Global Fishing Issues

1. Global Fishing Issues

2. Organization • 1. Introduction • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

3. 1. Introduction and Organization • Fundamental Global Fisheries Problems of: 1. Excess fishing capacity 2. Degraded and overexploited ecosystems 3. Overfished resource stocks • Inter-related problems • Different disciplines emphasize different aspects • But multi-disciplinary and multi-pronged approaches required • No single “magic bullet” solution

4. 1. Introduction and Organization • 1. Introduction and Organization • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

5. 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • Sources: • FAO “Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999,” in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, Part 3 • Pauly et al. “Towards Sustainability in World Fisheries,” Nature, Vol. 418, 8 August, 2002, pp. 689-695 • Daniel Pauly, * Villy Christensen, Johanne Dalsgaard, Rainer Froese, Francisco Torres Jr., “Fishing Down Marine Food Webs,” Science,Vol. 279, February 6, 1998, pp. 860-863 • Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Meeting on Management of Tuna Fishing Capacity: Conservation and Socio-Economics, Madrid, March 14-18, 2004

6. Big increases in effective fishing effort since WWII • Increases in vessel numbers and sizes • Rapid technological advances • Industrial-scale fishing • Trawling, purse seining, long-lining • Small-scale or artisanal • Shallow tropical waters for food fish and shrimp • Compete with industrial-scale shrimp trawlers

7. How large is the global capture fish market? • Current FAO global figures for fiscal 2000 • 94.8 million tonnes landed globally* • First-sale value = $81billion US* * Source: FAO SOFIA 2002 report (table 1).

8. Global landings slowly declining since late 1980s, by about 0.7 million tons per year (Pauly et al.)

9. Global consumption of seafood products has doubled over the past 30 years, driven by population growth and rising income levels. • The United States, European Union, and Japan are the "Big Three" consumers for 80% of all seafood traded internationally.

10. In the past 35 years, the number of people fishing in the world has doubled and most of the growth has taken place in Asia due to the growth of aquaculture and poor government enforcement of restrictions on over-fishing.

11. An annual average of 7.3 million tons of fish is thrown back into the sea dead or dying because they are damaged, of the wrong species, under the legal landing size, or over a vessel's quota of fish. • This figure is believed to underestimate the number of marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds also caught as by-catch.

12. Aquaculture has become the fastest growing food production sector in the world • Now accounts for over 30% of all fish consumed. • Most of the increase has occurred in Asian countries, with China producing 70% of the global total of farmed fish.

13. It takes up to 3 pounds of wild anchovies or mackerel to feed and create 1 pound of farmed salmon or shrimp.

14. Based on 2000 estimates, ocean-related activities directly contribute to more than $117 billion to the American economy and support well over 2 million jobs, including maritime trade, offshore oil and gas operations, and the fishing industry.

15. Global trends vis-à-vis MSY since 1974 (FAO) • Percentage of stocks at MSY level slightly decreased • Percentage of stocks exploited below MSY decreased steadily • Percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY has increased • From about 10% in early 1970s to nearly 30% in late 1990s • Many stocks without information

16. Global trends vis-à-vis MSY since 1974 (FAO)

17. Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

18. Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans • Increasing proportion of stocks exploited beyond MSY until late 1980s or early 1990s • In North Atlantic, situation has improved and stabilized in 1990s • In North Pacific, situation has remained unstable

19. Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in tropical (Central and Southern) Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

20. Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY levels in tropical (Central and Southern) Atlantic and Pacific Oceans • Growing percentage of stocks exploited beyond MSY in both tropical oceans • Deteriorating situation, with possible exception of tropical Atlantic, where stabilization might have started

21. Status of Stocks in 1999 (FAO)

22. Status of Stocks in 1999 (FAO) • In 1999, vis-à-vis MSY • 4% of stocks underexploited • 21% moderately exploited • 47% fully exploited • 18% overexploited • 9% depleted • 1% recovering • In sum, 72% of stocks at or above MSY level

23. Myers and Worm (Nature 2003) claim that the world’s oceans have lost over 90% of large predatory fish as compared to their pre-1970’s levels. FAO takes a much more conservative view, but agrees that “an increasing number of fisheries are either fully exploited or over-exploited.”

24. Fishing Down Food Webs • The mean trophic level of the species groups reported in Food and Agricultural Organization global fisheries statistics declined from 1950 to 1994.  • Globally, trophic levels of fisheries landings appear to have declined in recent decades at a rate of about 0.1 per decade, • This reflects a gradual transition in landings from long-lived, high trophic level, piscivorous bottom fish toward short-lived, low trophic level invertebrates and planktivorous pelagic fish.

