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How Factory Trawlers Are Destroying U.S. Fisheries |
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Sinking Fast: How Factory Trawlers Are Destroying U.S. Fisheries
originally by Rob King, edited for online by Jay Townsend for Greenpeace USA, 1996CONTENTS
1. Introduction - The Global Fishing Crisis
1.1. Overfishing and Fisheries Collapse
1.2. Subsidizing Destructive Fishing
Figure 1. The Contribution of Factory Trawlers to the U.S. Fishing Fleet
1.3. The Case for Banning the US Factory Trawler Fleet
2. The Rise of Factory Trawlers and the Industrialisation of Fishing
2.1. The First Factory Trawler
3. The Distant Water Fishing Nations
3.1. Arrival on the Grand Banks
3.2.1. Groundfish - Seafood Staple of the World Fish Trade
3.2. Expansion of the Alaska Pollock Fishery
3.3. The Growth in Japanese Distant Water Trawling Vessels in the North Pacific
Table 1. Pollock Removals in the Eastern Bering Sea...
4. The Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976
4.1. Conflicting Mandates
4.2. Failure to Prevent Overfishing
4.2.1. Canadian Management Failure
4.3. Marine Ecosystem Mismanagement
4.4. Conflict of Interest
5. Growth of the Domestic Factory Trawler Fleet
5.1. The Great Alaskan Groundfish Gold Rush
5.2. Consequences of Overcapacity
Table 2. U.S. Domestic Factory Trawlers Fishing in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands...
5.3. Overcapacity and the Economic Imperative to Waste Fish
6. Cascading Effects: Ecosystem Impacts of Overfishing
6.1. Single-Species Management and Definitions of 'Overfishing'
6.2. Recent Trends in North Pacific Fisheries
6.3. Indicators of Ecosystem Overfishing
6.3.1 Overfishing and the Fate of the Steller Sea Lion
6.4. Direct Competition With Fisheries: The Importance of Pollock
6.5. Marine Habitat Destruction
7. The Debt-Driven Economics of Factory Trawling
7.0.1 Fishy Business - ITQs and Private Ownership of the Oceans
7.1. Consolidation
8. The Distant Water Fishing Nations, Part 2 - Exporting Surplus Capacity to the World
8.1. The Russian Far East
8.2. Globalization
9. Achieving Ecologically-Responsible Fishing
9.1. Turning the Tide
9.2. Banning Factory Trawlers
9.3. Net Gains
Appendices
A. References
B. Partial List of Species Caught as Bycatch by Factory Trawlers in the North Pacific1. Introduction - The Global Fishing Crisis
1.1. Overfishing and Fisheries Collapse
For the first time in this century, world marine fish catches are declining. The downward trend in marine productivity stands in stark contrast to the remarkable growth in world catches during most of this century -- from about 3 million tons in 1900 to a high of 86 million tons in 1989, when harvests peaked. To fisheries experts, recent declines are a warning that current levels of exploitation have exceeded the productive limits of many of the world's marine ecosystems. 1 A 1990 U.N. survey of world fisheries confirmed that view, classifying nearly every commercial species it surveyed as fully exploited, over-exploited, or depleted.
Then, in 1992, the unimaginable happened: after being fished without interruption for almost 500 years, one of the world's most productive fisheries, the Canadian Grand Banks cod fishery of Newfoundland and Labrador, was closed. A resource that once seemed inexhaustible, and whose abundance was legendary, has been fished to the verge of commercial extinction and remains closed today. The immediate impact has thrown 40,000 people out of work in the fishing communities of Canada's maritime provinces, at a cost to the Canadian public of C$2 billion in unemployment assistance and retraining programs. The long-term costs of social dislocation, lost biological diversity, and potential ecosystem collapse have yet to be assessed.
The story of the Grand Banks cod fishery is only the most spectacular recent example of a phenomenon seen in other commercial fisheries across the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and the west coast of Africa, where four decades of historically unprecedented exploitation have been conducted by the industrial fishing fleets of Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Japan. Today, about 70% of the world's marine fish stocks are considered heavily exploited, over-exploited, depleted or slowly recovering, and nine of the world's seventeen major fishing grounds are in serious decline. Most are in the developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere, where these fleets have operated the longest. 2
Fisheries collapse on this scale only becomes intelligible when we understand the extent of industrial fishing operations in recent decades, though other factors contribute to the decline and intensify its effects locally. Complex interactions between global climate and ocean cycles, such as the El Niņo, can disrupt marine currents and alter the abundance of microscopic plant and animal life which form the base of the ocean food chain, with profound effects. Destruction of coastal habitat and spawning grounds has cascading effects throughout the marine ecosystem, as do industrial and agricultural pollution. All of these factors are at work today, and they prove particularly lethal in semi-enclosed, low-energy marine environments such as the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. 3
Overwhelmingly, however, the global fisheries crisis is a product of industrial overfishing. Modern factory fleets have transformed fishing into a globalized extraction industry dominated by multinational corporations and industrial economies of scale. Their combined fish-catching capacity is such that major fishing nations of the European Union could cut their fishing fleets by 40%, and Norway by 60%, with no reduction in harvests. 4 In the United States, overcapacity is a problem in many major fisheries; in the largest U.S. fishery, the North Pacific pollock fishery off Alaska, the Seattle-based factory trawling fleet has the capacity to harvest two to three times the total allowable catch every year. 5 In every major fishing nation the situation is the same: too many boats and too much fishing pressure on already stressed stocks are accelerating the downward spiral of fisheries production.
1.2. Subsidizing Destructive Fishing
Governments everywhere are responsible for promoting and subsidizing overexpansion of national fishing fleets. The European Union alone increased spending on its commercial fleets from $80 million in 1983 to over half a billion dollars a year in 1990, one-fifth of which went to boat building or refitting. 6 By the early 1990s, Japan had extended an estimated $19 billion worth of credit to its overbuilt commercial fleets. 7 In the United States, $1.6 billion of government and private investment was used to build up the domestic factory trawler fleet to fish in Alaskan waters; now the U.S. government is financing the export of surplus fleet capacity to Russian waters. In some cases, as in Canada and the U.S., fisheries collapse on the Grand Banks and Georges Bank has forced national governments to consider boat buyback programs in order to reduce fishing pressure. Overall, the world fishing fleets receive direct or indirect government support in excess of $50 billion every year. 8
Over-investment in boats led to a doubling of the world's commercial fishing fleet between 1970-89, when new tonnage was added at an average rate of 4.6% per year. In the same period total marine landings increased from 60 million metric tons to over 86 million metric tons in the peak year of 1989, at an annual rate of only 2.4%. 9 In other words, new fishing capacity was being added at nearly twice the rate of increase in total catches. Today catches are declining, and the reason is a worldwide fleet capacity grossly in excess of what the oceans can sustain.
The most powerful vessels in the world fishing fleet were introduced beginning in the 1950s. Large stern-trawling and processing factory ships, commonly known as "factory trawlers," are the most efficient fish-catching machines in the world. A modern "supertrawler" can catch 400 tons of fish per tow in the largest nets, and process 50-80 tons or more of product per day. Mobility and state-of-the-art electronic gear allow them to track schools of fish and maintain high catch totals even as stocks are declining overall. Mobility also allows them to escape quota restrictions and depleted stocks in one ocean by moving to new fishing grounds in any part of the globe. It is this class of vessel which poses the most serious threat to fisheries around the world today.
Figure 1. The Contribution of Factory Trawlers to the U.S. Fishing Fleet
1.3. The Case for Banning the US Factory Trawler Fleet
In the United States, the factory trawler fleet did not exist prior to 1983. Yet by 1991, 50 vessels from the fleet, comprising only 2.5% of all the boats in the groundfish fisheries off Alaska that year, landed 1.4 million metric tons of the catch -- nearly three-quarters of the total. 10 Large size and enormous horsepower, combined with the ability to catch, process and store large volumes of fish, to stay at sea indefinitely, and to travel great distances from one fishing ground to the next, have enabled the Seattle-based factory trawling fleet to dominate the Alaskan groundfish fisheries since the late 1980s.
In this respect the U.S. fleet resembles an earlier generation of foreign factory trawlers which dominated fishing grounds in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when record catches were recorded in every major commercial groundfish fishery in North America. Many, including the Grand Banks cod, New England cod, haddock and hake, and North Pacific ocean perch, yellowfin sole and Greenland turbot ultimately collapsed due to relentless overfishing by these "distant water" factory fleets -- leaving behind a legacy of depleted fisheries, declining marine ecosystems, and lost livelihoods for thousands of traditional fishermen and their families.
The U.S. factory trawling fleet in the North Pacific perpetuates the unsustainable fishing practices of that earlier generation of foreign ships. 11 The owners of these vessels pay nothing for the environmental and social disruption they cause. There is no fisheries equivalent of the "Polluter Pays" principle by which to hold them accountable for damages done. The costs of depleted fisheries, degraded marine habitats, and impoverished ecosystems are passed on to society -- representing the largest subsidy of all in a heavily subsidized industry. If compelled to internalize the environmental and social costs which they now pass on to society, these vessels could not afford to operate.
Indeed, many vessels in the U.S. factory fleet cannot make timely payments on existing financial obligations. The formidable advantages of the technology entail huge capital investments, meaning that large volumes of fish must be caught to remain profitable. Debts create financial pressures which are incompatible with the sustainable management of the fisheries in which they operate. Debt-driven economics encourages wasteful and destructive fishing practices such as fishing on spawning stocks in pursuit of the lucrative roe, as well as the practice common to factory fleets of "pulse fishing," in which a stock of fish is set upon and exploited until the catch rates are no longer justified economically. When the stock is depleted, the factory trawlers target another species or move to more productive fishing grounds.
Coastal fishing communities comprised of smaller, owner-operated boats and shore-based processing plants do not have the luxury of leaving for new opportunities elsewhere. They depend on the continued abundance of traditional fishing grounds for their livelihoods and way of life, and they are the first to pay for industrial-scale overfishing. Factory trawler operations eliminate opportunities for smaller, independent boat owners and undermine traditional fishing economies. Shore-based fishing communities in Alaska and along the U.S. West Coast have only managed to avoid complete preemption from groundfish fisheries as a result of direct management allocations of the resource. These allocations prevented the factory trawler fleet from taking the entire catch.
