Posted on 4/12/2001

Fish Numbers Decline Hidden By Inflation
From ens.lycos.com (Photo shows Dr. Daniel Pauly)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, November 29, 2001 (ENS) - Contrary to
statistics published by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) which indicate that the global fisheries catch is
stable, Canadian fisheries scientists have documented evidence that catches
have been declining for over a decade.

This new evidence, published in today's issue of the journal "Nature,"
means that the true state of the oceans is far worse than anyone has
previously realized. "The global catch trend is not increasing, it is not
even stable, but rather it has been decreasing steadily since the late
80's," states one of the study's authors, Dr. Reg Watson of the University
of British Columbia Fisheries Centre. "The bottom line is that the downward
trends in global fisheries catches have been obscured. Fisheries management
and economic decisions are being based on flawed data," says Dr. Daniel
Pauly, the other author, who also works at the UBC Fisheries Centre.

The two fisheries scientists say that "vast over-reporting by the People's
Republic of China combined with the large and wildly fluctuating catch of a
small fish, the Peruvian anchoveta, have painted a false picture of the
health of the oceans by inflating the catch statistics and implying that
business as usual is sustainable. "These earthshaking findings are the most
significant fishery and food security results in decades," says Dr. Jane
Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University and former president of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "They call into
question the very basis of international fisheries management," Lubchenco
said.

Presently, only a single institution, the FAO, maintains global fisheries
statistics. As a UN organization, the FAO receives but is not able to
verify the statistics reported by member countries, even when they are
suspected of being wrong. No mechanism exists for independent verification
of catch reports. "I have been troubled a long time by the mismatch between
what we know is the case for various fisheries - that they are going
downhill - and the triumphalist reports of a global catch that continues to
increase," says Pauly, an international authority on global fisheries.
"This study reconciles what we see at the local level, failing fisheries,
with what is happening at the global level - falling catches," he said.

Over the past 30 years there have been steep increases in the exploitation
of world fisheries. More species are being marketed and new fishing areas
have been opened. Fishing pressures are devouring what Watson and Pauly
call "the accumulated old growth riches of the sea." Despite scientists'
widespread expectations that world fisheries would plateau at values of
around 80 million tons, global catches reported by FAO generally increased
through the 1990s - driven largely by catch reports from China. The huge
discrepancy between what is reported and the true state of global fisheries
is largely due to misreporting by countries with large fisheries. "Many
countries over and under-report their catch statistics, but none has as big
an impact as China," explains Pauly. Although Chinese waters cover only one
percent of the world's water surface, China accounts for 40 percent of the
deviation between reported and corrected. The study highlights variances in
the 1990s of as much as 10 metric tons per square kilometer of ocean of
true catch amounts compared to reported amounts for Chinese waters. "The
same state entities devoted to monitoring the economy are also tasked with
increasing its output. Our studies showed that whatever leaders set as
production targets is what is officially reported. If you dictate fisheries
to increase by five percent then it is reported to increase by five
percent," Pauly and Watson say. "Regardless of whodunnit the message here
is that our overfishing problems are far more urgent than we even
realized," says Andy Rosenberg, Dean of the College of Life Sciences and
Agriculture at the University of New Hampshire and the former deputy
director of the National Marine Fishery Service. "It's not a case of, let's
gradually phase in some solutions. It's rather more urgent than that.
Overfishing is not a just a Chinese problem. We have serious overfishing
problems here as does Europe, and we need to come to grips with them as
urgently as the Chinese do. This is a global problem, not a case of a few
bad actors."

This new picture of the state of the oceans raises serious concerns about
the supply of fish and world food supply, and its ability to keep up with a
rising world population. Some governments and industries believe that
aquaculture is the solution. But Watson and Pauly warn that it is a fallacy
to believe that fish farming can make up the shortfall, and they caution
against their results being used to call for more aquaculture. "Aquaculture
cannot replace wild seafood because so much farmed seafood relies on wild
fish for fishmeal," Watson says. "Currently a third of all fish landed
globally goes into fishmeal and oil. Half is used for aquaculture and half
is used for agriculture. "The aquaculture component is increasing rapidly
because we are using fishmeal to raise carnivorous fish like salmon. If
aquaculture is going to help the situation, you have to raise vegetarian
fish - like carp, tilapia and shellfish - and not supplement their food
with fish meals or oils," Watson says. Stuart Leggatt, a former B.C.
Supreme Court Justice who just completed an inquiry into the B.C. (British
Columbia, Canada) industry entitled "Clear Choices, Clean Waters", says
pollution and escapes from the net cages which float in the ocean are among
the most serious problems with the industry. "After hearing from almost 200
people, both for and against net cage salmon farming, Commissioner Leggatt
has concluded that net cages must be removed from this coast within three
years," said Jim Fulton, executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation.
Leggatt's findings concur with recommendations from the federal Auditor
General and the Senate fisheries committee that Canada must reassess salmon
farming.

Fisheries are the most globalized food industry that exists. Over 75
percent of the world marine fisheries catch - over 80 million tons per year
- is sold on international markets. This means that what happens in one
country matters to another. Many people do not realize the extent to which
fish sold in the U.S. are caught elsewhere in the world. "A lot of the fish
eaten in the U.S. now are being imported from New Zealand, the Pacific,
West Africa and Antarctica," Pauly says. In terms of value the U.S. catches
shrimp, sea cucumbers and now even jellyfish, and exports much of it to
East Asia."

Pauly hopes that the study will remove what he calls "a psychological
weapon" - the distortions in the global reports submitted to the FAO - that
industry has used to justify putting out more boats and building bigger
trawlers. "The United Nations' FAO must have a stronger position in the
future when negotiating the supply of accurate data from the nations of the
world, and those data must be evaluated," he emphasizes. "Fisheries
management and economic decisions must be based on the best available data.
"I think the high seas must be managed, not simply watched," Watson says.
"We must insist that nations provide statistics that can be verified."