Dr Jeff Hutchings (m): The
World Bank in October of last year released a report in which they
estimate that overfishing costs the world economy 50 billion dollars
every year and has cost the economy 2 trillion in the last thirty years.
HOST:
Hallo, life-protecting viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving
Home. On this edition we examine the very serious problem of
overfishing and other harmful human activities that severely threaten
the continued existence of our fish co-inhabitants. “Is the Sea Ours?”
Produced by Greenpeace Brazil
Lawrence Wahba (m):I’ve
been diving in these waters from our coastline for more than 30 years,
since I was seven, eight years old. And nowadays we see much less fish
than we used to before.
HOST: Due to intensive fishing over the
recent decades, it is estimated that worldwide a staggering 90% of the
ocean’s largest fish are now gone. Numerous species are at grave risk
of extinction.
A study conducted by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature found almost a third of sharks and rays are at
risk of disappearing permanently.
Today, Dr. Guillermo
Moreno, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) Hong Kong Marine
Program, Dr. Yvonne Sadovy, a marine scientist and professor at the
University of Hong Kong, and Dr. Jeff Hutchings, a biology professor
from Dalhousie University, Canada, among others, share their expert
knowledge and observations about the survival of fish in our seas.
Dr Moreno (m):
The level of depletion is really reaching scary levels around our
oceans. Here is a picture showing the East coast of the US and the West
coast of Europe. And in red we have got places where in the 1900s,
there used to be many fish, and levels marked in blue show very low
levels of fish. In a matter of 99 years we have managed to deplete the
fish stocks in these areas.
Professor Sadovy (f):
In the 1980s, we found that we were catching more fish than the
fisheries could produce, and that’s a state of overfishing. And yet we
continued to develop our fisheries to catch more fish.
HOST: The
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in 2002
there were 4 million fishing vessels worldwide. With many fleets
employing highly environmentally destructive methods such as trawling
or dragging large nets behind boats and possessing high tech equipment
to quickly and easily locate schools of fish; fish have been
disappearing at an alarming pace.
Dr Jeff Hutchings (m):
In Canada we have depleted Atlantic Cod off Newfoundland, off the
northeast coast of Canada by 99%. Now what does that mean in terms of
numbers of individuals? Well it means we’ve depleted more than 2
billion spawning individuals. And another way to compare that is to
take 2 billion and multiply it by the average weight of cod and 2
billion cod is equal to about 27 million humans.
Dr Jeff Hutchings (m):
The second species is called the American Plaice. This is a flatfish.
It’s like a sole or a flounder or a halibut. And off the northeast
coast of Canada, this once widely distributed fish has declined 96%.
Dr Moreno (m):
It is currently happening all over the world, in the Antarctic waters,
in the Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, in every ocean in the world
right now.
Dr Moreno (m): So what it means that is eventually we’re going to end up with no fish in the oceans at this rate.
HOST:
Governments are financially supporting fishing industries which also
fuels the destruction of the ever dwindling fish populations.
Professor Sadovy (f):
One of the key ones is something called subsidies. Many fisheries
around the world are provided with funding from their governments,
which help those fisheries continue, even when there’s not enough fish.
For more information please visit the following websites:
Dr. Hutchings
Myweb.dal.ca/jhutchDr. Moreno and WWF Hong Kong
www.WWF.org.hkDr. Sadovy
www.HKU.hk/ecology/ys.htm