Sustainable fishing

The Pacific Coast of Canada is truly unique.  Here, over 29,000 kilometers of coastline are bordered by an ocean with a vital suite of ecological properties.  Because of these properties - a lack of sea ice year round, relatively constant water temperatures, and waters rich in nutrients  - our pacific coast boasts a level of biodiversity unparalleled in other Canadian waters.  Over 400 species of fish live here, including over 3,000 genetically distinct salmon stocks.  Lower down the food chain, invertebrates - animals without a backbone - number over 3,800.  This is over three times the number of marine invertebrates found on the Atlantic coast, and 3.5% of those found worldwide.  Such diversity has supported a rich fishing tradition along our coast for thousands of years.

Despite this rich species mix, the depiction of our coast as a pristine, untapped resource is quickly becoming a myth.  In just the past 100 years, Pacific salmon have disappeared from almost half of their original range along the northwest coast of North America.  It has become increasingly clear that the salmon are in crisis - catches have declined drastically, and many stocks are no longer being fished at all.  In the Fraser River, over 10 stocks of upper river coho salmon are now officially considered endangered. Although this precipitous decline has been most publicized for salmon, they are not alone in their fate.  Rockfish, which can live to be over a hundred years old, have been so overfished in some areas that the fishery has been closed in many regions.  The lingcod and black cod fisheries have met with very similar ends.  Clearly, a new direction for our pacific fishery is long overdue.

Where do we stand?

In the past, fisheries were managed using single species models.  Not only did this approach require huge amounts of data; it also ignored a couple of important aspects of our fisheries.  First, many fisheries involve multiple species.  Managing them properly using single-species models is simply not possible.  Second, this approach failed to address how one species fits into an ecosystem: how its removal affects other species, and how the ecosystem provides its needs, such as for habitat and food.

With the release of the Oceans Act in 1997, the Canadian government began to attempt a new direction for fisheries management.  Although the government now releases "Integrated Fisheries Management Plans", they still do not truly assess the impact of removing a stock on the surrounding ecosystem, and have not yet put into place strategies for ensuring the needs of species are met by the ecosystem.  This last point is especially true for non-salmon species.  Further, there is little integration of social considerations into fisheries management.  Above all, although this new direction has been sold as an integrated, ecosystem-based approach, the vast majority of the research budget is still spent on only a few fisheries.  Pursuing new, emerging species with little stock data is definitely not an integrated, holistic approach to fisheries management.

At The David Suzuki Foundation, we believe that such an approach is very possible, and very critical.  We believe it should look not only at the ecology and economics of the fishery, but also deal with social issues.  Below are 10 principles that we feel are key to finding workable, sustainable solutions, and managing our fisheries for the future.

Principle One:
MANAGE THE ECOSYSTEM, NOT INDIVIDUAL STOCKS
To truly understand our fisheries, and make decisions about them that are ecologically sound, we must think at the level of the ecosystem.  Adopting an ecosystem approach to fisheries management includes incorporating many of the principles listed below, such as looking after habitat and diversity.  Above this, though, it also means knowing the impact of fishing a particular stock on other members of the food web, and knowing how changes in the food web impact the stock of interest.  Because of this, it’s critical to understand all the components of the marine food web - even the ones that are "non-commercial".  It’s also essential that clear communication between those working on different stocks is taking place.   

Principle Two:
ADOPT A PRECAUTIONARY APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT
In fisheries management, nothing is for certain.  What we do know, after years of mistakes, is that we must err on the side of caution.  The need for this caution was affirmed in the Rio Declaration, which was signed by Canada in 1992.  Signatories of the convention are bound to take a precautionary approach to management: in short, to not postpone action for avoiding potential environmental harm, just because of a lack of solid scientific evidence. Although it sounds simple, this represents a radical shift in the way we think about how to fish.  For example, it means that instead of trying to get the most fish possible out of the system over the short term, we must manage cautiously, and take less, to ensure the survival of the fishery over the long term. 

Principle Three:
GIVE THOSE THAT CARE MOST ABOUT THE FISHERY A SAY
One of the biggest roadblocks to sustainability in our fisheries may be that the ability to catch the greatest number of fish is concentrated into the hands of just a few fishermen and companies.  Increasingly, this has resulted in the industrialization of our fishery, and a fishery where the decision-makers are more and more removed from the resource that sustains them.  Above all, industrialization often means that the goal is to maximize profit; too often when this happens, the true goal of ensuring the longevity of our fishery is lost.  Because their decisions are based on economic and corporate needs rather than ecosystem and social needs, industrialized fisheries often just don’t make ecological sense. 

In their study for the David Suzuki Foundation, Drs. Evelyn Pinkerton and Martin Weinstein found that worldwide, sustainable fisheries do exist, and that these fisheries are community based.  Not only do such community-based fisheries allow those that are closest to the resource - who care most about it - to have a say in managing it, and allow members of fishing communities to again be gainfully involved in their fisheries.  Allowing local people a role in managing their fisheries also gives them a reason to be its steward: to help research the stocks, and conserve and rebuild habitat.  Clearly, it’s time to put into place this win-win situation that, until now, we have largely avoided in order to cater to a corporate-based fishery.

Principle Four:
DECREASE CAPACITY AND PLAN FOR STOCK FLUCTUATIONS
In addition to allowing fisheries to be managed at the local level, we must also ensure that we are fishing less.  On the one hand, we know that stocks fluctuate.  This occurs naturally, even in the absence of human intervention.  In order to fish sustainably, we must plan for and respect these natural cycles.  On the other hand, ever increasing technology means that we are able to fish a greater and greater proportion of the world’s ocean.  Although the salmon license buyback scheme touted by the Federal government in the early 1920s and again in the late 1990s did decrease the number of people fishing, it didn’t solve the over-capacity problem.  Instead, it concentrated ownership into a smaller, technologically advanced fleet.  This over-capacity has resulted in stocks that have been driven down to very low levels. Although it may sound counterintuitive, we need to begin to fish less in the short-term, to get more fish on a longer term, sustained yield.

