posted on July 18, 2004 09:29:59 AM new
World's Appetite for Tuna Threatens Supply
Sat Jul 17, 1:09 PM ET
By MORT ROSENBLUM, AP Special Correspondent
FAVIGNANA, Italy - Over thousands of springtimes, as far back as Homer's Odyssey, the fishermen of Favignana have battled giant bluefin tuna lured into vast chambers of intricate netting. This year, the nets were empty.
The ancient "mattanzas" (slaughters) of Atlantic tuna that come to spawn in the Mediterranean are now all but gone. The craving for sashimi in Japan and the world beyond has taken its toll, but that is only part of it.
Marine biologists say not only bluefin tuna but also other fish stocks are plummeting across the world, upsetting delicate natural food chains. Some fear irreversible damage has already been done.
Even worse, international law experts add, little is being done to stop it. Despite all the evidence, high-tech fleets probe the last deepwater refuges, hardly troubled by authorities.
Legal quotas are too high, specialists say, and in any case are often pointless because too many crews lie about their catch.
Empty nets at Favignana, a butterfly-shaped islet off Trapani at the western edge of Sicily, are only one small sign of the times.
"This is no sudden crash, but rather an extremely slow-speed fatal collision," Carl Safina, founder of the conservationist Blue Ocean Institute on Long Island in New York, told The Associated Press.
For decades, he said, the world has moved blindly toward a precipice. "We have been confronted with signs and warnings and a clear view of the danger. And now we have fallen off. We may deserve it, but our children do not."
Safina reflected views heard in a broad range of interviews in North America and Europe, from environmental activists to government-funded specialists charged with helping to set fishing limits.
Some are more optimistic, arguing that careful management can restore stocks to sustainable levels, but none dispute that urgent action is essential.
Scientists blame worldwide overfishing by private fleets, often with their governments' complicity. Even where laws and accords are in place, they say, there is seldom more than token enforcement.
With a single bluefin worth as much as $150,000 on the Tokyo market, Italian and Russian organized crime is now involved, U.N. experts say.
University of British Columbia researchers sounded the alarm in 2001, reporting that some fish populations had fallen by as much as 85 percent. They said China drastically underreported its catch.
The report, directed by Daniel Pauly, said declassified Cold War technology, aircraft, and U.S. monitoring of water temperatures and ocean bottoms help fishermen find hideouts once beyond their reach.
A later study by Ran Myers and Boris Worm of Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University reported drops of 90 percent among critical stocks. That brought protests from fishing industry officials, who cited other surveys showing smaller declines.
"This is only quibbling over numbers," Safina said. "If it is 60 percent now and not 90 percent, then just wait five years."
Beyond uncontrolled fishing, specialists see damage from pollution, silt runoffs from over-engineered river systems, and the still uncertain impact of global warning.
Tuna is a particular problem.
Such common varieties as skipjack, found canned in supermarkets, fetch lower prices and are not in immediate danger. But prized bluefins are hunted down for sophisticated worldwide networks of Japanese buyers.
About 20 percent of the world's dwindling supply is caught in the Mediterranean, where tuna stocks are most threatened. And bluefin are also endangered in the Atlantic and Pacific.
The competition is fierce. At remote ports in Maine, boats that bring in bluefin find Japanese agents on their cell phones, eager to bid for the fish and ship them to Tokyo in coffin-like containers packed with ice.
Since these giant tuna might live 30 years, their plight affects an entire complex food chain, which already suffers from other types of overfishing.
In the early 1950s, the global tuna catch was less than 500,000 tons. By 2001, it had surpassed 3.7 million tons.
Serge Garcia, a Frenchman who supervises fish-monitoring programs at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites) in Rome, says he's deeply disturbed by nearly every trend he sees.
As a scientist who answers to each of the FAO's member nations, he steers clear of advocacy. But, he told The AP, the evidence speaks for itself: "Wherever you look, the numbers are going down."
Garcia said the main problem is that since ocean fish cannot be accurately counted, no one can be certain about numbers. As a result, fishermen and conservationists push data to opposite extremes.
But, he said, scientists have a clear idea of the downward trend. "I don't think it is wise to wait until this is proven right beyond any doubt," he said. "By then, it will be too late."
He calculated that fleets should be reduced by 30 to 40 percent to preserve stocks.
The ancient methods of Favignana focused on single schools, in which the biggest fish habitually swim first. This assured a lucrative catch without damage to sustainability.
Now most bluefin are caught on long lines. Other tuna are scooped up by purse-seine nets which catch whatever enters their broad openings. Huge numbers of untargeted fish are dumped back, dead in the water.
Using almost weightless nylon-Kevlar lines up to 2,500 feet long and equipped with lights and tiny cameras, Garcia said, fisherman can locate giant old tuna hiding in underwater caves.
