The Other Side of Krill Oil

It’s articles like this that really grind our proverbial gears, here at ASOC. The piece lists the major possibilities of krill, from its benefits, to human health, to a near promise of fortune for any would-be investor in the relatively new industry. Where is the downside of krill oil? Nowhere in the article is there a single mention of the devastating environmental and ecosystem impact of harvesting krill.

The biggest problems with the krill fishery are that a)whales, penguins, seals and other species are hugely or almost totally reliant on krill as a food-source; and b) there is too much uncertainty as to the abundance of krill. We also don't know how climate change and ice-melt will influence krill populations. It’s not difficult to find scientific papers that show how the movement of various penguin populations relates directly with the movement of krill blooms.

To responsibly harvest krill for human consumption, we need to first undertake krill biomass surveys. This will allow us to attain a more confident estimate of how much krill is out there and thus how much we can sustainably extract with minimal ecosystem impact.

As the krill industry grows we cannot examine it myopically. That is, we must not only consider the immediate health and possible financial benefits but also the future ecosystem impacts. Until we gage the impact of wildlife and climate change on krill for the present and into the future, we cannot responsibly add the burden of industrial krill harvesting on this vital species.

Working with WTO to End Overfishing

This past May Mission Blue, The World Wildlife Fund and Oceana delivered a letter to president Obama calling for the US to renew its leadership role at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to end government subsidies, which contribute to overfishing. Though no new agreement came out of May’s WTO Doha meeting, the importance of change to the faulty practice of fishing subsidies remains imperative.

With the Antarctic’s threatened krill, Chilean Sea Bass and other over-fished populations, we at ASOC know too well that the Southern Ocean has a great stake in fishery subsidies.

What are fishery subsidies? According to the UNFAO, “Fisheries subsidies are government actions or inactions that are specific to the fisheries industry and that modifies - by increasing or decreasing - the potential profits by the industry in the short or long-term.” The bulk of government action works to increase these potential profits.

What’s wrong with this? As the majority of the world’s commercially viable fish stocks grow more and more rare, the richest nations are still paying billions of dollars to keep fishing industries alive through these fishery subsidies. With a global commercial fishing fleet that is more than double what is needed to sustainably fish the oceans, a significant reduction in harmful fishery subsidies is absolutely necessary.

The solution to the fishing crisis requires better management of all fisheries, using measures such as setting reasonable catch limits as well as bans - or severe limits on – the use of destructive catch gear. While fisheries subsidies may promote the growth of an industry that needs to shrink, they can also help fishermen adapt to bans on long-lines or driftnets which collect a great deal of bycatch, or they can help promote small scale sustainable fishing practices as well as other more environmentally friendly fishing techniques. The key is to promote the subsidies that have a positive environmental effect while reducing the negative.

While the Doha talks have made little progress in finding a viable solution, it remains important that we continue to press the WTO to promote more sustainable fishing practices, through more responsible subsidies. Leaders recognize that the WTO needs tocome to some sort of an agreement on this, soon. As fish populations continue to dwindle, the issue of fishery subsidies grows more important and eventually there will be change. Thus we must continue to press Obama and the US to remain a leader in achieving a more responsibly subsidized global fishing industry.

Will people care about climate change and overfishing if they harm cute animals?

It's a no-brainer that animals like Antarctic penguins that are dependent on krill, that are in turn dependent on sea ice, won't do all that well in a warmer climate. Some, including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) would downplay the idea that there krill might become a problem. MSC recently certified the Antarctic krill fishery as sustainable. Throughout the process, the consultants assessing the sustainability of the fishery insisted that the catch was low, because there are thought to be millions of tons of krill, and a very small percentage of that estimated amount was being fished. But ASOC colleague David Ainley explains that there's a big difference between the overall number of krill or other fish and the number that you, Jane and John Q. Penguin, are going to get to eat. Penguins, Dr. Ainley says, need a lot of food. And looking for that food burns even more energy, so it's bad if they waste time going to locations where prey is no longer plentiful due to fishing.

People (most of them, anyway) don't have emotional attachments to krill and the other fish penguins eat. There seem to be few people who don't find penguins at least a little charming. Is it possible that if environmental problems can be shown to hurt innocent penguins who just want to waddle around cutely, people will start demanding better from their leaders?

