Paul Watson: Why are the fish disappearing?

Paul Watson

ABOARD FARLEY MOWAT, SOUTH PACIFIC - Columbus discovered America. That's what many of us were taught and therefore many people accept it as gospel.

The fact that the gold-lusting man never set foot on the continents of North or South America is irrelevant. The fact that there were millions of people living in North and South America also appears to be irrelevant.

He is "the discoverer of America" because the powers to be dictate that he is the discoverer of America.

The same thing is happening today with reference to world fisheries.

Some of the media have suddenly discovered that world fisheries are in trouble. It's a big story.

The October 31st edition of the Guardian has an article by Max Hastings entitled We need to start caring about fish, or there won't be any left to eat. The subtitle is: The World's oceans are being plundered and nobody seems to be willing or able to stop the slaughter.

Interesting. We at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been caring, and we have been actively opposing the ongoing rape of the ocean and newspapers like the Guardian and other media outlets have consistently ignored us or dismissed us as being scaremongers.

According to the Guardian, the latest figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that 52 per cent of commercial fish species are fully exploited, 17 per cent over-exploited and 8 per cent depleted. They report this like it is a revelation from God, when we have been saying the same thing for years.

Our warnings and predictions have been consistently ignored with accusations that we do not know what we are talking about and that governments are the experts. Yet the Guardian reports:

"Crazily, for social reasons most governments underwrite the killing. Japan is top of the annual subsidy league (£1.4bn) followed by the EU (£644m) and the US (£617m). Individual EU nations, headed by Spain, France, Ireland and Italy, give additional top-ups.

The Guardian quotes Charles Clover, author of the book The End of the Line as writing: "The fact that the sea is presided over by lunatics who believe there should be commercial fishing in 100 per cent of the sea breeds a culture that is corrosive. Two erroneous beliefs have been allowed to flourish. First, that you can cheat biology. Second, that you can keep people happy in far-flung communities in the west of Ireland, Scotland and Spain by allowing them to fish, when the gallop of technology means that this year maybe only half a dozen people in the village can fish sustainably, and next year it will be four."

The Guardian should be applauded for the article. It is informative and right on the mark. But as usual, it is too little, too late. A few people will talk about it and then go out and order fish and chips.

What frustrates and angers me is that we have been ignored when we have issued these very same warnings for decades.

Why? Because we don't have the credentials. We don't work for government. We don't all have degrees in biology. And because we have been saying things that few people want to hear.

You don't need a degree or a government position to see what is going on in the oceans. You need only your eyes and an understanding of the basic principles of ecology.

Commercial fishing has been a destructive form of excessive neo-technologically enhanced hunting gathering for decades. The fish have no escape and no time to regroup and replenish their numbers. We have slaughtered - and we continue to slaughter them - by the tens of millions, depleting species after species.

And the response has been to hold conferences and meetings, publish reports and lament, ignore or accept the losses as we continually adapt to diminishment.

As I write this, I am on my ship in the middle of the South Pacific searching for longlines. When we find them, we confiscate and destroy them.

Earlier this year, we deployed net rippers on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to damage the illegally set bottom draggers that have so effectively exterminated the Northern Atlantic Cod.

We have a full time patrol boat assisting the rangers of the Galapagos National Park in intercepting poachers.

We have rammed and disabled Japanese and Taiwanese driftnetters and confiscated and destroyed their 100km-long curtains of death.

Yet every day, the flow of fish from the sea to the market continues unabated. Endangered species lie on ice beside threatened species and depleted species. Every day we hear the tales of woe and self pity from fishing communities around the world as they blame the decline on everything from seals, dolphins, whales, pelicans and puffins to changing oceanic currents.

We humans blame everything and anything but ourselves. The truth is that the decline is completely caused by our incredible numbers and our insatiable appetite for fish.

The reality is that fish are bush meat, no different than giraffes, mountain gorillas and chimpanzees. We condemn Africans for slaughtering these animals for food yet we slaughter their oceanic equivalents without a thought or a consideration.

If people are really concerned and really want to save the fish then they should be supporting groups that are actually doing more than talking and publishing papers.

* Paul Watson is founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He lives in the United States but spends much of his time at sea aboard the society's flagship Farley Mowat.