"Only one of these big tuna can be worth as much as the most expensive Mercedes-Benz," Garcia said. "How do you expect criminal organizations not to want to be in on it?"
He said Mafia-owned fishing operations launder money from other activities and exploit official fishing subsidies. Other operators, he added, push for quick and maximum profit in case enforcement is tightened.
"It's warfare out there, complete with military technology," Garcia said. Within 20 years, he predicted, only the wealthiest will be willing to pay the necessary prices for the best cuts of tuna.
"It is the height of absurdity," says marine biologist Chato Osio at the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Mediterranean office in Rome. "Sicily sends its best tuna to Japan, and Sicilians eat inferior tuna they import from Asia."
Even if commercial boats respected Mediterranean quotas, he said, the annual 32,000-ton limit for tuna is already too high to protect the threatened fish.
The WWF and other groups campaign for fishing moratoriums in sensitive areas as well as rigorous patrols to enforce quotas.
Some experts put hope in tuna ranches, which have grown fast since 1997. These are not breeding centers, as are common for salmon, but rather holding pens for wild tuna that are caught but not landed.
At 30 Mediterranean sites, captured tuna are held in net corrals for five to 20 months until they fatten.
Proponents say this allows prices to stabilize and adds more meat to the market. But in practice, the WWF says, tuna penning wreaks its own sorts of havoc by disrupting natural cycles and seasonality, and by opening new markets for tuna. These, a WWF report says, have "made the situation of wild stocks even more perilous."
Francesca Ottolunghi, a marine biologist who advises the Italian fishing industry, calls WWF's positions too extreme. She predicts that farms will eventually raise tuna safely from eggs. But, like the environmentalists, she sees danger in illegal fishing.
"This is the biggest problem," Ottolunghi said. "Nobody has control. You can say anything you want, but there is no enforcement."
None of this is news to the Favignana fisherman, whose annual running of the tuna has dwindled from the mainstay of the world's biggest cannery to a subsidized curiosity for tourists.
Once celebrated as valiant holdouts of an ancient way of life, these men now survive on odd jobs and hang around the wharf exchanging tales of the good old days.
"Maybe it's not over completely," said sunburned, barrel-chested Giocchino Cataldo. "And maybe it is. Either way, this beautiful life has turned ugly."
Cataldo's title, "rais," or boss, comes from North African Arabs who once colonized Sicily. He decides when, where and how to trap the tuna.
With a prodigious memory, he jotted down the name and years of reign for every rais over the past century. Then, he grimly recited a litany of dwindling catches.
A marked change began in the 1960s, when Japanese and Soviet trawlers began to prowl the Mediterranean. Now Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese, among others, are major players.
Last year, when the Favignana mattanza brought in bluefin, Japanese buyers snapped them up and shipped them to Tokyo. Sicilian markets offered cheaper cuts from less valuable types of tuna.
This year, Cataldo's fishermen put their nets in the water but they came up empty.
In the mainland fishing port of Bonagia, near Trapani, the nets were kept ashore this year in protest at a nearby tuna farm that has attracted Japanese interest.
Without the Japanese to buy their offshore catch, "it is the end for us," said Salvatore Spataro, the Bonagia rais. But he suspects the old gods may still be with him. A winter storm disturbed the farm enclosure, and more than 2,000 tuna escaped.
Atlantic bluefin, with ancient instincts, follow their internal radar through the Straits of Gibraltar each year for springtime spawning in the Mediterranean.
The catch limits are set by a Madrid-based semi-official body, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, or ICCAT, with members from governments and industry.
Similar bodies look after tuna populations elsewhere in the world.
But they can only ask governments to provide enforcement, and many scientists say they lean too far toward fishing interests.
Safina calls ICCAT "the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna," accusing it of skewing data to favor fishermen.
Even with the best intentions, governments can only patrol within their territorial limits, often no more than 12 miles and seldom more than 200 miles.
The FAO uses figures supplied by member nations, but tracks a fast-rising category labeled IUU, for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
In theory, commercial fishermen should want to protect stocks to guarantee their own future livelihood. In practice, the experts say, many captains opt for maximum immediate profit.
At Favignana's port, the drama comes eerily to life at the cathedral-like cannery, now abandoned.
Its stone walls are chiseled with record catches from when the Florio family employed workers by the hundreds to can tuna shipped around the world. In 1857, the total was 10,159 tuna.
Now the only cannery in the area is on the Sicilian mainland, and its tuna is shipped in from North America or Asia.
Giuseppe Giangrazzo, a tuna man for 40 years who is live-in caretaker, now leads the occasional visitor on a bittersweet tour.
