws.
...

According to one study by Greenpeace, subsidies for some Chinese fishing companies amount to a significant portion of their income. For one large state-owned company, CNFC Overseas Fisheries, the $12 million diesel subsidy it received last year made the difference between profit and loss, according to a corporate filing.

“Chinese fleets are all over the world now, and without these subsidies, the industry just wouldn’t be sustainable,” said Li Shuo, a global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia. “For Senegal and other countries of West Africa, the impact has been devastating.”

“We are facing an unprecedented crisis,” said Alassane Samba, a former director of Senegal’s oceanic research institute. “If things keep going the way they are, people will have to eat jellyfish to survive.”

When it comes to global fishing operations, China is the indisputable king of the sea. It is the world’s biggest seafood exporter, and its population accounts for more than a third of all fish consumption worldwide, a figure growing by 6 percent a year.

Overfishing is a global problem. Like many crises it's least felt in the relatively affluent nations, especially those with large coastlines and inshore fish stocks. The poorest third of the world for whom fish represent their major source of food protein will, once again, take it in the neck.

What China is doing is what European fishing fleets have done for centuries, plying distant coasts wherever fish stocks remain available. There seems to be no will to stop until global fish stocks are fully collapsed. We're already 90% of the way there.











15 comments:

Toby said...

When in my teens I read many articles about the bounty of the oceans. The operative word was always unlimited. Of course, there is always a limit. Humans suffer the same problem of all other species: we consume and multiply until the source of food is gone and then we do a mass starvation. There are countless historical examples. This time it will be world wide.

Lorne said...

Our fixation on continual growth, premised on inexhaustible supply of resources, is surely one of our Achilles heels, eh, Mound and Toby?

The Mound of Sound said...

Lorne, like Toby and yours truly, we're of a vintage that has witnessed enormous, fundamental change in the planet and in mankind over the span of our own lifetimes. We were born in an era of all time record population growth but that post-war growth just continued, on and on, until the overall population has tripled from the point of our birth. A threefold increase in just one lifetime. Our species alone has filled the Earth to overflowing and Earth is beginning to bite back. It's like something emerging through a dense fog. We can sense the change afoot perhaps even more than we can see it just yet.

Anonymous said...

I well remember this period of history.
It's likely to happen more and more.
Mores the pity that the impoverished nations around the horn of Africa cannot afford a navy or coastguard to protect their fishing rights.



http://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-cod-wars/

TB

Anonymous said...

The food supplement industry is now selling Krill oil as a health benefit.
I guess it easier to obtain and cheaper than cod live oil to produce.
Krill is a basic diet of large whales.
We are now competing with the oceans large mammals for nutrition.

TB

Anonymous said...

Horrible as this sounds, perhaps if a billion or four were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, maybe fish could replenish itself along with an improvement on the environment. Capish?

The Mound of Sound said...

I share your concern about the krill fishery, TB. The decline in krill have been a problem to grey whales on their historic migration to the Bering Sea. That has forced them to go further, into the Beaufort Sea to find food. When they return for their southern migration many specimens appear emaciated.

The Mound of Sound said...

@ Anon. I think we're heading for a mass extinction that will take down most species, ours included. Depopulation on a global scale is not something we're capable of managing peacefully.

Anonymous said...

My friendly bet is that some nations are working on an engineered disease vector (plus a vaccine/treatment/antidote for their own citizens) as not only means of a warfare but also as a depopulation scheme...
A..non

Toby said...

Anonymous, amend that vaccine/treatment/antidote as available for "some" of their own citizens. Think "chosen few." You and I won't be on their list.

Anonymous said...

Horrible as this sounds, perhaps if a billion or four were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, maybe fish could replenish itself along with an improvement on the environment. Capish?

Short of a nuclear war we will not experience a cull of meaningful numbers.
A nuclear war will patronise the radical evangelists centred in the USA.
Should we consider an incurable disease to thin the masses; that too will be considered an act of god (no capital g) in the godfearing USA.
The UK is not beyond this thinking with Theresa May announcing her willingness to use a nuclear strike as a first response to a conflict.

http://biblehub.com/genesis/1-26.htm

The above sums up our attitude to nature and it's connection to woman and man.
The greedy bastards club deform this misplaced religiosity to further their ill made profits and human negligence.

TB


Corrections to my ramble will be welcome..

TB




The Mound of Sound said...

Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, Britain's astronomer royal, etc., etc., etc., wrote "Our Final Hour" in 2003. In it he gave mankind a 50/50 chance of surviving some form of bio-terror/bio-error this century.

Anonymous said...

Anyong.....My comment at 2:03 got traction. In the meantime it would not surprise me to learn that billionaires building there underground bunkers for survival from the holocaust that is come via Climate Change, would be the people who would like to let go a bio-death matter to substantially reduce the population. Mindfulness doesn't enter into the equation at all. In the matter of Kim, Jung-Un all one has to do is release a bomb in the middle of Pyongyang and puff, it no longer exists.

Anonymous said...

building their...

Anonymous said...

The world is trying to shut Scientists up especially Turkey. Why is that? Leaders of government know very well what is happening and they try to keep it from the people. Without science we would be still saying the world is flat.