Deserted Ocean - A Social History of Depletion

Recently, I read a book that, while very interesting, was extremely sobering. Norman Holy is an inventor who has won awards for developing fishing gear that minimizes bycatch. His work with the fishing industry and the devastating consequences of unrestrained natural resource use led him to write Deserted Ocean: A Social History of Depletion. While there are many contemporary accounts of the unwise fishing practices that have depleted fisheries in the 2oth and 21st centuries, overfishing tends to be thought of as a modern phenomenon - the result of advanced technology and high standards of living. Yet as detailed in Holy's book, overfishing was a concern centuries ago. Deserted Ocean focuses on the North Atlantic because the North Atlantic was unfortunately quite early to the overfishing game. Fishing has been important to North Atlantic coastal communities for about 1,000 years, possibly motivated by declining availability of freshwater fish. That's right - a thousand years ago fishermen had to move on from freshwater fish because they had depleted them. Complaints about the use of trawl nets that disturbed the sea bed and took too much bycatch were recorded in 1370. Around 1500 herring stopped spawning in the strait between Denmark and Sweden, likely because of overfishing.

By documenting this history, Holy makes it clear that our ideas about healthy fish populations and healthy oceans may in fact be incorrect inasmuch as the oceans of a century or two ago were not as pristine as we imagine. The story of the North Atlantic is one of making the same mistakes over and over again. Under such circumstances, how could anyone determine what marine life in the North Atlantic should look like? Some people may wonder why it matters. After all, we could simply, in the North Atlantic and elsewhere, change the management practices to suit the current ecosystem. But the question would remain if that would produce the most resilient and abundant fish populations. Holy notes many historical descriptions of areas almost choked with fish. Can we ever recreate those conditions? Deserted Ocean doesn't try to answer such a complicated question, but it does provide a clear picture of what we've lost through greed.

Holy also surveys the history of cod fishing and whaling, two egregious examples of humanity's capacity to devastate a natural resource. Cod especially illustrates how important it is to adopt a precautionary approach to fishing. It took centuries to overfish cod near Newfoundland, and though the fishery finally closed completely to fishing years ago, the population has not rebounded. Signs of danger were ignored for years because fishery restrictions are politically unpopular. We don't need to keep making the mistakes of the past. Deserted Ocean demonstrates that overfishing isn't the creation of hysterical fish-huggers. It's a real phenomenon, and the sooner we realize that the better.

End of the Line

I've been reading The End of the Line by Charles Clover, about the problem of overfishing. It was made into a movie last year. It's nothing many of us who work on ocean issues don't know already; nevertheless, it provides some information I had never heard before (especially information about historical fish catches), and provides a useful overview of the state of the world's oceans and how they got that way. Highly recommended. There is a great collection of videos related to the movie up at Babelgum, like this one about MPAs. Since Netflix doesn't have the DVD of the documentary yet, you can check these out in the meantime!

World Oceans Day

Today, Monday June 8, is World Oceans Day. This is the first World Oceans Day that has been officially recognized by the United Nations, although it has been celebrated before. If you work on ocean-related issues, you may be wondering, what exactly are we celebrating today? The depletion of 90% of the world's stocks of large fish, such as tuna and sword fish? Declining fish catches worldwide, which are probably symptomatic of the dramatic overfishing of most of the world's fisheries? Perhaps the prospect of eating jellyfish or swimming in an ocean devoid of life? But before we get too overwhelmed, today is also an opportunity to make others aware of how much humans depend on the ocean. Global oceans don't need us, but we certainly need them. As The Ocean Project points out, the ocean:

• Generates most of the oxygen we breathe;
• Helps feed us;
• Regulates our climate;
• Cleans the water we drink;
• Offers us a pharmacopoeia of potential medicines; and
• Provides limitless inspiration!

There are many proposed approaches for fixing the problems with the ocean, some more controversial than others, but it is evident that current methods are not working. I hope that reading about World Oceans Day doesn't make people feel hopeless, but rather impresses upon people the importance of implementing policies to protect the oceans, even if these policies may have short-term economic or social costs. The long-term benefits of closing a fishery for a few years or forcing businesses to implement stricter pollution controls will be worth it.

