The Problem with Fish

[Thanas]

On the other hand, I'd like to see the Europeans develop their own ratings (if they haven't already - I confess to some provincialism in my knowledge).

Second.link.in.my.first.post.in.the.thread. Why else did I include that description? It covers it universally, btw and includes all fisheries.

[Broomstick]

Well, not being able to read German, and with that Greenpeace logo up in the left corner, I have limited ability to know what's going on there. The Greenpeace list supposedly relies heavily on MBA and I just sort of assumed it was a German reprint of that. So if it's not, then I stand corrected and if you say it covers all the European fisheries I'll just take your word for it because you're generally a reliable authority and can actually read German.

In other words, I'm happy to be wrong on that point. Thank you for the update, I'll be amending my mental notes.

[Erik von Nein]

Well, the World Wildlife Fund has what looks like the same list here, so it appears they're doing just that.

[Erik von Nein]

Anyway, it's slightly getting off topic talking about guides. There're obviously plenty of them and they're all useful for informed decision making. The problem, always, is the time and effort required to make sure that the food you're buying is good. To go back to the point of mislabeled fish one effort I saw California making in light of the Oceana organizations inspection of seafood was to require all large restaurant chains to correctly identify what the species is, in what manner it was produced (caught vs farmed), and from what part of the world it originated from. I was going to make a comment on the effectiveness of the law when I noticed I read here that it's already a federal requirement for grocery stores, and there was still rampant fraud.

Apparently we're going to need much stricter control on seafood fraud in general (what a twist), which obviously would require more government resources.

[Irbis]

To add to fishery checks, here, in Poland, I recently started noticing fishery maps/data supplied by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), especially FIRMS (Fishery Resources Monitoring System). Maybe someone will find these useful?

As for fishermen cooperation with limits, I don't know, maybe there are environmentally conscious groups, but most of the time, you tend to hear how stupid/evil government limits fishermen rights by "communist" quotas and limits. Then, you hear about complete basket cases, like assholes in southern US closing compulsory turtle excluder devices with wire [link] because a tiny amount of catch can escape through these (and no one cares about these stupid reptiles, right?) or even trying to disable turtle protection altogether. Example - state of Louisiana prohibiting its marine wardens from enforcing TED and tow time limits

[Broomstick]

And yet, your own source states the first TED was invented and deployed by a fisherman.

It's a complex problem involving human beings. There are good ones, bad ones, smart ones, stupid ones, greedy ones, and so on. Never said solving these problems would be easy....

[madd0ct0r]

Lets throw another complicating factor in here:
developing countries.

within 150m of my house, there are people fishing from coracles, small boats and trawlers. One group lays out a semicircle net in the bay area and then 6 people slowly haul the net back onto the shore. Normal catch looks to be about 1.5 kilos of 5-10cm long fish. I don't know how they make a living from that.

At the same time you have huge rickety wooden ships that go out as far as the phillipines chasing bigger fish (and picking fights with chinese fishermen doing the same). You have saltwater shrimp farms, tilpia farms, catfish farms and yes there have been cases of the toilet just being built out over the pen.

Squid is very popular here and jellyfish is available in most restaurants. Fish is the main source of protein for most of the population, and while a lot of it is badly contaminated, so is the pork and so is the salad. The fishing stocks are probably crashing but in this case we're not talking super factory ships, just lots of locals.

[Broomstick]

within 150m of my house, there are people fishing from coracles, small boats and trawlers. One group lays out a semicircle net in the bay area and then 6 people slowly haul the net back onto the shore. Normal catch looks to be about 1.5 kilos of 5-10cm long fish. I don't know how they make a living from that.

That sounds like subsistence level fishing. Fish that small you more or less eat whole after minimal cleaning/gutting (they're about the size of the Great Lakes smelt I used to eat in my younger days) or use as sort of a condiment/flavoring in a primarily grain and/or vegetable based dish. Split six ways it provides enough protein to keep a body going, maybe a bit more than that. It also will provide vitamins and minerals (like calcium, if you eat the bones, too) you won't get from plain rice which, if I'm not mistaken, is the primary component of the diet of the poor in such places.

