I like to eat fish. Salmon, flounder, mahi mahi, perch, tuna, halibut, you name it. Fried, baked, poached or raw, I’ll scarf it down. Unfortunately my children and grandchildren (and yours) may soon experience the absence of fish as a main course, because as this UN report makes clear, global climate change and over-harvesting is having a demonstrable effect on our ocean’s fish stocks. Indeed, they are rapidly decreasing as the world (and especially the government of the United States) dithers over what actions to take to limit our collective carbon footprint.
Monaco/Nairobi, 22 February 2008 – Climate change is emerging as the latest threat to the world’s dwindling fish stocks a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests.
At least three quarters of the globe’s key fishing grounds may become seriously impacted by changes in circulation as a result of the ocean’s natural pumping systems fading and falling they suggest.
These natural pumps, dotted at sites across the world including the Arctic and the Mediterranean, bring nutrients to fisheries and keep them healthy by flushing out wastes and pollution.
The impacts of rising emissions on the marine world are unlikely to end there. Higher sea surface temperatures over the coming decades threaten to bleach and kill up to 80 per cent of the globe’s coral reefs-major tourist attractions, natural sea defences and also nurseries for fish.
Meanwhile there is growing concern that carbon dioxide emissions will increase the acidity of seas and oceans. This in turn may impact calcium and shell-forming marine life including corals but also tiny ones such as planktonic organisms at the base of the food chain.
The findings come in a new rapid response report entitled “In Dead Water” which has for the first time mapped the multiple impacts of pollution; alien infestations; over-exploitation and climate change on the seas and oceans. […]
“Climate change threatens coastal infrastructure, food and water supplies and the health of people across the world. It is clear from this report and others that it will add significantly to pressures on fish stocks. This is as much a development and economic issue as it is an environmental one. Millions of people including many in developing countries derive their livelihoods from fishing while around 2.6 billion people get their protein from seafood,” [Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director] said.
But don’t lose heart. I hear grubs and insects will make a wonderful protein supplement to our diet in the years to come. Mmmmm-mmmm, good!
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Pick a kebab and they cook it for you:
grubs, scorpions, crickets, snakes, cockroaches ....."But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I’m told they’ll be making it into a powder soon to add to baked goods like cakes and cookies!
And they’ll make into crackers and call it Soylent Brown.
In fact, I’ve been writing letters to my representatives and reading whatever I could since I first heard about this two years ago. It’s funny, since there’s so many fish farms in Californina, no one here really seems to want to do much. There’s worry to be sure, but the politicians don’t seem to care.
I note that when these articles run, the price of fish rises. The LA Times ran an article about declining fish stock throughout the world zeroing in on sushi lovers. My goodness, that weekend all the sushi bars we visited had raised their prices 50 cents – $1.50. Salmon dishes in particular, that used to be $9 – $10 rose $12 – $16. Two years later the prices have never come down.
And while we can farm fish (my alma mater has a fish farm), that doesn’t really help our dying oceans. The superb Altered Oceans series in the LA Times gives us a glimpse as to just how drastic this is not just to the fishing industry, but to our entire planet.
The new meaning of ‘it’s fishy’ is ‘it’s unaffordable’.
Somewhere I saw a handy little book for starving college students with 25 recipes using garden slugs. I’m thinking they’re next.
Seriously, tomorrow’s the day that the surviving fisherman whose livelihood was struckdown by the Exxon Valdez will finally make their way inside the halls of the Supreme Ct. Of course the fish & wildlife, despite the frantic & concerted efforts of a few, will never recover.
I like catfish. so maybe I’m safe
The World’s fisheries are fated to collapse. It is built in to our civilized mentality, not to mention the “efficiencies” of Capitalism.
Quite simply, every fishery is fished to extinction. Always. Why? Because the civilized mentality takes, and does not give back. So no care is taken to maintain fish populations. Fishermen compete against each other, and imagine any fish they don’t catch is just going to somebody else. Even as they watch fish decrease in size (the old fish are fished out; they are now catching immature fish) they cling to these ideas and behaviors. And market economics requires it.
Cape Cod was named after its plentiful cod schools–which were fished out while Massachusetts was still a British colony. The California sardine was fished to extinction in the mid-20th century; John Steinbeck wrote a charming (and somewhat clueless) book about it. There are countless other examples.
We are eating our way down the food chain, extinguishing species as we go. There is no cure while civilization exists.
There is a cure, but it means redefining what we mean by civilization.
Poisoning the land, sky and water in the pursuit of material wealth is an idea that must be killed. Quickly.
when I use the word “civilization” I mean what most people mean.
The dirty little secret is that civilization is based on the unsustainable extraction and use of resources, including inherently non-renewable resources.
Sustainable peoples have never been recognized as “civilized.” But they had (have) a way of life, including arts and culture.
The foremost difference is that sustainable people understand instantly the inherent wrongness of taking what you don’t need, and the wrongness of taking without giving back. They understand that to do either is to commit oneself to your own death–a death without family or cultural continuity. Since both their ancestors AND their descendants are part of their PRESENT lives, they understand the stupidity and futility of trying to steal from either.
In this they are totally unlike us. We barely think of our own children, let alone descendants of the far future. and we indulge whims with no thought to the cost to the present or future. Few of us can tell the difference between a luxury and a necessity, and we do not care even when we can. Right now, folks within civilization who are concerned with sustainability understand that industrialization does not work, but further, that agriculture does not work either. We will have to go back at least to (organic) gardening to have hope of becoming sustainable, and we are not yet even close.
I agree with your second paragraph. But how to accomplish it? Americans act like addicts, indeed ARE addicts, which tells us that there will be a moment, not yet, but in the midst of collapse and disaster, when Americans will be ready to consider a way of life that works over one that does not. However, case histories of addiction also show that MORE OFTEN THAN NOT addicts do not choose recovery, but continue on to death. So we are considering how to get Americans to choose the LESS LIKELY scenerio. I do not say it is impossible, only that our chances are poor. Yet their is no alternative.
There is no guarantee that if we do choose recovery, we will do so before committing an act of irrevocable death. We see this often with addicts–choosing recovery after the liver has already gone into terminal decline, for example. But–what of that? There is nothing to do but prepare for collapse in whatever way one can, and hope that it happens sooner rather than later. There may be a time when collapse can be actively helped, but that time is not yet. And we may never be sufficiently prepared.
the downeaster “alexa”
this is a song from the mid 80’s, nothing’s improved…speaks for itself.
are also extremely powerful in the decline of fish stocks. They stay at sea for years, harvest 1000s of # / day, and are destroying native sustenance fishing economies.
Yet we cannot reign them in since no one owns the deep oceans.
I am very concerned about these factory ships.
many years ago I found myself fishing for a summer’s work up in alaska. The season was poor and the Russian mother ships were always lurking just aways out. The fleet they serviced pretty well took all that they could and never looked back. One day we found ourseves literally within hailing distance and some Russians hailed us over. With much international sign language they conveyed they were in need of fresh fruit and vegetables.
So we returned to port, got some crates of oranges and returned the next day for a rendezvous with the mothership. Once the oranges were swapped, te Russians motioned for us to turn and open up our fish holds. We did and they let loose with a shitload of fish. We made many runs that summer and were the only boat to make good money.
WhatI remember best was the sheer size of the mothership and the sheer volume of fish that was harvested. It amazes me, with all our abuse that ant living thing still inhabits the seas.