"This was something to see," he said, as he showed a huge room of rotting ropes and empty hooks where freshly caught tuna used to be hung. "Now it is gone forever."
posted on July 18, 2004 09:48:18 AM new
Gee Crowfart, I didn't know we always had to talk about Politics... besides seeing how little you know, thought I would start a different thread... but it appears you know nothing as usual...
posted on July 18, 2004 10:06:18 AM new
Interesting article twelve, thanks. What's your take on it?
___________________________________
Beware the man of one book.
- Thomas Aquinas
posted on July 18, 2004 10:27:38 AM new
Yes it is interesting. We had/have the same problem here with crabbing and oysters.
Over-fishing. And there is so much pollution and crap in the waters....I hardly ever eat fish for fear of getting sick from it. Although never a big fish eater to being with. But it's too bad though. All those omega fats supposed to be very good for a body.
posted on July 18, 2004 11:02:14 AM new
profe, I think we need to find a compromise, I like tuna, not the canned vairety, but the steaks and also sushi... however, it appears we are eating more fish than the ocean can replenish, so unfortunately in this case more regulation maybe required...
Look at alligator... from no hunting back to hunting allowed... so time does help.
posted on July 18, 2004 11:47:33 AM new
Good article Twelve. I always wonder why we get to the point where supplies are so depleted before anything is implemented? (Not just fish, but everything.) I remember David Suzuki did a special 2 or 3 years ago on the fish supplies and said if we don't stop overfishing, supplies will become dangerously low, not only for people but for other animals that depend on the fish for food. When he talked to the fishermen, they were livid because they felt Canada was trying to steal away their livelihood by telling them to lay off for a while. They protested and wanted the government to pay them their lost wages instead of finding an alternative source of income. Can you believe it?
posted on July 18, 2004 04:21:04 PM new
but if i were a fisherman,i have bills to pay-mortgage,food,utilities,car just like everyone else.
What should i do,throw in the towel and work for Walmart??
I heard on the radio,walmart is hiring warehouse workers paying 11.50 an hour.
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
posted on July 18, 2004 09:57:17 PM new
They'll have to work somewhere else permanently when there are absolutely no fish left, so maybe doing it temporarily if it means there's still a chance to bring back their harvest isn't such a bad idea. The Japanese are notorious for their voracious appetite for certain kinds of seafood, as well as their enormous factory ships that literally strip mine the ocean, taking everything that gets caught in their nets. You'd think such a "highly developed" culture would be a bit less short-sighted.
___________________________________
Beware the man of one book.
- Thomas Aquinas
posted on July 19, 2004 12:22:59 AM new
Great Article. Food for thought...
Maybe they should make tuna fishing or fleet fishing seasonal like trout or walleye.
I am sure it would be hard to patrol but you would think if the fishermen made their living at it they would think of something that would help.
A big article in our news paper today.
Homes take over Farmland. And thats the truth. Every time we go for a ride in the car we come across a new subdivision. I honestly think it needs to be regulated or there will not be enough farmland let alone farmers to grow vegetables, hay, wheat etc. for years to come.
There was a large strawberry farm not to far away from us it is now called Strawberry Hill. yes, it was sold for new housing.
posted on July 19, 2004 01:06:05 AM new
Careful, Libra--that's "liberal" thinking. Here in California, housing is covering more and more acreage. In my area, dairies that have been inplace for generations are being pushed out to make way for homes.
But when people protest they are labeled "tree-huggers" and conservatives rant that they are "against progress."
____________________
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -- John F. Kennedy
posted on July 19, 2004 01:13:02 AM new
I think we all have different ways of thinking some liberal and some conservative. I guess it is how you look at something and hope that there will be something left for not the next generation but for generations to come. We can be liberal but we have to be conservative also. I see nothing wrong with a mix. You have to look deep into a subject to decide what you want....It's not the frosting but the cake.
posted on July 19, 2004 05:00:53 AM new
farming is not a profitable business in this country,the strawberry farm owner sold out for a good sum of money.
Good for him.now he could deploy his proceeds into something else and earn a higher return.
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
posted on July 19, 2004 05:44:03 AM new
stopwhining, I guess you won't be one to complain about imported produce....
___________________________________
Beware the man of one book.
- Thomas Aquinas
posted on July 19, 2004 05:52:00 AM new
i wont complain about us exporting airplanes,super computers,hollywood movies or USDA corn fed steaks.
If imported goods are no good,consumers wont buy them.
I saw a documentary film once on tv,an elderly woman sat in bed in a nursing home with a tray of food and she said-dont outlast your money,you are nothing when your money runs out.
The guy who sold out his strawberry farm to developer can now sleep better at nite.