At the same time you have huge rickety wooden ships that go out as far as the phillipines chasing bigger fish (and picking fights with chinese fishermen doing the same). You have saltwater shrimp farms, tilpia farms, catfish farms and yes there have been cases of the toilet just being built out over the pen.

Squid is very popular here and jellyfish is available in most restaurants. Fish is the main source of protein for most of the population, and while a lot of it is badly contaminated, so is the pork and so is the salad. The fishing stocks are probably crashing but in this case we're not talking super factory ships, just lots of locals.

It's highly unlikely that local third-worlders are the primary cause of the crashing local stocks. It's possible, particularly for localized shortages, but the typical pattern is they only fish within a certain radius of shore and there is a continual influx of fish from outside that radius. Also typical is that such people utilize a wide range of sea life, they don't just concentrate on one species and throw the rest overboard as trash.

Of course, if they adopt commercial tactics that can be a problem, as can fish farming techniques if they aren't done right.

Still, while a heavily populated island nation might strip their local seas with subsistence fishing, and that's not a trivial problem, the commercial trawler/factory ships are stripping the entire ocean. If local fish populations crash but the oceans are healthy there is the option of re-stocking from wild populations. If the high seas are stripped there is no resupply outside of relic populations you hope survived in some isolated nook or cranny.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Note: I love this thread. I endorse it.

*Stamps with approval*

There are a lot of ways that we can make the situation better. Hell, there is a fish farm in spain that is not a fish farm at all. It is an entirely artificial ecosystem in the form of a 100% constructed salt marsh. Basically what the farmers did is buy up land that used to be a salt marsh (but that was degraded to the point that it was not anymore), restored it completely, reintroduced native plants and animals, let it grow, and then figured out the populations of commercially important fish. Once this was done, they began sustainably harvesting said fish stocks. In the US alone we have lost to 50% of our native wetlands to draining (levee building for example. The irony is, a wetland floodplain is better than the construction of dykes for storm surge and flood mitigation), clearing for industry etc. It would not be at all difficult (costly, but not difficult) to restore these wetlands and use them for aquaculture.

Part of the runoff issue with aquaculture is that the ecosystems downstream of fish farms are destroyed. The wetlands that used to be along the river and in its floodplain that fix nitrogen and remove other biological waste are not there anymore, so dead zones get created in the river and where the river empties. The same thing is a problem with salt water fish farms.

The same is also, incidentally, true for plant agriculture. The two can even be combined, for that matter. A healthy wetland used to farm rice, crayfish, waterfowl, and various teleost fish. It would be capital intensive to create, but with government assistance it could work rather well.

[Thanas]

There currently is also a push in Germany to get people to eat more domestically produced fish like pikes, trout and carp, who have turned from everyday food to delicacies nowadays due to so much bluewater fish being available.

[Alan Bolte]

Although occasionally criticized for being too free with their certifications, the Marine Stewardship Council at least seems like a reasonable attempt at identifying sustainable fisheries and communicating that information to consumers. I'd hesitate before buying any fish product that lacks the MSC label.

[Aaron MkII]

For what it's worth, I only eat fish that I catch myself in the local lakes. Bass, perch, the odd catfish.

[Covenant]

It's incredibly depressing. I'm incredibly far from an ocean of any sort, so the idea of overfishing is strange to me. "How could people eat that much fish," I wonder, seeing as the tuna and cod stocks (best tasting of the fish I'd eat) have been so crappy for so long I just don't eat any fish products at all, or crabs or whatever.

This is much to the incredible frustration on the part of my vegetarian girlfriend. I won't buy us Tuna or Cod, because the ecological cost is just too high to be worth it. I'd rather skip meat at all than meet her half-way on a far less ethically stable ground. I'd rather eat a cow than a fish, given how rare a lot of fish are becoming. Lots of people use fish as the cornerstone of their diet, but as a Midwestern US guy I can afford to look elsewhere for my food. There's certain things I just can't work up the indignation to do, but I can very easily choose not to eat fish.

I would also encourage people to grow some basic veggies on their own. You can get a clay pot and a pepper plant for very little and get the knack of it, even without a yard or anything. Plus it just tastes better.

