
New Maps Reveal Global Fishing's 'Vast Scope of Exploitation of the Ocean' - acdanger
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/22/588034042/new-maps-reveal-global-fishings-vast-scope-of-exploitation-of-the-ocean
======
Qworg
Fishing is both gigantic and unprofitable (roughly $44B/year in the hole with
subsidies, as of 2014)[1]. Illegal fishing is also a gigantic problem. In
fact, illegal fishing is the 3rd largest crime in dollars after smuggling
weapons and drugs (up to $36.4B/year)[2]. It also contributes to human
trafficking.

Plug: We're working to stop illegal fishing at Vulcan (with satellites!):
[http://www.skylight.global/](http://www.skylight.global/). If you're
interested, we actually have an open position on the team -
[http://www.vulcan.com/About/Careers/Job-
Listings?p=job/oCIB6...](http://www.vulcan.com/About/Careers/Job-
Listings?p=job/oCIB6fwL)

Hit me up if you'd like to discuss - email in profile.

[1] [https://qz.com/1195914/the-way-the-world-catches-fish-
defies...](https://qz.com/1195914/the-way-the-world-catches-fish-defies-all-
economic-logic/) [2] [https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-
fishing](https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-fishing)

~~~
jimrandomh
> Fishing is both gigantic and unprofitable (roughly $44B/year in the hole
> with subsidies, as of 2014)[1].

This is a misunderstanding of economics. To determine whether an industry
would be profitable if subsidies were removed, you can't just subtract numbers
on a balance sheet; you need to know the demand elasticity of their product.

~~~
Qworg
Demand is strong, certainly, but productivity has topped out (ie: we're
overfishing/we can't find new fish). Do subsidies lower the price for the
consumer or simply keep output high given the decreasing stocks (therefore
decreasing the price)?

~~~
belorn
Its not so much that we can't find new fish, it is that only a small portion
of species is considered commercial profitable and those get fished to
extinction. It is the least functional way to handle a ecosystem, and that is
getting subsidized.

Its like when nation subsidies farmers that is growing singular crops that
kills the soil, decreasing prices while keeping output artificial high while
each year get worse and worse. Its not that farming is inherently unprofitable
or that farmers can't find fresh soil, but rather a system failure. The eco
industry, while often subsidized, has gotten quote profitable but the
equivalent thing for fishing seems to still be rather small. I have seen some
minor political efforts in trying to give subsidies money to fishermen that
target overpopulated or invasive species, but nothing big.

~~~
newnewpdro
It seems like you're viewing this as an optimization problem, which strikes me
as just a way of kicking the proverbial can down the road - just like the
subsidies are doing.

There simply need to be less people.

~~~
z0r
Which is at odds with current political and economic trends. Right or left, no
matter what kinds of social or environmental causes people seem to care about,
there is almost universal support for economic policies of unending growth.
You almost never see Japan get touted as a model first world country - with
both a shrinking population and economy - but maybe that's the way we all
should be heading.

Retirement investments and real estate be damned, maybe immigration and jacked
up trade isn't so important if we care about having a diverse and healthy
biomass for future generations to enjoy.

------
chrisb
Interactive version of this map showing fishing activity:
[http://globalfishingwatch.org/map/](http://globalfishingwatch.org/map/)

------
spodek
They're responding to people who buy fish, which is most people, so it's less
"Global Fishing's" and more "Humanity's Exploitation of the Ocean".

The maps look like a comment on our population growth, or a call to reduce
that growth if we don't want nature to reduce it for us. Eating more plants
instead of fish and other forms of efficiency could help too, but may
forestall the inevitable if we keep growing.

~~~
Retric
You can also farm fish, so it's more fisherman exploitation than simple demand
for fish.

~~~
usrusr
Many fish farms are just converters from one kind of fish (that is caught in
the wild but isn't popular in the supermarket) into another kind of fish (one
of the popular carnivorous ones).