Reductions in fishing capacity are desperately needed both to reduce fishing pressure on over-exploited fisheries and to make the remaining industry profitable without large social subsidies. In the United States, the problem of surplus fishing capacity is nowhere better exemplified than in the groundfish fishery off Alaska, where the glut of factory trawler harvesting capability grossly exceeds the total allowable catch limits for the pollock fishery. Obligations under the terms of the U.N. Treaty for the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks compel the United States and other countries to "prevent or eliminate" excess fishing capacity on fish stocks such as the eastern Bering Sea pollock, which migrates across U.S., Russian, and international waters. Without eliminating factory trawler capacity, efforts to achieve the goals of the treaty will remain elusive.
In all crucial respects the U.S. factory trawler fleet is at odds with Greenpeace principles for ecologically sustainable and socially responsible fisheries. The fleet's economic imperatives are overwhelmingly at odds with biological imperatives to reduce fishing pressure on overfished stocks. Given the (1) devastating environmental impacts, (2) unsustainable economics, (3) destabilizing effects on long-established coastal fishing economies, and (4) imperative to eliminate redundant fish-harvesting capacity from the commercial fishing fleet in the North Pacific, Greenpeace concludes that an expedited phase-out of the domestic factory trawling fleet is the most cost-effective and least disruptive way to further the goals of environmentally and economically viable fisheries in U.S. waters.
2. The Rise of Factory Trawlers and the Industrialisation of Fishing
The FAO Bulletin of Fishery Fleet Statistics identifies 38,400 vessels greater than 100 tons in the world's industrial fishing fleet, totaling 16.6 million gross registered tons (GRT) in all.The rest of the commercial fishing fleet consists of about 3.4 million vessels totaling some 16 million GRT. 12 In other words, roughly 1% of all the world's fishing vessels accounts for 50-60% of global fishing capacity as measured by gross registered tonnage. The importance of this figure can not be overstated because the crisis of over capacity is not simply a function of the number of boats. More to the point is the size of the boat, its horsepower, the extent of its range, and the capacity of its nets to harvest fish. 13
The purpose of this report is to focus on a specific class of very large industrial fishing vessels, generally greater than 150 feet and greater than 1,000 gross tons, which, using trawl nets, catch, process and freeze fish at sea. These factory trawlers represent a fraction of the fishing vessels defined by the FAO as "industrial," but their fishing power is unrivaled by any other class of fishing vessel. In the United States, the factory trawler fleet currently consists of approximately 60 vessels, most of which are based in Seattle and fish in the North Pacific.
The fishing power of this fleet can best be illustrated by comparing the fish caught by factory trawlers to the total U.S.marine catch of 5.6 million tons for 1992, according to the Fishery Statistics of the United States. 14 Forty-six factory trawlers are known to have fished in the groundfish fishery off Alaska in that year. They represent less than one percent of U.S.commercial fishing vessels greater than five net registered tons. 15 Yet these 46 factory trawlers landed 1.2 million metric tons of groundfish that year, representing 21% of the total U.S. catch. This also equals 1.5% of the total world marine catch of 80.2 million metric tons in 1992. 16
Clearly not all fishing vessels are created equal. Despite their comparatively small numbers, factory trawlers represent a disproportionately large share of the fish harvesting capacity in the United States and the world. They also bear a disproportionately large share of the blame for the global fisheries crisis confronting the world today.
2.1. The First Factory Trawler
The rise of the modern-day factory fleet is a recent development in the long history of commercial fishing, but its coming has revolutionized the entire industry. The first of this new generation of "factory trawlers" was the Fairtry, built in Scotland in 1954. Among its notable features was its size -- several times larger than any trawler of the day at 280 feet and 2,600 gross tons. 17 Its stern ramp design was also a radical departure from the conventional side-trawling boat, though familiar to whaling ships. Instead of hauling whale carcasses up the stern slip, the new factory freezer ships hauled a large trawl net.
It was no accident that the Fairtry was built for the Scottish firm of Salvesen's and Co., which had no experience in the fishing industry but operated Antarctic whaling factories. 18 Large factory vessels capable of making long journeys were already a familiar feature of the whaling industry, and the need to diversify was a necessity by the 1950s. As commercially viable populations of whales were hunted to the verge of extinction, factory whaling processors like the Dutch-owned Willem Barendsz were converted into floating fishmeal factories. 19 Others, such as the Soviet Vladivostok and the Japanese Takashima Maru were constructed as dual-purpose floating fishmeal processors and whale processors. 20
The stern-trawling innovation pioneered by the builders of the Fairtry led to greater towing power and improved gear handling,enabling these ships to haul bigger nets and catch more fish than their traditional side-trawl predecessors -- as much as 60 tons in one tow. 21 Powerful diesel engines and ample fuel storage tanks enabled these ships to reach fishing grounds thousands of miles from their home ports without refueling. The covered deck provided work space above and shelter below for newly developed automatic processing machines which increased productivity. Freezer technology and cold storage allowed ships to stay at sea for two months or more without sacrificing quality of product. All of these developments, as well as electronic navigational and fish-finding gear, light-weight nylon mesh nets and other technical advances which were soon to follow, greatly enhanced the fishing power of factory trawlers.
Given these formidable advantages, it is not surprising that the concept of the factory stern trawler pioneered by the Fairtry soon spread. But the size, complexity and expense of the new technology demanded a level of technical organization and capital resources which was only possible in large industrial economies. By the mid-to late-1950s, mass production of the factory trawler was underway in the major fishing nations of the industrialized North.
3. The Distant Water Fishing Nations
The Soviet Ministry of Fisheries was among the first to realize the productive potential of the new technology, and almost immediately embarked on a massive factory ship building program. 22 Incorporating the design of the Fairtry into its "Pushkin" class of factory trawlers, the USSR ordered 24 ships from shipyards in West Germany between 1954 and 1956. 23 Several hundred larger "Mayakovski" class factory trawlers soon followed. By 1970 the Soviet Union boasted 400 large (>1000 tons) ships, making it the largest distant water factory trawling fleet in the world, with more than twice the number of its nearest rival, Japan.
Japan adapted the concept in the late 1950s, using a layout derived directly from the whale factory ship. 24 The Japanese whaling firm Taiyo would become a major player in the North Pacific pollock fisheries, introducing one of the world's largest factory trawlers, the 5,300 gross ton Tenyo Maru, in the early 1970s. 25 Between 1960-63 approximately 30 stern trawlers ranging from 1,500-2000 gross tons were built, and by 1964 even bigger ships were under construction. Many were constructed and equipped expressly for producing surimi (a fish paste) from Alaska pollock fisheries, which the Japanese pioneered. By the late 1960s, more than half of Japan's surimi production came from these giant at-sea catching and processing ships. 26
Another major player was Spain. By the early 1960s, domestic demand for fish exceeded supplies from traditional fishing grounds in the middle and North Atlantic. In 1961 the Spanish fishing conglomerate Pescanova sent side trawlers and a freezer mothership to the coasts of southern Africa and South America, where abundant stocks of hake had been discovered, but the grounds were too distant to make the operation profitable with small side- and pair-trawlers. 27 Pescanova needed boats that could stay in the area for long periods, as well as process and keep catches frozen. That same year Spain launched a state-sponsored program for factory trawler construction which soon became the largest in western Europe. 28
By today's "supertrawler" standards, the fishing power of many of these early boats was comparatively modest. But they represented an enormous increase in fishing power, versatility and mobility over the existing boats, and in the heydays of the 1960s and early 1970s there was little or no constraint on their activities. National jurisdictions extended only to 12 nautical miles offshore: beyond that lay international waters where there were no management quotas, no time and area closures, no observers to monitor bycatch and compliance with regulations. To anyone crossing the Northwest Atlantic fishing grounds at night, the concentration of factory ships was often so great that their lights resembled floating cities.
It was during this period of phenomenal expansion that marine fish harvests soared: between 1950-70, when record harvests were recorded in every major fishery, world catches tripled from 20 million metric tons to 60 million metric tons per year. And it was during this time that many of the world's commercially important groundfish species in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific experienced steep declines in abundance. As catch levels reached all-time highs, fish stocks in many of the world's biggest commercial fisheries were decimated.
3.1. Arrival on the Grand Banks
In the Northwest Atlantic, historically unprecedented catches by foreign factory trawlers were directly responsible for the demise of the Northern Cod in the 1960s and 70s. 29 The very first factory trawler to arrive on the Grand Banks was none other than the Fairtry in 1954, followed by two Soviet trawlers in 1956 and a West German trawler in 1957. 30 By 1966-68, catches peaked and the numbers of the very largest factory trawlers (>1,500 gross tons) in the area had risen to 182, representing only 9% of the total fishing fleet but 40% of the fishing capacity as measured by gross tonnage. 31 Cod landings more than doubled in the period from 1959-68, reaching an all-time high of 810,000 metric tons in 1968. 32
By way of historical comparison, landings of cod ranged from 100,000 tons to 150,000 tons between 1805 and 1850, and sometimes exceeded 250,000 tons per year from 1900-1960. 33 The record-setting catches of the factory trawling fleets were clearly unsustainable, as can be seen from the steep declines in cod abundance that ensued: estimates of harvestable biomass dropped by 82% from 1962-77, by which time the Grand Banks fishery was on the verge of commercial extinction. 34 Cod stocks off Greenland, Iceland and in the Barents Sea suffered similar steep declines in abundance during the 1960s and 70s resulting from the expansion of operations of the distant water fleets in those fisheries.
The result has been the same everywhere these fleets fish. In New England, the abundance of commercially exploited groundfish and flounder declined by almost 70% between 1963 and 1974 due primarily to the advent of the distant-water factory trawling ships. 35 By 1974, abundance of Georges Bank hake, haddock and other commercial species had dropped to the lowest levels ever observed. 36
3.2.1. Groundfish - Seafood Staple of the World Fish Trade
Most of the world's commercially valuable marine fish are found in the shallow, nutrient-rich shelf and slope waters within 200 miles of the continents, which comprise only 9% of the total area of the oceans but 96% of all ocean fisheries. 37
Fish from these waters, particularly flatfish such as flounder, halibut and sole, and roundfish such as cod, hake, haddock, ocean perch and pollock, have dominated the seafood markets of the northern hemisphere for much of this century.
