Consumers
and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about
the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish.
It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and
scope of change. We are utterly
reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our
lifestyles and expert advice about the things we consume. At a basic level, we are perpetually
challenged to figure out whom and what to trust.
I am as
vexed as anyone, and I avidly read fisheries research as both an environmental
historian and as a consumer of fish.
A long time ago I set up a search bot that informs me about newly
published research on oceans, fisheries, and especially salmon. Every morning I get an email chock full
of citations, and over the last two decades I have witnessed dramatic shifts in
how we view oceans. Beginning in
the early 1990s in the wake of the collapse of the Grand Banks and Georges
Banks fisheries, there was a rising chorus of warnings about “The Death of the Oceans,”
to borrow the title of Sir David Attenborough’s recent documentary. The alarms came from respected corners
including The Economist and national
commissions to the Pew
Charitable Trust and other non-governmental
environmental organizations.
By the
turn of the millennium these arguments had grown pointed. UBC biologist Daniel Pauly boiled the
crisis down to a succinct phrase, “Fishing
Down Marine Food Webs” [pdf], often shortened to “Fishing Down the
Food Chain” and reinforced by an illustration from Pauly’s and Jay
Maclean’s In
a Perfect Ocean (2003, p. 52) suggesting a relentless destruction that
will end with us having nothing to eat but jellyfish:
Then in 2006 a group led by conservation biologist
Boris Worm published an article in the respected journal Science
[pdf] projecting “the global collapse of all
taxa currently fished by . . . the year 2048.” An alerted media gave these arguments wide coverage, and
historians folded such insights into discussions of the Newfoundland fisheries
and anthropogenic
evolution. As physicist
Clifford Will reminded readers of the New
York Times this
week, however, scientific debates are never closed.
Fisheries researchers
began to criticize both data and models.
At one level it was a nerdy argument among scientists adept at
statistical analysis, but underneath were real differences over how marine
fisheries were managed. Pauly,
Worm, and others, most of whom fell within the discipline of conservation
biology, used catch data provided by the Food and Agricultural Organization to
argue [pdf] that 70 percent of the world’s fisheries were overexploited and
perhaps 30 percent had collapsed.
This generated a flurry of comments
in Science, so many that everyone
agreed to a joint reanalysis of data.
When
this was published [pdf] in 2009, the authors, all of whom agreed that many
fisheries were a mess and that most could do better, nevertheless conceded that
the FAO data was problematic for many parts of the world and that cross checks
with other biometric and historical data revealed many fisheries were
recovering or recovered. This view
was confirmed last
week in the journal Conservation Biology
[pdf], when research on an array of data found far lower rates of collapsed
fisheries in the Pacific: 4 to 17
percent as opposed to 49 percent.
Both Worm’s models and data seemed flawed. Pauly’s claims of a future of jellyfish were also put to the
test, and, again, close attention revealed more stability both in specific
areas such as the Gulf of
Mexico and worldwide in not one but two studies.
Although
the media covered some of this debate, including the New
York Times and a YouTube
video and press releases by Ecotrust
and the PEW
Charitable Trust, reporting tended to feature environmentalist spins
skeptical of good news and its messengers. From a consumer perspective it was also maddeningly vague in
answering which fisheries were well
managed and which fish to
consume. A consensus is forming
that the best fisheries data comes from the most industrialized nations, which
are also better at management. The
problem is that these countries also consume fish from elsewhere in the world,
where FAO data is sketchier and management, often shaped by graft from
transnational fishing corporations, is less
effective and more prone to causing local
poverty around the
world. Although there is good
news as well as bad in the give and take of scientific fisheries research in
the last two decades, consumers in the American West, who really do eat a lot
of fish from around the world, still face a situation of caveat
emptor.
Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.
Joseph Taylor teaches in the history department at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver. He is the author of Pilgrims of the Vertical: Yosemite Rock Climbers and Nature at Risk, which won the National Outdoor Book Award, and Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis, which won the American Society of Environmental History’s best book award. He lives in Oregon.
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