Michael Lind
SUID: 4857561
Prof. Lusignan
EDGE Final Paper
3/15/03
Global Fish Netting
Today it
seems to anyone in the business realm that technology has become the most
useful resource. Yet, as the gas engine
seemingly made life easier and more productive, its effects have been
detrimental to the environment. This
motif of destruction following technological growth has plagued many of
mankinds’ significant strides. We all
are familiar with the slashing of the rainforests in South America, the
bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and the use of large nets by commercial
fishermen, but these problems have never directly affected most Americans, yet
an environmental disaster struck Florida in the middle of the 1990s. Commercial fishermen increased their usage
of modern technology to produce more catch.
They have done away with the harpoons and gaffs and cotton nets of old
and replaced them with gill, drift, and other entangling nets. This has become a global concern. Netting has become the norm for commercial
fishermen everywhere in the world as they try to increase their
efficiency. As the fishing market began
to take off, the natural resources diminished.
The amount that used to take an entire week of hard labor now takes only
a few hours. However, the
repercussions, found during the last decade, of this indiscriminate method of
fishing are gaining momentum in social and political areas. The widespread collapse of entire fisheries
combined with the disruption of the food chain and increased capture of
non-targeted species even prompted the United States, specifically, the state
of Florida, to take action against the commercial fishing industry.
The state of
Florida looked into the differences of these new fishing nets and their effects
on the marine life. Gillnets are used
throughout the North Atlantic and globally.
Different mesh sizes target different species of groundfish. Schools of fish just swim into these
invisible nets and are snagged by their gills, thus the name "gill
net". Near the United Kingdom,
they are used for such species as dogfish, monkfish, hake cod and haddock. Nets usually are set one day and hauled in
the next for a high quantity catch.
A buoy, often fitted with a tall radar
reflector, also called a high flyer, marks the line connecting either end of a
series of monofilament nets or panels.
The nets are held in place by cinder blocks or an anchor. The top of the net is kept floating in the
water column by a series of small floats; the lead filled bottom line
sinks. The bottom bridle, connecting
the nets, floats to reduce snagging on rocks.
The nets may be three meters high and ninety meters long. Sometimes up to ten nets may be joined into
one rig. There have been gear modifications to reduce whale entanglement
rates often concentrate on moving gear from areas where whales are present, a
dynamic or seasonal area management, or by reducing the amount of gear in the
water column, such as replacing floating lines with neutrally buoyant or
sinking ones. Entanglements in gillnet
involves all portions of the gear, specifically the bridles, anchor lines and
end lines.
Traditionally, small drift nets were
made of cotton and were used by coastal communities to catch dense schools of fish. Floats would be attached to the top of the
nets, and weights attached to the bottom.
They were then allowed to drift passively in the water and catch any
fish that swam into them. Following
technological advances in the production of synthetic materials in the 1970s,
the scale of drift-net fisheries significantly changed.
This
new netting is strong enough to endure the rigors of the open seas, but barely
visible once in the water. This not
only led to their widespread use, but also resulted in a dramatic increase in
the size of the nets, with many stretching as far as fifty kilometers. During the 1980s, approximately fifty
thousand kilometers of nets were being cast into the world’s oceans every
night. They were known as the 'walls of death' that caught everything in their
path and wrecked havoc on the natural harmony and ecology of the marine
world. Under much pressure from
conservationists, the United Nations finally agreed in 1989 to ban drift nets.
Since the ban came into effect in 1992, large-scale high seas drift nets have
practically disappeared from our seas.
