Hermi

MUSIC OF SPHERES

He was walking a frozen road
in his pocket iron keys were jingling
and with his pointed shoe absent-mindedly
he kicked the cylinder
of an old can
which for a few seconds rolled its cold emptiness
wobbled for a while and stopped
under a sky studded with stars.

~ Jean Follain

Still Water - Story of the Bluefin Tuna

The Mediterranean may lose its wild bluefin tuna. High-tech harvesting and wasteful management have brought world fish stocks to dangerous lows.

"My big fear is that it may be too late," said Sergi Tudela, a Spanish marine biologist with the World Wildlife Fund, which has led the struggle to rein in the bluefin fishery. "I have a very graphic image in my mind. It is of the migration of so many buffalo in the American West in the early 19th century. It was the same with bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, a migration of a massive number of animals. And now we are witnessing the same phenomenon happening to giant bluefin tuna that we saw happen with America's buffalo. We are witnessing this, right now, right before our eyes."

The world's oceans are a shadow of what they once were. With a few notable exceptions, such as well-managed fisheries in Alaska, Iceland, and New Zealand, the number of fish swimming the seas is a fraction of what it was a century ago. Marine biologists differ on the extent of the decline. Some argue that stocks of many large oceangoing fish have fallen by 80 to 90 percent, while others say the declines have been less steep. But all agree that, in most places, too many boats are chasing too few fish.

One of the ironies—and tragedies—of the Mediterranean bluefin hunt is that the very act of procreation now puts the fish at the mercy of the fleets. In the spring and summer, as the water warms, schools of bluefin rise to the surface to spawn. Slashing through the sea, planing on their sides and exposing their massive silver-colored flanks, the large females each expel tens of millions of eggs, and the males emit clouds of milt. From the air, on a calm day, this turmoil of reproduction—the flashing of fish, the disturbed sea, the slick of spawn and sperm—can be seen from miles away by spotter planes, which call in the fleet.

"The Mediterranean is at the point that if bluefin stocks are not actually collapsing, they are approaching collapse," said William T. Hogarth, ICCAT's recently appointed chairman, who also serves as director of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. "I was really disappointed—when it got to bluefin, science just seemed to go out the window. The bottom line was that, as chairman, I felt I was sort of presiding over the demise of one of the most magnificent fish that swims the ocean."

In 1996, Croatians who had developed techniques for fattening southern bluefin in Australia established the first Mediterranean tuna ranch, in the Adriatic. The process is simple. Newly caught bluefin are transferred to coastal sea cages, where—for months, even years—they are fed oily fish such as anchovies or sardines to give their flesh the high fat content so prized in Japan.

The prospect of producing a steady—and highly profitable—supply of fatty Mediterranean bluefin set off a cascade of events that has proved disastrous. The Mediterranean fleet has increased its fishing effort threefold, with the bluefin flotilla now totaling 1,700 vessels, including 314 purse seiners. Compounding the problem, the advent of tuna ranching made it difficult for the European Union and national governments to enforce quotas. Bluefin are netted at sea, transferred into cages at sea, fattened offshore, killed offshore, and flash-frozen on Japanese ships. As Masanori Miyahara of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, and a former ICCAT chairman, told me: "It's kind of a black box."

The spread of tuna ranching means that bluefin are being wiped out at all stages of their life cycle. In Croatia, for instance, the industry is based almost entirely on fattening juveniles for two to three years, which means fish are killed before they spawn. Elsewhere, in places such as the Balearic Islands, large females, capable of producing 40 million eggs, are being wiped out. In just ten years, bluefin populations have been driven down sharply.

"What's happening is a bit like what happened to cod," said Jean-Marc Fromentin, a marine biologist and bluefin expert with IFREMER, the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea. "You don't see the decrease right away because you have had a huge accumulation of biomass. But it's like having a bank account, and you keep taking much more out than you're putting in."

Experts agree that, first, the world's oceans must be managed as ecosystems, not simply as larders from which the fishing industry can extract protein at will. Second, the management councils that oversee fisheries, such as ICCAT, long dominated by commercial fishing interests, must share power with scientists and conservationists.

Further, governments must cut back the world's four million fishing vessels—nearly double what is needed to fish the ocean sustainably—and slash the estimated 25 billion dollars in government subsidies bestowed annually on the fishing industry.

In addition, fisheries agencies will have to set tough quotas and enforce them. For giant bluefin in the Mediterranean, that may mean shutting down the fishery during the spawning season and substantially increasing the minimum catch weight. ICCAT recently failed to decrease quotas significantly or close the fishery at peak spawn, although it did increase the minimum catch weight in most areas to 66 pounds (30 kilograms) and ban spotter aircraft. But without inspection and enforcement, the commission's new rules will, like the old ones, mean little.

Another crucial step, both in the Mediterranean and around the world, would be the creation of large marine protected areas. Also important are campaigns by such groups as the Marine Stewardship Council, which is working with consumers as well as retail giants to promote trade in sustainably caught fish.

The news from the fisheries front is not unremittingly grim. Indeed, where sound fisheries management exists, fish populations—and the fishing industry—are healthy. A prime example is Alaska, where stocks of Pacific salmon and pollock are bountiful. Iceland's cod fishery is thriving, because it, too, follows a cardinal conservation rule: Limit the number of boats that can pursue fish.

But all agree that the fundamental reform that must precede all others is not a change in regulations but a change in people's minds. The world must begin viewing the creatures that inhabit the sea much as it looks at wildlife on land. Only when fish are seen as wild things deserving of protection, only when the Mediterranean bluefin is thought to be as magnificent as the Alaska grizzly or the African leopard, will depletion of the world's oceans come to an end.

By Fen Montaigne @ NG http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0704/feature1/