Our oceans have been the victims of a giant Ponzi scheme, waged with Bernie Madoff–like callousness by the world’s fisheries. Beginning in the 1950s, as their operations became increasingly industrialized--with onboard refrigeration, acoustic fish-finders, and, later, GPS--they first depleted stocks of cod, hake, flounder, sole, and halibut in the Northern Hemisphere. As those stocks disappeared, the fleets moved southward, to the coasts of developing nations and, ultimately, all the way to the shores of Antarctica, searching for icefishes and rockcods, and, more recently, for small, shrimplike krill. As the bounty of coastal waters dropped, fisheries moved further offshore, to deeper waters. And, finally, as the larger fish began to disappear, boats began to catch fish that were smaller and uglier--fish never before considered fit for human consumption. Many were renamed so that they could be marketed: The suspicious slimehead became the delicious orange roughy, while the worrisome Patagonian toothfish became the wholesome Chilean seabass. Others, like the homely hoki, were cut up so they could be sold sight-unseen as fish sticks and filets in fast-food restaurants and the frozen-food aisle.
The scheme was carried out by nothing less than a fishing-industrial complex--an alliance of corporate fishing fleets, lobbyists, parliamentary representatives, and fisheries economists. By hiding behind the romantic image of the small-scale, independent fisherman, they secured political influence and government subsidies far in excess of what would be expected, given their minuscule contribution to the GDP of advanced economies--in the United States, even less than that of the hair salon industry. In Japan, for example, huge, vertically integrated conglomerates, such as Taiyo or the better-known Mitsubishi, lobby their friends in the Japanese Fisheries Agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them gain access to the few remaining plentiful stocks of tuna, like those in the waters surrounding South Pacific countries. Beginning in the early 1980s, the United States, which had not traditionally been much of a fishing country, began heavily subsidizing U.S. fleets, producing its own fishing-industrial complex, dominated by large processors and retail chains. Today, governments provide nearly $30 billion in subsidies each year--about one-third of the value of the global catch--that keep fisheries going, even when they have overexploited their resource base. As a result, there are between two and four times as many boats as the annual catch requires, and yet, the funds to “build capacity” keep coming.
The jig, however, is nearly up. In 1950, the newly constituted Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that, globally, we were catching about 20 million metric tons of fish (cod, mackerel, tuna, etc.) and invertebrates (lobster, squid, clams, etc.). That catch peaked at 90 million tons per year in the late 1980s, and it has been declining ever since. Much like Madoff’s infamous operation, which required a constant influx of new investments to generate “revenue” for past investors, the global fishing-industrial complex has required a constant influx of new stocks to continue operation. Instead of restricting its catches so that fish can reproduce and maintain their populations, the industry has simply fished until a stock is depleted and then moved on to new or deeper waters, and to smaller and stranger fish. And, just as a Ponzi scheme will collapse once the pool of potential investors has been drained, so too will the fishing industry collapse as the oceans are drained of life.
Unfortunately, it is not just the future of the fishing industry that is at stake, but also the continued health of the world’s largest ecosystem. While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people--even those who profess great environmental consciousness--continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice. But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee. In the past 50 years, we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent. One study, published in the prestigious journal Science, forecast that, by 2048, all commercial fish stocks will have “collapsed,” meaning that they will be generating 10 percent or less of their peak catches. Whether or not that particular year, or even decade, is correct, one thing is clear: Fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we.
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COMMENTS (5)
I thought you were talking about Stanley of course. Is it better or worse that you weren't?
The fishing-industrial-complex.
Ike missed that one. But back then there were probably a lot more fish though.
At last count there were 392 additional "industrial complexes" around the world. We know this because Goldman Sachs set them all up with Henry Kissinger, Tim Geithner and Barack Obama. The Evil Barack Obama. Not the Good one who goes out dancing with Michelle and tucks the kids in each night.
Sigh. Big, huge, gigantic corporations still own the world, don't they? Though luckily not necessarily in that order.
Not to worry about "the jig" though. There are lots more of them to take its place. Lik ... view full comment
I thought you were talking about Stanley of course. Is it better or worse that you weren't?
The fishing-industrial-complex.
Ike missed that one. But back then there were probably a lot more fish though.