Today the primary groundfish fisheries of the North Sea, Barents Sea, Iceland, West Greenland, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Georges Bank of New England have been severely over-exploited or are closed due to the collapse of overfished stocks.
Only the groundfish fisheries of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, and particularly the pollock fisheries of the Bering Sea, continue to support high levels of exploitation. As a result, Bering Sea pollock has displaced cod as the primary food fish in the world market, turning up as fish sticks, imitation crab meat and fillets around the world.
In the seas off Alaska, modern factory fishing commenced in the 1960s, when large Japanese and Soviet factory stern-trawlers replaced the smaller, less efficient side-trawlers. 38 Catches of Pacific ocean perch, Pacific herring and yellowfin sole reached record levels by the early 1960s, followed by collapses as each stock was fished down. 39 As stocks of one species crashed, the fleets shifted their effort to another.
3.2. Expansion of the Alaska Pollock Fishery
Following the collapse of the perch, herring and sole in Alaskan waters, Japan introduced stern-trawling factory ships with on-board surimi processing capability and thereafter the factory ships turned to pollock in the Eastern Bering Sea. In 1968, when Hoko Suisan of Tokyo introduced the 4,250 gross ton Katata Maru for duty in the Bering Sea, its president explained the company's preference for the stern-trawling processor in the Bering Sea pollock fishery:
"Knowing the conditions in this area, we have come to believe that we can succeed there using a trawler so large that she can work down to the deeper levels, and so well-equipped that she can make the best possible use of the fish she catches. Some companies operate a mother-ship system or other group system in conjunction with transports. But we prefer a single-ship system." 40The Katata Maru was a forerunner of the giant pollock-processing trawlers to come, such as the 5,300 gross ton Tenyo Maru, introduced by Taiyo in the early 1970s. 41 The number of Japanese factory trawlers in the Eastern Bering Sea increased ten-fold between 1964 and 1972, when record harvests of pollock were extracted from the Eastern Bering Sea. Landings increased from 175,000 metric tons in 1964 to 1.9 million metric tons in 1972, most of which was caught by the Japanese fleet.
By the early 1970s, indications of overfishing in the Eastern Bering Sea pollock stocks were evident. Fishing effort by foreign fleets had increased by a factor of 4, while the catch per unit of effort decreased by half and vessels relied increasingly on smaller, younger fish. 42 By 1975, all the major commercial species of the Bering Sea region were considered fully exploited or over-exploited, including the two most abundant species -- pollock and yellowfin sole -- as well as King crab and shrimp. 43 The big trawling nets of the factory ships were very efficient at catching fish but they did not discriminate between species, and high incidental catches (bycatch) of non-target species played an important role in the decline of commercially valuable species such as halibut. Nevertheless, it took four years (1968-1972) for international fishing commissions to institute a joint monitoring program of bycatch in Japanese trawling nets in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. 44
3.3. The Growth in Japanese Distant Water Trawling Vessels in the North Pacific
Table 1. Pollock Removals in the Eastern Bering Sea and
Percentage Share of the Total EBS Pollock Catch, 1964-1973Year Number of Japanese Factory Trawlers Minced Meal Fleet Mothership Vessels Total EBS Catch Japanese Share Japanese Share (1000 MT) (1000 MT) (%)
1964 4 4 174,972 174,792 100% 1965 6 4 230,551 230,551 100% 1966 13 4 261,678 261,678 100% 1967 29 5 551,562 550,362 99% 1968 41 5 702,181 700,981 99% 1969 42 5 862,789 830,494 96% 1970 42 6 1,256,565 1,231,145 98% 1971 41 6 1,743,763 1,513,923 86% 1972 42 6 1,874,534 1,651,438 88% 1973 42 6 1,758,919 1,475,814 84%
(A) Independent Trawler Processors > 3,000 tons
(B) Each fleet composed of a mothership (9,000-14,000 tons) with freezing facilities. As of 1964, the fleets fished for pollock in the Eastern Bering Sea. 45International bodies were powerless to halt the onslaught. Negotiations for a proposed Law of the Sea Treaty began in earnest only in 1973, and the relevant provisions reached by the end of those negotiations in 1982 did little to resolve the problems created by mobile distant water fleets. In an effort to limit catches by Japan, the USSR, and other distant water fishing nations, the U.S. entered into bilateral fishing agreements, but the treaties were ineffectual. Nowhere was this more true than in the abundant groundfish fishing grounds off Alaska, which by then had become one of the world's largest fisheries:
"By the time negotiations with Japan and the USSR rolled around in late 1972 and early 1973, the scope and pace of their fishing operations off Alaska and farther south in the Northeast Pacific had far outdistanced the advancement of scientific knowledge as to what had happened or was happening to a number of important fish stocks. 464. The Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976
For the factory ships of the distant water fishing nations, mobility is insurance against the collapse of local fish sticks. Coastal fishing communities do not have the luxury of leaving for new fishing grounds. They depend on the abundance of traditional fisheries for their livelihood. In the 1960s and early 1970s, coastal fishermen in the U.S. and Canada watched as the distant water fleets took larger percentages of the total catch.
"For many years after the first factory trawler invasions, Canadian and American fishery management officials clung to the hope that the fishing fleets of both countries -- large in number of vessels and fishermen employed but small in tonnage -- could somehow keep pace with the big visitors from abroad." 47That hope was not to be. In 1973-74, Congress held field hearings in seaports on both coasts. Angry fishermen appealed for protection as a matter of survival. They told of declining catches and the damage done to their gear, for which they weren't compensated, and of violations of the international treaties then in place between the U.S. and the distant water fishing nations. Debate in the House of Representatives revealed that the U.S. share of the east coast haddock catch had dropped from 99% to less than 12% between 1960 and 1973. Cod harvests off the coast of Maine had dropped from 92 million pounds to 41 million pounds, resulting in the loss of about 2,000 jobs. 48
In the absence of international safeguards, the U.S. Congress took unilateral action by passing the Fishery Management Conservation Act of 1976, later amended to Magnuson Fisheries Conservation Management Act in honor of Washington state senator Warren Magnuson, who sheparded the bill through the Senate. Not everyone supported it. Some regarded the Magnuson Act's extension of U.S. jurisdiction from 3 to 200 nautical miles as a violation of U.S. obligations to six multilateral treaties and 11 bilateral treaties involving 18 countries. 49 Others, like Rep. Studds (D-MA), who represented Cape Cod fishermen, argued that existing agreements were regularly violated by the factory ships already, rendering them effectively null and void.
The Magnuson Act was a milestone in fishery regulation. In addition to extending U.S. jurisdiction from 3 to 200 nautical miles, it established eight regional councils to regulate fisheries in coastal waters of the U.S. and required each council to produce fisheries management plans designed to prevent overfishing and regulate commercial species for sustained human use. For that reason, the councils were also empowered to limit fishing seasons and access to fisheries as necessary. Councils can require fishing vessels to obtain permits, pay fees, abide by catch limits and use appropriate gear. Significantly, each council can also prohibit vessels from fishing. 50
The Magnuson Act established the framework of the United States' marine resource management system of today. Key management requirements include the use of the best available science, efforts to achieve optimal sustained yield, prevention of depletion of fish resources, and promoting efficiency in harvesting techniques. Twenty years after its inception, however, there is little question that the council management system has failed to live up to key goals of the Magnuson Act. In part, the reason is due to conflicting mandates. On one hand, the councils are required to prevent overfishing, on the other they are charged with regulating fish stocks for full domestic use and "maximum net benefit to the nation." Sustainability in this context is defined as an optimal yield of target fisheries for human consumption. The degree to which council members are stewards of the marine environment versus the degree to which they are simply resource allocators, intent on maximizing commercial productivity, seems decidedly tilted in favor of the latter. The council system as it now stands has failed in three fundamental and crucial ways, which outlined below.
4.2. Failure to Prevent Overfishing
The Magnuson Act was created as a response to overfishing by foreign factory trawler fleets. The first fishery management plan developed by the New England Fishery Management Council in 1976 was an emergency plan for overfished cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder. 51 And yet the most damning indictment against the present fisheries management council system is precisely its failure to prevent further overfishing in U.S. waters, or to restore overfished stocks to former levels of abundance. The councils have presided over the continued decline of fish and other marine wildlife stocks from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Alaska, from Georges Bank to the Bering Sea.
Following the extension of the EEZs of the U.S. and Canada in 1976 and 1977, foreign fishing pressure was eased. Fish stocks began to recover in both New England and Atlantic Canada. Rather than allowing overfished stocks to recover fully, however, fisheries managers raised quotas to accommodate a flood of domestic boats into the fisheries. In New England, as in Newfoundland [ see "4.2.1. Canadian Management Failure" below ], this proved disastrous. Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine had been fished to extreme low levels of abundance by the earlier foreign fleets, and new domestic fishing pressure ultimately led to a second collapse of already depleted stocks. Yet the New England Council ignored fisheries experts who warned that quota levels were unsustainably high.
By 1990, overfishing and depletion of New England groundfish stocks was estimated to cost the region nearly $350 million worth of lost income and over 14,000 jobs. 52 By the time the Council adopted a fish recovery plan in 1994, stocks were so badly depleted that even tougher restrictions on fishing were needed. Between 1983-93, landings of the principal groundfish stocks had fallen 60%. Commercial landings of cod declined by 55%, and landings of haddock by 94%. 53 Today New England is still paying the cost of lost jobs and income, and so is the U.S. taxpayer -- $62 million in federal aid thus far, and proposed plans for a federal boat buyback program to reduce overcapacity would cost an additional $25 million. 54
4.2.1. Canadian Management Failure
Northern cod were on the verge of extinction as a commercial species when Canada extended its jurisdiction to the 200-mile limit in 1977, thereby placing the Grand Banks fishery within its Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ. Total catches had fallen off sharply from record levels set in the late 1960s, when distant water factory trawlers decimated the stocks, to levels achieved in the first half of the 19th century. 55 Between 1962 and 1977, cod abundance declined 82% due to relentless overfishing. After 1977, the fishing pressure was roughly halved by excluding the foreign factory ships, and stocks began to recover. 56 Abundance doubled by 1985, but remained low relative to historical numbers.