One
would thus be forgiven for believing that the subject of netting is now closed,
that drift-nets no longer pose a threat to marine life, but inshore gill nets
still have a relatively high incidental by-catch rate around diving seabird
colonies or where there are high densities gathered on the water surface. Large numbers of razorbills are known to
have drowned in gill nets at the mouth of Portugal’s Tagus estuary, where this
species congregates on occasions. Nets
set for bass have caught large numbers of diving birds, mostly razorbills and
divers, and in one incident in the United Kingdom an estimated nine hundred
auks were caught over an eight-day period in nets that were set below seabird
colonies. Herring nets and bottom-set cod nets have also killed large numbers
of diving seabirds, roughly twenty-five thousand in the southeast Kattegat
between 1982 and 1988, most of which were found in the bottom-set cod nets. Catches of shags in trammel nets may also be
a threat to populations of this species in Spain. The threat will depend on which species are present at the time
nets are put out, weather, tidal fluctuations, and fishing effort. Gill and tangle net fisheries in Cardigan Bay,
for example, often operate at or near the cormorant colony, but to date there
has been no major entanglement problems.
However in some parts of the world drift netting continues. The troubled waters in which drift netting
continues include the North-East Atlantic, the Mediterranean, East Asia, and
many of the countries responsible for this ongoing ecological destruction
belong to the European Union. Following
the United Nations ban, the European Union implemented its own legislation
limiting the length of drift nets in European waters to two and a half
kilometers. The primary nations
affected by this legislation were Italy, France, Ireland and the UK. Sadly, monitoring fishery practices is
difficult and has meant that in some areas this regulation has been
ignored. Moreover, studies carried out
by both France and the UK have shown that, even where the two and a half
kilometer limit has been adhered to, the level of bycatch of non-target species
has been far higher than anticipated.
In addition to the terrifyingly
efficient catch rate of these nets, bycatching has been the largest
problem. Dolphins and sea turtles
become trapped underwater and are unable to return to the surface to breathe,
eventually drowning. Similarly, many
species of pelagic fish that exist naturally in similar niches as those fish,
which are targeted by the nets become trapped and pulled in with the rest of
the catch. When the fishermen on board
identify the fish as “unwanted” they are simply ripped from the nets and tossed
back into the water, left to suffer with no chance of survival. Despite the commercial fishermen’s claims
that drift nets are highly selective and capable of targeting specific species,
much empirical evidence has proven otherwise.
In a study conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1993, a
netting operation targeting the pompano landed an additional two hundred and
fifty pounds of lady fish, one hundred and fifty pounds of catfish, two sharks,
and four green sea turtles. Luckily one
shark and three turtles survived the encounters with the net, but the more
frail fish became victims of bycatch and were tossed back dead (Adams).
In Florida the controversy boiled down
to a debate between commercial fishermen and recreational ones, both emphasized
their main points of saving their jobs and saving the sea life. The recreational fishers based their
arguments on the understanding that fish are inherently a natural resource and,
more importantly, that many species of fish have become scarce in the waters
off the Florida shores. The commercial
fishermen claimed that thousands of people’s livelihoods were in jeopardy of
being overlooked for the benefit of recreational fishermen. With media help, the critical issue in the
discussions of this matter among the public became the right of ownership, or
lack thereof (Adams).
As awareness of these issues grew, a
statewide campaign was launched in the early 1990s by Floridians who were
unsatisfied with the politicians’ inaction on commercial fishing practices. Proponents of fishing regulation argued that
a valuable natural resource was being stripped from them by the daily fishing
practices that the netters employed.
The state of Florida is given the responsibility of preserving the
resources for all of its citizens in its constitution. It is declared in the Florida constitution
that it is the policy of the state to “conserve and protect its natural
resources and scenic beauty” (FL Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 7). Organizations such as the Marine Fisheries Commission
and the Florida Conservation Association have been created in the past for the
very purpose of making decisions with respect to Florida’s marine
environments.
With commercial fishing practices
extracting more fish from Florida waters than ever before to meet increased
market demands of the expanding economy in 1994, people became concerned with
the long-term effects of such behavior and sparked interest in more fishery
conservation projects. The citizens of
Florida hoped to prove to the state legislative and judicial bodies that in
order to conserve the limited marine resources of the state, regulations should
target the commercial fishermen who were making the most concentrated catches
of fish. On November 8, 1994 Floridians
voted in favor of the net ban (Harkness).
