Atlantic Fisheries - mixed News!

The good news first.

I remain a huge fan of ex freedom fighter Maria Damanaki and her unshakeable commitment to tackle the various afflictions of the European fishing industry.
She has declared war on overfishing, the completely ineffective and economically nonviable subsidies, poaching and discards. What I also totally like is her idea of automatically reducing the fishing quotas of those members who fail to report their catches, very much along the lines of the precautionary principle.
Her proposals are now going to enter a consultation process and undoubtedly get watered down - but something will survive even the fiercest lobbying and thus, there will be progress.
I say, well done - as so often!

Now, once again, about those poor Tuna.
NOAA in its wisdom has decided not to accord the Northern Bluefin Tuna protection under the Endangered Species Act. Not good, tho I can somehow sympathize, as the Western stocks are certainly more robust and way better managed (read it, it's a great resource!) than the eastern stocks, especially in the Med.
The Tuna however remain a "species of concern" and a new assessment will be made by early 2013.

NOAA is also imposing new weak hooks.
It's about trying to reduce the Bluefin mortality in the Gulf where spawning Bluefins are protected but where they are never the less killed as bycatch of the important commercial Yellowfin and Swordfish longline fisheries.
But as always, things are complicated and reviews have been mixed, especially by the Pew who proposes to ban surface longlining instead.

Here is what the Pew folks have to say.



Long story short?
I do see progress, albeit frustratingly slow, and remain hopeful.
And Patric - do not forget my fine bottle!

Tuna Recap!

Whilst I'm trying to make time for a post, watch this.
It's basically a visual recap of the situation of the Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna fisheries - overfishing, poaching, subsidies and all the other pathetic shenanigans.

Some good news here: Maria Damanaki is flexing some muscle - as anticipated!
Go girl!

Hat tip: Blogfish.

Tuna Fisheries - it's complicated!

I must confess that my head is spinning.
I recently had a conversation with one of my very smart friends about the plight of the Northern Bluefin and he said look at the European subsidies. Without those, much of the large scale fisheries would not be commercially viable and the overfishing would not be happening.

The above graphic, already posted here, appears to be confirming just that.
Same same for this recent important paper by U.R. Sumalia & al. Thankfully, the Pew has taken the time to summarize it in this fantastic synopsis that I invite everybody to read in its entirety.
This is the ingress:

Ocean Science Summary: Subsidizing Global Fisheries

Global fisheries receive billions of dollars in subsidies each year.
Although some of this money, such as that to improve fisheries management, can promote sustainable fishing practices, other funding can lead to overfishing in the world’s oceans. Capacity-enhancing subsidies, for example for fuel or boat construction, reduce costs for fishers, enabling them to increase their capacity and catch more fish. The unintended consequence of this kind of assistance is that encouraging fishers to bring in larger catches contributes to unsustainable fishing practices over the long-term.

Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia and his co-authors improved upon previous estimates of global subsidies using updated data and methodology and calculated global amounts and types of fisheries subsidies for 2003.
They found global subsidies totaled roughly $27 billion, 60 percent of which went toward unsustainable capacity-enhancing subsidies. Instead of continuing to invest billions of dollars into activities that aggravate overfishing, the authors suggest directing those funds toward fishery conservation and improved management.
This Pew Ocean Science Series report is a summary of the scientists’ findings.

And there's more evidence, e.g this report by the WWF, this remarkable and shocking interactive map by Fishsubsidy and these recent statements by Maria Damanaki.

So, can we save the oceans by eliminating all subsidies?
It sure looks like a beginning - maybe. Alas, the more I try to explore the topic of global fisheries, the more I come to realize that the issue is unbelievably multifaceted and that there are no quick fixes and out of the box solutions - incidentally very much confirming my visceral unease about the strategies, or lack of, adopted in the Doha debacle!