Nevertheless, quotas were raised and offshore catches rose through 1987. The national and provincial governments had a vested interest in seeing that the domestic offshore fleets, primarily operated by Fishery Products International and National Sea Products, received high quotas, having concentrated millions of dollars of investment in a scheme to consolidate smaller companies during the 1980s.
Meanwhile, the inshore trap fisherman, who had operated a low-impact, stable fishery for 100 years, saw their catches decline steadily in number and size -- a strong indication of overfishing offshore. The Canadian Dept. of Fisheries & Oceans (DFO) ignored their observations and their warnings. 57 Failure to allow the stock to recover resulted in a second, more severe collapse which led to closure of the fishery altogether in 1992. The first was the result of unregulated overfishing by distant water factory fleets, the second was precipitated by government policies and regulators who failed to support sustainable fisheries and prevent overfishing:
"The collapse of Northern cod in the early 1990s can be attributed both to the absence of international fisheries regulations during the period of peak offshore catches in the 1960s and early 1970s, and to a failure to control fishing mortality by Canadian management in the 1980s." 58
4.3. Marine Ecosystem Mismanagement
The Magnuson Act requires regional councils to use the best available science in managing fisheries, but current management models are premised on single-species regulation of selected fish stocks for commercial use, with little or no regard for the wider ecosystem effects that large-scale extraction may precipitate. This is not good science, ecologically speaking, much less the best available science. To suppose that wild fish species can be regulated in isolation from their relations to all others in the marine food web flies in the face of everything we currently know about the ecology of living systems on land or at sea.
Management failure to take into account multispecies interactions can destroy a fishery. Imbalances created by concentrating fishing effort on a few commercial species can destabilize the system and set the stage for radical shifts in abundance and composition of species. 59 Such a drastic reordering of the system structure has occurred in the Northeast groundfish fisheries, where the proportion of low-value species such as skates and dogfish has increased from 25% by weight in the early 1960s to nearly 75% today, while over-exploited cod, haddock and hake stocks have decreased proportionally. 60 The consequences for consumers at the top of the food chain, including seabirds, marine mammals and human communities, may prove disastrous in the long-run.
Single-species management is premised on economic production models such as the concept of maximum sustained yield, or MSY. MSY theory supposes there is a quantifiable number below the hypothetical equilibrium population of a species at which reproduction is optimized. Stocks are "fished down" to this lower MSY population with the intent of stimulating species to reproduce faster and thereby regain their equilibrium state. 61 According to theory, the surpluses can then be culled and the stocks numerically controlled (through fishing mortality) to produce an optimum yield year after year, as if fish stocks were so many millions of bushels of corn or board-feet of timber. But marine ecosystems are highly variable; their dynamics are complex and less predictable than terrestrial systems. 62 In light of what is known today, current management assumptions about fish population dynamics and hypothetical equilibrium states appear dangerously oversimplified.
Despite attempts to refine or modify the management models in order to account for relevant ecological, economic or social factors, these models remain primarily concerned with providing the greatest overall net benefit to the nation in narrow economic terms. 63 They are also fundamentally flawed by adherence to single-species approaches which do not reflect actual conditions in a living ecosystem. Single-species management is a convenient tool, perhaps, for resource managers whose mandate is to maximize short-term productivity of individual fisheries, but it is misguided and dangerous from the perspective of preserving the long-term viability of marine ecosystems and fisheries alike.
The fisheries management council system has frequently come under fire for self-dealing and conflict of interest. This is not surprising given that a majority of council representation is comprised of members of the industry. For that reason, Section 302(k) of the Magnuson Act exempts council members from federal conflict of interest laws. In other areas of the federal government regulatory agencies are typically independent from the industries they regulate. This makes the council system vulnerable to the charge of acting in the industry's own best short-term interests, to the exclusion of others'. Quotas are set for maximum commercial exploitation, with little or no regard for levels of fish abundance needed to sustain other species in the marine food web.
The irony is that the industry representatives who dominate the councils have not even managed the fisheries resources in their own best interests. Industry pressure to set quotas at unsustainably high levels has resulted in the collapse of once-productive fish and shellfish species, causing severe economic dislocations for displaced fishermen. Meanwhile other public interests have little say in how public fisheries will be managed. But if it is true that excessive industry influence has been a big part of the management problem up to now, it is also true that the industry will have to be part of the solution.
5. Growth of the Domestic Factory Trawler Fleet
5.1. The Great Alaskan Groundfish Gold Rush
The Magnuson Act was a response to foreign overfishing, but foreign factory ships were allowed to continue fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) within the 200-mile limit. Under the new terms, however, they were allocated only the portion of the annual quotas which could not be harvested by the domestic fishing industry. 64 In the amended Magnuson Act of 1980, Congress sought to speed the phase-out of foreign factory trawlers by encouraging the development of a domestic fleet via joint-venture agreements and technology transfers with foreign ships.
The only U.S. fishing grounds still big enough to support a domestic factory fleet are in the distant waters off Alaska, which include one of the biggest single-species fisheries in the world: the Alaska pollock fishery of the Eastern Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska, comprising one-third of all fish caught in the U.S. The rush to build factory trawlers in the mid-to-late-1980s was driven by pursuit of that lucrative prize. But the size, sophisticated machinery and high tech gear of modern factory ships necessitate huge capital investments. Without heavy borrowing few could hope to finance such a venture.
Beginning in 1983, the federal government guaranteed nearly $65 million in low-interest loans to finance construction of a fleet of 10 factory trawlers for the Arctic Alaska Fisheries Corporation. Typically, up to 80% of vessel construction costs were financed through a federal loan guarantee program administered by National Marine Fisheries Service. 65 In all, the NMFS-administered Fisheries Obligation Guarantee (FOG) program financed or refinanced approximately $90 million in low-interest guaranteed loans for factory trawlers. 66 This marked the first concerted effort by the U.S. to develop its own fleet of factory trawlers, by way of Americanizing the Alaskan groundfish fisheries. 67
Although no one realized it then, the biggest boat-building boom in U.S. commercial fishing history was underway. 68 The Alaska groundfish fishery was transformed into a major domestic industry virtually overnight. Investment in domestic factory trawlers totaled $77 million in 1986, when there were approximately twelve boats in the fleet. By 1988 there were 43 boats worth $520 million. A number of these were now being built in foreign shipyards, where construction costs were heavily subsidized by national governments in Norway, Japan and Korea. In the Anti-Reflagging Act of 1987 Congress established a cut-off date of July 27, 1987 for new contracts with foreign shipyards. However, the bill was amended to allow Oceantrawl, Inc., which had one boat under construction in Norway, to obtain an exemption in order to secure contracts for two more boats at the cheaper Norwegian rates.
The Oceantrawl episode revealed the extent of Norway's involvement in the overbuilt U.S. factory trawler fleet. By the late 1980s, Norwegian banks accounted for as much as 80% of all foreign investment in the U.S. fleet -- primarily by way of loans from Christiania Bank and Bergen Bank. 69 Christiania alone issued more than $300 million in loans for new boats at a time when industry insiders were warning that fleet capacity already exceeded what the fisheries would bear. In addition to financing, Norwegian shipyards "converted" at least 15 of the factory trawlers in the U.S. fleet -- nearly one-quarter. Almost all entered the fleet between 1988 and 1990, at the height of the building bonanza.
By 1989, when more than $500 million of new factory trawlers joined the fleet, 70 one industry consultant declared:
Within this decade, U.S. fishermen and entrepreneurs have marshalled a fleet which is now capable of harvesting the entire Optimum Yield established for the Bering Sea and most of the resource potential in the Gulf of Alaska. During the next two years they will be processing the vast majority of the yield potential of the region." 71By 1990, the rated harvest capacity of the domestic factory trawler fleet was greater than the entire pollock quota for the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska combined. 72 At-sea processing capability soared as well: shipboard production of surimi expanded from 31,200 tons in 1988 to 136,000 tons in 1990. 73 The numbers are all the more impressive considering that factory trawlers have never accounted for more than 2-3% of all the boats fishing in Alaskan waters in any year. 74 Yet by virtue of their size and fishing power, the offshore factory trawlers were the dominant force in Alaska's groundfish fisheries by the early 1990s, landing over 1.4 million metric tons in 1991 -- roughly three-quarters of the total catch. 75
5.2. Consequences of Overcapacity
The addition of so much new fishing capacity presented a serious management problem. Too many competitors for limited fish created a race to catch as much as possible before the annual quota, or total allowable catch (TAC), was reached. Consequently, as more boats entered the fleet in the late 1980s, the TAC was reached in less time each year. In 1985, the joint venture fleet reached 41% of its annual quota by the end of April. By the same time in 1987, when 20,000 gross tons of new capacity were added to the domestic factory trawler fleet, 61% of the quota was taken. 76 In 1989, the domestic factory trawler fleet caught virtually the entire pollock quota for the Gulf of Alaska in the first quarter of the year, causing the early closure of the season and sparking resentment in Alaska's shore-based fishing community. 77 The feeding frenzy also occurred during spawning season for the pollock, and the loss of so many egg-bearing females raised serious questions about the impact on Gulf of Alaska pollock reproduction.
Table 2. U.S. Domestic Factory Trawlers Fishing in the
Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands, 1984-1993U.S. Factory Trawler Share of BS/AI Groundfish catch, 1984-1993
Year No. of U.S. Factory Trawlers Domestic Groundfish Total Catch Domestic Factory Trawl Total Catch Percent Share Joint Venture - Foreign Catch Percent Share 78 (000 MT) (000 MT) (%) (000 MT) (%)
1984 NA 79 3% 97% 1985 NA 5% 95% 1986 12 6% 94% 1987 NA 17% 83% 1988 22 34% 66% 1989 30 69% 31% 1990 45 80 69% 7% 1991 50 81 70% -- 1992 46 62% -- 1993 40 61% --
U.S. factory trawlers expanded their share of the total groundfish catch from 3% in 1984 to 70% in 1991. By 1990, with only 2-3% of the total groundfish fleet, the harvest capacity of domestic factory trawlers was greater than the entire pollock quota in Alaskan waters. In order to slow down the harvest, spread out the fishing effort, and reduce spawning mortality, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) divided the pollock quota into an "A" winter season and "B" late-summer season, beginning in 1990. The year-round fishing season was reduced to 286 days. Such measures did nothing, however, to address the fact that the factory fleet was harvesting most of the groundfish quota by 1991. Without measures to protect the shore-based fishing fleet, preemption by the offshore sector was unavoidable.
