UK Study Shows 94 Percent Fish Stock Fall Since 1889

Kate Kelland, PlanetArk 5 May 10;

British fish stocks have dropped by 94 percent in the past 118 years and commercial fishing has profoundly changed seabed ecosystems, leading to a collapse in numbers of many species, scientists said on Tuesday.

The dramatic decline means fisherman working today land only a fraction of the fish caught by their predecessors 100 years ago, when the British fleet brought in four times more fish, according to a study by researchers at the University of York.

"It is clear that seabed ecosystems have undergone a profound reorganization since the industrialization of fishing and that commercial stocks of most bottom-living species, which once comprised an important component of marine ecosystems, collapsed long ago," Callum Roberts and Ruth Thurstan wrote in the study published in the Nature Communications journal.

The findings show fishing quota systems have done nothing to mitigate the fall and underline the need for urgent action to stop the overexploitation of European fisheries and rebuild stocks, the scientists said.

Analysing historical fish landing statistics dating back to 1889, the researchers found the industrialization of fishing had led to relentless exploitation of stocks -- particularly species such as cod, haddock and plaice which are popular on British dinner plates -- and fishing laws such as the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) had failed to stem the decline.

They also found that increases in fishing power, as Britain's fishing boats transformed from a fleet of sailing boats to one made up of technologically sophisticated trawlers, did little to increase the ability to catch large amounts of fish.

"It shows clearly how the rewards of fishing have fallen along with the availability of fish to the fleet," Thurstan told Reuters in a telephone interview.

In 1889, a largely sail-powered fleet landed twice as much fish into Britain as the present-day fleet, the study found. In 1910, the fleet landed four times more fish than today and peak catches came in 1938, 5.4 times more fish were brought in.

This means fishermen would have to work 17 times harder now than 118 years ago to catch the same amount of fish, the researchers said.

"I hope this allows people to realize just how much the seas have been altered and how much has been lost," Thurstan said.

The EU's CFP has been reviewed every 10 years since its creation in 1983 and new reforms are due to be agreed in 2012.

The European Commission, which oversees EU fishing policy, said last year in a consultation on CFP reform that nearly 90 percent of EU fish stocks were over-exploited.

Thurstan said the priority should be to create marine conservation areas, where fishing is banned altogether, to allow stocks of threatened fish species to recover.

While the CFP is often blamed for declines in fish stocks, Thurstan noted that the study showed that much of the decline had taken place before the policy came into force.

"The CFP wasn't to blame for the major declines, however it has also failed to allow fish stocks to recover -- so in essence it has not made the situation any better," she said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Modern fishing techniques masking 'extraordinary' decline in UK waters
Decline in numbers of cod, haddock and plaice is greater than previously thought, researchers say
Press Association, guardian.co.uk 4 May 10;

Developments in the UK's trawling fleet have masked an "extraordinary" decline in the amount of fish in our waters over the past 120 years, a study suggested today.

Researchers said records of fish landings stretching back to the 1880s in the UK showed falls in species such as cod, haddock and plaice have been greater and more long-term than previously thought.

Figures gathered by the UK government since 1889 showed fishing vessels today have to work 17 times as hard to land the same number of fish as they did in 1889 when they were sail-powered and fished close to port.

The data, which has been analysed for the first time, suggests technological developments in the fleet and their movement to new fishing grounds enabled them to fish further, deeper and faster – masking the decline in fish in UK waters.

Overall, the UK trawl fishing fleet landed twice as much fish in 1889 than it does today, the researchers from the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society said.

In England and Wales the amount of fish being landed in the 19th century was more than four times greater than current levels.

Landings peaked in 1937 - when the catch was 14 times what it is today.

And an examination of the time and effort the vessels had to put into trawling to secure their catch showed the amount of fish available dropped by 94%.

The researchers, publishing their findings in the online journal Nature Communications, said fish stocks were in decline well before the amount of fish being caught went "catastrophically downhill" in the 1960s.

They warned that fisheries had been declining more seriously and over a longer period than suggested by scientific assessments of European fish stocks, which only go back 20 to 40 years.