It was a citizen initiative program that amended the state constitution
and prohibited the use of all entangling nets and most other nets larger than
500 square feet in all Florida near shore and inshore waters (Jacob).
It is very difficult to provide hard
scientific date of improvements or declines in a natural system. In the 1980s in Tampa Bay, on the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico, scientists conducted a study during the beginnings of the
fishing boom. They found that commercial
landing for menhaden increased almost twenty times, from less than one-half
million pounds in 1984 to eight million pounds in 1987. This number then rapidly declined back to
one-half million pounds over the next two years (Adams), which can only be explained
by severe over fishing.
The environmentalists and their
conservationist followers had won the battle, but the war was far from over for
the state. The environmental impacts of
the net ban seemed exceedingly positive, yet it was not clear as to what social
or economic discussions or repercussions would arise in the coming decade after
the ban. As a major source of Florida’s
GDP, tourism was a major concern for the state legislature. Recreational fishing is a tremendously
popular sport and accounts for hundreds of millions of the billion dollar
tourism industry throughout Florida.
Such benefits from increased tourism seemed enough in the minds of
Floridians to cover the costs from the elimination of commercial fishing
industry.
The thousands of fishermen who were
left unemployed overnight because of the July 1995 “end of netting” deadline
were forced to come to grips with a new industry. They were left with thousands of yards of monofilament netting
that used to be the source of their livelihood and now had become worthless
investments. Now the Florida government
is not required by its own Constitution to compensate these fishermen who just
lost their livelihoods because of a new amendment, some politicians became
sensitive to their hardships and suggested buyout programs to be incorporated
into the fishery regulations. Such
programs ranged from one-time compensations equal to previous annual sales, to
stamps forced upon recreational anglers.
Currently Florida’s legislature has begun to consider the development of
a service to retrain the commercial saltwater fishermen who were affected by
the net ban. A 1994 bill directs the
Florida Department of Labor and Employment Security to use funds under the
existing Economic Dislocated Workers Assistance Act to accomplish such a
task. In addition, with the help of an
Innovative Investment Program grant from the governor’s office, an organization
named Florida Sea Grant produced a series of workshops throughout the state in
1997 (Adams). These events issued
start-up kits to former commercial fishermen who were directly affected by the
net ban in which participants received information about designing a shedding
operation, regulations, marketing and developed a seafood safety plan.
As for the nets themselves, fishermen
were offered compensation for their property loss. In an attempt to keep the angered unemployed out of the
courtroom, the state vowed to set up net buy-back programs. The nets would be examined, given a price
based on a set of criteria that determined if the net had been legally used in
the years prior to the amendment to the constitution. Unfortunately, the prices that the fishermen received in return
were small fractions of the original costs of their investments, ranging from
only five hundred dollars to three thousand five hundred dollars (St. Pete
Times).
With government
compensation and the sympathy of the general population of Florida, it seems
that the livelihoods of Florida’s commercial fishermen will be saved. For example, fishermen near Cedar Key on the
Gulf of Mexico coast of Florida have not only found new work as clam farmers,
but now appear ready to lead the nation in their new field. These entrepreneurs have grown exponentially
in the span of a few years to become the largest handler of farm-raised claims
in the country (Harkness). If the crop
doubles this year as expected, the University of Florida estimates that Florida
production will account for ten percent of the total US clam supply and over
twenty-five percent of the nation’s aquacultured crop.
Now the European Union
banned gill net use at the end of 2001 despite Ireland and France’s plea for
more time for fishing fleets to adapt to life after drift nets, yet
surprisingly, European fishermen took a different stance than their
counterparts in Florida and said, “that the catching of other species is
acceptable” (BBC News). The worse case
of non-enforcement occurs in the Mediterranean, which now suffers most of the
effects of large-scale high seas drift nets.
