Global Fishing Issues

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Global Fishing Issues
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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

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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

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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

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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

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• 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

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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• 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.

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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

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Global trends vis-à-vis MSY since 1974 (FAO)
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Trends in percentage of stocks exploited beyond
MSY levels in North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
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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

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

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Status of Stocks in 1999 (FAO)
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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

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

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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.

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Status of Tuna Stocks (FAO)
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(No Transcript)
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Trends in the catch of the principal market
species of tunas by ocean
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Trends in the world catch of tunas by species
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Trends in the catch of tunas from the Pacific
Ocean
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Abundance of Pacific Tunas
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Trends in the catch of tunas from the Atlantic
Ocean
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Trends in the world catch of bluefin tunas
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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

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3. Fisheries Impact on Ecosystems and Biodiversity

• Source Pauly et al.

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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

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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

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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

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• 2. Ill-structured and incomplete property rights
• Open access
• Incomplete international institutions
• External costs and market failure
• Dont pay full economic costs of resource
  exploitation
• Including user cost of resource stocks
• Including ecosystem services
• Leads to excess capacity, ecosystem degradation,
  overfishing

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• 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

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• 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

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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

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6. Comprehensive Conservation and Management

• No single answer for multi-faceted problem of
  excess fishing capacity, ecosystem degradation,
  and overfishing
• Also case-by-case

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• 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

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2. Strengthen international environmental
agreements for high seas and straddling stocks

• Problems derive from common stocks, which migrate
  over expansive areas of the worlds 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

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• Start management with limited entry
• Moratorium on fleet growth
• Must deal with new entrants (allowed under intl
  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

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3. Limited access (entry) programs everywhere
there isnt 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)

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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

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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

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6. Eliminate external costs to make consumers and
producers bear full costs of consuming seafood

• Eliminate subsidies
• Taxes on both producers and consumers
• Incidence depends on elasticities (relative
  strengths)

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7. Comanagement

• Comanagement reshapes, the state interventions
  so as to institutionalize collaboration between
  administration and resource users and end those
  unproductive situations where they are pitted
  against one another as antagonistic actors in the
  process of resource regulation. (Baland and
  Platteau, p. 347)
• Artisanal fisheries in developing countries

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8. Judicious use of marine protected areas and
marine reserves

• Especially in critical habitats like spawning
  areas, rookeries, nursery and pupping grounds,
  coral reefs, beaches and nearshore for turtles,
  etc.
• Provide insurance scheme for resource stocks and
  biodiversity
• MPAs dont address ill-structured property rights
  and excess capacity

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8. Judicious use of marine protected areas and
marine reserves

• By themselves, MPAS tend to actually aggravate
  excess capacity problem in remaining open areas
• Have to couple with programs to reduce fishing
  capacity
• Controversy whether MPAs increase resource stock
  sizes outside and by how much and which species

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9. Technology standards

• Improved gear
• Reduce incidental mortalities and bycatch
• (e.g. TEDs and circle vs. J hooks for sea
  turtles)
• Reduce ecosystem degradation (e.g. trawl)
• Mesh sizes and designs for escapement

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10. Eco-labeling, certified fisheries, trade
restrictions

• Useful in some instances
• More case-by-case basis

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11. Small-Scale / Artisanal Fisheries

• Eliminate harmful harvesting practices
• Dynamite, cyanide
• Reserve nearshore fishing grounds and keep out
  larger-scale
• Less destructive gear (e.g. mesh sizes)
• Create employment opportunities outside of sector

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11. Small-Scale / Artisanal Fisheries

• Create employment opportunities outside of sector
• Enhance value-added from post-harvesting
  activities
• Stop increasing investment and technological
  change through aid programs, etc.
• Increases fishing effort on resource stocks
  already over-exploited

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12. Judicious reliance on aquaculture

• Not panacea
• Primarily only economically feasible for
  high-valued species
• Derived demand for fish meal from fish species
  lower down on food web
• E.g. anchovies, sardines

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• Recognize true opportunity costs, trade-offs, and
  costs and benefits
• Full costs include
• Ecosystem degradation for coastal shrimp
  aquaculture in mangrove swamps
• Genetic mixing with wild species (salmon)
• Diseases
• Seed stock and feed still primarily from wild
• Dont substitute aquacultured for wild species
• Even feeding salmon soybean meal simply shifts
  problem to monoculture agriculture in degraded
  terrestrial ecosystems