This is an email from the David Suzuki Foundation that I received:
Tell the government to honour its commitments to our oceans
If a panel of doctors told you to take better care of your health, would you listen? Ten leading marine scientists with the Royal Society of Canada just told Canada to take care of its oceans before it’s too late.
With the budget speech just weeks away, now is the time to tell Finance Minster Jim Flaherty that our oceans desperately need proper investment. Rising ocean temperatures and increased salinity in certain areas are just two of the serious threats they face. In last year’s budget speech, the government promised to create six new marine parks by 2012. That hasn’t happened yet, and they only have 10 months left to meet their commitment.
Join the thousands of Canadians telling the government to listen to its doctors and honour its commitments to the oceans.
You see the link, it does not take long to send that letter. Considering the government's stance to the environment I can't believe that they made such a promise. Probably with their fingers crossed behind their backs. To say "Six marine parks" is a bit of a vague statement anyway. How big is each of them going to be? The ocean around Canada is incredibly vast and protecting an inch here and there will not make a difference. Will the fishing industry stop being short-sighted and support marine parks? I doubt it. But keep the number in mind and we'll see what happens by the end of 2012.
I was a bit sceptical when suddenly all the fish in the supermarkets had eco-labels on. One day it's just ordinary fish from the ocean the next day it's caught sustainably, they want to make us believe. Read this short article from David Suzuki why fish need a bicycle and you have all reason to question any fish you eat. The Marine Stewardship Council does intend a certification that in my eyes doesn't keep the promise that the organisation gives to the consumer. Considering the amount of by-catch mentioned in the article they can stick their vision of keeping the ocean alive up their a.. . As a friend said, don't eat anything that comes out of the ocean! I have to agree. That's very sad though because I love fish, alive and on my plate.
I happened to have a look into the paper today. I have not read much the news since I returned to Edmonton because they are upsetting and I was proven right again today. The Fisheries Resource Conservation Council suggests that "70,000 grey seals should be killed over a one- or two-year period to test the hypothesis that the animals are preventing recovery of groundfish in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence." What???
In the 1990s the cod stocks collapsed due to overfishing by human beings, not by seal, but now they want the seals to be killed because the cod does not recover!!?? Apparently fishermen have been complaining that the "hungry seals have hindered the recovery of cod stocks". I bet they are hungry and I can't blame them because it is not their fault. They are victims too. It's again one of these cases where our species has messed around far too much with nature and now puts the blame for not being able to quickly enough continue their exploitation on a different animal species. I can't belief somebody dared to make such a stupid suggestion.
The other upsetting point obviously is the search for a new Premier of Alberta. Elections are held on Saturday. Does not matter who it's going to be all candidates want to expand the oil sands and do more business with Asia because there is a growing opposition in the US to a planned pipeline. One candidate cautioned that there are not enough refineries and therefore the oil sands growth should only be moderate until the maximum value can be achieved. Along with that comes a demand for Alberta's very own immigration law to get more workers in to help with the expansion of the oil sands. A man called Ted Morton said that economical growth must come without polluting air, land and water. He's not going to win. No change for the better in sight then. Alberta, one fine day you will have to suck up your mistakes.
There was a recent study done on commuting times in Canada. Edmontonians have the shortest commute to work from all Canadians. That came as a surprise and the city of Edmonton is all proud of it. My explanation for this "win" is that Edmonton - sprawl, sprawl, sprawl - devotes a lot of space to streets, roads, bigger roads and back alleys. Don't walk, don't cycle, just drive. Traffic lights are timed to keep motorized vehicles going even if that means that pedestrians might have to wait up to 3 minutes to get a green light. That's not only frustrating it adds up to a lot of time once you need to cross at more than one light. Having rented a car recently I must say I was astonished how many errands I could run in a single day. It would take me at least a week by any other means.
Successful practices of fishing are happening but they are still rare. In Alaska the catch is shared between a limited number of boats (limited permits given out) and fishing is only allowed within certain time limits. The fishermen there recognized that this practice will secure their jobs in the long-term as it keeps the fish populations in Alaska alive.
In Europe the situation is different. Iceland is the good example. It has strict regulations but the fishermen adhere to them, can still make a living and see a future for their profession. There's practically no discard of fish. Good for them! It is important to have the fishermen on the right side. As long as there is fishermen out there that deny the collapse and disappearance of fish bad (illegal or legal) fishing practices will continue. Film review & Icelandic fishing practice
The European Union is world-leader in overfishing and still protects the fishing industry more so than the fish. But the EU commission, it sounds rather ridiculous, is working on eliminating the discard of fish. Especially the North sea is "mixed fishing" which causes lots of discard. When a fishing boat has reached their quota for one fish they keep fishing to reach their quotas for other fishes. In doing so they have by-catch of the fish whose quota has already been reached so they throw it back into the water. While some politicians urge to stop discard now, others are willing to wait until 2013 to implement new rules. "Unethical" fish discards have to end, EU commission says
Googling "European fish catch quotas" comes up with lots of articles calling for radical change in regulations for the European fishing industry. Politicians are slow to act though and getting the whole EU to an agreement is often a painful, time-consuming process. But time's running out. That's why certain fisheries have started to take on their own changes. Scotland, terribly overfished, is trying a new quota system. "The Scottish Government was able to make conservation a priority while securing increased fishing opportunities for some stocks, and minimise reductions where science supported such action".