After considering its options, the council concluded that all Alaskan communities would benefit from an inshore allocation of the fish quota, both in terms of economic development and social stability. 82 As a result, 7.5% of the annual groundfish quota was allocated to six groups representing 56 western coastal Native communities in Alaska, while another 7.5% was held in reserve. Of the remainder, 65% was allocated to the offshore contingent of factory trawlers and 35% was reserved for inshore catcher boats delivering to shore-based processing plants.
The inshore/offshore allocation was an important management tool for protecting the shore-based fishing fleet and processing industry. Increasingly, groundfish harvesting had become an important source of employment and income for Alaska. From 1986-1992, the volume of shore-based groundfish landings in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands increased by a factor of 16, primarily due to increased catches of pollock. 83 By 1991, groundfish harvesting by inshore boats accounted for about 20% of all fishing employment in Alaska -- second only to salmon harvesting -- and provided more than two and a half times more employment than did the offshore fleet. 84 As a result of the inshore allocation, shore-based boats that delivered groundfish to shore-based plants earned $134 million by 1993. 85 Increased purchases of groundfish from inshore boats, in turn, provided shore-based processors a growing source of business outside the peak summer months, making the work less seasonal and raising hopes for year-round employment. 86
That hope was short-lived. The advent of so much new fishing capacity in the Alaskan groundfish fisheries has forced earlier closure of the season every year and left fishermen and processors idle for longer periods. 87 As long as factory trawlers continue to receive the majority of the harvest allocation, shoreside production is constrained. It is no surprise, then, that Alaskans have resented the dominance of the factory fleet in Alaska's waters. Like the foreign distant water fleets of the past, the Seattle-based fleet's large-scale removals of groundfish take jobs and income away from shore-based fishermen, and provide no benefit to the shore-based processing sector because the catch is processed offshore. Much of the product is then transferred to the buyer at sea, or is landed in ports outside Alaska. 88
5.3. Overcapacity and the Economic Imperative to Waste Fish
Overcapacity has severely limited time on the fishing grounds as more and more factory trawlers reach the quota more quickly. As seasons grow shorter and shorter, the race to maximize catches and profits encourages waste. The economic imperatives of factory trawling dictate wasteful fishing in other ways, too. It is more profitable, for instance, to discard the bycatch of other groundfish species than to use valuable and limited storage space which could be used for the higher value target catch. Once the storage holds are full, the factory trawler must offload, reducing time on the fishing grounds still further. 89
It is also more profitable to throw away target catch which is too small or otherwise unsuitable for processing in the automatic processing machines. Since the fleet pays nothing for its fish, there is no loss for throwing away all but the choicest fish. Great numbers of the target species such as pollock are discarded because they are too small to be processed by the machines, or otherwise considered commercially undesirable.
Factory trawlers waste more fish than any other fishing vessel class in the Alaskan groundfish fisheries, and perhaps the most wasteful and destructive practice of all is intensive fishing on spawning concentrations of pollock in the winter "A" season. Economic necessity drives the fleet to fish as hard as possible on the egg-bearing females for their roe, which is the most lucrative product in the pollock fishery. The practice of "roe stripping," or removing the egg sac and discarding the rest of the fish, was banned by the NPFMC in 1989. 90 Nevertheless, only as much of the fish catch is kept as necessary to comply with the law. Utilizing the flesh of the fish requires valuable time, labor and limited freezer capacity, and slows down the taking of the more valuable roe. 91
In the rock sole fishery, factory trawlers also fish on spawning females in pursuit of high value roe. There is no prohibition on roe-stripping in this fishery. The rock sole fishery also has one of the highest discard rates of any fishery is Alaska. In addition to discarding most of the target species, enormous quantities of incidental fish, crabs, juvenile halibut, starfish and other bottom-dwelling species are discarded.
Overall, factory trawlers catch more bycatch species than any other vessel class, and throw more of it away. In 1994, 47 factory trawlers operated in the groundfish fisheries. They discarded, dead and dying, a record high of more than 580 million pounds of groundfish, salmon, halibut, herring, crab and other species. 92 This was more than three times the combined bycatch (170 million pounds) of the more than 2,000 other boats that fished groundfish that year. In addition to bycatch, as much as 70% (by weight) of the target catch is discharged overboard as offal, or processing waste. 93
In the Bering Sea, factory trawlers caught 60% of the total harvest and accounted for 80% of total discards. Discarded species included 188.5 million pounds of pollock which were too small or otherwise commercially undesirable, and prohibited species such as halibut (8 million pounds). For every pound of halibut dumped by a factory trawler, one pound is deducted from the total allowable catch for commercial halibut fishermen. Halibut fishermen lose catch and income as a result, yet the owners of the factory fleet pay no compensation to halibut fishermen. The International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) has recommended a 10% per year reduction in bycatch as a way to reduce mortality of declining stocks, but the NPFMC is considered unlikely to approve such a goal if it entails lowering groundfish quotas. 94 Other prohibited species discarded from factory trawl nets included 64,000 salmon, 14.3 million Tanner and Bairdi crabs, and 352,558 King crabs. In all, hundreds of species, including important prey and predators like squid and shark, have been identified in trawl nets inspected by federally-sponsored observers. [ See Appendix B for a list of species. ]
6. Cascading Effects: Ecosystem Impacts of Overfishing
The oceans are the last areas on earth where wild species are commercially exploited on a large scale. As wild ecosystems, food production from the oceans has little in common with land-based agriculture. But marine fisheries management regulates ocean resources by means of economic production models which attempt to optimize the "yields" of wild fish stocks as if they were domestic food crops. Furthermore, the current management science paradigm assumes that the populations of individual stocks can be controlled solely by controlling the amount of fishing effort directed at individual species. 95 This practice of "single-species" management assumes that the population dynamics of commercially regulated stocks are independent of their interactions with all other species in the marine food web. 96
Failure to take into account multispecies interactions and the long-term effects of concentrating fishing effort on a few commercial species has had disastrous consequences in major fisheries on the Atlantic coast of North America. Radical shifts in ecosystem structure have occurred in overfished areas such as the Grand Banks and Georges Bank. Over time, these fishing-induced imbalances in abundance and composition of species at one level of the system can affect all others, setting off a chain reaction of cascading effects which ultimately impact seabirds and marine mammals at the top of the marine food chain.
Effects of overfishing on top predators have been observed in harp seal and humpback whale populations off Newfoundland following the collapse of the capelin fishery in the late 1970s. In the British Isles, populations of several seabird species show declines which parallel those of overfished herring, sprat and and eel fisheries. 97 In the Barents Sea off northern Norway, the collapse of herring stocks in the 1960s and of capelin in the mid-1980s is linked to dramatic declines of cod in the mid-1980s, which preys on both species. The decline of all three fish stocks, in turn, is thought to be responsible for thousands of dead seabirds and the invasion of coastal waters by underfed harp seals, where record numbers drowned in coastal fishing nets in the late 1980s. 98
Overfishing is increasingly suspected as the primary culprit in the steep declines in many wildlife populations of the North Pacific and Bering Sea. Nearly four decades of intensive industrial-scale fishing have led to the collapse or near-collapse of prey fish stocks such as the Pacific ocean perch, sablefish, and Pacific herring, as well as regional spawning stocks of pollock in the areas of Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska and Bogoslof Island in the Bering Sea. The continuing decline of many seabird and marine mammal populations is indicative of an ecosystem in trouble, and bodes ill for the long-term viability of the largest fisheries in U.S. waters. Rather than adopt a precautionary approach, however, the NPFMC has continued to set annual fishing quotas at historically high levels.
The NPFMC justifies its decision to maintain current levels of commercial exploitation on the basis of single-species managment models. Although these models have failed to prevent overfishing in fisheries on the East Coast of Canada and in New England, management scientists responsible for stock assessments in the North Pacific maintain that overfishing is not occurring using the same approach. Their failure to recognize the warning signs of overfishing stems from the failure of single-species models to recognize the ecosystem processes required to sustain those fisheries.
6.1. Single-Species Management and Definitions of 'Overfishing'
In current management practice, producing optimal yields from fisheries hinges on the theoretical ability to fish a target species down to levels far below its "pristine" or unfished state without overfishing them. As defined by management science in current models, overfishing is a threshold rate of fishing mortality ("F") which exceeds an individual stock's rate of reproduction. At this threshold, additional fishing effort does not increase yield but actually decreases it as fish are caught before they can reach maturity and reproduce. 99 Stocks classified as "fully exploited" are fished right to the edge of this theoretical threshold, reducing their population to the absolute minimum level deemed sufficient by management science to produce maximum sustainable yield, or MSY. This threshold population level is typically less than half the original unfished biomass of the target species. 100
The basis for managing fish stocks in this fashion depends on a host of crucial assumptions about fish population dynamics, none of which can be proven. First, management science assumes an entirely hypothetical "equilibrium population" which corresponds to the original, unfished biomass of the species -- an assumption which forms the basis for determining the maximum sustainable yield. However, the degree of natural fluctuation in the abundance of fish stocks in marine ecosystems is highly variable. Ocean currents, sea surface temperatures, natural predation by other fish, as well as seabirds and marine mammals, all affect the outcome of fish reproduction, and their impacts vary widely from year to year. Hence the notion of an equilibrium population is an oversimplification. Yet this key assumption forms the basis for the population models which are used to calculate optimum levels of exploitation for individual fish stocks.