The majority of these belong to Italian drift-netters, fishing almost
exclusively for swordfish. Many of
these nets are illegal and are up to twenty-kilometers in length, with the
average net length being around twelve-kilometers. More than eight thousand whales and dolphins die in these nets
each year. “The French caught 1,700 dolphins in one
season. We want the ban to come into
place by the year 2000. A longer delays means more dolphin deaths” (BBC
News). Attempts
to minimize the impact of drift netting have been stained by the Italian
Government's lack of enforcement of European Law. The International Whaling Commission claimed in 1994 that the
Mediterranean striped dolphin population might not be able to sustain the
numbers being killed by nets. Despite
this, the Italian Fisheries Minister called for the length of drift nets to be
officially extended to nine-kilometers.
One might ask that if
fish and the fishing industry are in such trouble because of the overfishing
caused by drift nets, why are fish so available and affordable? Actually, seafood prices have risen faster
than those for other meats, but further price increases are slowed by the
imports because of the act of overfishing itself. They keep supplies high prior to depletion, and by an aquaculture
in response to destruction of natural systems. For example, the fall in the
price of shrimp is largely due to construction of shrimp farms following
depletion of many wild shrimp populations.
Unfortunately the construction of the farms themselves has destroyed
nearly half the world's mangrove nursery habitat for wild shrimp and fish. When fish prices rise to the point where
they surpass other sources of comparable-quality food, the continued rise in
fish prices is restricted.
Yet no international law
requires that fisheries need to be profitable.
In order to catch seventy billion dollars worth of fish, fisheries spend
ninety-two billion dollars and incur total costs of one hundred and twenty-four
billion dollars per year (Safina).
Subsidies fill these deficits.
Between 1983 and 1993, European support for its fisheries rose thirteen
hundred percent, from eighty million to five hundred and eighty million
dollars. These massive subsidies arise
from governments' efforts to preserve employment in response to the general
predicament of the fisheries. Such
subsidies include fuel tax exemptions, price controls, low interest loans, and
outright grants for gear or infrastructure.
These subsidized incentives have helped investors build more fishing
power than the resources would support and there now exists a great disparity
between what the oceans can sustain and what the fishing fleets can take.
Between 1970 and 1990, the world's industrialized fishing fleet doubled its
catch numbers and tonnage, until the fleets of the world had twice the fishing
power needed to catch what the oceans can produce. Ironically, if they had not grown at all, they would have been
able to produce the same amount of catch
This overcapitalization
usually leads to depletion and it leads to profitability dives into the red,
reducing the market value of the boats.
Fishermen unable to sell out without major financial losses, keep the
boats fishing to pay off the loans.
This increases the political pressure on the fish and on the managers to
not reduce the allowable catch. This
pattern leads to the endless inquiry into the reasons for stock failures in
developed countries. The United Nations
report that the current world fleet cost cannot be matched by revenues at any
level of effort and that, as the opportunities for increased catch from fishery
resources have considerably declined, the continuation of high subsidies can
only lead to greater economic distress as well as further depletion.
Reinstating balance, profitability,
and the employment potential of fisheries requires a reduction in the fishing
power and the rebuilding of the fish populations. One study by the U.S.
