FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

Fix It First

The European Community at the ICCAT meeting presented a unified front of industrial fishing and government. They challenged the western Atlantic’s scientific and common sense attempts for preserving the tuna resource. That does not bode well for fishermen. Mocking scientific fact and ecological reality are two basic ingredients for disaster.

The Europeans have been at it a while. They are now leaders in the live catch of wild tuna for penning to grow them out. If wild stocks collapse, they are just a write off and a political contribution away from the transition to aqua-cultural investments.

The U.S. has the best science, and the best organized effort to realistically restore the tuna fishery. At the same time it has miserably failed at restoring groundfish. The position of the Europeans on preservation and the US failure with groundfish are compounded by the current U.S. administration enacting a gung ho expansion and development plan for aquaculture in the U.S.

There are at least a couple things about this expansion that smack of fuzzy memory, if not out-right stupidity. First, the miserable failure of groundfish stocks started with the very same federal gung ho plan to do it with “documents n’dollars”, typical of government policy. The Sustainable Fisheries Act (1968) was not about sustaining fish stocks, as much as it was about about sustaining the U.S position in international economics by maximizing the catch.

Second, the designers of fisheries management policy in the late 1960’s objected to the “commons”, the ocean being owned by no and everyone. If they own it, they can control it by restricting access to others.
   
The privatization and industrial banking sector that got into fisheries management with the SFA, is now setting up to deliver the same approach to manufacturing fish. Build it big, fast and private for investors and everything will work out.
   
If the same thinking that drove fisheries management policy drives aquaculture development policy, there is no reason to believe the result will be any better. Aquaculture is not about all of aquaculture, but is about biologically different, food chain removed, by-products apparent, fixed input to outcome determined, investment driven and manufactured, biological products. These products are underwritten by all taxpayers, but, financially benefit only a few.

The wild stocks are designed to be the long term sustainable asset. Management broke it first. They should fix it first.