Ocean Sentry
A study warns of the dependency on other sources due to depleted fishing grounds
(Published on 5 may) – Since the 8th of May, all the fish that is consumed in Spain, at least according to statistics, will have come from waters outside of the European Union. Either from the catches of European ships in waters outside the EU or simply bought from other countries. According to a study carried out by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Ocean2012, in just over four months Spain has consumed all their annual quota of fish caught inside European fishing grounds, based on the data from 2007, the last to be revealed.
Without the consumption of farmed species the outcome would be even worse.
This pseudodependency to other grounds is due to the combined effect of the increase in consumption of this type of food and the growing impoverishment of the European fishing grounds that forces the EU fleets to turn to grounds located further off. For example, in 1990 Spain didn´t depend on fishing carried out in other fishing grounds until the 18th of June. Also, the EU was supplied with fish from it´s waters until the 2nd of September but now this quota is reached by the 3rd of July. There are countries whose situation has rapidly worsened at a faster rate than Spain. If in Spain´s case dependency reaches now 41 days sooner than in 1990, in Italy the result arrives 60 days sooner, in Portugal 73 and in France´s case 85 days sooner.
The technique to transform the problems generated by the abuse or the destruction of natural resources into a calender is also used by the New Economics Foundation to measure the so called ecological deficit that is generated by each country. The problem is that, in the case of dependency to fishing, the figures are not only less reliable but instead their interpretation is more complex. For example, if a country increases it´s consumption of fish in the same proportion that it also increases its catch in European waters, it´s degree of dependency will remain the same: and what may seem good news actually hides the fact that this country is worsening the situation of European fishing grounds.
Aniol Esteban, responsable for Environmental Economy at the NEF, admits the methodological and interpretative limitations of this model applied to fishing but also underlines that it still reflects the ever worsening state of European fishing grounds. In his opinion, the main problem is the failure of the European communitarian fishing policy that hasn´t ended with the deterioration of the grounds and “is subsidizing the increase in fishing capacity”. With this we have the additional problem that consumers are bombarded with the message that to eat fish is healthier. “I´m not saying that we have to become vegetarians but to be able to keep eating fish we have to allow the fishing grounds to recover. We would have to cease fishing for five years so as to guarantee that in the future we can continue to do so” he claims.
“The EU has one of the largest and richest fishing grounds in the world but we haven´t known how to manage these responsably” says Miquel Ortega Cerdà, political coordinator for Ocean2012, an alliance of organizations that defends “the transformation of the European fishing policy to stop overfishing, the end of destructive fishing practices to guarantee a fair and equal use of fishing resources”. “The obvious way to stop this catastrophical tendency is to restore the European fish populations to levels that will premit sustainable fishing and to consume only what we can fish in a secure way” says Ortega.
The Portuguese are the largest consumers with almost 62 kgs per person per year. But among the most populated countries, Spain clearly leads with almost 45 kgs., ahead of France (34 kgs.), Italy (25 kgs.) and the UK (20 kgs.); all of these are far ahead of Germany (15kgs.) and Poland (11kgs.), with the European average around 22 kgs. per year and the world average of 17kgs., almost the double of the nine kgs. that were consumed in 1960.
Consumers are not aware of the problem because the arrival of fish from outside of the EU stops European prices from soaring in spite of being an item each time more scarce. Therefore, while in 1995 the EU caught almost eight million tons of fish (weight alive) in it´s waters and only just over 4 million coming from outside countries, now more fish from outside the EU is consumed (almost 6 million tons) than from inside EU waters (five million tons).
Esteban emphasizes that the study carried out some years ago demonstrated that the British fishing fleet now needs to make 17 times more the effort than over a century ago to fish the same amount of fish in spite of the advancement of technological measures: this proves the brutal deterioration of the fishing grounds between then and now.
One of the solutions for the problem have been fish farms, but these carry on one hand the risk of pollution and the transmission of diseases and on the other hand they require the use of large amounts of wild fish to fatten the fish in the farms. If Spain wouldn´t take into account the consumption of fish from fish farms, the horizon would be bleaker. Then, the dependency on fish that comes from other countries would not begin on the 8th of May but instead would move forward to the 24th of March.
Source: El País