~~~
mirimir
Indeed. From
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X16305516)

> Finally, comments are presented on the proposition that aquaculture will
> overtake wild capture fisheries in terms of food production, notably because
> current aquaculture requires huge quantities of wild-caught fish as feed.
> Indeed, this emphasis on aquaculture-as-substitute for fisheries raises
> issues of food security and malnutrition in developing countries, from which
> much of the fish used as feed originates.

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zokier
They sure are pretty maps, and the boats do seem to get around, no denying of
that. But I'm not sure how I'm supposed to gain any insight of any
exploitation, never mind of its vastness, from the maps. One might even
somewhat naively think that having the fishing spread out is actually good
thing. And I'm actually pretty aware that our fishing is not anywhere near
sustainable levels, so no need to begin arguing about that. What I'm
commenting is the relative vacuousness of the article.

~~~
mirimir
FAO: [http://www.fao.org/fishery/en](http://www.fao.org/fishery/en)

Criticism of FAO's 2016 State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X16305516)

Quote from there:

> Also, concerns are raised as to why FAO chose to ignore the well-documented
> data 'reconstruction' process, which fills the gaps that exist in data
> reported by countries to FAO. It is being ignored despite its importance for
> governance and resource conservation being well known. This process and its
> findings could be used by FAO to encourage countries to improve their data
> reporting, including retroactive corrections. This is important in view of
> successive analyses of the status of fisheries resources undertaken by FAO
> (published in current and past SOFIAs) and also in modified form by the Sea
> Around Us. This suggests a degradation of marine fisheries, and, if trends
> continue, a crisis by mid-century.

------
bahmboo
Somewhat related [https://www.kaggle.com/c/the-nature-conservancy-fisheries-
mo...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/the-nature-conservancy-fisheries-monitoring)

------
clort
It would be interesting to be able to change the map depending on the country
of origin of the vessels to see the distribution. The article says that Spain
is one of the major presences here; but certainly I've seen Chinese fishing
boats in the Atlantic

~~~
pducks32
There is a bit of masking probably going on with a boat’s flag’s origin.
Maritime law is a strange game and thy can get away with a lot of shady stuff
if they pick some obscure countries as their “home”

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ajmurmann
I wish we could ban all fishing for at least five years and after that highly
restrict it. One can dream right? (I say that as someone who likes eating fish
a lot)

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irrational
I'm astonished at how much fishing is going on around Europe. I expected that
around China/Japan/SE Asia, but Europe? I've lived all over the US and in my
experience hardly anyone eats seafood (we certainly never ate it growing up in
California, Florida, Texas, Oregon and Puerto Rico and I've never met anyone
who mentioned that they have recently eaten seafood). So I assumed Europe
would be the same (since a lot of our culture comes from Europe). Maybe people
are secretly eating more seafood in the USA than my experience would assume,
or Europeans just eat way more seafood that I would have guessed.

~~~
zombieprocesses
> I'm astonished at how much fishing is going on around Europe.

Why would that surprise you? Europe has a long tradition of fishing. And
europe's population is 800 million strong. They even had a brief "war" in the
north atlantic over fish.

[http://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-cod-
wars/](http://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-cod-wars/)

Japan and China are targeted in many fearmongering articles about
fishing/whaling/etc because stories about them get traction/reaction. Maybe
because of ethnic/racial tension. Who knows.

Try "Japan is killing whales" vs "Norway/Iceland is killing whales".

or

"China is overfishing" vs "Europe is overfishing".

The former gets the most reaction/clicks even though the latter outwhales and
outfishes the former.

The biggest culprit is europe, then us, and then the japanese and then the
chinese. It's primarily the europeans and us that are destroying fisheries.
Not only that, europe's fishing reach is global due to their colonial
heritage.

There is a very strong fishing tradition in europe. Nearly wiped out the
whales in the 1800s. Wiped out the fish/tuna/etc in the mediterranean and the
north atlantic. Then moved over to the US and wiped out our fisheries along
our atlantic and alaska. And the regions destroying fisheries along africa are
not the chinese, as you see on the news, but it's the europeans by a long
shot.

