Big fish eating all fish, Rania Masri, www.greenresistance.wordpress.com
As discussed earlier, the privatization of our waters could, as it has elsewhere, result in inflated prices for this
basic human right (water), thereby making it an economic luxury1. As has been proven through both
economic analyses and numerous examples, if water distribution is left to the market economy, then it will be
distributed in the manner that creates the highest profit. Such so-called management pushes the global water
deficit into even more dire circumstances.
As discussed earlier, the so-called liberalization of our economy, brought on by multilateral trade agreements
(including within it the removal of tariffs and domestic subsidies and other protections for our small farmers),
has, as it has elsewhere, weakened small farms and decreased our national food sovereignty.2
Now, we must ask: what about our seas?
Here, once again, the big fish is eating the little fish. The big fish are the multinational corporations,
empowered by removal of tariffs and supported by their governmental subsidies. The little fish are the
artisanal fishermen, the biological diversity of the oceans and the seas, the economies of developing countries,
and the food security of millions upon millions. The same policies that have wrecked havoc on farms and
water networks worldwide are wrecking havoc in seas and oceans worldwide.
The demand for seafood is increasing: more than doubling since 1973 (with China responsible for most of
this increase.) Fish and fishery products are the most traded food in the world3. Yet, although over half of
this trade in value originates in developing countries, the majority of the profit from this trade is in the
developed countries that process the fish.
The supply of seafood is dramatically decreasing: ecologists warn that the world will run out of seafood in
approximately 40 years if we continue with our current rates of overfishing. Researchers warn that 90 percent
of present-day marine fish (including tuna, marlin, and swordfish), crustaceans, shellfish and other currently
eaten species could vanish in 40 years4. In other words: we are pushing the majority of marine species
towards a permanent death.
How is this happening? To meet the growing demand for fish – particularly tuna, shrimp, salmon, and
sardines – industrial fisheries are using unsustainable fishing practices that not only deplete the targeted
species, but also kill sea birds, turtles, and other marine life, while destroying delicate ecosystems like deep-sea
reefs. Approximately one quarter of the global fish catch is tossed back overboard, dead or dying, as bycatch,
or ‘collateral damage.’ For shrimp, bycatch could be as high as 20 kilograms for every 1 kilogram of shrimp.
In the Arabian Gulf, the ratio of shrimp to bycatch is 1:45, and the shrimp fishing methods have dramatically
harmed, most particularly, sea turtles. Globally, due to the fishing methods, millions of marine life are killed
– as collateral damage – every year, including, but not limited to: 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and
1
“Drought, Thirst, and Hunger.” Al-Adab Magazine. September 2007.
http://adabmag.com/topics/albi2a/raniamasri3.pdf
2
“What kind of sovereignty do we want?” Al-Adab Magazine. July - August 2007.
http://adabmag.com/topics/albi2a/RaniaMasri2.pdf
3
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. ‘The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture.
(translated as: ‫حالة الموارد السمكية وتربية األحياء المائية في العالم‬- )Part 2: Selected
Issues in Fisheries and Aquaculture. Rome. 2007. http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/A0699e/A0699E00.HTM (the
Arabic link is at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0699a/a0699a00.htm)
4
Juliet Eilperin. ‘World’s Fish Supply Running Out, Researchers Warn.’ Washington Post. November 3, 2006.
5
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. ‘A global assessment of fisheries bycatch and
discards.’ Rome. 1996. http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/T4890E/T4890E00.HTM
porpoises (1 every 2 minutes); more than 250,000 loggerhead and leatherback marine turtles; and 100,000
sharks in the Mediterranean sea alone.
The demise of all this marine life – both the targeted and the bycatch – means the endangerment of millions
of livelihoods. Fifty million of the 51 million fishermen live in developing countries. At least 34 million
people worldwide who earn less than one dollar a day live from fishing. For poor coastal communities, access
to and conservation of fisheries resources is a matter of sheer survival. The industrialization of the seas is
threatening their traditional ways of supporting their families, and could very well threaten our own
fishermen. Seventy-eight year-old Sa`id, an Egyptian fisherman since he was 7, explains: "Now he who suffers
suffers a lot, and he who is well-off is extremely well-off.”6 (In other words, it is capitalism at its strongest:
wealth distributed from poorer to richer.7)
Fish are more than merely a commodity to be traded. Much more. They are a primary food supply for
billions, and a critical source of animal protein in poor countries. So the demise of marine fish species means
the further risk to the health of billions of people. (Yes, that includes our own community.)