At last count there were 392 additional "industrial complexes" around the world. We know this because Goldman Sachs set them all up with Henry Kissinger, Tim Geithner and Barack Obama. The Evil Barack Obama. Not the Good one who goes out dancing with Michelle and tucks the kids in each night.
Sigh. Big, huge, gigantic corporations still own the world, don't they? Though luckily not necessarily in that order.
Not to worry about "the jig" though. There are lots more of them to take its place. Like, for instance, food grain-industrial-complex. And the water-industial-complex that Bilderberg is setting up with the IMF and the World Bank. I see a Time cover down the road. Not as memorable as Beck's and Palin's, perhaps, but insiders like us know how much more important it will be. Sponsered by ADM, I'm sure.
Farmed fish may or may not take up the slack. Who relly knows, right? But with any luck Animal Planet is already in production with Sardine Wars, Crab Wars and Krill Wars. You know, adter all the whales are gone.
george
Honestly using Bernie Madeoff as an analogy and comparison point to this global problem really trivializes this issue, and demonstrates the authors lack of understanding for the scope of what he's writing about. Also more emphasis should be placed on the effective pollution in the decline of global fisheries. Information going back to the 1950s I believe estimated that fishery production could easily sustain global population increases well into the end of this century. Studies from the 70s and 80s warned us about the damage that widespread pollution was having on the base resources that these fisheries rely on. Unfortunately those warnings went largely ignored by governments around the wo ... view full comment
Honestly using Bernie Madeoff as an analogy and comparison point to this global problem really trivializes this issue, and demonstrates the authors lack of understanding for the scope of what he's writing about. Also more emphasis should be placed on the effective pollution in the decline of global fisheries. Information going back to the 1950s I believe estimated that fishery production could easily sustain global population increases well into the end of this century. Studies from the 70s and 80s warned us about the damage that widespread pollution was having on the base resources that these fisheries rely on. Unfortunately those warnings went largely ignored by governments around the world including the US government, the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese etc.
Now with the combined forces of massive overfishing and massive pollution increases, we've got a real problem on our hands, a problem that we're going to have to deal with over the next 25 years, or we will be looking at the collapse of our oceans as viable ecosystems, and if the oceans die, we all die, it's that simple. We'll be talking about human starvation and land-based ecosystem collapses, the like of which has never been seen. We won't have to wait for global warming to wipe us out, we kill the oceans, and we kill ourselves in very short order. And not buying fish from the weasels who run Whole Foods Market or not eating sushi, ain't going to solve this problem. It's going to take a global effort, first to stop the never-ending flow of land-based pollution into our oceans, the scale of which has never really been fully measured or accounted for, next tight controls on fishing volumes worldwide will have to be placed, until the various fisheries have had a chance to recover. These measures must be taken over the next 10 years to avoid catastrophe.
I agre with AaronBBrown that the Ponzi Scheme analogy is weak and trivializes the issue. I also agree that the pollution angle is noticiably absent.
It really is a good piece and pulls together some important considerations. How do you divy up an ocean? If you don't have fish in your piece, and you can't go to the next, what do you do?
With the cool fishing shows on Discovery Channel, America really wants to hear this story. I think he could do a weekly show on Discover and really build his case.
It really looks like we might have to take a year or two off fishing to let the ocean replenish itself. That would devastate huge communities. But it would be better than the battles that would o ... view full comment
I agre with AaronBBrown that the Ponzi Scheme analogy is weak and trivializes the issue. I also agree that the pollution angle is noticiably absent.
It really is a good piece and pulls together some important considerations. How do you divy up an ocean? If you don't have fish in your piece, and you can't go to the next, what do you do?
With the cool fishing shows on Discovery Channel, America really wants to hear this story. I think he could do a weekly show on Discover and really build his case.
It really looks like we might have to take a year or two off fishing to let the ocean replenish itself. That would devastate huge communities. But it would be better than the battles that would occur when the hunger breaks out and there is nothing we can do.
Daniel Pauly has been busy looking at the plight of the oceans for quite some time. He is not only an insightful scientist, he spends a fair amount having the fun of throwing out coy images to see what will hook our attention to the reality of the oceans being destroyed in clear sight before our very eyes.
The Madoff/Ponzi scheme analog is of value if we grasp the core of the intention. Like any such scheme the victims have to be complicit in allowing the victimization to happen. So often the victims of Ponzi schemes know at some level that what is being put forth is not fully true.
