[Marxism] The exhaustible ocean

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan Yardley
How humans imperil the oceans and all that lives in them.

By Jonathan Yardley
Sunday, July 29, 2007; BW15

THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA

By Callum Roberts

Island Press. 435 pp. $28

There are times when the capacity of mankind to blind itself to plain 
reality is simply breathtaking. Thus to this day we still believe, as 
was universally believed two centuries ago, that the seas surrounding us 
afford an infinite source of wealth. As recently as half a century ago, 
two respected academics asserted in a book titled The Inexhaustible Sea 
that what the ocean "has to offer extends beyond the limits of our 
imagination -- that someday men will learn that in its bounty the sea is 
inexhaustible."

A boundless delusion. What informed scientists now know, as Callum 
Roberts writes in this measured but passionate and immensely important 
book -- a persuasive synopsis of existing scholarship augmented by the 
author's own research -- is that the resources of the sea are as limited 
as those of land and air, and that our penchant for exploiting them to 
the point of extinction is appalling.

To cite one especially egregious instance, the majestic bluefin tuna has 
been so over-fished that in Japan and other countries (this one 
included) where sushi is cherished, a single fish sells for $100,000; 
apparently homo sapiens, ever self-interested, would rather pay the 
price than find something else to eat and give the bluefin a shot at 
survival. Today "there is probably only one bluefin left for every fifty 
present in 1940," Roberts writes. "The last of these regal fish are 
today pursued more relentlessly than ever. . . . The fish are now so 
valuable that it pays to employ planes and helicopters to scan the 
ocean, guiding boats in for the kill when fish are spotted. This isn't 
fishing any more -- it is the extermination of a species."

To be sure, it's not that everyone has been willfully ignorant of the 
sea's declining health. Nearly a century and a half ago a Maryland 
official told the State Oyster Commission that the oyster industry was 
dominated by reckless, uneducated men who paid no attention to 
consequences. In the official's words, the industry was "more like a 
scramble for something adrift," where every participant's goal was "to 
get as much as he can before it is lost."

Well, now to all intents and purposes, the oyster industry is lost. 
"Today," Roberts reports about the Chesapeake, "the whole bay yields 
only 80,000 bushels a year, down from a peak of 15 million in the 
nineteenth century."

As Roberts makes plain, the history of fishing -- commercial fishing 
primarily and most flagrantly, but many instances of sport fishing as 
well -- is one of human selfishness persistently outracing attempts to 
bring it under control, to mandate restraint. And yet, though the 
evidence that Roberts presents of exploitation and destruction is 
damning, his book is not "a requiem for the sea." A marine biologist at 
the University of York in England, Roberts is an optimist about the 
future, so long as that future includes national and international 
networks of protected areas and simple fishing reforms. Unfortunately, 
though, the very history that Roberts recounts suggests that attitudes 
held now for hundreds of years will be difficult if not impossible to 
change.

That history begins in the 11th century with a revolution in England and 
Europe. Whereas in the past fishing had been done primarily inland, in 
freshwater lakes and rivers, now fishers turned to the sea. There were a 
number of reasons for this, ranging from improving fishing techniques to 
"deteriorating freshwaters" tainted by pollution and sewage, but what 
matters is that the sea was quickly seized upon as a principal source of 
food and that its exploitation began at once. As methods for preserving 
and transporting fish steadily improved -- and as coastal fishing 
grounds were rapidly decimated -- fishers moved ever farther away from home:

"There is a common theme in European expansion and exploitation of the 
sea. First, the explorers -- Columbus, Cabot, Drake, Bering, Cook, and 
others -- set sail for God, country, fame, and wealth. They returned 
with tales of strange seas teeming with wildlife. Through books . . . 
the possibilities for exploitation became known in Europe, stimulating a 
second wave of travel financed by merchant adventurers in pursuit of 
profit. Those voyages, although commercially motivated, were 
instrumental in extending the boundaries of the known world. As well as 
the animals slaughtered for commercial ends, sailors and travelers had 
major impacts on the fauna of islands and the sea, butchering millions 
of animals for provisions."