And fish are more than merely a critical resource to the health and livelihood of billions. These marine
species are a vital biological richness in the oceans and the seas – fundamental to the health of the oceans.
There is an extraordinary biological diversity in the oceans – richer than the abundance and variety of life on
land.
So how are trade agreements influencing overfishing?
Trade liberalization, under the prodding and design of the World Trade Organization and USAID, has
reduced (or eliminated) tariffs, allowed for industrial (i.e. large) foreign fishing vessels to venture into local
fishing grounds, relaxed (or eliminated) regulations on harmful fishing practices, and, all the while, the
industrialized countries (namely, the European Union, the United States, and Japan) continue to grossly
subsidize their fisheries – thus placing them at an even greater economic advantage than the local, much
smaller fishermen.
The consequences? The direct reduction in fish stocks, the reduction in the fish caught by the (much smaller)
artisanal, local fishermen, the threat to food security, the reduction of and endangerment to marine
biodiversity, and severe damage to the environmental coastlines. This pillage has happened internationally, in
places as varied as the coasts of West Africa,8 Egypt9, Oman10, Pakistan11, Brazil, and Thailand12 – to name a
few.
The big fish here are not only the large, primarily foreign, industrial fishing vessels involved in destructive
environmental practices like trawling, but also the big fish-buyers. As explained by the FAO’s 2006 report,
the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, due to economic globalization, fewer and more powerful food
6
Ray Bush and Amal Sabri. ‘Mining for Fish: Privatization of the ‘Commons’ Along Egypt’s Northern Coastline.’
Middle East Report 216 – Fall 2000. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_bush-sabri.html
7
Holly Sklar. ‘Billionaires Up, America Down.’ ZNet Daily Commentaries. November 9, 2007.
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/09sklar.cfm
8
GEO-4. Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development. United Nations Environment Program.
October 25, 2007. http://www.unep.org/geo/
9
Ray Bush and Amal Sabri. ‘Mining for Fish: Privatization of the ‘Commons’ Along Egypt’s Northern Coastline.’
Middle East Report 216 – Fall 2000. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_bush-sabri.html
10
‘Oman Fisheries Plans Investment in Shrimp Farming Sector.’ Oman Daily Observer. October 27, 2007.
11
Annie Kelly. ‘Net losses.’ The Guardian. April 11, 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/11/food.fish
12
Annie Kelly. ‘Market Forces.’ The Guardian. April 11, 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/11/food.wto
firms, concentrated in the industrialized countries, have emerged. They have (further) shifted power from the
fishermen to the retailer. (In other words, what has been happening to land farmers is also happening to
fishermen.)
The Mediterranean Sea has not escaped from this economic plunder. We can best understand what is
happening by examining our own blue-fin Mediterranean tuna, most favored for that globalized, fashionable
food known as sushi. “Think of a giant bluefin [tuna] as an 800-pound torpedo of sushi,” writes the New
York Times, “some of the finest, fattiest, most expensive there is. Since the 1970s, when the sushi craze
[exploded], … fish hunters in spotter planes have chased the giant bluefin across the world’s oceans. They
have been ruthlessly efficient: The worldwide bluefin population has plunged more than 90 percent in the last
30 years.”13
In other words, as report after report after report have screamed out for the past few years, “Bluefin tuna in
the Mediterranean Sea and east Atlantic Ocean are nearing extinction because of widespread illicit fishing.”14
The response from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna? Ignore the
scientists. Listen to short-term economic profit to the big businesses. In their meeting in mid-November
2007, after unprecedented reports of overfishing, and after scientific research revealed that 50,000 tonnes of
tuna were being pulled out of the Mediterranean waters annually – far above the official quota of 15,000
tonnes15, the ICCAT actually approved larger quotas for individual countries in their fishing of tuna. As
Greenpeace’s oceans campaigner stated, ‘The northern bluefin tuna is on the road to extinction, and this
meeting has not even reduced the speed limit.”16
As the population of wild tuna has plunged, and the demand continued to increase, “fish farms” (allegedly
‘farming’ the fish, rather than fishing it directly from the sea) have increased in popularity. However, these
large-scale ranching operations in the Mediterranean are no less destructive than boats on the open seas.
