Short-sighted Fisheries Policy

NOAA has stated that while bluefin tuna populations are declining rapidly, there's no reason right now to place list the fish as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Perhaps NOAA policymakers are receiving pressure from the fishing industry and/or Obama Administration not to suggest protecting the bluefin. Or perhaps NOAA is just engaging in short-sighted policies, given that the bluefin is probably only a couple of years of needing that protection.If NOAA is engaging in number counting and won't list the bluefin before it reaches a certain point, it isn't doing a good job of thinking about long-term fishery management and the need to protect a species before it goes extinct.

Andrew Revkin suggests in the linked piece that if the goal is to sustain the fishery that the ESA is the wrong tool. I don't necessarily disagree with this. In my own work, I write about how the ESA was probably the wrong tool for protecting the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest. However, I also argue that at the time, it was the only tool in environmentalists' tool box. Without court orders to stop old-growth logging in national forests, the rest of those forests would have all been logged by now (nearly all of them were planned for logging operations by 2000). Today, those forests are saved for the time being, even as the fate of the owl remains dicey.

Given the anti-environmental attitudes in Congress and among much of the public, do environmentalists have another tool in the toolbox other than using the ESA if they want to save the bluefin and other species from oblivion? I'm not so sure they do. So I'd like to see Revkin explain what other realistic possibilities are out there for people concerned with fish populations. He suggests some ideas here, but changing values are unlikely and just admitting that species are going to go extinct is not useful.

Chicken of the Sea

I've been meaning to write for several days about Elisabeth Rosenthal's fine evisceration of tilapia in the Times.

To summarize, this African native is a fish that farms readily and tastes like nothing, making it perfect for the American palate. It's less healthy than almost any marketable fish. Although these are vegetarian fish (as opposed to farming salmon which necessitates the harvesting of smaller fish as fish food), these farms have widespread ecological problems.

Tilapia arrived in American markets almost overnight. Rosenthal visited Lake Yojoa in Honduras. To put it in context, in 2002 I traveled to Honduras where the person with whom I was in then in a relationship had gone on a school-related trip. She visited this very Taiwanese-run tilapia farm. I had never even heard of the fish before. Less than 10 years later, it's one of America's most consumed fish.

I'm going to leave behind the issues of how these factory fish farms pollute lakes with feces and destroy ecosystems to make two other points.

1. I am routinely amazed by Americans' desire for tasteless protein. I've never actually eaten tilapia so I can only speak to what others have said--it is bland. Like people who order well-done steaks or the boneless, skinless, white-meat chicken breast craze, tilapia represents some of the worst in American cuisine. While I suppose one can turn a chicken breast or tilapia into something tasty through the application of sauces, it's not like most people eating this stuff do that. They might add some ketchup. Moreover, why would you want to eat a meat that doesn't taste like anything. Of course, this is not much different from rice or pasta, but those are essentially nutritious grains that provide the base for regional cuisines that do amazing things. And some of the ways various cultures have made fried chicken their own suggests that you can apply the same principles to often tasteless meat (and I realize that chicken doesn't have to be tasteless and can often be good, but in the reality of most people's diets, it is bland and not tasty).

I just can't understand the desire to eat food that is a) bland without reason, b) cloyingly sweet, or c) artificial tasting. Yet Americans do that all the time. And the fact that we breed and kill animals with this very goal in mind is unconscionable. I am no longer really a vegetarian, though I don't eat meat at home. But there's some defense to eating an animal if you treat it with respect. Part of that respect is to care about how you cook and eat it. If you are going to treat tilapia or chicken like Cheetos, why eat it at all?

2. There simply is no excuse for eating fish in 2011 except (perhaps) in very small amounts. I don't want to sound all Cassandra-like here, but wild fish are going extinct in large numbers and farmed fish decimate ecosystems and cause other fish to go extinct. We treat the sea as a farm. Like other meat, we often don't see it as an animal, but something in a nice package at the store (see the disturbed feeling many have with fish served with the head on as an example). It's even worse with the sea though because we literally can't see the animals.

Our children are basically not going to eat most of the fish we eat today. Tilapia will probably be available--there's too much going for it, including an insatiable American appetite for that tasteless protein and the fact that corporations and poor governments are almost always going to choose to decimate that lake ecosystem over giving up on investments. Catfish and other common fish will be around as well.

But most wild fish will be gone, as likely will farmed salmon. What fish-based cultures are going to do is quite worrisome. Meanwhile, we eat away, not knowing or caring. The conditions of factory beef, pork, and poultry farms are very bad, it's true. But these area manageable in the long-term because they are common species. Fish are becoming less common by the day. It's the last wild meat we harvest commercially. The equivalent is not beef or pork, it's bison or passenger pigeon. Our descendants will see our consumption of fish like we see our ancestors destroying passenger pigeon flocks.

Regina Schrambling has more at Epicurious.

Update: A friend sent me this about the scientific debate over just how depleted fish stocks are. Even if the most optimistic (least pessimistic?) models are true, it's still looking bad in the long haul. 

