TIMES are tough for tuna. The guidance of scientists that advise groups that manage tuna stocks is falling on deaf ears.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas meets this week in Brazil to set catch limits. ICCAT's scientific advisers have told it that stocks of the giant bluefin tuna are plummeting towards collapse. Catches in 2008 were at three times the ICCAT limit, which is itself more than what its scientific advisers consider sustainable (see "Tigers of the sea")
. "It's like the year before the collapse of the northern cod," says Dan Pauly at the University of British Columbia, Canada. In 1992 the Newfoundland cod fishery collapsed. It never recovered.
Giant bluefin tuna stocks are plummeting, like the year before the collapse of the northern cod
As stocks fall in the Atlantic, the tuna fishing fleets are targeting the Indian Ocean. So far, stocks of several tuna species there appear in good shape, with the exception of the yellowfin. According to the scientists advising the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), stocks of yellowfin are being overfished. The panel of scientists will meet later this month to discuss the available data, but it may prove futile: the IOTC's member nations rejected the panel's recommended catch limits in April. And in September, India launched a new ocean-observing satellite. It will be used to spot plankton blooms, which attract small fish and, in turn, tuna - so the fishing boats will know where to go.
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Have your say
I find this situation infuriating. How short sighted can people be and so ignorant to ignore the cold hard facts. Why are they not listening to the scientists?
I say again... infuriating!
It is easy to understand. Scientist are members of the working class and they are not numerous. There is no incitative to listen to them.
The mentra is the same as elsewhere:"Fishermen are REAL experts, scientists know noting". By teh way, the only place where cod stock were relatively well proctected is Iceland. In that case, it was difficult for fishermen to claim their cousins were incompetent.
The tragedy of the commons. All the fishermen know that if they themselves refrain from overfishing, others will catch the fish anyway. So they have no real personal motivation to lower their fishing rates, even if they know they are heading for disaster. Strict international regulation and control is the only solution, but on the open ocean and with so many countries involved, that's difficult.
The tragedy of the commons explains the behavior of individual fishers, while short-sighted greed and lust for power explain why the food industry and politicians support them.
But they are only allowed to get away with it because the rest of us are idiots.
It should be remembered that the people who catch these fish are not poor schmo's with beards and peg legs. They are wealthy businessmen. Millionaires the lot of them. That is why it is so funny to me when they do a "And that's cutting me own throat" act. And don't forget. The tuna is not caught for sport. It's people that eat the catches - And the fact is that there's just too many people on this planet. So forget about dolphin friendly tuna please. There's nothing friendly about a can of tuna. Except the price which is ridiculously low when you consider that you are buying the processed flesh of a decimated species - A beautiful one at that. For shame.
Tragedy of the commons.
Whether you catch 100 tuna or 1000 tuna is almost irrelevant to tuna stocks because your catch is such a tiny fraction of all tuna catches; but it's going to have a huge impact on your livelyhood. The incentive is for each individual fishing vessel to catch as many fish as possible; but when everyone does that it has a huge impact on total catches.
Contrast this with a farm. Because the animals are fenced in and you're reasonably sure nobody is going to steal them, every animal has your name tag on it and if you sell it, you lost that a. If you're a rational, profit optimizing individual you're going to figure out which animals and how many you should sell and how many you should keep to generate the highest returns you can in a fashion that is sustainable year after year.
There is only one potential solution that I see; fish-farming, but you've got to reduce the use of fish meal from wild-caught fish, preferably to zero.
It will not work for governments to get together and declare ownership of a wild fish resource and then sell permits for certain numbers of catches. Politicians are rent-seekers and professional liars; their term in office is limited so they have the incentive to run down fish stocks as fast as possible in a way that allows them to extract the maximum rent from their stewardship of a given fishing resource.
The only way to prevent this disaster is political action. To dismiss politicians as "rent-seekers and professional liars" who cannot play a role is at best naïve and at worst just a covert form of denialism.
Cynical perhaps, but not naïve. Pretty close to the truth in most cases.
You're the one who's in denial.
You're talking about the same cretins who keep subsidizing the construction of fishing vessels and subsidizing fuel for fishing vessels to make up for declining fisheries and thereby exacerbating overfishing.
You're talking about the same people that still today insist on destroying food and depleting soils to produce biofuels.
The same people who inflated the tech bubble and the housing bubble. The same people who keep bailing out, subsidizing and turning a blind eye to fraud from the cancer on the productive economy that is Wallstreet.
The same people who provided strong tax incentives to buy a SUV.
The same people who provide a massive subsidy for cars in the form of the national highways; in essence killing all the rail-roads that cannot support themselves on hauling coal.
The same people who levy a tax on electrified rail, but not diesel rail, making it uneconomical to build electrified rail in the US.
The same people who killed millions by largely successfully preventing the use of DDT against malaria mosquitos in third world countries. This after malaria had been eliminated in southern Europe and the US with DDT.
The same people who are busy trying to pass a gargantuan cap and trade bill that they haven't read, that was written by lobbyists and that is ostensibly intended to reward polluters and forestall effective action on climate change.
The same people who started two unjustified, unconstitutional, undeclared wars in the middle east. Who keep spouting ever-changing rationalizations that don't bear any scrutiny. The world trade center and pentagon attack cost millions for Al Qaeda to execute. It did billions in damages and cost thousands of lives. The government response to 9/11 cost trillions and has so far claimed ~1 million lives. The government gave Al Qaeda a lever 1000 times longer than they otherwise would have had, with which they could move the world.
These are the same people who insist waterboarding is not torture. The same people who rely on information derived from Uzbekistan's gulags were people are being sent to be boiled alive, raped by broken bottles, having their children tortured in front of them, spanish inquisition stuff; to extract information.
These are the same people who continue the war on drugs. Even when it is abundantly clear that it contributes to murder rates. Even though it is abundantly clear that drug trafficking is the primary mechanism of funding for the very same criminal elements that are involved in human trafficking, extortion and racketeering. Even though it criminalizes drug users.
These people need to be tried for treason and face firing squad. You don't have two braincells to rub toghether if you think these people can stem overfishing
"Why are they not listening to the scientists?" - Richard Griffiths
It's because these so called sientists who are predicting doom are nothing more than quacks and hacks who are on the gravy train of government sponsored gloom an doom.
Global slavery through the establishment of a global Communist and anti-God world order is their goal.
The ocean is full of fish - so many that they literally jump into your fishing boat.
Anyone who says otherwise is a lying communist.
I think this might be a little taste of the sad things to come for global warming negotiations :
scientists propose guidelines, politicians compromise them severely and then few/none really respects the water down agreement anyway.
I hope I'm wrong...........
You forget... in the case of GW, a huge portion of the 'scientists' are out for money as well. Just look at who gets the government and private 'grants'. It's good business to be a GW alarmist.
Yes, because absolutely no industrial or mining corporation is putting a single cent into GW-denial "research". All scientists are evil, money-grubbing pawns (of someone who is evil and has lots of money, apparently), and all transnational corporations are honest, open and public-spirited
hi professor, this following article appears to show how lack of enforcement of various environmental laws
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