Ending the unsustainable.

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Ending the unsustainable.

Postby Andy Elliott » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:54 am

Ending the unsustainable.

Many people, and not just anglers, have for a long time complained about the unsustainable nature of commercial overfishing (and it is overfishing) but have yet to propose a solution to the problem.

While it might be tempting to fantasize about sinking the whole global commercial fishing fleet to create the mother of all artificial reefs, it's not about to happen.

The sad truth is that the world needs fish to eat, and more of it all the time. The commercial answer to this is to go out and catch more fish. Fish which, had the original biomass been carefully husbanded, protected and exploited wisely with forthough for generations to come, would have been ample for todays and tomorrows needs.

[img]http://www.donegalcottageholidays.com/waterfront/killybegs.jpg[/img]

Unfortunately, the bulk of fish caught worldwide goes to produce fishmeal and fish oil, rather than for direct human consumption. It is a sad truth that the price of cheap chicken is the result of feeding them on fish-based protein. Farmed fish, those fed on diets of fish products, and indeed poultry, pigs, etc are very poor converters of fish protein into animal protein - it's about a one to five ratio of feed weight to gains in carcass weight.


The reason that it is economic to feed fish to other fish or animals is that it is a 'free' resource - it's just a matter of catching it, unlike agriculture, where fields have to be ploughed, harrowed, fertilized, weeded, sown, reaped etc - commercial fishing is all take and no give.

Worse still, commercial fishing appears to be the only industry on the planet where it is not considered legally to be anti-competitive for a government to prop up an industry with lavish subsidies. If the Irish government tried to do it with, say, it's national airline, the EU would stop it instantly. However, commercial fishing does not operate under the same restrictions.

Let's take a moment here to ponder exactly what constitutes a subsidy. A subsidy can be defined as a direct pecuniary aid (read: hard cash, taxpayers cash, to be exact) furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking.

So, a grant for a new boat, or upgrading a boat, constitutes a subsidy. What else is a subsidy? Well, lets consider that a reduced tax on marine diesel is a subsidy - it 'saves' commercial fishermen money on their fuel costs, thus raising their profitability or allowing them to sell more of their 'product' at a reduced price.

Lets look a little harder. The EU, of which we are a part, regularly purchases 'fishing rights' for it's fleet in foreign countries' waters - using taxpayers money, of course. It then gives these rights to commercial fishermen. Free of charge.

COnsider the following example. Suppose, for the sake of arguement, you were an airport operator and due to an increase in business, you had insufficient parking space for your customers. Would the government buy the land to build you a bigger car park and them build it for you at taxpayers expense? No. Yet the government sees no unfair advantage in expanding ports, building new piers and harbours, dredging channels etc, for the commercial fishing industry.
[img]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/5194/killybegop1.jpg[/img]

Would a government intervene with the European parliament to get preferential treatment for a particular industrial sector or indeed individual? In practice, no, as it's against the law. However, the Irish government has done this in the case of the Atlantic Dawn and it's owner. It's a matter of public record.

[img]http://www.mcaorals.co.uk/Photos/LK%20boat%20images/Artic-Dawn.jpg[/img]

An even more obscure subsidy is offered in this year's support to the salmon-farming sector. Facing the threat of Norway, in particular, flooding the EU market with farmed salmon at a lower cost than the EU producers could, the EU placed a tarrif on imports of farmed salmon, allowing the producers here to maintain their prices and as such, their profitability. Since these fish farms here are a major consumer of fish oil and fishmeal based products, this in turn has artificially secured a market for the commercial catching sector's product: more wild fish.

Given the information above, would a reasonable and impartial observer say that the commercial fishing industry here (and this goes on on a global scale) is unfairly subsidised to the hilt? I think they would.

What other negative effects do subsidies have? Using another example, we'll explore that. I'm sure that almost anyone reading this cannot have failed to notice the spiraling increase in fuel prices over the last few years. Oil is just oil, at the end of the day, a substance sucked out of the earth. It'll cost about the same tomorrow to extract a barrel of oil as it does today, or did yesterday. So why has oil increased so dramatically in price?

Market theory dictates that the more in demand a product is, the higher the price the market will bear. But the demand for oil, while growing steadily year on year, does not increase steadily year on year. The price fluctuates in a generally upward trend, the specific price on a given day driven by real or imagined threats to supply. Oil is a commodity, so lets think of fish as one too.

Has the price of fish leapt upwards every time fuel costs rise? No. Is the cost of fish in the marketplace rising commensurately with inflation. No. Generally, when a commodity become expensive, people tend to try to cut back on consumption. So why is fish not subject to the normal laws of the marketplace?

The answer is that commercial fishing is subsidised so that the cost of 'producing' fish remains relatively flat. Thus, consumers are unaware that fish are becoming scarcer because the real cost, both financial and social (social relating to the destruction of the marine habitat etc), is being manipulated by subsidies. So subsidies hide the truth of declining fish stocks from the public at large.

So, in conclusion, would it be fair to say that a lot of the overcapacity in the catching and indeed fish-farming sector is driven by subsidies? Would the removal of these subsidies really help to reduce the pressure on fish stocks? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.


Pat G Boyle & Andy Elliott
Andy Elliott
 

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