Of Fish and Men

[Daveparts still]

Of Fish and Men
By David Glenn Cox

The argument seesaws back and forth. My scientist says this, which is answered by, “Oh yeah? Well, my scientist says that and he also says that your scientist is full of crap!” The argument over global warming has become a media battle; those that don’t believe by now will never believe.

The arguments are based on anecdotal data which when compiled and collated presents a picture of impending environmental disaster. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t put much stock in numeric data or computer projections. It’s hard to scare some folks with a computer print out that says, “We’re all going to die!” If, however, you point down the street and say, “You see that big guy down there? He told me he’s going to kill you.” Then they get a little nervous and ask, “What should I do?”

It is the same scenario, just a different medium of communication.

What if we are looking at the climate change issue all wrong? What if by the time the polar ice caps have melted away by the end of the century mankind is no longer a part of the argument? The issue of global climate change then becomes like a castaway worried about sunscreen when he has neither food nor water.

The UN CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) is meeting in Doha, Qatar for the next several weeks to discuss the usual issues such as ivory poaching, tiger poaching and banning the trade in polar bears skins. CITES holds the power to ban these practices with a two-thirds vote of the nations and they probably will, but there is a more serious issue that won’t be so easily passed and it involves us all.

The tiny nation of Monaco, yes Monaco, has proposed an outright ban on international commercial harvesting of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Optimistic projections say that the schools of tuna once thought inexhaustible are down to 18 to 28% of their populations of fifty years ago. Darker projections put the population at 10% of levels from fifty years ago. If it were just bluefin tuna the issue could be ignored, but that is not all.

From the journal "Nature:"

"From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. 'There is no blue frontier left,' said lead author Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada. 'Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles.'"

Imagine a cattle rancher who looked out at his herd and saw only calves, yearlings and old bulls. The rancher has two choices, stop culling the herd or sell what’s left and go out of business. The Norwegians are famous for their love of cod and developed a means of domestically farming the fish in direct response to declining wild cod populations. Yet the wild stocks are still being harvested and are still threatened with extinction.

The civilized nations of educated people in Australia and Japan examined not computer projections but actual reports of falling harvests and declining catch size and rationally decided that they will ignore any ban put in place by CITES. World Wildlife spokesman Carlos Drews said, "The expectation is to reach definite positions that will be long-term measures to conserve, for example, the Atlantic bluefin tuna.”

The UN can create bans but cannot override sovereign national laws, which makes any ban only voluntary. As the fish stocks decline, the prices rise. A bluefin tuna can bring upwards of $10,000 in a Japanese fish market and a record 440-pound tuna sold for $180,000. The four billion-dollar bluefin tuna industry is the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Sharks are also on the agenda in Doha with increased fishing for fins and meat. Many of the endangered species have long life spans and so breed very slowly. There is also concern over increased harvesting of coral for jewelry. Funny thing, those little critters while building their pretty little houses remove CO2 from the atmosphere in the process.

The Japanese argue that the bluefin tuna is highly valued in sushi and that it is a part of their culture, just as whaling and killing dolphins is a part of their culture. There was a time when slavery was a part of our culture and a short time when killing Japanese was also a part of our culture, so sometimes culture is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes you must develop a new culture; it's called progress.

In China and India and all over the rapidly-industrializing Asian continent, toxic fertilizers, industrial solvents, human waste and chemical runoff have decimated the local shellfish populations. Their numbers decline and the rest are too toxic to eat. In Thailand the Mekong River is at fifty-year low levels. The Mekong dolphin, once common, is now rare. The Thais blame China’s many new dams along the river. The Chinese maintain that the low water levels are caused by an unusual drought. Regardless of the cause the low water has caused a reduced harvest of fish and less available drinking water. In February twenty cargo ships were stuck along the section of river that borders Myanmar and Laos.

The river was once expected to become an express portal to move cargo, but low water levels now call that future into question as the Chinese government has stopped issuing permits for commercial ships to travel the river. The people who live along the river are already suffering. Farmers complain of no water to irrigate their crops and fishermen come home with empty nets. As world populations rise, over fishing will increase until the fish populations disappear altogether. No one is certain what will happen to the world’s oceans at that point and it is really no different from the darkest days of the cold war. If we reach that point and push that button, it is the end of civilization. Not maybe or only in computer models, but with certainty when the oceans die we will die.

Not all of us, but most of us will die. The number of people who can feed themselves will decline and the number of those who can afford automobiles will shrink as well. The market for manufactured goods will shrink proportionally. The increase of famine and pestilence will rob farmers of the income for chemical fertilizers so yields will again decline increasing world famines.

So, when you look at the issues from the standpoint of fishing the ocean's population to extinction, it is really quite frivolous to worry about global warming. There will still be oil in the ground to pump and gold and precious ores to mine, but there won’t be any food. Transportation will become more and more a thing of the past as costs become prohibitive. Education and technology will decline as economies collapse, until one day in a hundred years or so, one of the few human survivors sitting along the riverbank will say, “Sure is a nice day!”