Take the fisheries for Tuna.
It interests me insofar as it is well researched and documented and mutatis mutandis, in many ways an excellent proxy for the fisheries for Sharks. Prima vista, and like in the case of Sharks, the situation appears crystal clear: one Asian villain is enticing the fishermen to fish a species into extinction.
But then, I stumble across this remarkable (and probably accurate) in depth exposé and read with consternation that it is none other than the so much reviled Japan that is urging a reduction in world wide quotas of Tuna, demanding better management and actively combating (yes this would again be Maria!) illegal, unreported and unregulated catches! Not plausible? Independent verification here, and here is the synopsis of the whole investigative report!
So who is the villain now - maybe these people?

Long story short: it is complicated - that being a massive understatement!
If you really have the time to spare, please read this latest document by the FAO. It brims with detail and the more one reads, the more one gets a picture of the massive scope and inter-dependency (check out the graph on p. 101!) of global Tunas fisheries.
Here are the Conclusions.

Most of the RFMO conventions define MSY as the reference point for stock management. Under such definition, almost all the world’s tuna stocks are nearly fully exploited and some are overexploited. Some of the stocks which are not yet overexploited are being overfished (i.e. fishing mortality is higher than the level corresponding to MSY).
Therefore, it is a crucial time to establish proper management of the stocks and to thus decide the future of tuna resources.

The sustainable use of the stocks is crucial for the industry.
The most serious difficulty in management is the increasing fishing capacity compared to the available stocks. Therefore, in terms of proper management, global control of fishing capacity, not only that of industrial fisheries but also of small-scale coastal fisheries, is the key to success. There are many options for holding fishing mortality at a proper level, such as catch quotas, effort control, time-area closures, size limits and many others. However, all of these will be very difficult to agree upon in an international forum as long as there is an excess of fishing capacity.

Up until the end of the twentieth century, the tuna fishing industry was singly focused on how to increase efficiencies in fishing, processing and trading in order to increase profit.
Under current circumstances, consideration of ecosystems and the sustainability of both target and non-target species, as well as many other socio-economic factors (such as rising costs of fuel and labour and strict regulations on industrial waste discharges and emissions) are necessary. Sometimes these considerations result in an increase in cost and a decrease in efficiency for the industry.

Over the past several decades consumers have enjoyed a constant increase in fish supply and the ready availability of low-priced products, but now they must also assume the increased production costs associated with the factors listed above.
This scenario is analogous to that of a pie that has already expanded dramatically to its maximum, but for which the number of pie consumers (i.e. fishers) has also increased and is still increasing.

At present, the most important issue is how to manage the number of potential pie consumers and how to distribute the pie among them (e.g. using fishing capacity control measures and/or catch allocations).
This problem involves many complicated aspects including allocations between developed and/or distant water fishing nations and coastal and/or developing countries, among fishing gears, and between products (e.g. fresh fish versus canned fish).

As shown in this report, the industry has shown great changes at all stages in response to a variety of socio-economic factors, while management has remained focused on the biology of individual stocks.

When the tuna industry is as complicated as it is now (interaction among species, fishing gear types, areas, products and consumers, and individual country’s economic situations), then management needs also to be realistic and practical to succeed.
For example, if the maximum biological gain is to be the goal, all tuna should be taken at the size where biomass is maximized (see Section 4.2.7) assuming that the spawner-recruitment relationship is not affected by catching fish at this critical level. However, if we try to do this, the production cost would be far more than current cost (i.e. most of the fish would have to be taken by longline and the effort would thus need to be increased by up to tenfold over the current level). Even then, the resulting products may not meet the markets’ demands (e.g. too costly or too large for canning).

The current share of catches, mix of fisheries, status of stocks, and structure of industries and market, in short, the current landscape of the industry in all its complexity has been formed through the balance of all these bio- and socio-economic conditions and factors.
There is no doubt that a slight change in one segment can alter the balance substantially. For example, as seen recently, an increase in fuel prices had a major effect on fishing grounds, target species, relative profitability among fisheries and product types and, in the end, the retail price of various products.

Understanding the entire tuna industry is critically important for proper management.
Also, it is now time to solve the allocation problem (including all types of allocations such as allocation of TAC among countries, products and fisheries), and to approach it through established principles rather than leaving it up to ad hoc balancing of bio- and socio-economic factors.

