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Destructive
Fishing
The oceans are teeming with a plethora of unique and
awe-inspiring creatures; however, harmful and unsustainable fishing
operations pose a serious threat to the biodiversity in our oceans and
can impact entire eco-systems.
Overfishing
Overfishing is the term used to describe the reduction of
fish populations below a biologically and economically
sustainable level such that the population cannot replenish
itself. Many fish populations around the globe are in a
dangerously steep decline due to poor international fishing
regulations and poor enforcement of existing regulations.
Modern day industrial fishing has depleted our oceans and
changed the landscape and balance of the marine environment so
drastically that many species are facing extinction.
Sadly, many fish such as the Patagonian toothfish and some
species of sharks are routinely caught before they even reach
breeding age.
Overfishing not only threatens the future
survival of targeted fish species but it also wreaks havoc on
the balance of whole ecosystems and creatures that depend on
ocean resources, including people. Modern technologies in
fishing practices including bigger nets, longer lines, and
larger fleets coupled with inadequate oversight of fishing
operations by many nations have contributed to the decline, the
results of which are rapidly becoming frighteningly obvious.
At the end of 2006, the journal Science reported that the
world's fisheries could collapse by as soon as 2048 if current
fishing and oversight practices continue. This could spell
disaster for marine life and the coastal communities that depend
on the marine environment for survival.
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Struggling Salmon |
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Many salmon runs in the U.S. have declined almost to the point
of extinction. Salmon and trout are essential prey for some
marine as well as some terrestrial animals, from grizzly bears
to seals and sea lions, so the effects of declines in salmon
populations is felt up the food chain. Unfortunately,
overfishing isn't the only problem these fish face; pollution
and the obstruction of their migratory routes by dams also
threaten salmon populations. Misguided conservation attempts
also inhibit the recovery of salmon populations; such is the
case with the
Columbia River salmon. |
^TOP
Non-Selective Fishing
Millions of animals every year die as bycatch (untargeted
animals that are inadvertently caught in fishing gear). Marine mammals
and sea turtles are extremely sensitive because they breathe air;
therefore they literally drown if they become tangled and then entrapped
in fishing nets. If, by chance the animal manages to break free, they
may be so entangled that they are forced to drag the net with them which
can cause life threatening injuries, interfere with certain behaviors
necessary for survival, and make them vulnerable to predators.
Driftnet Fishing
Driftnets are
gillnets that are allowed to drift near the surface of
the water whereby fish
are trapped as nets slide behind their gill covers.
Driftnets are used to capture many types of fish including tuna,
swordfish and salmon. These nets were traditionally small in size,
biodegradable and attached to small vessels but present day
driftnets are made of nylon and can measure up to 50km in length.
The tops of driftnets are equipped with floats, and weights are
attached to the bottoms—creating a vertical wall in the water.
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Turtle Entangled in a ghost net -
NOAA |
Being
non-selective, vast numbers of non-target animals perish
in driftnets as bycatch.
In some cases, several days pass before the driftnets are retrieved
and by this time it may be too late for air breathing mammals caught
in the nets to be retrieved and freed before they drown. Unintended
victims of the driftnet include whales, dolphins, sea turtles,
seals, sea lions and seabirds, including some endangered species.
Driftnets are particularly dangerous when they become “ghost nets” –
those that have been abandoned or lost by fisherman - and since the
nets are made out of highly resistant nylon they can linger in the
environment entangling marine life for months.
In
2001 NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency of the
U.S. Department of Commerce, created the Pacific Leatherback
Conservation Area prohibiting driftnet fishing for a part of the
year in the waters off Monterey, CA to the mid-Oregon coast. This
decision was a saving grace for leatherback sea turtles who are
still recovering from decades of decline, as well as other marine
species. Because of their destructive power, driftnets have also
been banned in the European Union since 2002 and in the Baltic Sea,
where driftnets must be phased out by 2008. Unfortunately, despite
the EU ban French and Italian fisherman are illegally using
driftnets to catch tuna and swordfish in the Mediterranean due to an
extreme lack of enforcement.
Gillnet fisheries
are also responsible for the decline of the most
endangered porpoise in the world, the vaquita, a harbor porpoise
endemic to Mexico. The vaquita is currently listed as endangered
under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Critically
Endangered by the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red List of
Threatened Species.
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Trawl Fishing
Trawling is
another fishing technique that results in high numbers
of
bycatch. The two trawling methods are pelagic and bottom (or
dimersal). Bottom trawling, the more environmentally destructive of
the two, involves a fishing vessel which drags a funnel shaped
weighted net, equipped with a mechanism to disturb the seabed, along
the sea floor to sweep up everything in its path. This method is
indiscriminate, uncontrollable in the numbers of organisms netted
and is extremely destructive to ancient and fragile seabed
communities.