25. Fishing Down Food Webs • This effect, also found to be occurring in inland fisheries, is most pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere. • Fishing down food webs (that is, at lower trophic levels) leads at first to increasing catches, then to a phase transition associated with stagnating or declining catches. • These results indicate that present exploitation patterns are unsustainable.

26. Status of Tuna Stocks (FAO)

28. Trends in the catch of the principal market species of tunas by ocean

29. Trends in the world catch of tunas by species

30. Trends in the catch of tunas from the Pacific Ocean

31. Abundance of Pacific Tunas

32. Trends in the catch of tunas from the Atlantic Ocean

33. Trends in the world catch of bluefin tunas

34. Organization • 1. Introduction and Organization • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

35. 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • Source: Pauly et al.

36. Organization • 1. Introduction and Organization • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

37. 4. Aquaculture

38. Organization • 1. Introduction and Organization • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

39. 5. Root Causes of Problem • 1.Expanding derived demand for resources and increased productivity of exploitation • Ultimately, excessive population, advanced state of technology for resource exploitation, and demand for high standard of living • Until tackle these ultimate sources of high derived demand for resources, will have terrestrial and oceanic environmental problems • Are addressing symptoms in some sense

40. 2. Ill-structured and incomplete property rights • Open access • Incomplete international institutions • External costs and market failure • Don’t pay full economic costs of resource exploitation • Including user cost of resource stocks • Including ecosystem services • Leads to excess capacity, ecosystem degradation, overfishing

41. Economic concepts of opportunity costs, trade-offs, and all costs and benefits • Trade-offs between between oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems for level of resource exploitation and ecosystem “health” • No free lunch • Opportunity cost to preserving oceans lies on greater reliance on terrestrial ecosystems

42. Monoculture, simplistic terrestrial food webs, genetically modified foods, pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers to raise yields • Great grain-growing areas of world, like Great Plains, have devastated ecosystems as bad anything facing oceans • Human diets comprised more of plants and less of animals • Eating lower on the terrestrial food chain to reduce derived demands for resources

43. Organization • 1. Introduction and Organization • 2. Trends in World Fisheries and Their Resources: 1974-1999 • 3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity • 4. Aquaculture • 5. Root Causes of Problem • 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

44. 6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management • No single answer for multi-faceted problem of excess fishing capacity, ecosystem degradation, and overfishing • Also case-by-case

45. 1. Property rights when appropriate • Individual or effective common property • On catches, resource stocks, fishing effort, or areas • Catches: flows from resource stocks • Areas: TURFs in most developed form • Largely developed countries • More difficult with complex multispecies fisheries • Critically difficult to apply in developing countries • Enforcement and monitoring key problems

46. 2. Strengthen international environmental agreements for high seas and straddling stocks • Problems derive from common stocks, which migrate over expansive areas of the world’s seas • Strengthen the authority for regional tuna and other international organizations • Give authority to deal with economic and social issues • Including the authority to assume and assign property rights in the fisheries • Establish permanent global body to coordinate regional commissions

47. Start management with limited entry • Moratorium on fleet growth • Must deal with new entrants (allowed under int’l law) • Strengthen management with annual vessel-level catch limits • Assigned to individual vessels rather than to flag states • Better if catch quotas are transferable property right • Their purchase addresses new entrant issue • Esp. coastal developing country nations • Trade restrictions for compliance and enforcement • Vessel decommissioning scheme

48. 3. Limited access (entry) programs “everywhere” there isn’t effective property rights regime • Highly attenuated property right • Particularly exclusive use • Especially developing countries • Difficult to apply property rights approach • Complex multispecies fisheries in tropics where output controls and rights ineffective • Typically, combine with limits on one or more inputs (e.g. vessel length)

49. 4. Judicious use of vessel decomissioning and buy-back programs • In developed countries, more short- to medium-term measure to restore profitability • People behave very differently when fishery is profitable. • Rights-based systems are not possible (e.g. number of players is too high) • When fishery (at industry level) is not profitable due to excess capacity • Good supplement to marine protected areas • In developing countries, more difficult to implement

50. 5. Taxes on fisheries to raise cost of fishing and decrease input usage, fund management, vessel buy-backs, etc. • Opposite of subsidy • Substitute for property rights solution in some instances • Especially high seas, complex multispecies fisheries, international trade