Enjoy Your Sushi Now

Among the many things that outrage and depress me about humanity, our treatment of and disregard for the oceans is near the top, and I'm not talking about oil spills (though there's that, too). Yet another species faces extinction, and the disappearance of blue tuna could catastrophically change the nature of the oceanic ecosystem. All so the Japanese (and Americans, and Europeans) can get their quality sushi. Disgusting.

Historical Image of the Day

Herman Moll, "A View of a Stage and Also the Manner of Fishing for, Curing, and Drying Cod at New Found Land," 1720.

Also, this the first time I've ever put up an image from the 1720s oddly enough.

Historical Image of the Day

This week's theme is the Atlantic Ocean in early America. Since I use these images to create a bank for teaching materials, I've been trying to add more pre-1865 themes in recent weeks, which will probably continue for awhile. It's easier to find images in the postwar period and laziness is always tempting, but I'll do this for awhile.

Map from William Bolan's 1764 book The Ancient Right of the English Nation to the American Fishery.

Japan Forced to Confront Its Eating Habits

Japan is freaking out because the world's fish are disappearing. To be specific, the numbers of bluefin tuna that the Japanese love for sushi are declining rapidly, largely, though not entirely, because of the insatiable Japanese market for them. Of course, the Japanese are going to do nothing except demand that no measures are taken to change this. They wouldn't want to give up their fish for 5 years in order so that they can eat them for longer after that period!

This shortsightedness is hardly a Japanese characteristic. We are no different except that most of our meat comes from land-based mammals. However, our own love for Filet-o-Fish at McDonald's is sending other species near extinction. Within 15 to 20 years, we will have very few choices for eating fish. I wonder what our reaction will be? Anger at the past for not dealing with the problem? Probably. But we'll probably have the same habits in 20 years and will be rapidly ending the existence of any number of other species.

Overfishing May Be Declining, But It Hasn't Gone Away

In some rare, moderately-decent environmental news, overfishing may be falling off some.

Two years after a study warned that overfishing could cause a collapse in the world's seafood stocks by 2048, an update says the tide is turning, at least in some areas.

[...]Of 10 areas of the world that were studied, significant overfishing continues in three, but steps have been taken to curb excesses in five others, Hilborn and Worm report. The other two were not a problem in either study.

This is indeed some fairly good news in an area (fishing and the oceans) that has seen some of the worst news regarding environmental change in recent years.

However, I think it's a bit premature to be saying that "Crabcakes and fish sticks won't be disappearing after all." As the article itself points out (and contradicts its opening statement), many fish populations are still at high levels of risk, and fishing in Europe (particularly around Scandinavia) continues to be particularly excessive. And even if people try to boycott fish from those parts of the world, sometimes the alternative is not much better. Certainly reducing the overfishing rates in several areas of the world is good news, but until we reduce overfishing entirely and populations can rebound (which is still a major question), saying the threat of overfishing is going away seems a bit premature.

Lots Going On Around Latin America

Regular writing on my own work has taken up most of my time lately, leaving me unable to comment in depth on some stories from Latin America lately (though I thank Erik for picking up some of my slack). Still, it seems worthwhile just offering another quick pointing to several stories of interest across Latin America recently, and hopefully, I'll be back to regular blogging soon (though it depends how writing elsewhere goes).

-To follow up on Erik's post, indigenous peoples in Peru have responded to Garcia's sending of the military to extract oil from indigenous lands by saying they will return to "ancestral laws" and interpret any invasion as an act of aggression.

-Things have gotten really ugly really quickly in Guatemala in the wake of the murder of lawyer last week. Rodrigo Rosenberg was killed while riding his bike, and a video of Rosenberg was released that said if he were killed, it was because president Alvaro Colom had ordered the killing. In response, mass protests calling for Colom's resignation and supporting Colom have burst out. The UN and the FBI are getting involved to help solve the case, while an individual who, via Twitter, recommended people withdraw their money from one of the banks (currently of major relevance to the events, as the assassination apparently involves Rosenberg, two of his clients who were also murdered, Colom, and charges of corruption) is under house arrest, charged with trying to spark a panic. Meanwhile, both Colom's supporters and his opponents are claiming the other side is propped up by money from drug cartels. I hope to have more analysis on this later, but right now, I fully agree with Boz: if there is any truth to any of these claims, then it means that the drug cartels have entered national politics in Guatemala, and that is nothing but bad news.

-Massive rains and flooding in the northeastern states of Piauí and Maranhão in Brazil have left 300,000 people homeless, and it appears no sign the waters will go down for at least a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, a recent drought in the Center-South has forced Brazil to increase its importation of gasoline from Bolivia for energy needs, as hydroelectric energy production has dropped.

-Chile marked the 50th anniversary of the Torres del Paine national park by increasing its preservation-and-maintenance funding from $60,000 to $800,000/year, and asked UNESCO to put the park on the wildlife heritage list.

-In more environmental news, Argentina has established quota limits for fishing on three types of fish, in an effort to try to stave off over-fishing and eventual extinction of these species.