Deepwater coral
communities and sea mounts are being
devastated by bottom trawls, an activity which has been compared to
the clear-cutting of rainforests. Corals are among the oldest
living animals on the planet and are slow growing organisms – some
species only growing a millimeter every year. When coral
communities are damaged they are lost for generations. In addition,
many deep sea creatures have yet to be discovered or thoroughly
studied. Bottom trawls may literally be extinguishing endemic
communities of sponges, crustaceans, fish, and other species that we
have yet to even discover.
Shrimp trawls are notorious for their high level of bycatch, catching animals ranging from fish to endangered sea turtles. The
unwanted dying or already dead bycatch is commonly discarded back
into the water. Gear modifications such as Bycatch Reduction
Devices (BRDs) and Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) greatly reduce
unintended bycatch by allowing animals an escape. Unfortunately,
enforcement of these devices varies greatly across nations.
Pelagic (or mid-water) trawls are designed to catch large schools of
fish such as tuna, sea bass and anchovies by dragging a net higher
in the water column. By doing this however, they are the cause of a
high level of cetacean bycatch. The fish species targeted by these
trawls are also important prey sources for dolphins so they are the
most common victims of this fishing method.
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Longlining is a fishing technique which involves placing thousands
of baited hooks on a fishing line that can stretch for several
miles. This technique gained popularity in the 1980’s, with the
growing demand for highly valued fish such as tuna, mackerel, and
swordfish. Unfortunately, these fish are not the only creatures
that are caught and killed on these longlines. The bait also
entices marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds, sharks and non-target
fish species.
Gear modifications and temporary prohibitions can reduce the numbers
of bycatch taken by the longlining industry. For example in 2004,
in an effort to protect non-target animals from being caught by
longlines, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) prohibited
the use of longlines out to 200-miles off California, Oregon and
Washington State. The decision by the PFMC helped protect countless
species from the damaging longlines. The use of circle hooks as
opposed to the traditional J-hooks has also increased the number of
turtles and other marine animals that are successfully freed from
longlines.
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A
purse seine, which is attached to a boat, is a weighted down net
that hangs vertically in the water with floats on the top and rings
on the bottom with a rope running through them. When a fishing
vessel encircles a school of fish, the rope is tightened preventing
the fish from escaping. This fishing method is commonly used to
capture fish species that travel in schools close to the surface
such as certain species of tuna, sardines, herring and salmon. In
the 1950’s, fisherman in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean
discovered that large yellowfin tuna congregate under pods of
dolphins (pantropical spotted, spinner, and common). Fishermen
began to use the presence of dolphins to guide them towards schools
of tuna and set their nets around the dolphins to catch the tuna.
It is not clearly understood why the tuna travel with the dolphins
but it is extremely detrimental to dolphin populations. Fisherman
actively seek out a pod of dolphins and after herding them into a
tight group using speed boats, they surround them with a purse seine
net, which encloses the dolphins when pulled tight. This chase,
which can take up to two hours, traumatizes and confuses the
dolphins so that even if they are given the opportunity to escape,
they are unable to do so. For those that survive, there is no way
of knowing how this disturbance affects them. The dolphins are
hauled aboard with the tuna and are usually discarded as bycatch.
Those that survive may endure this unpleasant capture and release
many times throughout their lives. The tuna industry in the Eastern
Tropical Pacific alone is responsible for over seven million dolphin
deaths.
Legislative actions to protect dolphins from purse-seine nets
The
enactment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) in 1972 should
have brought an end to the dolphin bycatch problem in U.S. waters.
Under the MMPA, the tuna industry was required to work towards a
zero dolphin mortality rate. The tuna canning companies Starkist,
Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea all pledged to only produce and
sell genuinely “Dolphin Safe” tuna. They did this by only buying
from suppliers that could guarantee that dolphins had not been
killed during the capture of the tuna. Strict enforcement meant
that dolphin bycatch in the tuna industry decreased, but only in the
U.S.
Dolphin deaths soared in the Eastern Tropical Pacific at the hands
of Mexican, Venezuelan and Colombian tuna fishermen who were still
purse-seining the animals. In 1992, the U.S. International Dolphin
Conservation Act banned the importation of tuna caught by
purse-seining dolphins. By 1994 only “Dolphin-Safe” tuna, caught
without netting dolphins, could be sold in the U.S. Consequently,
dolphin mortalities plummeted. Unfortunately, the Mexican tuna
industry saw to it that this was only a temporary respite. Through
extensive lobbying, they managed to overturn the highly successful
1992 law. The misleading International Dolphin Conservation Program
Act, aka the Dolphin Death Act, was passed in 1997 and this law
drastically changed the “Dolphin-Safe” label of a can of tuna fish
sold in the U.S. to include tuna caught by netting dolphins - as
long as no dolphin was observed killed during the process.