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
posted on July 19, 2004 06:00:11 AM new
stopwhining, some parts of the country $11.50/hr is a decent wage...
However, fishing limits have been around for years, it just needs to be enforced more strcitly... because when the blue fin tuna run out... there will be no more...
posted on July 19, 2004 06:30:43 AM new
11.50 an hour with walmart 401k,medical insurance,10% discount on shopping at walmart(grocery not included) etc is not bad.
It comes to 23k a year with no overtime,not enough to afford a house or raise a family.
How much does a truckdriver make??
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
posted on July 19, 2004 06:50:45 AM new
I wouldn't work for WalMart if they paid me $20 per hour. I know a couple of people working there and the conditions and the treatment of their employees is horrendous. One woman I know comes home and cries every night after work. Her boss is a tyrant who yells at her every time she wants to take a bathroom break. Some days she's lucky to get her 1/2 hour lunch. She's looking for something else, but there's nothing out there for her. But, I suppose some WalMarts might be better than others.
My boyfriend, Ken, is a big fish eater. He's shaking his head in disbelief over this and can't understand how it got to this point with no one taking action. It could very well turn into an ecological disaster! Of course, I had to tell him that his voracious appetite for fish is what got us into this mess. LOL!
twelve
I'm not a big fish eater, but I did try a tuna steak (I guess that's what it's called - it had some other fancy name at the restaurant) the other day and I have to say it was good. I wasn't going to get it, but I thought about this story and had to see what the tuna rage was all about. Not "fishy" tasting at all. I have to also admit to liking Swordfish if it's cooked correctly. However, after your story I'm swearing off any kind of fish. Around here, that's not hard. You don't want to eat anything coming out of Lake Erie!
It can't be done even around here. I live in the inner city and these houses are going for $100,000+. The mortgage payment of my friends next door is $700 per month. Add utilities, insurance and repairs to that and you have to make pretty decent money. This is a poor working class neighborhood for the most part and home prices have spiraled out of control. Ken was lucky in that he got a fixer-upper for $35,000. That was five years ago and it's still a fixer-upper! That's what I get for being with a carpenter.
posted on July 19, 2004 07:23:40 AM new
twelve,
is there a walmart warehouse in WV??
in most cities if a guy makes 23k,his wife is probably working too ,to afford a house,2 cars and all that upkeep of house and cars.
My neighbor is a single guy,looks like he is taking in renters,i see different cars parked in his driveway every nite,up to 4 cars and he has 3 bags of garbage for pickup.He has a mirror and a dresser in his garage,and i see a man shaving in front of it in the morning.
He has been in this 2 storey house for 9 months now and still have not sodded his backyard.
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
[ edited by stopwhining on Jul 19, 2004 07:24 AM ]
posted on July 19, 2004 07:32:00 AM new
Don't know don't care whiney, you used the figure $11.50/hr... you people just can't stand it that people do buy houses and live comfortably on those wages...
Other places besides Walmart pay $11.50/hr... and more... you really have no clue do you...
...and this is getting off topic... I will not respond to anymore off topic comments... start your own thread.
What's your take on the fish whiney?
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
[ edited by Twelvepole on Jul 19, 2004 07:33 AM ]
posted on July 19, 2004 07:34:07 AM new
According to the US HHS Poverty Guidelines, a couple with three children would be close to the poverty line on the income that you mention, twelvepole. The 2004 poverty level for a family of five is $22,030 in 48 states and D.C. Alaska would be 27,550 and 25,340 in Hawaii.
posted on July 19, 2004 07:36:53 AM new
Walmart is busy with the biggest class action suit in history...so tell your friend things may get better but not too soon.
Since 1994-98 Walmart has been cheating women out of equal pay and equal advancement, making people work OT without pay, not allowing people to take breaks...I think there's more to the list, can't remeber right now.
Now, of course Republicans will see nothing wrong with this so we'll get the PREDICTABLE Nazi-style answers so I'll ignore those.
I boycott Walmart not because it'll have any affect on sales but because I'm a decent human being with a conscience. Walmart work ethics are one step up from slavery(again, the Republicans will see nothing wrong with that so I'll ignore their responses).
All this happening in the "greatest country in the world"???
And, no numbnuts, no one can live on $23,000 and buy a house unless you live in the wilderness and live off the land.
Typical Republican bullcrap...duh, $23,000...anyone can live on that.....ya but they can't own a home or buy food!
posted on July 19, 2004 08:14:41 AM new
I love to fish and love to eat it. I have never had a tuna steak though. Now I can relate to Salmon and I understand that is getting scarce also. Then again with all the PCB's maybe to much fish is bad.
Here Lake Michigan is stocked with some pretty good fish but then you can't eat it everyday because of the PCB's and every once-in-awhile they remind you of it.