National Marine Fisheries Service found that the profitability of the
yellowtail flounder fishery could increase from zero to six million dollars by
removing more than a hundred boats. The
potential benefits to the U.S. gross domestic product of increasing fishing
productivity from its current state to the long-term potential sustainable
yield amount to eight billion dollars and three hundred thousand jobs. Further increases in employment combined
with reducing the pressure on the fish could be achieved by directing
investment away from industrialized, highly-mechanized ships towards smaller
boats with larger crews because the per million dollars of investment,
industrial-scale fishing operations employ one to five persons, while small
scale fisheries employ between sixty and three thousand persons. This industrialization of fishing threatens
millions of jobs in the small-scale fishing sector, by depleting fish along
distant coasts where many subsistence-level people live and by drastically
reducing direct employment. For
example, fifty percent of the world catch come from small-scale fisheries, and
the majority of their catch is used for direct human consumption, not animal
feed. Although fishing accounts for
only about one percent of the global economy, on a regional basis, marine
fishing can contribute an enormous amount to human survival. Marine fisheries
contribute to more of the world's animal protein than any other kind of
domesticated or wild animals, including beef and poultry. Worldwide, about 200 million people depend
on fishing for their livelihoods. More
than one billion people rely on fish as their main source of protein in Asia
and in Southeast Asia, more than five million people fish as their full time
employment. In northern Chile, forty
percent of the population fishes. In Newfoundland, nearly all of the people
fished or serviced the fishing industry until the cod collapse in the early
1990s closed the fishery. Because
fishing access is generally open and because it does not require land
ownership, it can be seen as the last resort for employment in our developing
world, an occupation to turn to when you have no other option.
While the catch of wild
marine fish is declining worldwide, each year the number of people in the world
increases by a large amount.
Maintaining these average consumption levels in the face of our human population
growth will require tens of millions of additional tons of seafood by
2010. Aquacultural production will have
to double and wild fisheries will have to be significantly increased worldwide. Wild fishery landings can now be increased
only through conservation, which allows rebuilding of depleted fish
communities, and through technological advancements. Even if all the fish that go to animal feed, a third of the world
catch, was used purely for human consumption, it could maintain average consumption
rates for possibly twenty years. We
will thus witness in the next few decades a never before imaginable exhaustion
of the oceans' ability to naturally satisfy humanity's demand. Fish farming will be increasingly looked to
in order to fill the gap between human hunger and what nature can support. Since aquaculture requires land ownership
and focuses its production on high-value fish and shrimp for export to
developed countries, it does not guarantee that increasing aquaculture would
translate into more food for those who need it. One increasing problem for aquaculture will be clean water. Half the people of the world live within
about sixty miles of the coasts, and in China, coastal population density is
three times the national average. This overcrowding affects the quality of
water available for aquaculture. Some
of aquaculture's most valuable products cannot currently be bred in captivity,
and are raised from wild-caught fry, but fry are getting scarce for some
species because the wild fish are declining from overfishing.
Clearly one of the most
important things that could be done to rectify overfishing and bycatch is to
remove the subsidies for fisheries that would otherwise be financially
incapable of existing off of the oceans' wildlife. Small-scale fisheries have been terribly neglected by
governments, aid agencies, and investors and which employ more people with less
ecological harm. Although the state of
the world's fisheries is not stable, there still also reasons for
optimism. For one, although our
scientific knowledge is still developing, we know enough about human-induced
problems to understand how they might be remedied, as seen by the rebound of
protected fisheries. The resurgence of
striped bass on the east coast of the U. S. is probably the best example in the
world of a species that was allowed to come back from severe depletion through
tough management and a realistic rebuilding plan. The United Nations has also been making historic progress this
year toward new conservation agreements dealing with high seas fishing. Measures such as these are important steps
toward a vision of a sustainable future for life in the world's oceans.
Works Cited
Adams, Charles. Since the Net Ban: Changes in Commercial
Fishing in Florida.
Florida Sea Grant College Program,
1999.
BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/108747.stm. June
8, 1998.
Harkness, Chris. http://christianharkness.tripod.com/waterwomen.html.
December 2,
2001.
Jacob, Steve. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_FE123.
December 2, 2001.
Safina,
C. 1994. Where Have All The Fishes Gone? Issues in Science and Technology.
10:(Spring) 37-43
Safina,
C. 1993. Bluefin Tuna in the West Atlantic: Negligent Management, and the
Making
of an Endangered Species. Conservation Biology 7:229-234
St. Petersburg Times.
“Will the Net Ban Sink the Commercial Fisherment?”
November 6, 1997.