Management science's ability to avoid overfishing target stocks also depends crucially on accurate estimates of natural mortality rates, on the quantity of mature males and females in the stock (the "spawning stock biomass"), and on a numerically quantifiable relationship between the spawning stock biomass and the number of juvenile fish "recruited" into the stock each year. Since none of this information can be obtained by direct observation, these numbers and relationships can only be inferred. Management science extrapolates its estimates of fish populations, age structure, spawning stock biomass and new "recruits" from research trawl data and hydroacoustic surveys, as well as catch data from fishing vessels -- all of which have limited efficacy as indices of fish stock abundance. The numbers are strictly best guesses, yet they serve as the operational basis for determining what does and what does not constitute overfishing for a particular stock.
Under the best of circumstances, these conventional survey techniques are crude, and in the case of species such as the Atka mackerel they are virtually useless. Owing to the fact that Atka mackerel have no swim bladder, they make poor targets for hydroacoustic surveys. 101 Accurate trawl survey estimates are difficult to obtain and the results are highly variable because the species inhabits rough, rocky seabed terrain and schools in localized concentrations. 102 Before 1991, biomass estimates were considered so unreliable that catch quotas were based on the average historical catch. However, a 1991 trawl survey indicated an increase in abundance and thereafter the total allowable catch was increased steadily, rising from 23,500 to 80,000 metric tons between 1990-95. 103 However, the variance in the most recent biomass estimates for the Aleutian stock is large: between 142,000 and 1.1 million tons, indicating a great deal of uncertainty about actual abundance. 104 In the absence of key information about the life history of the Atka mackerel, establishing the "appropriate" fishing mortality rate is purely guesswork. 105
In addition to the high degree of uncertainty involved in caluclating species abundance and establishing an appropriate level of fishing mortality, the credibility of management definitions of overfishing is limited by an exclusive single-species focus. The overfishing level is defined for each species as the fishing mortality rate that reduces the level of spawning biomass per recruit to some percentage of its original, pristine level. 106 As long as the fishing mortality rate remains at or below this arbitrary value, an individual stock is not considered overfished. However, this threshold rate or "magic number" is set to maximize commercial productivity of each stock in isolation from its relation to other fish and to other non-human predators which rely on the species.
Definitions of overfishing in single-species management models are fundamentally flawed because they do not reflect actual conditions in an ecosystem. In reality, management science has no idea what constitutes overfishing in a multispecies or ecosystem context. Yet if anyone should propose that stock assessments take account of interactions between target species and others species in the marine food web, management scientists are apt to respond that there is too little information and further study is needed. Lack of credible information, however, has not prevented them from setting very high exploitation rates under the current system.
6.2. Recent Trends in North Pacific Fisheries
Despite management claims that overfishing is not occurring in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, there have been numerous instances of overfishing and fisheries collapse on regional concentrations of key fish stocks since the 1960s. Some of the most notable occurred as a result of intensive exploitation of yellowfin sole, Pacific ocean perch, Greenland turbot, sablefish and Pacific herring by the foreign factory fleets of Japan and the USSR in the 1960s. More recently, key pollock stocks in the Gulf of Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and central Bering Sea were fished to the point of collapse and subsequently closed to directed fishing.
Yellowfin sole was the most abundant of the flatfish species in the Eastern Bering Sea, and it was intensively exploited for fish meal production by Japan. Catches peaked at 553,000 metric tons in 1961, but the stock could not sustain that level of exploitation and declined sharply thereafter. 107 By the mid-1980s the stock had begun to recover, but research surveys indicated "unreasonable biomass fluctuations" ranging from 1.8-3.9 million metric tons. 108 Current exploitation of the stock is limited by efforts to reduce bycatch of prohibited species such as halibut and crab.
Pacific ocean perch was targeted by Japanese and Soviet fleets throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, with peak catches occurring in 1961 and 1965. Pacific ocean perch are slow-growing and long-lived, and stocks were unable to sustain the large removals from their populations. By 1977, stock assessments based on catch per unit of effort data indicated that abundance had declined by more than 90-95%. 109 The species has never recovered and remains at very low levels today.
Similarly, Greenland turbot was overfished by foreign factory fleets in the early to mid-1970s, when harvests ranged from 60,000-80,000 metric tons. By the mid-1980s, however, catches had fallen to less than 10,000 tons, and population trend assessments suggest that the biomass of the stock has decreased steadily from "virgin" levels of over 1 million metric tons in 1960 to less than 300,000 tons in 1993. 110
Sablefish, or black cod, has also experienced long-term declines in the 1960s, when Japanese factory ships harvested an annual average of 11,700 metric tons in the eastern Bering Sea. 111 Like Pacific ocean perch, sablefish is a long-lived and slow-growing species, hence its recovery from overfishing is slow. Although average catches since 1977 have been far below the levels of the 1960s, indicators of stock abundance in the eastern Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands have been declining since 1985. Estimates of stock abundance in the eastern Bering Sea reached the lowest observed level in 1993. 112
Overfishing did not end with the phase-out of the foreign fleets, however. Foreign vessels were simply replaced by the domestic factory trawler fleet beginning in the mid-1980s. Catches have remained at very high levels for major commercial groundfish species, and in some cases now exceed the catch totals of the foreign fleets which preceded them. In the case of the Pacific cod, for instance, catches totaled 13,600 metric tons in 1964 and ranged between 36,000 and 63,800 tons in the 1970s. As the foreign fleet was phased out in the late 1980s, catches soared. The domestic fleet reached a historic high of 218,100 metric tons in 1991. 113 Meanwhile, estimates of Pacific cod biomass for the Eastern Bering Sea portion of the stock showed a pronounced decline from a peak level of about 1.1 million metric tons in 1987 to about 500,000 tons by 1992. 114 An above average year class in 1992 boosted the stock estimates to about 1 million tons in 1995, but the spawning stock biomass is thought to be at only half of its value a decade ago. 115 In 1995, catches of Pacific cod in the Eastern Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands once again exceeded 200,000 tons.
Overall, 8 of 11 commercial species in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands were classified as fully exploited by 1991, including the three largest -- pollock, Pacific cod and yellowfin sole. 116 Intense fishing pressure on commercially valuable stocks has coincided with a dramatic increase in the abundance of commercially low-value flatfish such as arrowtooth flounder, Alaska plaice, and flathead sole. 117 Increases in bottom-dwelling flatfish predators, like the arrowtooth flounder, have potentially unanticipated consequences for species such as crab, herring, capelin and juvenile pollock, whose feeding ranges overlap. 118 The increase in arrowtooth abundance in the Gulf of Alaska during the 1980s and 1990s is thought to play an increasingly important role in controlling species diversity in the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem. 119
Ironically overfishing may have contributed to the recent historical surge in abundance of the North Pacific's most important commercial groundfish species, alaska pollock. Between 1962 and 1968 almost 1.7 million tons slope rockfish such as ocean perch were removed from eastern bering seaaleutian islands gulf, 120 leaving a vacant food niche for the pollock. Some investigators believe that overfishing of the Pacific ocean perch may be responsible for the increased abundance of the faster-growing pollock in parts of the North Pacific ecosystem in the 1970s. 121 Today pollock constitutes the largest single-species fishery by volume in the United States as well as the most abundant species in the Bering Sea groundfish complex. Between 1977 and 1992, pollock comprised 75-85% of all groundfish landings in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands region, and 40-80% in the Gulf of Alaska. 122 Although overall catches have remained high relative to historical estimates, the biomass of the stock suffered at least two significant periods of decline in the eastern Bering Sea following record levels of exploitation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
After recovering in the early to mid-1980s, another period of low recruitment and declining abundance followed. Increasingly, fishing effort on pollock stocks shifted to spawning concentrations in pursuit of roe, a practice which threatens the long-term reproductive potential of the species. One of the worst instances of pulse fishing for roe occurred following the discovery of large spawning aggregations of pollock in the Shelikof Strait in the early 1980s. After several years of relentless fishing pressure, the stock collapsed. Estimates of biomass dropped from more than 3 million tons in 1981 to around 300,000 tons by 1988.
In the late 1980s, displaced foreign factory trawler fleets from Japan, the former Soviet Union, Poland, China and the Republic of Korea initiated a new pollock fishery in the international waters of the central Bering Sea, known as the Donut Hole. Meanwhile the growing domestic factory trawler fleet shifted to spawning pollock concentrations in the Bogoslof Island area. 123 Catches in the Donut Hole rose from 181,000 tons in 1984 to more than 1.4 million tons in 1989, but within two years catches plummeted and stock abundance dropped to extreme low levels. All parties agreed to a fishing moratorium in 1993.
In the Bogoslof region a similar pulse-fishing pattern produced high initial catches, followed by alarming declines in pollock biomass from 2.4 million tons in 1988 to 600,000 tons by 1991. Directed fishing for pollock in the area was prohibited in 1992. 124 Fisheries scientists now believe that pollock from both areas are part of the Aleutian Basin stock, which remains at low levels today.
In addition to the decimation of the Aleutian basin stock in the late 1980s, an overall decline in juvenile pollock of about 80% was observed by 1991. 125 Midwater factory trawl nets are responsible for catching and discarding enormous volumes of young pollock every year. The discards are of significant enough magnitude -- ranging from 109,000 to 163,000 metric tons between 1990-94 -- to warrant the attention of fisheries scientists when estimating pollock population size and forecasts of future yields. 126 When combined with losses from collapsed spawning stocks in the Aleutian Basin and Gulf of Alaska, the future of the pollock fishery appears less and less certain.