Although this report has covered many aspects of the economic and social importance of tuna fisheries, it could not go into detail on the relative importance of the industry to the many different states involved in it. This kind of research would need not only to examine the states’ economic characteristics but also their sociological characteristics including culture and eating habits. This important aspect of the allocation issue remains a rich and essential field of research for the future.

See where I'm coming from?
This is not gonna be fixed tomorrow - but having said this, there is progress!
And to the doomsayers among you: do not forget this!

It is not too late - not for the Tuna and not for the Sharks!

PS I love sparring with Patric!
His visual representation illustrates perfectly the exact opposite of where I'm coming from, ie local as opposed to global extinctions. In fact, the Northern Bluefin is already extinct in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. But contrary to those enclosed bodies, the Atlantic is a mighty big piece of real estate. Tuna will become commercially extinct long, long before we will manage to wipe out the last stocks - especially if those subsidies get cut (and they will!) and the fight against IUU gets traction.
Again, the track record is unequivocable!

Discards - Madness!

Another British celebrity chef, another campaign.

It is so bad, it just totally defies comprehension.
One has to pick one's fights and I'm plenty busy with trying to do something for Sharks - but if you care, check out Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fishfight campaign website.

Instead of more words, watch the following: obscene!



Solutions?
This is probably unbelievably intractable, as it will likely imply re-writing the European Common Fisheries Policy that regulates the different quotas or TACs - just check out the TACs for 2011 and you'll see what I mean!
But thanks to people like Hugh (and a whole host of NGOs, too), the issue is now firmly on the table - and Maria Damanaki is on the right side of the divide.
Again - and yes I am a fan!

As I said, when it comes to Fisheries policies, I'm basically an ignoramus.But the following graph may be a good starting point for identifying the problem and finding solutions - and not only in the case of discards!
Check it out - see what I mean?

Paris - Realpolitik!

I trust you know that the western hemisphere economies are broken.

With the exception of some micro states with special circumstances and Germany that has successfully re-routed its exports to Asia, everybody else is in a terrible mess, with no real end in sight.
The bailouts amount to nothing more than kicking the can further down the road when the billions will have to be re-paid, and the clamoring for austerity and re-balancing of the budgets can really only have one immediate effect: more joblessness that may even become structural, less consumption and consequently, an even slower economic recovery.
I was in the USA when the GOP conquered congress and had to laugh at the hypocritical bipartisan pledges of no earmarks (great, but will the budget be trimmed by those amounts? Take a wild guess!) whilst the three Big deficit Gorillas, Defense, Medicaid and Medicare were studiously never mentioned.
Heed my words: whenever anybody will stand up and suggest some real cuts, some opponent will utter the magic word jobs!, and Tea Party or no Tea Party, nothing substantive will ever happen!
Wanna bet?

Politics on a conservation blog?
Thing is, conservation does not happen in a political vacuum, ever.
Like it or not, this is the current economical and above all, political backdrop and any measures where anybody can stand up and shout jobs! are bound to fail from the outset.

Take the fatally stalled US Shark finning bill and you can see where I’m coming from.
Or take Europe: Greece, now Ireland, soon Portugal and Spain, possibly Belgium and Italy: more austerity, more riots, more job losses – not to mention a weakening of European solidarity and the Euro. Did you really think that Sarkozy who barely survived a popular uprising where twenty-year-olds rioted against a pension reform that would only affect them in half a century (!) would take the political risk of pitching conservation against perceived job losses and riots by the tuna fishermen?

With that in mind, ICCAT has been a roaring success!
You can read the outcome for Sharks in this informative post by Richard and for once, I do not totally concur with his assessment that the news is equally good and bad: with the exception of Porbeagles, a tiny food (as opposed to fin) fisheries where Canada successfully shouted jobs!, most of the proposed measures did pass, albeit with some exemptions which IMO are only fair in the case of Hammerheads and rather irrelevant long term in the case of Shortfin Makos.

Leaves the only truly negative and highly disturbing outcome which is the defeat of a finning ban.
Very sad indeed but as Richard points out, several countries are trying to enact local finning bans and if so and if drafted properly, see Hawaii, that will hopefully severely curtail the possibility of offloading fins caught offshore.
Fingers crossed!

