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20/9/2015 National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com

NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC

Published: Apri 2007

Stili Waters, The Global Fish Crisis

The Medite rran.ean may lose its wild bluefin tuna. High-tech harvesting and wasteful management have brought world fish stocks
to dangeroliiS lows. This story explores the fish crisis-as well as the hope fora new relationship between man and the sea.

By Fen Mont aigne

No more magnificent fish S\\~.rns the world's oceans than thegiant bluefin tuna, which can grow t o 12 feet (4 mete rs) in length, we igh 1,500 pounds (68o
kilograms), a:nd live for 30 years. Despite itssi7.e, it is an exquisitely hydrodynamic creation, able to streak throug h water at 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour
and dive deeper than half a mile (o.8 kilometers). Unlike most othe r fish, it has a warm-blooded circulatory system that e nables it to roam from the Arctic to
the tropics. Once, giant bluefm migrated by the millions throughout the Atlantic Basin and the Medite rranean Sea, t11eir flesh so important to the people of
the ancient world that they painted the tuna's Ukeness on cave waUs and minted its image o n coins.

The giant, or Atlantic, bluefin possesses another extraordinary attribute, o ne that may prove to lbe its undoing: lts buttery belly meat, liberally layered with
fat, is considered the finest sushi in the world. Over the past de-cade, a high-tech armada, often guided by spotter planes, has purs ued giant bluefin from one
end of the Me diterranean to the other, annually netting tens of thousands of the fish, many ofthem illegally. The bluefm are fatte ned offshore in sea cages
before being s hot and butchel!'ed for the sushi and steak markets in Japan, America, and Europe_ So many giant bluefin bave been. hauled out of the
Mediterranean that the population is in danger ofcollapse. Me.anwhile, Europe.an and North African officials bave done little to stop the slaughter:.

"Mybigfear is that it may be too late," said SergiTude la, a Spanish marine biologist \'~tb the World Wildlife Fund, which has led the struggleto re in in the
bluefin fishery. "l bave a very graphic image in my mind. It isofthe migration ofso manybuffalo in the Ame rican West in the early 19th century. 1t was the
samc with bluefin tuna in the Mediterrauean, a migration ofa massivc numbc r ofanimals. And now we are witnessing the same pbe nomenon ha ppening to
giant blue fin tuna that we saw happen Mth Ame rica's buffalo. We are "~tnessing this, right now, right before our eyes."

The decimation ofgiant bluefin is emblematic ofeverything wrong \~th global fisheries today: the vastly increased killing power of new fishing technology,
the shadowy ·network of inte•·national companiies making huge p rofits from the trade, negligent fisheries manage ment and enfo•·oeme nt, and consumers'
indiffe rence to tlle fate of the fish tl1ey choose to buy.

The world's oceans are a shadowof what they once were. With .a few notable exceptions, sueh as well-managed fJSheries in Alaska, Iceland, and New Zealand,
the munbe r offish s wimming the seas is a fraction of wbat it was a centuryago. Marine biologists differ on tbc ex:tent of tlle decline. Some argue that stocks
of many la t·ge oceangoing fish have fallen by 80 to 90 percent, while othe rs saythe declines have been less steep. But ali agree that, in most places, too many
boats are cbasing too fcw fish.

Popularspeciess uch as cod havc plummeted from tbe North Sea to Georgcs BankoffNew England. In the Mediterra nean, 12 species ofsha rk are
commerciallyextinct, and swordfish there, which should grow as thick as a telepbone poie, a re now caught as juve niles and eaten when no bigger tha n a
baseball bat. With many Northern Hemisphere waters fished out, commerciai fleets bave steamed south, overexploiting once teerning fishing grounds. Off
West Africa, poorly regulated fleets, both local and forc ign, are \~ping out fisb stocks from tbe productive waters ofthc continental shelf, dcpri~ng
s ubsiste nce fishe rme n in Senegal, Ghana, Guioea, Angola, and othe r countries oftheir families' main somce of protein. In Asia, so many boats bave fished
the waters of tbe Gtùfof Thailand and t be Java Sea t hat stocks are closeto ex.halistion. ''The oceans are suffering from a lot of things, but t be one that
ove rshadows everytlùng else is fishing," said Joshua S. Reichert of the P ew Cbaritable Tru.sts. "And unless we get a handle o n tlle extraetion offish and
marine resources, we willlose much of tbc !ife that remains in the sea."

"Cru.el" may seem a harsh indictment of the age-old profession offishing-and certainlydoes not apply to ali who practice ilie trade-but how else to portray
the world's shark fishermen, wbo kill te ns of millions ofs harks a year, large numbers finned alive for s hark-fin soup and aUowed to sink to the bottom to die?
How else to characterize the incalculable numbe r offish and other sea creatures scooped up in nets, allowed to s uffocate, and dumped overboard .as useless
bycatch? Or the long!ine fisheries, whose miles and mi!esof baited hooks attract-and drown-creatures sucl1 as the loggerhead turtie and wandering
albatross?

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