The realities of the food system, for which seafood is no different, is that there are voices in this republic g ... view full comment
Daniel Pauly has been busy looking at the plight of the oceans for quite some time. He is not only an insightful scientist, he spends a fair amount having the fun of throwing out coy images to see what will hook our attention to the reality of the oceans being destroyed in clear sight before our very eyes.
The Madoff/Ponzi scheme analog is of value if we grasp the core of the intention. Like any such scheme the victims have to be complicit in allowing the victimization to happen. So often the victims of Ponzi schemes know at some level that what is being put forth is not fully true.
The realities of the food system, for which seafood is no different, is that there are voices in this republic gradually coming to see the considerable extent to which what we have allowed to continue as being called food, is simply not fully true. We have bought into the so-called convenience of allowing our food system to fall into the hands of huge, disconnected, and therefore hard to locate industrial production operations. The fishing-industrial complex articulated by Dan Pauly is another example of the same issues we’ve seen in poultry, beef, pork and other over-sized, inhumane systems of food production. We have seen these systems lay waste our lands, our waterways, or air and now the largest ecosystems upon which all earthlings are interdependent, the seas.
When the common consumer begins to get a glimpse of the extent of the destruction and ecosystem compromises inherent in current commodity practices, it is so very easy to become overwhelmed. This sense of overwhelm is often unwittingly the result of even NGO agencies science reports of devastatingly negative systems being destroyed at overwhelming rates. It is a hard line to walk: they ring the alarm loudly to bring us to our senses. Yet, the siren rings too often and too loudly, so the state of overwhelm drifts into ennui, victimization, and visions of “don’t such industries rule the world anyhow”; and, so, passivity is the result.
Scale is key, size matters. And, the jury is now so in—industrial scale food production systems are not the way for those living on this planet to go. Now, we need to take a cue from the film “Network”: I want you all to go the window, through it open and scream “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. After that it is important to take real action. Access to action that is meaningful is what we must find in order to make a difference.
CleanFish® is a company trying to make a difference in real marketplace terms. We are betting that co-producers will take action and use the market forces to accelerate real change; at market speeds.
As size is key, we put our reliance on more ecologically responsible, more resilient artisanal practices of both wild and cultivated fisheries. We do see aquaculture as one of the responses to the need before us, to give the oceans a rest. Natural systems can and will rebound only if they are not continually raped and pillaged by Neanderthal gear of yesteryear, and industrial floating plants so massive it is not possible for anyone on board to not realize it is shamefully wrong and criminal to carry out their work and even call it fishing.
Intense networks of artisanal fisheries, and those committed to practices that will respect nature is being sought and supported by the CleanFish Alliance of chefs, distributors, and seafood producers. All the work we do is designed to turn the tide away from passivity and call on seafood lovers to claim their ground as co-producers together with fisheries doing responsible and ethical practices…and willing to do more if they could be met by co-producers who would tell their chefs, schools, restaurants, and markets that they want to make a difference in their purchase of the seafood they love. We need co-producers who truly want to actively vote with their forks for a more hopeful future. And, as Dan Pauly exhorts, we can and must also vote toward government actions on behalf of the natural resources in the care of the world governments of every region.
Collective awareness matched by individual actions of stewardship is something we can all do. Vote as often as you can. Yes, on the ballot! Yes, on the boats and docks! And, yes on farms! And, yes, at the tables of community centers, diners, cafeterias, gourmet restaurants, dormitories, and homes all over the land-- with your fork! Do not let the tyranny of big industrial production and big market trade pseudoreactions take away your will to act. Your vote counts, fork by fork; it counts. The industrial food machine wants to make you feel like passive victims while they continue to chew up and lay waste the planet’s resources.
Thanks Daniel Pauly for continuing your efforts to wake us up. Now that you are awake—go vote… everywhere you can.
Tim o’Shea, co-Founder, CleanFish
Pauly wants to auction off fishing rights to the highest bidder, and that seems unlikely to be "artisanal fisheries" such as CleanFish. Those fleets of underutilized big commercial boats will win out. Owning rights to fish is no different than a farmer owning the rights to the crops off his land.
Pauly wants to auction off fishing rights to the highest bidder, and that seems unlikely to be "artisanal fisheries" such as CleanFish. Those fleets of underutilized big commercial boats will win out. Owning rights to fish is no different than a farmer owning the rights to the crops off his land.