The decline in young pollock was temporarily offset by the appearance of a large 1989 year-class, which started showing up in the eastern Bering Sea in 1992. However, the pollock fishery has been "fishing down" this year-class throughout the 1990s. Estimates of overall pollock abundance have dropped by nearly half from their peak levels of 13-15 million tons a decade ago. 127 Management scientists counted on a strong 1992 year-class to begin appearing in 1995, but thus far it has not. Preliminary results from bottom-trawl surveys suggest that it is mysteriously absent. 128
The "disappearance" of the 1992 pollock year-class coincides with reports of massive amounts of juvenile pollock being caught by Russian factory trawlers on the northwestern side of the Bering Sea. Since the Eastern Bering Sea pollock stock is believed to extend across the Russian-U.S. boundary in the North Bering Sea, the large Russian bycatch of juvenile pollock may be responsible in part for decimating the age group on which the NPFMC is relying to supply the U.S. fishing fleet in coming years:
"If significant harvests of pollock destined for the eastern Bering Sea occur in the Russian EEZ then there may be a reduction in the exploitable biomass and subsequently the yield in the U.S. EEZ. Exacerbating the problem is that generally younger, smaller pollock occur at the northern portion of the Bering Sea. Harvest of large numbers of young pollock will have an effect on future yield [in the U.S. zone]." 129If the 1992 year-class is indeed being intercepted in Russian waters, the American factory trawler fleet could soon see a dramatic reduction in catches. 130 Concern among fishing interests is so great that the industry has agreed to fund a new hydroacoustic survey in the hopes of finding the "missing" pollock. Ironically, U.S.-owned and/or U.S.-operated factory trawlers fishing on the Russian side of the Bering Sea are at least partly responsible for the problem. [ See "8. Distant Water Fishing Nations, Part 2" below. ]
The prospect of large reductions in abundance of the eastern Bering Sea pollock stock would not only devastate the financially strapped U.S. factory trawler fleet. The implications for already depressed and declining seabird and marine mammal populations, and for the North Pacific ecosystem generally, could be even more serious.
6.3. Indicators of Ecosystem Overfishing
The abundant waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska support the richest assemblages of marine mammals and seabirds in the northern hemisphere. 131 As predators at the apex of the food chain, they are indicators of the health of ecosystems. In the Gulf of Alaska and the Eastern Bering Sea, the Steller sea lion, northern fur seal, and (to a lesser extent) harbor seal have all suffered steep population declines since the 1970s, when large-scale fisheries were established. The Steller sea lion population has dropped so sharply that it has been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the western stock in Alaskan waters is under consideration for endangered status. Northern fur seals were designated as a depleted species under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1988, by which time populations levels declined to less than half the numbers observed in the late 1950s. 132
Alaska's breeding population of seabirds is estimated at 50 million birds, roughly 96% of all the seabirds breeding in the United States. 133 But many seabird populations have suffered declines of the same magnitude as sea lions and fur seals. Red-legged kittiwake populations in the Pribilof Islands have declined by 50% from the early 1980s to 1990s, and the marbled murrelet has declined to a similar extent in the Prince William Sound. 134 The black-legged kittiwake and common and thick-billed murres have declined over large parts of the Bering Sea in the last two decades. 135 Unpublished surveys of fish-eating murres, puffins, kittiwakes and cormorants in the Gulf of Alaska have reported large declines in their numbers from the Barren Islands to the Shumagin Islands since the mid-1970s. These declines parallel declines in marine mammal populations which depend on the same prey species of young fish. 136
The continued decline of marine mammals and seabirds indicates that the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska ecosystems can no longer support their historic numbers. Population declines have been attributed in part to increased natural predation, to changes in climate or pollution, or disease; but while these factors may play a role in local population declines, there is no evidence to suggest that any of these -- taken separately or as a whole -- has played a major role in the overall population declines of bird and marine mammal species in recent decades. 137 The only likely explanation for their widespread decline is competition with fisheries.
6.3.1 Overfishing and the Fate of the Steller Sea Lion
In the 1960s, the worldwide population of Steller sea lions, located primarily in Alaska, was estimated to be 250,000 adults and juveniles. By 1989, the Alaskan population of Stellers had dropped to less than 64,000 -- a decline of almost 60%. 138 In the core of the species' range on the eastern Aleutian Islands, Steller counts dropped from approximately 50,000 animals in the late 1960s to about 3,000 in 1989 -- an alarming 94% decline. 139 By 1994, the Alaskan population had fallen to about 45,000, not including pups. In 1990, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed the Steller sea lion as a threatened species under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act, and the Aleutian stock is now under consideration for endangered status.
Between 1977 and 1992, as Steller populations crashed, commercial catches of one of their primary food sources -- pollock -- remained at historically high levels, and the abundance of younger, smaller pollock of the size preferred by juvenile sea lions showed a 70% decline in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. Increasingly, commercial harvests shifted to areas which have subsequently been designated as critical habitat for Stellers. Pollock catches in Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands critical habitat areas increased from 20-30% of annual pollock harvests in the early 1980s to 35-55% of the total in the period from 1987-1992, while harvests in critical habitat foraging areas in the Gulf of Alaska have accounted for as much as 50-90% of total annual pollock catch. 140 Fishing effort was also concentrated increasingly in the winter months and on egg-bearing females, whose roe is prized by humans for its high market value and by sea lions for its high energy content.
One of the most flagrant examples of overfishing in Steller habitat occurred in the mid-1980s around Kodiak Island. Following the discovery of large spawning schools of pollock in the area of the Shelikof Strait, catches skyrocketed. Within two years they peaked, then crashed as the stock was decimated. Estimates of pollock biomass dropped by more than an order of magnitude in this period: from 3.7 million tons in the early 1980s to 300,000 tons by 1988. Meanwhile sea lion populations in the area dropped by 60%. 141
Other instances of intensive fishing in critical Steller habitat include the Atka mackerel fishery in the central Aleutian Islands, conducted first by Soviet vessels and presently by U.S. factory trawlers. According to the NPFMC, "In all but two years from 1979-1991, between 77% and 98% of the Atka mackerel landed each year were caught within 20 nautical miles of Steller sea lion rookeries" at Sequam and Agligadak Island. 142 Pollock harvests also increased significantly at Sequam and Agligadak, where reported catches rose from 3 metric tons in 1980 to more than 28,000 metric tons in 1987, while sea lion counts dropped from 3,456 in 1985 to less than 1,000 in 1991. 143 Other areas of intensive fishing in critical Steller habitat include Bogoslof Island and the Ugamak-Akutan-Akun area, where sea lion counts declined by 50% and 33% respectively from 1985-1991. 144 All of these areas are within the core of the Steller's range in Alaska.
The crash of Steller populations in Alaskan waters coincides with intensified commercial fishing in critical Steller habitat, with increasing harvests of roe-bearing pollock during the winter spawning season, and with decreasing abundance of young pollock of the size preferred by juvenile sea lions. The decline of sea lions is not attributable to the death of adults, therefore it is thought that juvenile mortality, resulting from lack of available prey, is responsible. 145 Weaned and juvenile pups forage in shallower waters close to shore, relying heavily on smaller age 0-1 pollock, herring, and capelin. For that reason they are more vulnerable to local changes in abundance of prey. Supporting evidence for the theory of juvenile sea lion mortality comes from observations of Steller rookeries, which report a decline in the survival of weaned sea lion pups of between 20% and 60%. 146
Further evidence of nutritional stress in young sea lions has been observed in the Kokiak Island rookeries, following the decimation of the Shelikof Strait pollock stock in the mid-1980s. Surveys there confirmed that sea lions -- particularly young sea lions -- weighed less and grew more slowly than their counterparts of earlier years. 147
6.4. Direct Competition With Fisheries: The Importance of Pollock
Alaska pollock is the most abundant groundfish species in the Bering Sea, accounting for as much as 50-70% of all groundfish biomass. It is a vital component of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska ecosystems, serving as a major prey item for other fish,including sablefish, Atka mackerel, adult Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, Greenland turbot and arrowtooth flounder. 148 Pollock is also a major part of marine mammal and seabird diets. It comprises a third to nearly two-thirds of sea lions' diets in the Eastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska respectively, and as much as 90% of the summer diet of fur seals. 149 Estimates from the early 1980s indicate that marine mammals alone consumed over 1 million metric tons of pollock annually. 150
Seabirds also prey heavily on young pollock, removing an estimated 270,000 metric tons annually from the eastern Bering Sea. 151 In some areas, seabirds may consume 10% or more of annual pollock production and may consume up to 80% of the fish near a large colony. 152 All told, consumption of fish by marine mammals and birds in the eastern Bering Sea may have been as high as 3 million tons annually in the 1970s, when their numbers were much higher -- a figure which, if accurate, rivals total fish removals by all fisheries in the region today. 153
The single largest disruption to marine mammal and seabird habitats in the last 30 years has been the arrival of industrialized fishing fleets and the establishment of large-scale fisheries. Following the introduction of the first Japanese trawlers with on-board surimi processing capability in 1964, removals of Eastern Bering Sea pollock soared from 175,000 metric tons to 1.9 million metric tons in 1972. By the mid-1970s, pollock harvests had peaked and estimates of pollock abundance reached a low of 4 million metric tons, 154 but harvest quotas were maintained at high levels under the direction of the NPFMC. Annual harvest quotas for Alaskan groundfish remain at historically unprecedented high levels.
Today the Alaska pollock is the largest fishery by volume in the U.S., and the largest food fish by volume in the world. 155 During the 1980s, pollock catches in the North Pacific and Bering Sea averaged 6 million metric tons -- three times the world's Atlantic cod catch -- but worldwide landings dropped to 4.6 million metric tons by the early 1990s. Alaskan waters accounted for about one quarter of world pollock landings in 1992. 156 Although harvests are large, the value of ex-vessel landings on a per pound basis is low -- less than 10 cents per pound before valued-added processing. The low value of pollock, combined with the huge capital investment in factory trawlers, means high volumes are needed to achieve profitability. 157
Competition between human and wild predators for declining fishstocks may be leading to the demise of threatened species such as the Steller sea lion. It appears that the Alaskan marine ecosystem is no longer capable of supporting many of these wildlife species at their historical levels of abundance, and fisheries are the prime suspect:
"It seems extremely unlikely that the productivity of the Bering Sea ecosystem can sustain current rates of human exploitation as well as the large populations of all marine mammal and bird species that existed before human exploitation -- especially modern exploitation -- began." 158It may be impossible to know with any precision the optimal abundance levels needed to support thriving marine mammal and bird populations of the North Pacific and Bering Sea. What is known is that the historically recent expansion of groundfish fisheries in Alaskan waters has coincided with steep declines in many marine mammal and bird species which prey on the same fish stocks. Unless the human pressure on those fish stocks is reduced, populations of natural predators in the system may never recover.
6.5. Marine Habitat Destruction
Marine habitat destruction from fishing gear is a major source of observed ecosystem changes in heavily exploited fisheries. Of all the gear types, large trawling nets are the most destructive to marine habitat, and particularly bottom trawls. Bottom trawling has been controversial since its introduction to Europe in the 14th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, bans on bottom-dragging trawl nets were decreed in Holland, France and England. 159 More recently, the New England Fisheries Management Council's latest fish recovery plan (Amendment 7) has recommended closer scrutiny of bottom trawling's effects on fish habitat.