“Farms catch their fish in the wild, young and small …The tuna are fattened in pens using vast supplies of
smaller fish whose plundering is its own ecological plunder.”17
It is not just the tuna that are endangered. The Mediterranean Sea is turning into a graveyard, with the
highest numbers of threatened sharks and rays in the world. Overfishing, particularly the killing of non-target
fish species caught incidentally during fishing, is the main cause of the dramatic decline. “The main concern is
not only for each individual species, as important as they are, but for the cumulative impact of this loss of
biodiversity,” said the Mediterranean Red List coordinator at the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean
Cooperation. “We are observing serious changes which will have major consequences over time on all animal
life and, ultimately, on the livelihoods of people around the Mediterranean.”18
What will be the impact on the livelihoods of Lebanese fishermen? The problem is data is either nonexistent
or inaccurate. For example, fishermen in northern Lebanon, their cooperatives and syndicates had absolutely
no idea about their yearly production of fish and its value. Based on data gathered through extensive field
13
‘The Bluefin slaughter.’ Editorial. The New York Times. November 17, 2007.
‘Overfishing is driving bluefin tuna to commercial extinction.’ The Independent. November 18, 2005; and Stefan
Lovgren. ‘Bluefin Tuna in Atlantic Nearing Extinction, Conservation Group Says.’ National Geographic News. July 24,
2006.; and Richard Black. ‘No cuts for Mediterranean tuna.’ BBC News. November 19, 2007.
15
Agence France Presse. ‘Greenpeace slams ‘unsustainable’ new tuna quota.’ November 19, 2007.
16
Richard Black. ‘No cuts for Mediterranean tuna.’ BBC News. November 19, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7101745.stm
17
‘The Bluefin slaughter.’ Editorial. The New York Times. November 17, 2007.
18
‘Mediterranean Sea: most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays.’ IUCN: The World Conservation Union.
November 15, 2007. http://www.iucn.org/en/news/archive/2007/11/16_pr_sharks.htm
14
research by the University of Balamand’s Institute of Environment, we do know that “Lebanese fisheries
remain traditional, do not constitute a significant pressure on the Northern coastal zones, except in areas
where spear fishing is practiced and illegal mesh size fishing nets are used. Northern Lebanon fishing sector
comprises approximately 1,000 to 1,400 fishing boats, employs more than 3,300 fishermen, and has an
estimated yearly catch of about 5,800 tons of fish catch per year valued at US$ 27.7 million in 2005.”19
Nevertheless, despite the absence of sufficient data in Lebanon, there is sufficient information worldwide for
us to make clear predictions of the future for Mediterranean fishermen if this current situation of industrial
over-fishing it to continue (as it is continuing).
Continued liberalization of trade in fish and fish products (as promoted by the World Trade Organization)
will only economically benefit (for the short-term) a small number of developed, fish-exporting countries –
or, more specifically, a small number of firms in a small number of developed, fish-exporting countries. No
other country will benefit. Likely, developing countries will deplete – or allow the depletion of – what is left
of the wildlife biomass (the marine species), thus increasing the already considerable loss of both genetic and
biological diversity and erode the very basis of a healthy and productive marine ecosystem. For consumers in
the developing world, fish prices will increase as more of the national fishing effort is diverted to fishing for
export species. Globally, liberalization will also increase pressure to divert food from the plates of the South’s
poor to fishmeal processing.20
We, in Lebanon, will not be immune.
I must step away from the institutional discussion of trade policies and fishermen communities and industrial
fisheries, and ask a personal question: since it is economics that is at fault here, we must ask ourselves what
this continuous overfishing, overhunting, over-consumption is saying about our own lifestyle.
Here-in we have to remember our fundamental problem: the so-called ‘free’ market does not do moderation.
Until we change our market policies, shouldn’t we impose personal moderation? For the benefit of our small
fishermen, the viability of the marine species, and the health of our marine ecosystems, shouldn’t we impose a
bit of personal moderation in our own consumption habits?
Or have I, by speaking of personal moderation, just uttered a cardinal sin?
19
Fadi M. Doumani. ‘Economic valuation of the Lebanese northern coast.’ Integrated Management of East
Mediterranean Coastlines – IMAC. Institute of the Environment. University of Balamand. July 2007.
20
‘Trading away our oceans: why trade liberalization of fisheries must be abandoned.’ Greenpeace. January 2007.
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/raw/content/en/documents-reports/tradingaway.pdf