Padraig Hoare: Overfishing of oceans is unsustainable
If we continue the way we fish in our seas and oceans, we are heading towards catastrophe. Picture: Emer Keaveney.
The oceans are vast, and the bounty is plentiful -- at least, that is the perception of fishing among us laypeople.
However, according to the scientists, among them 50 of Ireland’s top researchers and academics, that perception could not be more wrong.
If we continue the way we fish in our seas and oceans, we are heading towards catastrophe.
Experts say that gloomy scenario is not hyperbole, but also that it is reversible if the practice of overfishing is tackled.
Overfishing is a clear and present danger to biodiversity, climate and human health, according to more than 300 scientists in the EU, including around 50 Irish experts.
They have sent a joint statement to the EU Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, calling for action.
End overfishing “as an urgent and necessary response to the biodiversity and climate crises” is the crux of their pleas to the European Commission, European Parliament and EU member states.
The statement, which including signatories from UCC, UCD, NUI Galway, TCD, Galway-Mayo IT and Queen’s University Belfast among other leading European institutions, calls for recognition "that ecosystem-based fisheries management is critical to the health of the ocean and its capacity to respond to climate change and that fishing limits must be set accordingly”.
According to the experts, overfishing reduces fish biomass, impacts biodiversity, alters the marine food web and degrades marine habitats.
This makes the marine ecosystem more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, they say.
The statement says that in the EU, it is estimated that at least 38% of fish stocks in the North East Atlantic and Baltic Sea, and 87% in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, are being overfished.
Those figures are stark.
“The combined effects of climate change and overfishing are accelerating the decline of ocean health. Ending overfishing would reduce the cumulative pressures on the ocean, increase its resilience and contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change. It would be decisive and important climate action and it can be taken today,” the scientists say in their statement.
Programme director of campaigning initiative Our Fish, Rebecca Hubbard, said the evidence is incontrovertible and the conclusions unavoidable unless change and sustainability is forthcoming.
“The science is clear - now the EU must ensure that a healthy ocean is central to its response to the nature and climate crisis - and that means finally putting an end to overfishing.
“Just like with our own health, if we continue to batter the ocean with overfishing, the whole system will weaken further, until it can no longer provide us with the life-support we need it for - oxygen, climate regulation, food and jobs. The EU must stop dragging its feet and take this clear and decisive action now, before it's too late.”
Dr Rainer Fröse, of GEOMAR - Helmholtz centre for ocean research in Kiel, Germany, was less diplomatic about the practice but just as clear.
“Overfishing means taking more fish out of the water than can grow back. To be honest, that's pretty stupid. Because then the stocks shrink, and shrunken small stocks can only support small catches.
“The whole thing also has an impact on the climate; fish stocks that are too small cannot fulfill their role in the ecosystem. If the ecosystem does not function properly, it cannot breathe properly and cannot absorb CO2 properly,” he said.
Overfishing and bycatch are the largest drivers of biodiversity loss in the ocean, according to Professor Alex Rogers, who is science director at Rev Ocean.
“We need a healthy and productive ocean, and ending overfishing is key. This is especially the case when faced with the effects of climate disruption, which affects the whole ocean, including fish stocks themselves.
“As a scientist, I am calling on the EU to recognise that ecosystem-based fisheries management is critical to the health of the ocean and its capacity to respond to climate change. It is also vital for human health, including that of future generations,” Prof Rogers said.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), fishing is one of the most significant drivers of declines in ocean wildlife populations.
Catching fish is not inherently bad for the ocean, the WWF says, except for when vessels catch fish faster than stocks can replenish, which is called overfishing.
The number of overfished stocks globally has tripled in half a century and today fully one-third of the world's assessed fisheries are currently pushed beyond their biological limits, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
According to the WWF, overfishing is closely tied to bycatch—the capture of unwanted sea life while fishing for a different species.
“This, too, is a serious marine threat that causes the needless loss of billions of fish, along with hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and cetaceans.
“The damage done by overfishing goes beyond the marine environment. Billions of people rely on fish for protein, and fishing is the principal livelihood for millions of people around the world,” the WWF says.
The organisation says that “pervasive illegal fishing” is causing untold damage.
Illegal fishing is estimated at up to 30% of catch or more for high-value species. Experts estimate illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing nets criminals up to $36.4bn (€31.3bn) each year, according to the WWF.
“These illegal catches move through opaque supply chains due to a lack of systems to track fish from catch to consumer — something called traceability — and import controls in much of the sector,” it says.
Over-subsidising fishing is also having a major impact, the WWF says.
“Supports provided to the fishing industry to offset the costs of doing business, are another key driver of overfishing. Subsidies can lead to overcapacity of fishing vessels and skewing of production costs so that fishing operations continue when they would otherwise not make economic sense.
“Today’s worldwide fishing fleet is estimated to be up to two-and-a-half times the capacity needed to catch what we actually need. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has called for an end to harmful subsidies,” the WWF says.
When it comes to overfishing, Ireland is among the biggest culprits.
An analysis released by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) earlier this year revealed that Ireland joined Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Germany at the top of an overfishing league table.
Ireland and the others have done so by gaining the highest percentage of quotas above scientifically-advised levels for sustainable limits over a 20-year period, according to the NEF.
Ireland is at 24%, while Spain is highest at 35%.
Ireland is second of the top five, with Portugal, the Netherlands, and Germany at 23%, 23%, and 22% respectively.
The UK, Denmark, and Spain have received the most in terms of excess tonnage at 1.78m tonnes, 1.48m tonnes, and 1.04m tonnes respectively.
