Radio Australia 26 Feb 10;
Experts in sustainable fishing are warning that much of our favourite seafood may soon become unavailable if over-fishing continues. They say supplies are dwindling fast and, if the current situation continues, we may have to make do with less popular replacements like jellyfish.
Presenter: Sarah Dingle
Speakers: Professor Jessica Meeuwig, Centre for Marine Futures, University of Western Australia; Darren Kindleysides, Director, Australian Marine Conservation Society; Guy Leyland, Spokesman, National Seafood Industry Alliance.
SARAH DINGLE: Early morning at the Sydney Fish Market and business is brisk. The daily auction has drawn fishmongers from across the city. But there's one item which isn't on the floor.
SEAFOOD BUYER: I could buy a 10 kilo box of jellyfish and watch it rot because I don't know if there's too many people standing in line to buy one.
SARAH DINGLE: The director of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Darren Kindleysides, says that may change.
DARREN KINDLEYSIDES: Seafood itself is at a crossroads, global fisheries are largely overfished catches are declining and fisheries face real challenges through climate change.
And we've heard that if we don't change how we manage our fisheries that the future for seafood could be jellyfish burgers or jellyfish and chips, an ocean that is warmer, has less fish in it and is actually a better habitat for jellyfish and already we're seeing around the world blooms of jellyfish increases in the numbers of jellyfish.
GUY LEYLAND: I'm aware of those sorts of claims but I think world's a big place you can't really generalise, you need to look at country by country and ocean by ocean and in regard to Australian fisheries our oceans are in good shape.
SARAH DINGLE: Guy Leyland is a spokesman for the National Seafood Industry Alliance. He says Australians at least won't have to change their eating habits in the slightest, the only difference may be the impact on their hip pocket.
GUY LEYLAND: Fish that are being supplied by the Australian seafood industry, they are being sustainably harvested. I suppose the only concern is that there's a cap or a limit in terms of the amount of fish the industry can supply and as a consequence it's likely that with greater consumption the price of those species can go up.
I think the fish-consuming public is increasing, we can only supply so much fish, there's a gap and the gap will probably be filled by imports.
SARAH DINGLE: Professor Jessica Meeuwig, from UWA's Centre for Marine Futures says imports are not the solution
PROFESSOR JESSICA MEEUWIG: We know that most of the fish stocks around world are overexploited quite heavily, in some cases for some species particularly the open ocean fisheries, the estimates are that only 10 to 20 per cent of their pre fishing biomass remain. So we've really moved to a place where hunger for seafood has led to an emptying of the oceans globally.
Perhaps compared to the Philippines where there's a huge populations and a lot of poverty Australia's in a better situation, but I don't think there's any room for complacency about the state of our fish stocks.
And if you take Western Australia for example, we have a very large coast here and not a very big population, and that I think has led people to believe it would be difficult to overfish, but what we've seen in the last few years is significant declines in western rock lobster, which is the world's best managed fishery and we've also seen significant declines in species like dhufish, baldchin groper, pink snapper.
(Sound of fish market auction)
SARAH DINGLE: Back at the fish market huge yellowfin tuna, mud crabs and John Dory are all going under the hammer but Professor Meeuwig says there may be less variety in the future and we won't like their replacement.
PROFESSOR MEEUWIG: As we're fishing out the oceans we start at the top of the food chain, we deplete those species then we move further down and at the end of the process you end up with not much other than jellyfish. And we do have areas where jellyfish have become a plague problem such as the Black Sea.
I see no reason why with care we can't keep eating seafood, I think the lesson is to say that we do actually need to act and make sure that we're not overfishing and make sure that we create opportunities for stocks to recover.
