Green Options

Most of us are familiar with the idea of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial development leaching into the atmosphere, causing global warming. The effect of CO2 on ocean temperatures and acidification is much less well publicised, but just as worrying. In fact, it’s a potential cause of famine.

The economic downturn is making it tough to be a member of the middle class, now there’s evidence that ‘middle class’ coral reef fish are hurting too.

According to a new Wildlife Conservation Society study, reef fish levels along middle class coastal communities in Eastern Africa tend to be significantly lower– up to 4 times lower– than along areas bordering wealthy or poor communities.

Reasons for the disparity are numerous, and they involve a complicated interplay between traditional customs, economic development and population dynamics. But middle class apathy could also be to blame.

Although you may or may not be a part of the cultural elite who consider themselves caviar connoisseurs, if you have interest in the environment and economy you may be able to appreciate the developments occurring in in the world Caviar market thanks to a number of U.S. based fisheries.

The world over, fish stocks are declining, catch rates are falling and management is failing. Ever bigger ships with ever bigger nets employing more advanced technology should surely result in increasing catch sizes. However internationally, catch rates are declining. Even small scale subsistence fisheries are in decline. Why is this happening?

The ocean is a complex system which crosses our arbitrary international boundary’s making management of these resources incredibly difficult. Over fishing of one fish species in one area can have a knock-on effect in areas far removed and on completely different species. Our understanding of these delicate interactions is very limited.

Since 1983 the fisheries of the European Union have been managed under the Common Fisheries Policy. In September this year the European Commission announced a full review of of the Common Fisheries Policy because it has failed to protect fish stocks.

Since it was announced last week that a deal had been reached for the probable removal of four dams on the Klamath River, I’ve been ecstatic.

By Lester R. Brown

After World War II, accelerating population growth and steadily rising incomes drove the demand for seafood upward at a record pace. At the same time, advances in fishing technologies, including huge refrigerated processing ships that enabled trawlers to exploit distant oceans, enabled fishers to respond to the growing world demand. In response, the oceanic fish catch climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to its historic high of 93 million tons in 1997. This fivefold growth—more than double that of population—raised the wild seafood supply per person worldwide from 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds) in 1950 to a peak of 17 kilograms in 1988. Since then, it has fallen to 14 kilograms.

As population grows and as modern food marketing systems give more people access to these products, seafood consumption is growing. Indeed, the human appetite for seafood is outgrowing the sustainable yield of oceanic fisheries. Today 75 percent of fisheries are being fished at or beyond their sustainable capacity. As a result, many are in decline and some have collapsed.

While oceanic fisheries face numerous threats, it is overfishing that directly threatens their survival. Oceanic harvests expanded as new technologies evolved, ranging from sonar for tracking schools of fish to vast driftnets that are collectively long enough to circle the earth many times over. Indeed, a 2003 landmark study published in Nature concluded that 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans had disappeared over the last 50 years, as a result of this expansion.

The harvest of soft shell and peeler blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay has been declared a commercial fishery failure by U.S. Government. The federal declaration is an important step in providing economic assistance to the communities reliant upon crab production.

With apologies to both Stephen King and Verizon Wireless, the “real” Dead Zones we need to talk about are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world’s water systems that can no longer support aquatic life. As Joshua Hill, over at Plantsave has eloquently said,

Dead zones are created, in the beginning, by nitrogen (among other things). Nitrogen is the byproduct (in this instance) of natural gas transformed in to ammonia fertilizer, which is then spread across the agricultural landscape of many western and emerging nations.

From there the runoff makes its way to streams, then rivers and finally the oceans. It is at this stage upon reaching the ocean that the real trouble begins. The increase of nitrogen in the waters fuels the increase of algae which subsequently absorbs exorbitant amounts of oxygen, making life unbearable for most creatures…

According to this year’s report, Americans consumed a total of 4.908 billion pounds of seafood in 2007, slightly less than the 4.944 billion pounds in 2006. The average American ate 16.3 pounds of fish and shellfish in 2007, a one percent decline from the 2006 consumption figures of 16.5 pounds. But what most concerns scientists is the growth in imported farm-raised seafood coupled with declines global fishstocks.

Researchers with Scripps Institution of Oceanography believe they may have found the answer to the mystifying collapse of Pacific sardine fisheries in the middle of the last century: a shift in wind patterns that drastically reduced the upwelling of plankton, the fish’s primary food source. The discovery has implications for future climate change as well.

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