According to reports by the NEF and Our Fish, the charitable campaign to reduce overfishing, Ireland from 2001 to 2020 set 765,000 tonnes of quota above scientific advice, placing the country sixth in tonnes.
Some quotas are consistently set above advised levels — including pollock in the Celtic Sea and herring to the west of Scotland and Ireland, Our Fish said.
“This is shocking evidence of the sustained and sought-after overexploitation of an incredibly valuable natural resource,” said Our Fish advisor Mike Walker.
The reformed Common Fisheries Policy, which began in 2014, aims to restore and maintain populations of fish stocks above levels capable of supporting maximum sustainable yield.
The corresponding exploitation rate was to be achieved by 2015 where possible and by 2020 at the latest for all stocks, Our Fish said.
Our Fish director Rebecca Hubbard said: “As the Covid-19 crisis has clearly demonstrated, our systematic destruction of nature is drastically threatening the health of our planet, and the health of people.
“NEF’s Landing the Blame analysis brings home the stark truth that by overfishing almost 9m tonnes nine million tonnes of fish in 20 years, EU fisheries ministers continue to radically undermine the one ecosystem that provides us with the best protection against climate change — the ocean.
“The European Commission and EU leaders must wake up to the seriousness of this situation — the potential is for the ocean to shift from friend to foe if we do not ease pressure on it by enshrining the ending of overfishing and restoration of ocean health in the EU Green Deal, and by prioritising the finalisation of the biodiversity and farm-to-fork strategies as a matter of urgency.”
According to Social Democrats TD and spokeswoman for wildlife Jennifer Whitmore, the “marine is another poor relation when it comes to climate action policy” in Ireland.
“It is time the Government stood up for marine biodiversity and coastal communities and committed to ending overfishing,” she told the Dáil.
"This needs to be done on an ecologically coherent basis. That is why we need to ensure we have enough investment in our research so that we know what we are protecting and why we are protecting it.”
Her Social Democrats colleague and West Cork TD Holly Cairns said sustainable fishing in Ireland is more than achievable with sound investment and strategies to benefit smaller fishing communities such as in her constituency.
“As a coastal constituency in West Cork, we know the sea is an amazing natural resource that supports our tourism and fishing sectors,” Ms Cairns said.
“It is essential that we ensure the sea is respected. Unfortunately, we need only look at all the pollution on our beaches and overfishing by supertrawlers to realise this is not the case.
“We need to support sustainable, small-scale fishing. To do that, we need to immediately address the lack of basic infrastructure for such fishing.
“Too many small piers dotted around our coastline and islands are falling into disrepair and lack basic amenities like slipways.
“They urgently need investment to preserve the livelihood of local families and the practice of truly sustainable fishing, the kind of fishing that has existed in rural and coastal Ireland for generations. That type of fishing is more environmentally friendly and will keep families living on islands and in other coastal areas.”
Brexit, or the threat of no-deal from the talks, could lead stocks of fish in our nearest waters to dwindle significantly or even collapse altogether, according to researchers at the University of Strathclyde.
Preserving existing fishing quota arrangements will be essential to securing an overall post-Brexit deal, according to the EU position.
The UK government has said fishing rights is one of its red-line issues in negotiations, insisting that British boats must have increased quotas and priority in UK waters. That spells trouble not only for fish but also for mammals such as dolphins and porpoises, according to the Strathclyde researchers.
In their analysis, they used mathematical modelling to assess the possible consequences for fish stocks and marine wildlife of the UK and the EU both setting their own quotas, and the combined total exceeding the sustainable limit recommended by scientists.
They found that unilateral quota-setting would lead to around a 70% risk of North Sea herring and cod stocks falling to unsustainable levels within five years.
The models also showed whales and seabird numbers would be likely to decrease due to the reduction in their food supply.
Michael Heath and Robin Cook, both of Strathclyde’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, co-produced the study.
Prof Heath said: “Our report shows the importance of observing scientific guidance on catch limits.
“Otherwise, the outcome will be overfishing, eventual collapse of key stocks and declines in seabird and cetacean numbers, placing further pressure on the UK’s coastal communities that rely on a healthy marine environment to survive.”
Dr Cook said: “Seabird populations are already under pressure from climate change and a diversity of human activities, so it would be detrimental to add further pressure from overfishing.
“The findings highlight the need for the UK to follow effective and auditable standards to ensure fishing limits are set at sustainable levels.”
The researchers analysed data on fishery landings around the UK, particularly from the North Sea, since 1903.
The distributions of landings in UK and non-UK zones in the North Sea were then compared with estimates for various species of ‘zonal attachment’ — the proportion of a shared stock which could be said to be ‘owned’ by a country, based on the distribution of fish relative to its exclusive economic zone.
The assessments predicted that the greatest risks from talks breaking down, followed by unilateral arrangements, would be to plankton-eating pelagic fish, particularly herring.
While risks to demersal fish as a whole would be lower, there would still be a significant risk to cod, they said.
Two plausible courses of events in a unilateral UK approach following breakdown of talks were possible, they said.
One is based on total allowable catch for individual species in the North Sea, in which the UK’s quota claims would rise by 72% for herring, 37% for saithe, 26% for sole, 16% for cod, and 14% for whiting.
The other concerns a scenario in which the UK denies access to its waters to EU countries and Norway and the measure is reciprocated, the researchers said.
In these cases, fishing would rise by 58% for pelagic species by trawling and netting, 20% for mackerel by long-line fishing and 6% for sandeel and sprat by trawling.
Cod and herring have a history of stock depletion and are known to be vulnerable to collapse and the risks, particularly for cod, are even higher, they said.
