As population levels continue to increase and fish stocks collapse, we are going to have to face the fact that per capita availability of fish is going to drop drastically in the next 20 years. This is a great pity from the point of view of feeding a world running low on food and the oil and other resources needed to produce food. Wild fish is one of the few foods that has no fossil energy inputs up to the point of harvest and is a very important protein source for millions of people.
A new book by Callum Roberts called The Unnatural History of The Sea, says that 200 years ago the North Sea probably held two million tons of cod. Now it is almost certainly less than 40,000 tons.Prof Roberts says that at least half of human fishing capacity has to be somehow taken out of circulation and one third of every ocean has to be turned into protected recovery areas.
I don’t think there is any possibility of this happening at a time when other high protein foods are becoming more expensive and scarse. We will continue until there is almost no fish left, adding to the other food supply problems now building. If several of these problems start having a big effect together, food shortages will cause panic, hoarding and speculation, making a bad situation a lot worse.
September 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Hi, What an interesting, thoughtful article. I suppose one of the problems is that the fishing vessels have become larger and larger. There is some irony in the fact that the British have strict amounts of fish they can catch, yet the rest of the world seems to be catching as much as they want. I was talking to an elderly lady today whose father(or grandfather, I can’t remember which) used to go fishing from Hull in a trawler. She said in those days it was very hard. The trawlers were very basic. One of the things was they often ran out of food when they were out at sea and had to eat fish all the time. She said that years ago it was English fishermen who found some of the fishing areas and now we can’t fish them. It was very interesting talking to her. Another thing she told me was that her father (or grandfather) had a rock out at sea named after him. This may not seem much but she was very proud of that fact. thank you for putting together a really thoughtful article. Trisha