[A-List] Feeding Frenzy

[Bill Totten]

Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (April 03 2007)

To Ransom A Myers, who died on March 27th.


If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great
beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks,
giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the
giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for
fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them.

A study in this week's edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the
ocean's megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction.
Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97%
and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99% {1}. Just about
every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published
in Nature four years ago, shows that over ninety per cent of large predatory
fishes throughout the global oceans have gone {2}.

You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger
meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from
eating shark's fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. 
One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other 
is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of
respectable newspapers.

In terms of its impact on both ecology and animal welfare, shark fishing could
be the planet's most brutal industry. While some sharks are taken whole, around
seventy million are caught every year for their fins {3}. In many cases the fins
are cut off and the shark is dumped, alive, back into the sea. It can take
several weeks to die. The longlines and gillnets used to catch them snare whales,
dolphins, turtles and albatrosses. The new paper shows that shark catching also
causes a cascade of disasters through the foodchain. Since the large sharks were
removed from coastal waters in the western Atlantic, the rays they preyed on
have multiplied tenfold and have wiped out all the main commercial species of
shellfish {4}.

Much of this trade originates in East Asia, where shark's fin soup - which sells
for up to GBP 100 a bowl - is a sign of great wealth and rank, like caviar in
Europe. The global demand for shark fins is rising by about five per cent a year
{5}. But if you believe that this is yet another problem for which the Chinese
can be blamed and the Europeans absolved, consider this: the world's major
importer (and presumably re-exporter) of sharks is Spain {6}. Its catches have
increased nine-fold since the 1990s {7} and it has resisted - in most cases
successfully - every European and global effort to conserve its prey.

The Spanish defend their right to kill rare sharks as fiercely as the Japanese
defend their right to kill rare whales. The fishing industry, traditionally
dominated by Galician fascists, exerts an extraordinary degree of leverage over
the socialist government. The Spanish government, in turn, usually gets its way
in Europe. The EU, for example, claims to have banned the finning of sharks. 
But the ratio it sets for the weight of fins to the weight of bodies landed by
fishermen is five per cent. As edible fins make up only two per cent of the
shark's bodyweight {8}, this means that two and half finless sharks can be
returned to the water for every one that comes ashore. Even this is not enough
for the Spanish, whose members of the European Parliament have been demanding
that the percentage is raised {9}.

Northern European civilisation doesn't come out of this very well either. 
In 2001 the British government promised to protect a critically endangered
species called the angel shark, whose population in British waters was
collapsing. It ducked and dithered until there was no longer a problem: 
the shark is now extinct in the North Sea {10}.

Why do we find it so hard to stand up to fishermen? This tiny industrial lobby
seems to have governments in the palm of its hand. Every year, the European
Union sets catch limits for all species way above the levels its scientists
recommend. Governments know that they are allowing the fishing industry to
destroy itself and to destroy the ecosystem on which it depends. But nothing 
is sacred, as long as it is underwater. In November the United Nations failed
even to produce a resolution urging a halt to trawling on the sea mounts at 
the bottom of the ocean. These ecosystems, which are only just beginning to 
be explored, harbour great forests of deepwater corals and sponges, in which
thousands of unearthly species hide. But we can't summon the will to stop the
handful of boats that are ripping them to shreds.

The power of the fishermen's lobby explains the lack of protection for marine
predators. Though fish species far outnumber mammal species, the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species protects 654 kinds of mammal and just
77 kinds of fish. Trade in only nine of these is subject to a complete ban {11}.

The rules that do get passed are ignored by both fishermen and governments. 
On Sunday I stood with a fisheries manager on the banks of a famous sea trout
river in Wales. Perhaps I should say a famous former sea trout river in Wales.
For the past four years, scarcely any fish - sea trout or salmon - have appeared.
He was not sure why, but he told me that trawlers in the Irish Sea land boxes of
what appear to be bass; hidden under the top layer are salmon and sea trout. 
No one seems to care enough to stop them: government monitoring appears to be
non-existent. The pressure group Oceana walks into European ports whenever
there's a public holiday and finds hundreds of miles of illegal drift nets
stowed on the boats {12,13,14}. Where are the official inspectors?