~~~
throwaway1892
As a French, I think I've as much "China/SE Asia is overfishing" as "Europe is
overfishing". But usually it turns political very quick, since the region
supported by the fishing industry don't have many other economical prospects.

------
all_usernames
Be prepared to read a lot more of this topic in the coming years. With 2 of
the main food species (Tuna, Salmon) de facto endangered, we're going to be
thinking about our seafood much differently from now on.

~~~
pvaldes
This is a real history. Last month three or four people were detained trying
to taking a plane in Spanish with destination Malaysia with bags full of
plastic water bottles. There was not drug in the bottles, they were just full
of european baby eels. 24 Kg of elvers to be farmed for some months and sold
in Asia as adult eels for a lot of money. Is a very lucrative smuggling. As
elvers are tiny and lightweight a kg means a lot of fishes.

In the meanwhile the population of european eels were reduced in maybe a 90%
in the last generation... and nobody cares. No one single politician of
relevance is talking about that.

------
pmoriarty
Anyone interested in this should check out the Leviathan commercial fishing
documentary:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uqyNKK3HYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uqyNKK3HYU)

------
hi41
On Being podcast has a Sylvia Earle episode about over fishing has depleted
the ocean ecosystem and is bringing many species close to extinction.

Here is the episode: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-being-with-
krista-tip...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-being-with-krista-
tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000403412214)

------
pc2g4d
From the article it seems the map represents places fishing vessels _were_,
not necessarily where fishing occurred. So a vessel en route to fishing
"grounds" (what's the right term?) would be counted as fishing all along the
way.

------
singularity2001
At least "exclusive economic zones" around islands are mostly respected

~~~
IshKebab
Or they turn off their transponders or whatever.

~~~
contingencies
Yes. Or don't have them. If you believe this map nobody fishes on either coast
of Thailand or Peninsular Malaysia at all. Not true!

Probably the map heavily skews to showing only points from large vessels in
international waters and most vessels in well regulated / developed countries'
waters.

~~~
jabl
The map is mostly based on AIS data; AIS transponders are only required on
vessels larger than 100 tons, thus excluding smaller coastal fishing vessels.

 _EDIT_ According to wikipedia, I'm wrong
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system)
). The international limit (IMO SOLAS) is apparently 300 gross tons, though
local jurisdictions can have stricter requirements, e.g. it mentions that the
EU requires all fishing vessels longer than 16m to be equipped.

 _EDIT2_ wikipedia is wrong, the EU limit for fishing vessels is 15m as of
2014-05-31 ([http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32009R1224&from=EN)).

~~~
glup
I was just going to look for this information, thanks!

------
cageface
Given the level of pollution in the ocean now you're probably better off
avoiding fish anyway unless you want a daily dose of toxic heavy metals and
industrial chemicals.

There are no essential nutrients in fish you can't easily get from other
foods.

~~~
azinman2
Is that really true? My understanding is that depends heavily on what type of
fish it is (where are they in the food chain and how old they are), and isn’t
the ocean super gigantic? It’s also not like heavy metals don’t exist in our
land-based foods [1] (along with lots of other nasties like antibiotics and
pesticides).

Further, if it was really so toxic, wouldn’t a population like Japan that has
a very seafood heavy diet be suffering massive health issues?

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11347908/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11347908/)

~~~
cageface
There are definitely tradeoffs, but you can get all the benefits of eating
fish from safer sources:

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/mercury-vs-omega-3s-for-
bra...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/mercury-vs-omega-3s-for-brain-
development/)

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/fish-and-
diabetes/](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/fish-and-diabetes/)

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/ciguatera-poisoning-
chronic...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/ciguatera-poisoning-chronic-
fatigue-syndrome/)