And they called for much stronger reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to allow for recovery of fisheries in the seas around the UK.

Dr Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS, said: "Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom-living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice."

Improvements in technology and movement to new fishing grounds masked "very severe" declines in fish stocks, he said.

He warned that declines were much greater than thought - and that some species' populations were only 1% or 2% of what they historically were.

As a result, he said: "The reform of the common fisheries policy needs to set recovery targets which are much more ambitious than they currently are."

The study calculated the "landings of fish per unit of fishing power", comparing the effort trawling vessels put in with the amount of fish they were rewarded with to assess the availability of fish.

The crash has been huge for some species - with the rate at which halibut were being caught declining 500 times and haddock by more than 100 times.

Both species have declined by more than 99%, while hake and ling declined by more than 95% and cod have fallen by 87%, the researchers said.

Professor Callum Roberts, from the University of York's environment department, said: "This research makes clear that the state of UK bottom fisheries – and by implication European fisheries since the fishing grounds are shared – is far worse than even the most pessimistic of assessments currently in circulation.

"European fish stock assessments, and the management targets based on them, go back only 20 to 40 years.

"These results should supply an important corrective to the short-termism inherent in fisheries management today."

'Profound' decline in fish stocks shown in UK records
Richard Black, BBC News 4 May 10;

Over-fishing means UK trawlers have to work 17 times as hard for the same fish catch as 120 years ago, a study shows.

Researchers used port records dating from the late 1800s, when mechanised boats were replacing sailing vessels.

In the journal Nature Communications, they say this implies "an extrordinary decline" in fish stocks and "profound" ecosystem changes.

Four times more fish were being landed in UK ports 100 years ago than today, and catches peaked in 1938.

"Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice," said Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the Marine Conservation Society and one of the study's authors.

"It is vital that governments recognise the changes that have taken place (and) set stock protection and recovery targets that are reflective of the historical productivity of the sea."
Victorian values

In the late 1880s, the government set up inspectorates in major fishing ports in an attempt to monitor what fish were being landed.

"The records are prety reliable," said Callum Roberts from the UK's York University, another of the study authors.

"The Victorians were very assiduous about collecting information; and while some of the landings might have been missed from smaller ports, the larger ports were covered very efficiently," he told BBC News.

Around the same period, naturalist Walter Garstang was beginning to analyse "fishing power" - essentially, the capacity of a fleet to catch fish.

The biggest change over the period was from sail to engine power.

"With sail power, boats could only go at fixed times and only in certain places with a smooth sea bottom," Professor Roberts noted

"But when you got engines, that meant they could fish in any conditions of wind or tide and sea bed."

As waters near the coast became depleted, industrialisation also meant the UK fleet could travel further in search of new grounds - a phenomenon that took off after 1918.

But despite the growing power and range, the amount of fish caught for each unit of effort has gone drastically down, with 17 times more effort required now to catch the same amopunt of fish as compared with the late 1800s.
'Old news'

Philip MacMullen, head of environmental responsibility at the UK's industry-funded sustainability organisation Seafish, suggested that accenting the historical picture could obscure more recent improvements.

"It could be correct but I don't know, and I don't think the data support the findings," he said.

"But it's old news. Fifteen years ago we started understanding how badly management was working, and 10 years ago we started doing something about it."

Seafish points out that in the last decade, stocks of some species such as cod have shown increases.

But Professor Roberts counters that the long historical timeline in his study shows the recent improvements to be small in scale.

"If you get a 50% increase from 2% of a species' former abundance, you get to 3% of its former abundance, so you shouldn't celebrate too hard," he said.

"That's why this perspective is important."

Whereas UK fishermen tend to blame the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for their economic problems, the authors of this study say it proves that depletion stems from mismanagament well before the CFP came into existence.

"There's nothing basically wrong with the CFP and not much wrong with the scientific research they receive," commented Dr MacMullen.

"But what happens to that advice when it goes up to the Council of Ministers - it's completely mis-managed."