'Mayday'
From New England's Coast
European
Fishing Quotas
Slashed To Save Species
China, U.N.
Challenged Over Fish
MSNBC STAFF
AND WIRE REPORTS
Nov.
28 - Challenging China as well as a United Nations agency, scientists
writing in the journal Nature calculated that a numbers game is
misrepresenting fish stocks worldwide. "Misreporting by countries
with large fisheries" is creating a false sense that oceans
are still abundant, they wrote.
BASED
AT THE University of British Columbia at Vancouver, the scientists
found that global catches, which were thought to be increasing
during the 1990s by 700 million pounds of fish per year, actually
have been decreasing by nearly 800 million pounds annually. Just
one group, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, compiles global fisheries statistics, but it relies on
voluntary reporting of catches from countries to estimate the
amount of fish the oceans hold. The new studies being announced
Thursday call into question the veracity of FAO figures and its
reporting system. "FAO must generally rely on the statistics
provided by member countries, even if it is doubtful that these
correspond to reality," authors Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly
said. Moreover, by subtracting just one fish from the equation,
the abundant Peruvian anchoveta, which is used only for fish meal
and whose population fluctuates due to El Nino, an even more striking
decrease was apparent: 1.5 billion pounds a year less seafood
available for human consumption. "Misreporting by countries
with large fisheries, combined with the large and widely fluctuating
catch of species such as the Peruvian anchoveta, can cause globally
spurious trends," Watson and Pauly wrote.
TRACKING
A DECLINE Since 1988, when the world's seafood supply peaked at
34 pounds a person each year, the combined effects of overfishing
and increasing human populations have reduced the amount of fish
and shellfish available on Earth to only about 25 pounds a person
each year, according to the findings. And this trend is projected
to continue rapidly downward to less than 17 pounds a person each
year by 2020. Using statistics gathered by the FAO since 1950,
the scientists created maps of world fisheries catches and then
built a computer model to predict catch size in different ocean
regions. The model showed China's reported catches were unrealistically
high when compared with catches from other ocean areas that have
similar characteristics such as depth, temperature and biological
productivity. "The greatest impact of inlated global catch
statistics is the complacency that it engenders," the scientists
concluded. "There seems little need for public concern, or
intervention by international agencies, if the world's fisheries
are keeping pace with people's needs. If, however, as the adjusted
figures demonstrate, the catches of world fisheries are in general
decline, then there is a clear need to act."
STANDING
UP TO CHINA The findings came as little surprise to Lee Alverson,
a global fisheries consultant in Seattle who headed research for
the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Northwest and Alaska
from 1970 to 1980. "It takes a lot of nerve to make the sort
of accusation they did about China, but there were a lot of scientists
who felt nervous about those numbers," Alverson said. "If
any of the nations are putting bogus numbers into the accounting
process, then our ability to assess if overfishing is going on
is in jeopardy." Pauly said the world community must end
overfishing if it is to meet future food demands. The new studies,
he said, are "dashing hopes that the sea can continue to
meet our growing demand for fish."
BILL
BEFORE CONGRESS A U.S.-based conservation group urged officials
and lawmakers to take notice of the study. "This is a wake-up
call to all fisheries managers especially those in the U.S. you
can't make good management decisions based on poor data and that's
exactly what we¹ve been doing here," Gerald Leape, director
of the Marine Conservation Program, said in a statement. "Right
now, we don't even know the status of two-thirds of all the fish
stocks in U.S. waters." "There is currently legislation,
The Fisheries Recovery Act of 2001, before Congress that would
eliminate this problem," he added. "This crisis deserves
the immediate and full attention of Congress." And a study
being published Friday in the journal Science found that protecting
marine reserves offers a realistic way of enhancing fish stocks.
"The study provides new evidence that marine reserves really
can enhance nearby fisheries," said study co-author Callum
Roberts, a professor at Britain's University of York. "It
provides critically needed data that shows marine reserves can
deliver the gains to fisheries that have long been predicted by
theory," he told MSNBC.com.
The
Associated Press and MSNBC.com's Miguel Llanos contributed to
this report.
Source:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/664237.asp?cp1=1
