The Day All Fish Are Gone

Imagine if I told you that you've eaten your last fish save for whatever they make those triangle fish wedges out of.  Sounds crazy right?  Well actually that day may come within our lifetime.

A documentary released last week, The End of the Line, describes the plight we are in and what will happen if our practices do not change dramatically and soon.

It's really not hard to imagine.  We've seen huge quantities of marine biomass disappear over the last 100 years, hitting warp speed with the advent of industrial fishing practices.  When Lewis and Clark showed up to my little part of the world in the Pacific Northwest, they saw the Columbia River so full of salmon that it appeared they could walk across it.  It's estimated that annual return was in the neighborhood of 30 million.  Today that number, brought low by a series of hydroelectric dams, development of the riverbanks and its tributaries, and overfishing, is closer to 300,000.

The problem here is the "tragedy of the green."  This concept, first noticed in ancient Greece, describes the point in which laisse-faire capitalism falls apart.  The belief that the market can regulate itself, because it only makes wise choices, is absurd.  The market is not some sort of "hive mind" like the Borg in Star Trek, always doing what's best for the collective good.  In fact there's no consideration whatsoever for the common good.  It's a collection of individual decisions based on self-interest.  People will generally make their decision based on what gives them the most value, without thinking of the consequences to the greater good.

Imagine a communal green, where everyone in a village is free to graze their livestock.  Over time, the green will be destroyed because people will overuse it.  Now think of the world as that green.  Without restriction, people and even national governments, will do what is in their best short term interests.  That results in all sorts of environmental degradation.

Johann Hari, speaking of The End of the Line, describes the story of Newfoundland and how it paints a bleak portrait of our future:

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a rapid rate that they couldn't reproduce themselves. But the postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they haven't. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.

Perhaps most tragicly, as commercial fishing has depopulated OECD nation fisheries, their attention has turned to the Global South, specifically Africa.  Without governments that can effectively protect their waters, these nations are defenseless against international poachers.  In fact, this is essentially the source of our new problem with Somali pirates. 

Originally these latter day swashbucklers were subsistance fishermen, precisely the sort of sustainable harvest that we should encourage.  They found their stock being rapidly depleted by foreign poachers, mostly from south asia.  To defend their fishery, these men turned to boarding these vessels and holding them for ransom.  Eventually they discovered that this was a more lucrative business venture than their previous lifestyle and started targetting larger and larger boats.  Next thing you know they're taking down oil tankers and Navy Seals are shooting them in the head.  Butterflies making hurricanes.

You would think now that we know seafood is essential to human brain development, that governments would be more interested in doing something about this problem.  Fish are how we became humans.  Without their DHA and Omega 3 fatty acids, our brains could not grow and we would not have become sentient and able to develop huge civilizations that would eventually wipe out the source of that "intelligence." 

Sometimes I feel like this movie was less comedy and more prophecy.

But again, nations act selfishly and consider only their short-term interests.  So an international order, with real authority, is necessary to stop this cycle of destruction.  Ironically, the solution can be found in the land of Sarah Palin, well known lover of wildlife.

With fish, the solution is even simpler and more straightforward than with the other ecological crises ensnaring us. The scientific experts say we need to follow two steps. First, expand the 0.6 per cent of the area of the world's oceans in which fishing is banned to 30 per cent. In these protected areas, fish can slowly recover. Second, in the remaining 70 per cent, impose strict quotas on fishermen and police it properly, as they do in Alaska, New Zealand and Iceland.

The cost of this programme? $14bn a year – precisely the sum we currently spend on subsidising fishermen. At no extra cost, we could turn them from the rapists of the oceans into their guardians.

If nothing is done there will be no more fish in 50 years.  The price for inaction is so enormous, it defies logic that the world, led by the US, would stand by and let it happen.  But with so many competing demands, the interests of future generations are not being considered.