"Butchering" is the word, all right, but don't let that lead you into 
thinking that Roberts is a bleeding-heart sentimentalist. He readily 
accepts fish as a source of human sustenance, clearly enjoys eating fish 
himself, and recognizes that a large commercial fishing industry is 
inevitable and necessary in a populous, demanding world. But he is 
offended, as well he should be, by the barbarity that so often has 
characterized fishing and by "the destructive and wasteful way in which 
we fish." Exact and reliable figures are difficult to obtain, but 
scientists have estimated that "a quarter to a third of all animals 
caught are simply tossed back into the sea, most of them dead or dying." 
This is especially true of trawling, which was introduced in the 14th 
century and throughout its history has swept everything off the seabed 
and into its nets: not merely the fish being sought, but any other 
creatures that have the misfortune to get in the way.

As trawling expanded -- and particularly after the introduction of 
steam-powered commercial fishing ships in the 1870s, which increased 
incalculably the range and maneuverability of the fleet -- its 
depredations grew ever larger and more serious. A couple of decades 
before the introduction of steam, "fishers complained that the trawlers 
were wiping out fish stocks, especially by the destruction of fish spawn 
and immature fish," that "the trawl cleared the bottom and ruined their 
bait beds," that "crab populations were imperiled by soft crabs being 
crushed when shedding their shells" and that "the trawl broke up and 
dispersed schools of fish, driving them away." These complaints were 
motivated more by self-interest than by altruism, but they set a pattern 
that has been repeated and magnified ever since.

These, though, were complaints about coastal fishing. Now trawling is 
widely practiced in the open seas, as "distant-water fleets spread 
fisheries across the Atlantic from pole to pole." (The same is true of 
the Pacific, but Roberts admits he couldn't find enough documentation on 
the changes in Asian waters to write about them in detail.) Now, too, 
technology has greatly expanded the reach, and the devastation, of 
trawling. Global positioning devices attached to floating logs alert 
fleets to the whereabouts of fish:

"Purse-seine boats now seed the ocean with veritable forests of floating 
decoy logs and other fish-aggregating devices to bring together 
scattered shoals of fish. When they return, they scoop up the fish with 
ruthless efficiency, taking with them turtles, sharks, and dolphins -- 
whatever happens to be there. For some reason, logs preferentially 
attract juvenile tuna, so their take even of the target species is 
wasteful. By catching young tuna before they reach adulthood, purse 
seiners forgo much higher catches for themselves later, and they are 
also denying these tuna the chance to reproduce, putting future catches 
at risk. Where once the vast canvas of the sea was great enough for fish 
to lose themselves in, escaping capture, today even the high seas afford 
little refuge. New technology has given old fishing methods a far more 
lethal edge."

Against this gloomy backdrop, Roberts finds more than faint cause for 
hope. Progress has been made in reducing pollution of the coasts and 
oceans from sewage and other contaminants. Marine reserves -- "places 
that are protected from all fishing" -- have had notable success in 
giving endangered species breathing room, but only .006 percent of the 
ocean is thus protected, and "we need fifty times more reserve areas to 
do the job well, spread across the waters of coastal nations and the 
high seas." Given that the fishing industry has a far louder and more 
persuasive voice in the halls of government than do the fish themselves, 
it is difficult to share Roberts's optimism. I am haunted by this passage:

"Perhaps geologists feel saddened by the loss of some remarkable gypsum 
formation rendered to dust for plasterboard. I don't know. But I 
certainly feel anguish on seeing coral glades leveled. It hurts to know 
we are losing species whose forms have never been described and perhaps 
have never been seen by people. They have shared our planet for 
countless millennia, living undisturbed lives deep in the sea. 
Extinction, the irrevocable loss of a species, causes pain that can 
never find relief. It is an ache that will pass from generation to 
generation for the rest of human history."

It is also nothing less than a global catastrophe, about which Callum 
Roberts has issued a powerful, galvanizing call to arms. Wishful 
thinking tells me that perhaps this time the call will be heard. 
Experience teaches another, and far gloomier, lesson. ·

Jonathan Yardley's e-mail is yardleyj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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