Of course, governments plead poverty. Which makes you wonder why they decided
last year to allocate EUR 3.8 billion to the destruction of the marine
environment. This is what you and I are now paying in subsidies to keep the
ocean wreckers afloat. The money buys new engines, and boats for young fishermen
hoping to expand their business {15}. For the same cost you could put a
permanent inspector on every large fishing vessel in European waters.

If we don't act, we know what will happen. Another paper published in Science
suggests that on current trends we'll see the global collapse of all the species
currently caught by commercial fishermen by 2048. Yet, if we catch the
ecosystems in time - with temporary fishing bans and the creation of large
marine reserves - they can recover with remarkable speed {16}. I hope 
British ministers, now drafting a new marine bill, have read this study.

But beyond a certain point the collapse is likely to be permanent. Off the coast
of Namibia, where the fishery has crashed as a result of over-harvesting, we
have a glimpse of the future. A paper in Current Biology reports that the
ecosystem is approaching a "trophic dead-end" {17}. As the fish have been mopped
up they have been replaced by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one.
The jellyfish eat the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably
irreversible. We have entered, the paper tells us, the "era of jellyfish
ascendancy".

It's a good symbol. The jellyfish represents the collapse of the ecosystem 
and the spinelessness of the people charged with protecting it.

www.monbiot.com


References:

1. Ransom A Myers et al, 30th March 2007. Cascading Effects of the Loss of Apex
Predatory Sharks from a Coastal Ocean. Science Vol 315 no 5820, pages 1846 -
1850. DOI: 10.1126/science.1138657

2. Ransom A Myers and Boris Worm, 15th May 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of
predatory fish communities. Nature 423, pages 280-283, doi:10.1038/nature01610.

3. Shelley C Clarke et al, October 2006. Global Estimates of Shark Catches using
Trade Records from Commercial Markets. Ecology Letters Vol 9 no 10, pages
1115-26.

4. Ransom A Myers et al, ibid.

5. Francesca Colombo, 12th March 2007. Dangerous Waters - Even for Sharks. 
Inter Press Service News Agency. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36885

6. Oceana, 24th September 2006. Conservationists rally MEPs to make, not break
EU ban on shark finning. Press release.

7. Oceana, 5th December 2006. Oceana requests explanations from the spanish
socialist and popular parties regarding their efforts to increase shark captures.
Press release.

8. Oceana, 24th September 2006, ibid.

9. Oceana, 23rd August 2006. Sharks threatened by European Parliament finning
report. Press release.

10. Peter Popham, 9th March 2007. Sharks hunted to extinction in the
Mediterranean. The Independent.

11. http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/species.shtml

12. Oceana, 29th June 2006. Oceana investigators uncover scandalous fishing
practices: a large fleet of illegal driftnetters are fishing out of Sicilian 
and Calabrian ports. Press release.

13. Oceana, 4th August 2006. Oceana investigates french ports in the
Mediterranean to uncover an illegal fleet of driftnetters. Press release.

14. Oceana, 8th November 2006. Oceana presents evidence in an international
meeting of mediterranean countries that Italy and France are using illegal
driftnets. Press release.

15. Council Of The European Union, 19 June 2006. 2739th Council Meeting:
Agriculture and Fisheries. 
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/agricult/90146.pdf

16. Boris Worm, 3rd November 2006. Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean
Ecosystem Services. Science Vol 314, pages 787-790. DOI: 10.1126/science.1132294.

17. Christopher P. Lynam, 11th July 2006. Jellyfish overtake fish in a heavily
fished ecosystem. Current Biology Vol 16 No 13, pages 492-493.

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/03/feeding-frenzy/


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