Your Cat's Toll on the Environment

The fishlife in rivers and oceans is already pretty much screwed, but beyond the human toll of fishing, Paul Greenberg's op-ed reminds us of yet another way people's seemingly innocuous decisions about things as seemingly mundane as domestic pet ownership are leading to the not-so slow death of the oceans. While Greenberg has some suggestions (including policy suggestions for Obama), I'm just not hopeful about the future of fish and the oceans, and this is just one of many reasons why.

Historical Image of the Day

Halibut fishermen, Tacoma, Washington, 1888

Chile Reduces Salmon Antibiotics (but Fails to Address the Broader Environmental Issues)

Earlier this year, I commented on a story about salmon farming in Chile, where fish populations were being ravaged by a virus facilitated by industrial-style fish production in Chile. Although salmon-producers in Chile at the time denied that their practices were "unsafe for consumers" nor for the fish, the Chilean government finally apparently disagrees. The government's biggest step will be to reduce the level of antibiotics used on the fish (currently between 70 and 300 times above normal levels according to Dr. Felipe Caballo) in the hopes that drug-resistant bacteria don't develop. Like Caballos says, it's a step in the right direction.

However, based on what's reported in the article at least, I really don't see how the decision to reduce antibiotics is going to solve the overcrowding problem. Improving sanitary conditions and all is fine, but when the salmon industry has grown from 28,000 tons to 665,000 tons produced in just eighteen years is amazing, and the government representative is quoted as saying “The development of this sector [salmon] can only continue to grow and be successful if the private sector and government continue to work in a responsible and coordinated way,” then you clearly are not concerned with actually dealing with overproduction and the environmental costs of overproducing salmon (or any other foodstuff). I know I'm not an economics major, but you simply cannot simultaneously "grow" and "reduce" production levels at the same time, and the antibiotics decision does little to curb the environmental damage, including salmon waste killing other marine life and stripping water of oxygen, or salmon escaping and invading other rivers and lakes, eating the marine life there.

There's nothing that anybody will realistically do about this; salmon makes too much profit for Chile, and Americans like eating their fish too much to consider why it might be better to do without. So is reducing antibiotic levels a good idea? Probably. But at the end of the day, salmon production in Chile is still a major force of environmental degradation that nobody is really willing to do much about.

The Damage Caused by Salmon Farming in Chile

Erik has written before on the collapse of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, but it isn't limited to there. Salmon in Chile are being devastated by a virus that has already killed millions of salmon in a country whose third-largest export is salmon. The virus has been able to spread in large part due to overproduction of salmon in Chile in what biologists consider unsanitary conditions, a general consequence of industrial-style production of fish (or other animals) for consumption. Not surprisingly, the salmon industry leaders "reject the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers," despite the fact that they use antibiotics that are prohibited for use on animals in the United States (where 29% of Chile's salmon is sent).

And as has been the case in so many similar instances of environmental damage due to overproduction of resources, the people in the localities where the salmon are raised are the humans who suffer first. Their water is being polluted due to overproduction, damaging the water in ways not unlike monocrop agriculture, and as the companies pick up and relocate to cleaner waters (which they will inevitably pollute with overproduction once again), the Chileans in the south are left without jobs.

Nor are humans the only ones affected. The article points out that "Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen, killing other marine life and spreading disease, biologists and environmentalists say. Escaped salmon are eating other fish species and have begun invading rivers and lakes as far away as neighboring Argentina, researchers say," and fishers are having a really hard time finding fish in the sea for their own consumption (on a much smaller scale). The overproduction in Chile, as in elsewhere, is causing potentially-irreparable damage to the environment, marine ecosystems, and even the local economies of southern Chile. The story here is nothing new, but it's still depressing, and it sure seems unlikely that companies will ever learn before it is too late.

Hunting Dolphins

This is an interesting story about a village in Japan that hunts dolphins. Even in Japan, that's generally not done, but the government doesn't really do anything about it.

While we might (rightfully) think of hunting dolphins as a bad thing, the Japanese dolphin hunters have a fairly compelling argument:

To some puzzled people in rural Japan, the question comes down to this: What's the difference between killing and eating a dolphin, and killing and eating a fish? Or a chicken? Or a cow?

Many Japanese consider the deer a sacred messenger from the gods, he says, but they would never suggest that people in other parts of the world stop venturing into the woods on a quest for venison.

On the surface, this is a good point. But there is a fundamental difference. Cows and chickens are domesticated animals. They are farmed. There is a fairly infinite supply of them, assuming some mass pandemic doesn't wipe them out. Dolphins are wild, threatened species. The equivalent of hunting dolphin is not a chicken, it's an elephant.

Of course, the same goes for people who eat most fish. That tuna you are eating isn't coming from a farm. Tuna are heavily overfished and their population is collapsing. If you are eating tilapia or another farmed fish that's one thing. But eating a wild fish is the same as eating a wild hippo or tiger. This is why I believe fish are the least ethical category of modern meat. Everything is farmed, often in a bad way it is true, but nonetheless, at least we are destroying a species by eating them.

I should note that deer is kind of a special case. So few people hunt them that their populations are rising rather than falling. Unless we bring back wolves, hunting this wild animal is OK. If everyone started doing it though, that would be something quite different.

Historical Image of the Day

Fish kill, Baton Rouge, Louisiana