AWI
joined Earth Island Institute and others in filing a lawsuit over
the weakening of the “Dolphin Safe” label. The U.S. District Court
sided in our favor, however the federal government appealed the
decision, but in 2001 the Courts once again ruled in our favor and
denied the weakening of the label.
The
attack on the “Dolphin Safe” label resumed in 2002 when Secretary of
Commerce Don Evans issued a finding of "no significant adverse
impact" regarding the capture of tuna which would have allowed
Mexico, Colombia, and other tuna fishing nations to label their tuna
as "Dolphin-safe" and then to sell it in the US, even if it had been
caught by the chasing, netting, and killing thousands of dolphins
annually. In 2004, U.S. Federal Judge Thelton Henderson upheld
the integrity of the “Dolphin Safe” standards and ruled that the
Bush Administration had based its decisions on politics and not
science. Finally in 2007, a federal appeals court unanimously
refused to allow the weakening of the "Dolphin Safe" tuna label.
The Bush Administration announced it would not appeal, thus ending
eight years of litigation and successfully protecting the integrity
of the label. Now “Dolphin Safe” in the U.S. really does mean
the tuna was caught by methods that do not harm dolphins!
^TOP
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Timeline of Dolphin Safe Tuna Events: |
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1990
- Earth Island Institute and other groups created the
"Dolphin Safe" label and the National Marine Fisheries
Service implemented the labeling system as a way of reducing
dolphin deaths due to tuna fishing. Congress passed the
Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act, setting the
Dolphin Safe tuna label standards into federal law.
1997
– Because of pressure from Mexico, the U.S. attempted to
weaken the definition of “Dolphin Safe” and passed the
International Dolphin Conservation Program Act, aka the
Dolphin Death Act. Luckily, the Act contained an
amendment by Senator Boxer requiring that before weakening
the label the U.S. Department of Commerce assure chasing and
netting dolphins does not cause "significant adverse
impacts" on their populations.
1999
- Secretary of Commerce William Daley issued a preliminary
finding of no "significant adverse impact"
from chasing and netting dolphins, contrary to
scientific findings by Commerce researchers.
1999
- Earth Island Institute and nine other environmental
and animal welfare groups, including AWI, filed a lawsuit (Brower
VS Daley) to overturn the decision by the government to
weaken the "Dolphin Safe" label on American tuna products.
2001
- Courts denied the weakening of the label.
2002
- Secretary of Commerce Don Evans issued another finding of
"no significant adverse impact" regarding the capture of
tuna which would have allowed Mexico, Colombia, and other
tuna fishing nations to label their tuna as "Dolphin-Safe"
and then to sell it in the US, even if it had been caught by
the chasing and killing thousands of dolphins annually.
Earth Island Institute along with eight other plaintiffs,
including AWI, filed suit against the Secretary of Commerce
(Earth Island Institute, et al. v. Secretary of Commerce
Donald Evans) the day after the finding announcement.
2003
- Federal Judge Thelton
Henderson issued a preliminary injunction preventing the
weakening of the "Dolphin-Safe" label, arguing that the
decision by NMFS ignored two federal court rulings.
2004 -
Judge Henderson issued his decision in favor of the
plaintiffs and ordered the US Commerce Department to issue a
new rule prohibiting the use of a "Dolphin-Safe" label on
any tuna products caught by netting dolphins.
April 27, 2007
- A federal appeals court unanimously refused to allow the
weakening of the "Dolphin Safe" tuna label - ending eight
years of litigation. |
Fisherman in
Southeast Asia, Africa and the Aegean Sea practice this method to catch fish
even though it is illegal in most places. Fishermen who use this method set
explosives, usually homemade, in the water to stun entire schools of fish at
once. Shockwaves from these explosions can be very hazardous to the surrounding
environment, especially to sensitive coral reefs. Homemade explosives may
contain damaging pollutants such as kerosene and fertilizers further degrading
the environment. The explosions transform dynamic ecosystems into empty
lifeless deserts.
Shark
Finning
Recent
studies have shown that shark populations are facing dire consequences
due to the human desire for their body parts. Shark liver oil and shark
cartilage have long been thought of as having great health benefits and
as a general “cure-all,” including more recently as an unproven cure for
cancer. Sharks are also killed for meat, accidentally as bycatch and
for their fins.