Compare that to Doha and everybody should stop pouting and instead rejoice – and bravo Sonja for setting the right tone!

Tuna? Not good!
But then again, taking into account the current economical and political backdrop and after Europe changed its position (jobs!), I expected zero and am thus both totally surprised and happy about the tiny quota reduction!

Plus, there is a secret weapon: the formidable Maria Damanaki!
I totally like her commitment to sustainable fisheries and in view of the recent brilliant investigative report (brilliant technical platform, too!) that has uncovered blatant underreporting, overfishing, poaching and widespread scams in the Mediterranean Tuna fisheries, the European Fisheries Commission has ample scope for enforcing the quotas and prosecuting the perpetrators - and by doing that, for substantially reducing the amount of Tuna that are being effectively caught!


And I have no doubt that Mrs. Damanaki will do just that, as she has already announced in admirably politically correct lingo!
And... she may have an equally formidable and totally unexpected ally: Japan(!) who wants to put an end to the illegal shenanigans - and if you don’t believe me, read the abovementioned investigative report and do your own due diligence on Google, also with regards to the reviled Mitsubishi Corporation!

You can find the list of relevant decisions here and you will notice several important and largely unreported technical measures aimed at achieving better transparency. All-in all, as Damanaki says, it’s a step in the right direction.
Yes much remains to be done – but I believe that conservation and the need for sustainable fisheries remain squarely on the table, and that’s a good thing.

So, here’s a toast to the victory for the Sharks!

Hat tip: the truly unequaled, and obviously blissfully unrepentant Elizabeth Griffin Wilson of African Elephant fame, for teaching us that "If you took those sharks (caught in the Atlantic in 2008) and lined them up, they would stretch from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, and that's just (in) one year"
Wow!

Shark Media: Love. Not Loss.

I actually wanted to blog about something completely different.

I wanted to write a post about the fabulous outcome of COP 10.
This is really a remarkable result, especially considering the current economical, and thus political circumstances. The decision to expand nature reserves to 17% of the world's land and 10% of the planet's waters and Japan's pledge of USD 2bn for biodiversity are great and need to be applauded - at least til tomorrow, then the professional whingers will undoubtedly start moaning about how it's not quite enough.

Sure beats the news out of the European union where the Mediterranean states (thank you Malta!) are already trying to torpedo Europe's stance at the upcoming ICCAT meeting, this against the stated intentions of their new and I believe, brilliant Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki! Thankfully, Maria isn't taking that laying down, so fingers crossed that the end result will be equally positive!
As to the meeting itself... some people may want to re-read this.

Anyway, that's what I wanted to post about.
But in researching the biodiversity topic, I literally stumbled upon this remarkable video.

Totally true!
I spare you the links, but I've been blogging quite a bit about my dislike of a specific brand of pro-Shark videos that I find overly melodramatic and gory. Looks like others with much more specific know how agree, especially with respect to the stupid and rather revolting "shock ads" and shock campaigns.

The correct way?
Look no further than the BBC whose iconic images remain the pretty much unequaled standard for excellent, moving and truthful animal documentaries. Or when it comes to written statements, check out this latest feature about Wolfgang (Shark whisperer huh... somebody aint gonna be amused...) where his love of the animals is all-pervasive.
That's how you do it!

So here's to more smart Shark media!

Doha - pathetic!

No, this is not yet another post slamming CITES!

From a message by a friend.

The environmental issues need to get into the realm of either the more ruthless, more effective or more monetarily concerned or a combination of all three.
From what I've read, it seems the pro-fishing folks obviously had a strategy and agenda for this meeting. It seems the anti folks just went with their own agendas and hoped to meld once they got there.
It's a full-time job for hardened old internationally experienced, economically savvy lobbyists, not concerned PR grads and volunteer sculptors.

Exactly!
I've been of two minds about this post as once again, it'll get me in trouble for taking on fellow conservationists. I had fervently hoped that somebody else would finally address this total failure of the Marine Conservation movement, or that one of the people involved would have had the courage and the humility to do a proper post mortem and show a modicum of accountability.