Principle Five:
PROTECT DIVERSITY
The Pacific ecosystem is a complex one - scientists know that we are not even close to understanding the number of links present between the plants and animals of this system, or their importance.  Because of this, the only way to ensure the continued health of this ecosystem is to consciously work to preserve all of its components.  By preserving biodiversity, we preserve these important links, and make the pacific ecosystem more resilient to any stresses it may have to face.

Another, less obvious, type of diversity is genetic diversity.  It is genetic diversity that allows salmon to know what stream to return to when it comes time to spawn.  Genetic diversity also allows populations to survive in times of stress, such as low food availability or adverse water conditions.  Unfortunately, our hatchery program is helping to destroy this important aspect of our salmon stocks.  All along the coast, hatchery fish are being added to wild populations.  These hatchery fish are less diverse genetically than their wild populations, and once released into nature create the illusion of large, wild stocks.  When these stocks are fished, the small group of fish that is truly wild becomes highly vulnerable to extinction.  Hatchery fish also compete with wild fish for limited resources.  Although meant to enhance our fishery, in the end, large-scale hatcheries could help to destroy it.

Principle Six:
PROTECT HABITAT
To maintain diverse, healthy marine populations, it is crucial that we work to preserve the habitat that sustains them.  For salmon, this means keeping lakes and streams forested, free-running, and unpolluted.  It also means maintaining healthy estuaries.  In the open ocean, bottom trawling is one of the greatest destroyers of habitat practiced by our fisheries.  Because of how a trawl operates, scraping along the ocean floor to "scoop-up" everything in its path, it collects more than just the species we’re fishing for: the plants, mud and rocks that form ideal habitat, and hiding ground for young fish are also removed from the ecosystem.

Marine protected areas are also a crucial part of habitat protection.  In the past, there were always parts of the ocean in which we were unable to fish.  Today, with ever-increasing technology, these hiding places, or refugia, have disappeared.  Refugia, however, are crucial: they act as source areas to replenish our oceans.  By protecting productive habitats as no-fish zones, we can help to ensure the continuation of our fisheries.

Principle Seven:
MINIMIZE BYCATCH
Bycatch, or the catch of non-target species, poses an immense threat to the continued viability of our marine environment.  When a species is caught by vessels that are not targeting it, this additional harvest can put the catch levels of that species "over the edge" of sustainable harvest.  This can lead to precipitous declines in stock biomass.  For example, the large bycatch of rockfish in the target halibut fishery is causing huge problems for the numbers of these long-lived species.  Similarly, non-specific gillnet catches on the Skeena led to well-publicized declines in steelhead salmon in a fishery
 
intended to catch sockeye.  Even when non-commercial species are caught, we are loosing species that are invaluable to the marine food web.  Inevitably, this weakens the marine ecosystem.

As is the case for habitat protection, trawling is one of the worst bycatch offenders - by this fishery’s very nature, it can not be selective.  Although some industries have gone a long way to reducing their bycatch, those that can not are clearly unsustainable, and should cease to exist.

Principle Eight:
MAKE AQUACULTURE SUSTAINABLE
Although it may seem that aquaculture is an easy answer to the ever-increasing demand for finfish and shellfish worldwide, past experiences from countries that have long practiced aquaculture tell us that this is not the case.  The open netcages used for finfish aquaculture have been shown, time and time again, to be environmental disasters.  Because they are kept in such close proximity, the potential for disease to spread through caged fish is enormous.  Unfortunately, escapes are common in open netcage systems, raising concerns for the transfer of disease to wild populations.  On the West Coast, most farmed finfish is exotic Atlantic salmon, raising concerns that escapes will mean the introduction of an exotic species, and competition with native fish.  Even when native species are farmed escapes can be dangerous: when farmed stocks breed in the wild, they do immense harm to the gene pool.  Finally, open netcage systems cause immense pollution problems.  Surplus food and the immense volume of feces produced by densely packed farms pollute the aquatic environment surrounding farms.

The farming of exotic species is also a problem in shellfish aquaculture. Because they grow faster and are more marketable, exotics are the rule rather than the exception in our shellfish farms.  In addition, it’s common practice to farm in the intertidal zone of our oceans - that critical area of habitat that connects saltwater to freshwater, and oceans to land.  By turning this critical habitat into an intensively managed farm, resident species, and free-ranging shorebirds and marine mammals are severely affected. 

Principle Nine:
RESEARCH THE ECOSYSTEM, AND MAKE RESEARCH AVAILABLE TO ALL
Research is an integral part of making decisions about how our marine resources are managed.  Currently, the research being undertaken on the Pacific Coast of Canada focuses largely on salmon, herring, and a few other species.  It is crucial that we broaden the scope of our fisheries research, and undertake such research for species that are not currently commercial.  In fact, in an ecological sense, there are no underutilized species: each is as important as the next for the strength and well being of the ecosystem.  Before a new species is subject to any fishery, we must ensure that we have a significant body of research to understand how much fishing pressure it can sustainably bear.  Just as importantly, this information must be made readily available, in an unbiased way, to all stakeholders in the fishery. 

Principle Ten:
LET THE MARKET DECIDE
In the end, one of the most powerful ways to ensure that our fisheries are managed in a sustainable way is to give consumers, worldwide, information about how the fish on their table have been caught.  As we have witnessed in the past, consumers can be a strong voice for change when the information necessary to make that decision is easily available to them.  Making this information available, and making sure that it is arrived at in a scientifically rigorous fashion, could be central to changing the way we fish.