Many
shark populations have faced steep declines due to years of
exploitation. Over 100 shark species appear on the IUCN Red List of
Threatened Species however, there are trade restrictions on the body
parts of only three species—the basking, great white and whale
sharks—which are covered by the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Because
of the high value of shark fins and the relatively low value of their
meat, sharks are often “finned”—by far the most cruel, unsustainable and
wasteful method of killing a shark. Once sharks are caught and hauled
aboard, fishermen slice off the fins while the animals are still
conscious. Often the helpless sharks are then tossed back into the
water where, unable to move, they can endure long, painful deaths from
suffocation, blood loss or predation by other animals.
Shark
fin soup is a popular dish in East Asian societies; however it can be
found at restaurants throughout the world, and is commonly served at
weddings and banquets. Current estimates show that as many as 73
million sharks are killed yearly for the shark fin industry and their
slow reproductive rates make them extremely vulnerable to extinction. An
additional 50 million sharks die annually as bycatch (by fishermen
targeting other species) in unregulated and indiscriminant longline,
gillnet and trawl fisheries. The disappearance of sharks, apex predators
in many ecosystems, is causing dangerous imbalances in marine
communities worldwide.
Despite
the global depletion of sharks, many countries do not have any means of
managing shark fisheries—and those who do tend to have weak, incomplete,
or poorly enforced standards.
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What you can do to help: |
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AWI is leading an effort to compel restaurants in the U.S. that
currently serve shark-fin soup to cease doing so because of the
cruelty of the practice and the fragility of shark populations.
Click here
to read more about AWI's shark fin campaign and for a list of
restaurants in your area. |
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Fish Farms
Fish farming is
a very controversial form of aquaculture (cultivation of aquatic organisms) in
which fish are raised in enclosures to be sold commercially as food. It is
hailed by some to be a solution to the overfishing of depleted wild-caught fish
species; however these farms can destroy entire ecosystems - introducing
diseases, pollutants and endangering native species. The industry has
boomed in recent years and now more than 30 percent of all the seafood consumed
globally each year is raised in these artificial situations. Some species
that are
commonly farmed include salmon, tuna, cod, trout and halibut.
These aquafarms can either be in the form of mesh cages in natural bodies of
water or concrete enclosures on land.
Bad for the fish
Fish suffer
in these filthy and inhumane facilities. Just as is the case with most
agricultural farms, the fish are housed in unnaturally crowded and cramped
conditions with little room to move. These overcrowded and stressful
conditions encourage disease outbreaks that farmers treat with pesticides
and antibiotics. Fish may also suffer from lesions, fin damage and other
debilitating injuries. High stocking densities can also lead to poor water
quality with high ammonia levels and thus low oxygen levels. Many
land-based farms are indoor enclosures so the farmers control the amount of
food, water, oxygen and lighting the fish are given.
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Bluefin Tuna Ranching |
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Years of unregulated
and underreported catches of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea
and Atlantic Ocean are threatening the existence of the severely
overfished species. To meet the high and growing demand for
sushi in Japan and elsewhere, ranching of bluefin tuna is becoming a
popular industry and is exacerbating the problem still further.
Fisherman use longlines and purse seines to catch the tuna before
they reach breeding age and have time to reproduce. .
They are then kept in sea farms for 3-6 months and fattened with
thousands of pounds of smaller wild-caught fish before being killed
and exported. |
Although there is
evidence to the contrary, it is still a common misconception that fish do
not feel pain, and slaughter methods in these factories are appalling.
Little to no attention is given to the suffering of the animals and most are
therefore fully conscious during slaughter which can take many minutes.
Some species, such as salmon in the U.S., are also starved for many days to
empty the gut before they are sent to slaughter.
Bad for the environment
Ocean-based
fish farms are extremely bad for the environment and native marine species
in the area. These farms pollute the oceans with an overwhelming amount of
waste and introduce diseases into the environment. Furthermore, smaller
wild species are being overfished in order to feed the farmed livestock.
Escaped fish introduce yet another threat into the environment whereby
hundreds of thousands of fish escape yearly and threaten the genetic
diversity and survival of native species.
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What you can do to help: |
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As a consumer, you have the power to help overfished
fish species from extinction. For a list of
healthy choices and species to avoid, please
click
here. |
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Additional Information: |
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-
Film Spotlight:
Darwin's
Nightmare -
This
captivating documentary, based on a fishing village in the Congo,
illustrates that overfishing not only hurts fish, but the whole
ecosystem.
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