Alas, no such luck.
All I get to see are the continued ramblings of the pundits slamming the Japanese and depicting unhelpful doomsday scenarios - and lemme tell you: I am not impressed!
Ocean Death Panel? Sushi-Cide? Tunapocalypse? What's this, a high school poetry contest to complement the pathetic home movies?

It's Copenhagen all over again.
There, everybody and his dog flocked to Denmark, protested, pontificated and vociferated, only to achieve less than nothing - whilst incurring a stunning aggregate expenditure in the process and even more disturbingly, burdening the Planet with a stupendous incremental aggregate Carbon Footprint.

Here, it appears, a motley uncoordinated naïve and clueless group of amateurs paid themselves a trip to Doha in order to protest, pontificate and vociferate - and by those metrics alone, the output has been impressive indeed!
Not however the end result: Zilch, Zero, Nana de Nada!

I say, there has to be a moment of accountability after a failure of this dimension.
It's time for those righteous and self-congratulatory folks to stop whining, to climb off their high horses and to have a hard look into the mirror - and yes, if they dare doing so, what they will see is a bunch of total and utter losers!
Time for the Director of Conservation Strategies to acknowledge that the "strategy", if ever there was one, sucked; time for the Campaign Manager to realize that her "managerial skills" were pathetically inadequate and the campaign, a total fiasco; time for everybody who made the trip on other people's money to tell them how much the debacle cost and to explain why going to Doha was a good idea in the first place and why the public should continue to send money to finance those useless exercises; time for replacing the failed managers and for abandoning the failed strategies in favor of new, pragmatic approaches with a chance of success.
And please, learn something from the world of sports: there, the losers do not rant and ramble but instead, they learn from their mistakes and progress to win the next match!

Does the defeat make me angry?
No, it really does not. It just sadly reinforces my reservations against some of those NGOs who are so long on pontificating and so short on tangible results. And I certainly will never, ever bequeath, or otherwise deed or gift any cash, securities, real estate or other tangible personal property to them like a particularly brazen one solicits!

The fact is that to everybody with a brain, CITES was always gonna be a very long shot indeed.
Yes it was a great utopia and a bold move which would have provided for a relatively simple solution to overfishing, one of the most complex and intractable policy and conservation challenges. But fisheries are often the major source of income for maritime countries and big business on top of that, and trying to simply pull the rug from under those interests was inevitably going to generate some determined opposition.
In that regard, the whining by some quarters that business succeeded in trumping conservation looks at best naïve and at worst, just plainly stupid - certainly when compared to the Japanese delegation who understood and deftly exploited the unease of many of the delegates.

Solutions?

The good news is that the need for Marine Conservation has been clearly put on the table.
The good news is also that contrary to the usual stupid stereotypes, Fisheries officials very much understand the need to fish sustainably (read this, very interesting!).

Yes that very much comprises the much maligned Joe Borg (to include him, and some of the delegates in this list is just plain stupid - what possible benefit will conservation derive from antagonizing the very people who will make the decisions) who has done some real good things, and his successor Maria Damanaki! And yes, that includes the Japanese, too!
Very much like New Zealand and others, they rightly argue that the best way to manage stocks is to do so via treaties among the nations concerned - in the case of the Northern Bluefin, ICAAT and GFCM.

ICCAT has been widely criticized for failing to achieve its objectives, and rightly so.
But once again, the situation is far from being simple. If you take the time to read the executive summary (page 12) of its own external audit, much of the deficiencies is attributable to non-compliance by some of its members, including some astounding scams by the fisheries industry. In essence, it is the Europeans themselves, and not the much maligned Asian consumers that have created the problems.
When it comes to the fisheries for Bluefin (page 53ff), the problems are complex and manifold and primarily concern the fisheries in the Eastern Atlantic and especially, the Mediterranean.

But contrary to the doomsday scenarios, not everything appears lost.
Read page 69ff and you will find that a whole host of sensible recommendations has been put forward, a fact that was echoed in Doha.
Some forward-looking NGOs like the WWF have recognized this as an opportunity and added some recommendations of their own.

