My father-in-law is a commercial fisherman and very active ecological activist, and becomes livid at the Monterey Bay guide. I don't totally understand why but I think basically he believes it grossly oversimplies commercial seafood chains and in the process hurts producers acting sustainably, and in some cases provides cover for problematic markets before it's too late.
In his case I think this is because the seafood he produces isn't on the guides at all. It's not obscure, just not covered, but he's noticed in using the guides, people tend to avoid products they can't verify as "good". In other cases (in his mind) the guide hurts people working in markets to change the means of production to become more sustainable.
His position is that there's basically no substitute for understanding where your food is coming from. I think he sees the core problem is then disconnect between consumers and production, in that the global production chain has become so financially efficient that sources are completely obscured from purchasers.
I'm not sure I agree with him on everything regarding the guide. The global seafood market is insanely complex, and the guide helps navigate it in at least a simplified way. But I think he's right in a sense that real changes are going to require something more substantial in terms of consumer changes and /or real international regulation and enforcement. There's too much fraud and detachment from actual supply. I don't think fishing is unusual in this regard in the food supply but I do think it's different in that a lot (not all) of it involves wild as opposed to farmed resources.
As a counter point, management of US fisheries seems to be finding a good balance:
U.S. seafood catch at 17-year high
"Last year's increase, up 23% by weight over 2010 levels, is evidence that fish populations are rebuilding. Still, a number of fisheries remain in trouble."
Responded to the comment directly above (?) As a supplement to a family's food supply, hunting and foraging are totally insufficient. Not if everybody was doing it. The numbers aren't there.
Fewer steps in the seafood supply chain, doesn't offset the fact that in America anyway, it currently provides a whopping total of 1 meal a week per. That's gotta be dropping too. So still the numbers don't support any idea of supplementing food supplies to any great degree.
The OP was just a puff piece about an uptick in hunting. That was fun and interesting. I just posted to provide the insight that, this isn't going to ever matter to our situation in any significant way. We have to support/restart our commercial food chain, or its going to get very bad. No alternatives are reasonable.
Also, a lot of people are comparing this to the Canadian DFO's handling of the Cod fishery. Sorry, this is not like that. Both in time line and management style. This fishery was just shut down, it's had its numbers slashed previously as well. In the Cod situation they had their foot in the accelerator until the very end.
Considering for cities like NY and SF the majority of seafood served is not what is advertised, despite existing legislation to the contrary, I think enforcement is the problem.
I imagine the only substantial course of action would be to ban ocean fishing vessels from the entire coast.
> Also, concerns are raised as to why FAO chose to ignore the well-documented data 'reconstruction' process, which fills the gaps that exist in data reported by countries to FAO. It is being ignored despite its importance for governance and resource conservation being well known. This process and its findings could be used by FAO to encourage countries to improve their data reporting, including retroactive corrections. This is important in view of successive analyses of the status of fisheries resources undertaken by FAO (published in current and past SOFIAs) and also in modified form by the Sea Around Us. This suggests a degradation of marine fisheries, and, if trends continue, a crisis by mid-century.
I believe the core problem with your position is you're not acknowledging the orders of magnitude in cost between protecting a fishery or enforcing food safety standards vs say... $10 Trillion to blow up and rebuild Iraq.
You've articulated a few highly non-controversial programs which is fine, but to then project that unto the government as a whole when programs like that are the exception not the norm is unfair.
"Unimaginable theft and loss of life carried out by our government and laundered by "reputable" sources like NYTimes? But what about some fisheries man?! We can't scale back the government!"
No, this is actually a terrible thing in the long run for one simple reason: fisheries are being destroyed everywhere [1], and the US is the only nation currently with the clout to really push to change this. But since seafood isn't even on most Americans' radar and we live in a democracy, it's very unlikely any politician will ever spend political capital on it.
Fisheries are being destroyed is because blue water fisheries are a commons -- no nations own them, so whoever vacuums up the fish first reap the profits. Not to mention global warming and ocean acidification are stressing fish breeding grounds worldwide.
This model made sense up until WW2, and was in line with how international waters were historically governed, but it is an ecological disaster in the making because technological developments during the war (sonar, deep sea nets, etc.) allowed huge fishing fleets to completely destroy blue water fishing grounds.
The only way to change this is for someone to push at the international level to rewrite the agreements on fisheries (restrict them by quotas, manage them by an international body with an eye towards conservation, etc.), and the only superpower that has the political capital to really get the ball rolling is the US.
But most Americans don't eat much seafood so it's not on anyone's radar. Enjoy your seafood while you still can. Maybe rich nations will have farmed fish or domestic freshwater sources, but cheap seafood from the ocean will basically not exist within a few decades.
They did a moratorium on crab fishing by crab fishermen but allow trawling for groundfish that a) picks up crab as bycatch and b) destroys their spawning grounds.
It’s not a great example of an effective policy response.
I imagine it doesn't seem ironic to you because people you trust gave a compelling narrative, but for the rest of us all you've given us is (second-hand) handwaving. All we mutually have to go off of is data, and anyone can go check what stocks are being taken off the overfished list [1] in a some of the areas you named. I'm not claiming all fish stocks are doing great. Some remain overfished, some are in bad shape or shifting out of their historical ranges due to climate, etc. But unconditional doomerism applies here at least as poorly as it does on average.
> Justifying regular animal consumption in any environmental or ethical sense is pretty much impossible
My issue is most people overlook the impact we've had on fisheries. It's much harder for fish populations to get back to where they need to be without massive regulation. Which is extremely hard on a global scale considering the economical impact it can have on some areas. The PBS documentary "Fish on my Plate" (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-fish-on-my-plate...) goes over this a bit in various ways, but one story they highlight is how Peru fixed their anchovy problem.
Never mind the issue of byproduct waste when it comes to line & trolling boats. Raising chickens & cows have an impact, but byproduct kill has an entire ecosystem impact.
Shout out to the folks at Global Fishing Watch doing amazing work tracking unregulated fishing activity. Just need policy to catch up with reality now.
The US generally has sustainable fishing and farmed-fishing laws and monitor catches and stocks. I don't know if there is a law that tracks nets per boat, but maybe there should be. Regardless, if you keep track of where your fish comes from (US wild caught and US farm-raised [farmed excluding salmon because they eat more protein than they produce]), then you (as far as I know) are not contributing to these problems. Buying fish exported from countries lacking oversight is the real problem.
Perhaps a global or regional coalition of commercial fishing associations interested in protecting their market. Speaking for myself, I can confirm that I've reduced my intake of ocean-sourced seafood over the last decade precisely because of the increasing prevalence of micro-plastics in the food chain (which seems to be a far greater problem for ocean-sourced food than land-sourced food).
"If fishing was done on land and not miles off sea and underwater where the public can't see what's going on - I'm sure there would be much more care about how we fished and it wouldn't take a massive collapse in fish populations before something was done about it."
I think that's a but wishful. Just look at stuff like CAFOs. The majority of consumers don't give a damn as long as the price in the store is cheap enough. They're not thinking of where the stuff they're buying came from.
> It’s estimated that fish caught specifically for bait in Atlantic Canada and New England in the United States amounts to hundreds of millions of kilograms, but the catch is poorly tracked.
hundreds of millions of kilograms. mind boggling. What a waste of life and food.
http://www.seafoodwatch.org/
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