Hooked and Booked

Greenpeace has uncovered unsettling evidence that the Spanish government has been subsidizing a company known to engage in Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Southern Ocean. The company, Vidal Armadores S. A., is blacklisted by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which regulates fishing in the Southern Ocean. Why is a blacklisted ship receiving several million euros from the Spanish government? It is unclear, but unlikely that the Spanish government can claim ignorance. According to Greenpeace, New Zealand inspectors uncovered evidence that a Namibian-flagged ship called the Paloma V was involved in illegal transshipments - the transfer of illegal fish catches from one ship to another - in April 2008. Their evidence implicated several ships in the Vidal fleet in these transshipments.

The Spanish government went ahead and signed an agreement with the Namibian government to allow one of the ships identified by NZ to fish in Namibian waters. They've also assisted Vidal with obtaining other contracts and licenses. One of the fish they are involved with illegally catching is the Patagonia toothfish, which is quickly nearing extinction due to legal and illegal overfishing. Transshipment and other loopholes are widely used by pirate fishers so they can reap enormous profits without getting in trouble.

As Greenpeace says, it's time to hook and book illegal fishers. The Spanish government needs to stop subsidizing and helping Vidal, and start prosecuting those involved in illegal fishing activity. Global fishing stocks are in decline. If all the catch limits and regulations of CCAMLR and other bodies are to be at all effective, countries must enforce existing anti-IUU laws (and probably add new laws and punishments). It's all too easy for people to ignore overfishing, particularly when it's done in the Southern Ocean, far away from any governments who could object or patrol. But the ocean belongs to us all, and damaged ecosystems do not only have local repercussions. When companies such as Vidal flout the law so openly, they indeed need to be hooked and booked, not subsidized.

Why is illegal fishing a big deal?

One of our organization's key issues is protecting Southern Ocean fisheries from illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It can be difficult to convince people that human access to an important source of food should be limited. Nevertheless, cracking down on IUU fishing isn't about stopping people from eating fish, but about cracking down on environmentally destructive criminal behavior, as recent stories have made clear.

As this story points out, some illegal fishermen engage in environmentally unsound practices, such as bottom trawling and driftnets, that can damage ecosystems and thus the long-term health of fisheries. Skirting regulations involving the size of mesh used for nets, for example, might result in catches of younger specimens, which makes it difficult for the population to continue to reproduce its numbers. While the IUU fishermen can move on to other areas in search of the best fish stocks, small fishermen do not have the technology or the resources to do the same.

When these fishermen don't follow the rules, their actions therefore can have huge impacts on people and ecosystems. In Africa illegal fishermen may have deprived governments there of close to $1 billion in licensing fees. One BBC reporter who visited Sierra Leone heard tales from local fishermen harassed and intimidated by foreign fishing boats who entered zones reserved for local use. These extremely poor Sierra Leonean fishermen also complain that they have difficulty catching their usual amounts of fish because of the huge numbers taken by foreign ships. Eventually, fisheries could be depleted irrevocably, robbing struggling countries of important natural resources and leaving them to deal with environmental damage.

Recently, the NGO Oceana reported on another dimension of the IUU fishing problem - the connection between some IUU fishing boats and drug smuggling. Oceana notes that a man recently arrested for cocaine smuggling owned boats that it had repeatedly accused of IUU fishing. Fish poachers are much more likely to be criminals than to be poor people simply trying to earn a living. Lax enforcement of existing fishing regulations only encourages criminal behavior - of many kinds - at sea.

Unreported catches can additionally complicate the problem of setting sustainable catch limits. Responsible fisheries management requires an accurate idea of the size and age composition of fish populations, which cannot be accomplished if no one knows how many fish are taken. As the Newfoundland cod fishery collapse demonstrates, sometimes even drastic actions by policymakers may come too late to allow fish stocks to recover from unsustainable harvest levels. Good fisheries management practices ensure healthy fish stocks and healthy oceans for years to come and prevent economic and environmental problems.

So what can the average person do to avoid seafood from illegal operations? A good start is the Blue Ocean Institute's Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood, which can point you in the direction of well-managed, sustainable seafood. Oceana has great suggestions about how you can take action to change the policies that encourage or tolerate unsustainable fishing.

Penguins - A Sentinel Species?

In a recent article in the New York Times, P. Dee Boersma, a longtime penguin researcher, warns that the declining numbers of some penguin species bode poorly for the marine environment as a whole. Threats to penguins include overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Although these animals may live far away, their problems cannot be ignored. Check out some more articles about the impact of environmental problems on penguins here, and here.