All now depends on the delegates.
ICAAT will meet this November and you can find the list of contracting countries here, and here, the members of GFCM - and yes, both lists feature Japan, like it or not!
It will be those people, and not some clamoring NGO that will seal the fate of the Atlantic Tuna - and the sooner we recognize that and play the role we can play, the sooner we will succeed in influencing them in favor of some tangible progress.

Japan-bashing and insulting the delegates is clearly not the way to go.
One must always keep in mind that since civil societies do not hold the institutional power to make any such decisions, their role can only be to try and influence the vote by convincing the parties that sustainable fishing is ultimately very much in their own interest. To be righteous and confrontational is a clear recipe for failure - as amply proven in Doha!

Luckily and contrary to CITES where many delegates were not fisheries experts, the delegates attending the ICCAT meeting will most likely know what they're talking about. But like in Doha, they will be civil servants acting on instructions from home, so trying to sway them during the meeting will be way too late.

The strategy?
Look no further that the successful campaign by Japan, Inc.
Whilst the Europeans were still bickering and the USA, still pondering its stance, Japanese lobbying started months ahead of the conference when various smaller countries were approached and ruthlessly and charmingly "convinced" that it would be in their best interest to vote in line with the Japanese. At the conference itself, veteran negotiators ensured that their allies would not stray and then orchestrated a veritable ambush where the pro-ban countries were dealt a defeat of truly epic proportions.

The lesson to be learned is that the pro faction needs to be better prepared, better coordinated and more ruthless - and possibly also more charming!
Europe needs to become tougher with members who stray, like Malta and Spain. Europe and the USA must start lobbying the other members well ahead of time and must be willing to apply the same kind of political pressure, including leveraging their development aid.
At the same time, negotiators should explore any avenues for reaching a preemptive agreement with the suspected nay-sayers like Japan - and that includes being open for compromises but at the same time, very much explaining that both Europe and the USA wield a mighty big stick inasmuch as they have the power to ultimately decide to implement unilateral restrictions if pushed too far, as has already been suggested.

When it comes to those NGOs, what can I say.
For once, try to be useful by helping when asked, by not voicing extreme and childish viewpoints and above all, by discreetly staying where you belong: in the background, acting as valued counselors and facilitators as opposed to vociferous self-promoting agitators!
I'm obviously critical of all that publicly funded convention tourism - but if you really deem it necessary to be represented: coordinate among you, formulate a common strategy and then send over a few seasoned, well prepared and above all, credible lobbyists.

I however see the real chance for the civil societies in quiet, polite and persistent lobbying "on the ground", flanked by developing, financing and implementing economical and social solutions for the fishermen, country-wide education campaigns and above all, money and hardware for effective enforcement and policing.

The good news is this: the arguments in favor of a drastic reduction in quotas or a moratorium altogether are compelling.
After all, at current rates, those countries are at risk of completely losing their fishing industries as the Tuna and other Fishes will eventually become commercially extinct. Most fisheries officials understand that - but whereas wealthier countries can afford to pay off the fishermen and to set in place an effective enforcement regimen, trying to implement the necessary measures in lesser developed countries is extremely difficult.

Other, more effective and pragmatic and at the same time, less vocal NGOs like SOSF, SF, the Pew or the incredibly impressive IUCN have recognized this and quietly pursue local and regional agendas yielding long-term sustainable results, some of which spectacular. No instant gratification here, no grandiose "statements": just a lot of persistent, difficult and tedious work which is conducted for the sake of the cause and not with personal aggrandizement in mind.
This, I believe, is the way to go - no need to re-invent the wheel.

But back to the principal topic of this post.
Guys, please, spare us the "statements" and the pouting!
Coming from you, the losers, they are frankly embarrassing.

The idea of jetting to Doha, making some noise and then coming back for a victory lap has sorely backfired. Veni vidi should be followed by vici - defui is just not good enough, sorry.
Show some humility. Be accountable.
Maybe, then, you will regain some credibility.

(down off soap box)

PS: Wolfgang has weighed in here - much too kind as usual, thank you!
PS2: another must-read by Mark Harding here!
PS3: SouthernFriedScience's take here.