[Sea Skimmer]

The problem is people see the ocean as this vast endless void... ignoring the fact that most of the fish are living near the surface and that much of the ocean while deep, is hardless a bottomless pit of life. Same mental problem I think we getting people to take the scale of air pollution seriously with understanding that almost all the air is within 35,000 feet of the surface... less then the distance most people commute to work.

[CarsonPalmer]

If this was up already, I apologize, but I didn't see anything on here about crabs, lobster, or calamari. I know they aren't fish, but where do they fall here?

[Thanas]

If this was up already, I apologize, but I didn't see anything on here about crabs, lobster, or calamari. I know they aren't fish, but where do they fall here?

They are already on the list.

It depends on where they are fished, but lobster is seriously overfished with the stocks collapsing, calamari are a no-no and crabs are generally okay as long as they are the atlantic crab.

[Broomstick]

The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery (which straddles the US/Canadian border and is jointly maintained by the respective governments) is actually experiencing a glut of lobsters, with their numbers growing year by year, likely due to lack of predation from now-scarce, once-common predator fish like cod. If you want lobster, try to buy one from that fishery which is being managed sustainably and arguably might need an apex predator to keep the lobsters from overpopulating since humans seem to have decimated the natural predators so much.

Alaska crab should be on OK lists, as the crab fisheries are as stringently maintained as the other Alaska fisheries, and Monterey Bay lists wild-caught Dungeness from the US Pacific Coast as a "green" choice, but other Pacific crab would be questionable.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery (which straddles the US/Canadian border and is jointly maintained by the respective governments) is actually experiencing a glut of lobsters, with their numbers growing year by year, likely due to lack of predation from now-scarce, once-common predator fish like cod. If you want lobster, try to buy one from that fishery which is being managed sustainably and arguably might need an apex predator to keep the lobsters from overpopulating since humans seem to have decimated the natural predators so much.

Yeah, New England in general is quite literally overflowing with lobster. Hell, every summer you get the local McDonalds in New England and Maritime Canada selling lobster sandwiches (pretty decent ones, too). The local Chinese places sells lobster lo mein. And it is dirt cheap, by lobster standards anyway.

[Todeswind]

New England is lousy with the things. We used to race them across the kitchen when I was a kid, whichever lobster made it from the fridge to the sink first "won." (It went in the pot first.)

In retrospect it was a bit morbid. Still for $3-5 a pound, you can eat very well in Maine, and for only a bit more in the rest of New England.

The funniest thing for me is that Lobster is historically a "peasant dish" in New England. The damn things were what people ate en lieu of real food, more or less the 18th and 19th century New England equivalent to gruel. Being forced to eat lobster was so "inhumane" that prisons were legally bound not to serve lobster more than a couple of meals a weak as it ostensibly fit the bill of "cruel and unusual punishment" to force men to subsist on lobster alone.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The fisheries in Washington and Oregon for Salmon especially are heavily managed by tribal fishing rights, which means most of the catch is overseen by people with an actual interest in long-term sustainability of harvest. You will not find it broadly on the market outside of our region, however, so it isn't as important to mention as the overall size of the catch from the two states combined is just a fraction of that of Alaska, precisely to allow runs to recover and because they're simply going to be smaller due to hydroelectric dams down here.

[Pendleton]

Question: How is moving to fresh water fish in any way an answer to the problems presented? I have seen that idea presented before, and variations on other problems with ecological decline.

[Molyneux]

I've heard the idea of jellyfish as a reasonably eco-friendly food source put forth. Anyone heard about those?
For me...I've told my family to never trust any salmon that isn't labeled as Alaskanan and wild-caught, and I try to limit my total fish intake, specifically going for small schooling fish like mackerel and herring when I do eat fish.

It helps that I adore mackerel and herring, of course.

[Sea Skimmer]

Jellyfish harvest have already skyrocketed in recent years as fish stocks collapse in the Asian littoral around China, it would be better not to take that root when we know even less about the sustainability of the populations then we do about most ocean fish.

[His Divine Shadow]

Heh. I loathe fish, but ironically canned tuna is something I love. Damn.

[NoXion]

Prawns are the only seafood I eat with any regularity. What's the environmental impact?