New catch quota scheme progressed, Scotland
If only we would learn faster from the success of others and change quicker for the better.
subtitled "Imagine a world without fish" is a Docurama production, after the book of Charles Clover, about the overfishing of wild fish in all of our oceans.
The awareness that something is going wrong in out oceans was raised when everywhere around the world local fishermen reported less and less fish catches while at the same time the global fish industry registered higher and higher catches each year. Turned out that the Chinese have been making up numbers, reporting amounts of fish that they did not actually catch - because it was not there any more. In 2002 it was sure that fish quantities have been falling since 1988. In fact, all fish stocks in the world have declined dramatically, that means by 70% and more. It seems to me the ocean is about to be emptied from wild fish and filled with plastic, other garbage and yes, dead fish instead. A tenth of the worldwide catch is thrown back into the water - dead- because those fishes do not sell well enough.
Commercial fishing has transformed entire eco-systems at a huge scale. The current fishing fleet has the capacity that could catch the world's catch 4 times over. With current technology not a single hunted animal on this Earth has a chance of survival - this includes fish that can not hide or escape the radar of the fishing boats. The world's long-lining industry sets 1.4 billion hooks each year, estimated to be set on lines that could encircle the globe more than 550 times! Even more destructive, most destructive of all are bottom trawlers, huge nets dragged along the ocean floor as if ploughing it and not leaving behind a single creature. The mouth of the largest trawling net in the world can accommodate 13 747 air planes.
A considerable part of the film was about the blue fin tuna. Blue fin tuna is an icon fish, very beautiful, fast, and considered the king of the tuna,- ìt is just a delicious fish that`s it has been hunted to near extinction. All fish are caught by quota today but the quota, set by politicians in the rich countries of the world, is often unrealistic. The quota for the blue fin tuna is 3 times higher than needed for the species to recover, and two times higher than needed to prevent the species from collapse. Recommendations from scientists are frequently ignored under the pressure of the fishing industry and the prevention of unemployment. In the Mediterranean (mostly Italians) catch twice as much as the quota, which represents 1/3 of the blue fin tuna population. The Italian government does not care.
Breaking the rules by fishermen is (one of) the biggest problem and worth $25 billions per year. It is hard to stop a bad behaviour when a few people make millions of dollars by decimating fish species. In Japan Mitsubishi is in control of over 50% of the blue fin tuna production. Rumours have it that they try to build up a frozen reserve which will be worth lots of money (and this tuna is already expensive) once stocks are depleted. Mitsubishi has sent out bigger fishing ships with more freezing & transportation capacity, while saying it agrees to reducing the quota and preserving the species for the future.
Consequences from overfishing are multiple and lots of them unforeseen. Jellyfish infestations are increasing because all the big fish, the predators are gone. There`s also more algae, plankton, and worms. Newfoundland overfished its cod population back in the 80s. Since then lobster that udes to be eaten by cod has increased. Sure, you can make good money of lobster too but what will happen when the lobster is gone? With the domino effects generated by losing one species after the other the stability of the ocean systems declines - to become a road of no return? Scientists warn that by the mid of the century all fish will be gone, if things remain the same, but things don`t get necessarily better, they could get worse too. ``In Jan 2009 a paper in science reports that fish droppings help the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide: a first link between over fishing and global warming.`` With fish disappearing climate change may accelerate! Besides, losing wild fish will have immense impacts on the ability to feed the world`s population: 1.2 billion people call fish a key part of their diet, for many more it`s an important part of their diet.
Fish farms are not the answer. Fish farms use wild fish to feed farm fish; they destroy more fish than they harvest which means that the more fish farming there is the less fish will be in the ocean. Essentially, you convert one fish into another but you don't increase the amount of fish. Therefore it`s much better to eat small fish like anchovies instead of grinding it up to feed it to salmon - anchovies are better for us any way than salmon.
First steps to protect fish have been taken and marine reserves were established where commercial fishing is completely prohibited. This fishing ban may need police enforcement but the positive effects of fish repopulating gone already be seen. So far 4000 marine reserves exist worldwide but they only cover 0.6% of the ocean! Industry is allowed to fish in 99.4% of the ocean. This has to stop. If even only a part of the annual fishery subsidies, estimated $15-30 billions, were spend on marine reserve this would help to start turning the situation at sea around.
As the three key ingredients to guarantee the survival of fish in the oceans were named:
- Political will to implement change - the future of our fish is very much in their hands
- Consumers need to change eating behaviour and question where their fish comes from and how it`s been fished
- Fisheries need to follow the rules (they would have to accept huge job losses because the commercial fleet is way too big)
All the speakers in the film agree that we don't need more knowledge to act, we can start change right now but before all, one question has to be answered, and without the right answer there will be no change: Does society want to see the sea recover?
The end of the line