What has always been known is that the heavy footrope of a bottom trawl scrapes, plows, and levels the seabed, overturns boulders, breaks up corals, and crushes plants and animals. Studies of trawl gear impacts on seabeds indicate that bottom trawls have large effects on abundance and composition of species in severely disturbed habitat. They are also indiscriminate, sweeping up everything in their path -- including foraging sea lions and fur seals. High incidental mortality of non-target or prohibited species such as halibut and crab (amounting to 50% or more of the catch in some cases) contributes to their depleted status. Intensive trawling for rockfishes such as the Pacific ocean perch has serious implications for slow-growing, deep-water corals of the North Pacific, which are prime rockfish habitat. Tropical corals require decades to recolonize disturbed areas, and Alaskan corals would take considerably longer. 160
Giant midwater or pelagic trawls of the type used by factory trawlers typically have much less impact on bottom habitat and lower bycatch rates in the open sea. Nevertheless, a 1992 study of bycatch in the pelagic pollock fishery of the Bering Sea found that a mean average of 40 species were netted in every tow. 161 Large numbers of pelagic salmon are regularly intercepted by these nets every year, including important prey such as squid and juvenile pollock. Factory trawlers targeting midwater pollock discarded over 188 million pounds of pollock which were too young or otherwise commercially undesirable in 1994 -- more than the combined groundfish bycatch of all other boats fishing for groundfish in Alaskan waters that year. 162
7. The Debt-Driven Economics of Factory Trawling
A modern supertrawler can catch as much as 400 tons of fish per-tow in the largest nets and process 50-80 tons of surimi or fillets per day. 163 Size, horsepower, mobility and highly advanced electronic equipment greatly enhance the fishing power of the factory trawlers, but the advantages must be paid for in higher capital costs and operating expenses. The more expensive a boat is, the more fish it will need to catch in order to be profitable. 164 The economics of ever more complex and costly vessels drives factory trawlers to fish as hard as possible. In addition, the flood of boats that entered the Alaskan groundfish fisheries in the late 1980s compounded the problem by increasing competition for a finite resource.
By 1992, there were some 65 boats and an estimated $1.6 billion of investment in the factory fleet. The fleet's share of the Alaska groundfish harvest was over 1.2 million metric tons -- up 83% from 1987. 165 But the number of days in the fishing season continued to dwindle as the fleet reached the total allowable catch earlier each year. By 1993, the offshore share of the pollock quota was taken in just 85 days, and by 1994 the quota was reached in just 70 days. That same year an analysis of the fleet's financial status concluded that:
"Shorter [fishing] seasons in the Alaska pollock fishery are the result of growth in fishing capacity beyond the amount required to extract the given quota. Presently [1994], the catching capacity of vessels operating in the Bering Sea pollock fishery appears to be double or more the annual quota." 166The factory trawler fleet was financed on the assumption of a 10-12 month fishing season. When the season was reduced to three months or less, many boats could not make payments on their loans. Adding insult to the injury caused by curtailed seasons and the inshore/offshore allocation was a sudden crash in the market for surimi from over $2 per pound in 1992 to under $1 per pound in 1993, further reducing a boat's income. The only way for the boats to make up the loss was to harvest as much pollock roe in the winter "A" season, since roe is the highest valued product in the pollock fishery. By 1994, the roe trade accounted for one-quarter of the Seattle-based fleet's annual revenues on average. 167 For many, the difference between financial solvency and bankruptcy hinged on the outcome of the "roe season."
Stiff competition and lower revenues were a lethal combination. From 1990-93, the measure of average factory trawler productivity declined by 50% and profits vanished. 168 By 1994, the market value of the average factory trawler in the fleet was worth less than its long-term debt. 169 But negative economics only drove vessel owners to fish harder because the alternative was bankruptcy. To stop fishing under these circumstances was to lose everything. Some would have their assets seized, but in many cases creditors would refinance the loans and let the boats keep fishing in the hopes of recovering some portion of the investment.
7.0.1. Fishy Business - ITQs and Private Ownership of the Oceans
Individual Transferable Quotas, or ITQs, would privatize fisheries by allocating exclusive ownership rights to a percentage of the harvest to boat owners on the basis of prior catch history. Under this system, each share would be transferable; shareholders could sell their shares or buy others' just as they would buy and sell futures on the commodity market. ITQs would institutionalize the process of consolidation now underway, rewarding those with the largest capital resources and biggest fleets. Conglomerates like Tyson Seafoods or RGI-owned American Seafoods would be allocated the largest shares, based on the recent fishing history of their boats. They would also be able to buy up additional shares of the fishing quota, taking the politically messy allocation process out of the public's hands and letting market forces decide who will fish. In short, the wealthiest can effectively buy control over the fishery. 170
ITQs are promoted as a panacea for the ills of overcapitalization and overfishing. Proponents claim that ITQs are a way to limit the number of boats, extend shortened fishing seasons, reduce waste and bycatch, and improve safety. However, small-boat owners and fishermen using cleaner fishing gear would be excluded from most fisheries based on their smaller financial means and lower percentage of the catch. In the North Pacific cod fishery, for example, factory trawlers would receive ownership rights to over half the total allowable catch, based on the recent history of the fishery. This despite the fact that factory trawler bycatch rates in the cod fishery are among the highest of any fishery -- roughly 40% of the catch is non-target species, including halibut and crab. Boat owners using the cleaner pot and jig gear have only a 2% bycatch rate, yet they would receive ownership of only a few percent of the fishing quotas under an ITQ system. ITQs are not a solution to the problems of overfishing.
By 1994, nine ships in the at-sea processing fleet were in various stages of bankruptcy proceedings, including six factory trawlers -- nearly one out of seven. 171 The shakeout had begun a year earlier, when Christiania Bank of Norway called in its loans on the Pacific Orion, the flagship of Pacific Orion Limited Partnership. Christiania requested a Chapter 7 foreclosure because it was clear that the debtor could not make payments on the loans. Pacific Orion's seizure led to involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings against the company's other factory trawler, the Royal Prince.
Case files from the U.S. District Bankruptcy Court in Seattle provided a rare public glimpse into the complex financial arrangements that fueled the fleet's construction in the late 1980s. In the case of Pacific Orion and Royal Prince, as with so many others, the financing came from overseas. Christiania Bank of Norway was the principal lender, with a staggering $42 million in outstanding loans on both boats. The principal and interest on the Pacific Orion totaled $26.4 million, not including late charges, moorage fees, insurance, attorneys' fees which were included in the balance owed. 172 The total due to Christiania for the Royal Prince was $16 million.
Kyokuyo U.S.A. also played a key role in financing the Pacific Orion. Kyokuyo's parent company in Japan owned factory trawlers which had been displaced by the U.S. fleet in the North Pacific. Kyokuyo provided the original owners of the Michelle Irene Joint Venture (aka Pacific Orion) $5 million for acquisition and installation of surimi processing equipment. The conditions of the loan provided that Kyokuyo of Tokyo would act as exclusive sales agent in Japan for all fish and fish products produced for the Japanese market until the principal and interest were repaid. In this way the pioneers of the Alaska pollock fishery ensured their continued access to the resource once their own boats had been displaced by the domestic fleet.
Christiania's involvement in the development of the U.S. factory trawler fleet was crucial. Despite warnings of overcapitalization and excess fleet capacity, Christiania continued to extend credit for new boat construction. By the late 1980s, Norway accounted for as much as 80% of all foreign investment in the U.S. fatory trawler fleet and Christiania Bank was the prime lender, with an estimated total investment of about $315 million in boat loans. Its clients included the factory trawlers Pacific Orion, Royal Prince, Highland Light, Royal Sea, Snow King, Royal King, Valiant, and Aleutian Speedwell. Significantly, every one of these boats has since filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code or has been seized by creditors. Bankruptcy records reveal that at least $127 million of Christiania's loan portfolio was subsequently in default. In addition, Bergen Bank of Norway is reported to have financed Emerald Resource Mgmt.'s fleet of three factory trawlers -- the Claymore Sea, Heather Sea and Saga Sea -- worth $75 million. 173
Christiania's financial troubles ultimately resulted in Norway's nationalization of the bank. A number of loans in Christiania's portfolio were purchased at a fraction of their original value by Trust Company of the West, a distressed-debt management fund based in Los Angeles. TCW's strategy of buying up bad boat debt at discount prices only makes sense, however, if the boats can be made profitable in the Alaskan fisheries. In this way boats keep fishing despite losing millions of dollars in every year that they have operated.
In 1995, Christiania turned over its interest in debts owed on two factory trawlers belonging to Royal Seafoods and one belonging to Royal King Fisheries. The face value of the original debt claim was $33 million, and total debt approached $40 million including late fees and unpaid interest. 174 TCW proposed a restructuring plan to the owner of Royal Seafoods, offering to reduce the debt to $17.5million in exchange for equity control of the company. Royal fought TCW's offer and filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an attempt to reorganize itself, but the bid failed. Royal's debt was simply too deep and its plan for reorganization was not credible.
Early in 1996, TCW won its battle for control of Royal Seafoods and purchased 20% interest in the Royal King. All three ships were then renamed and placed under the management of International Maritime Management, Inc. 175
In 1995 TCW also went shopping for the bankrupt Valiant and was the successful bidder at the U.S. Marshall's auction, paying $5 million for a boat that failed to make payments on an $11.1 million loan from Christiania Bank. 176 TCW's most recent acquisition is the Aleutian Speedwell, formerly owned by Morning Star Fisheries. By mid-1996, TCW had 5 factory trawlers in its fleet -- all of them victims of delinquent debt. In all cases, bankrupt boats continue to fish despite dismal performances at sea. Similarly, the Pacific Orion became the Arctic Fjord and continues to fish for Arctic Storm Inc., based in Seattle. The Royal Prince was purchased by Norwegian subsidiary American Seafoods and became the Pacific Navigator. The Highland Light reorganized under new ownership and remains in the Alaskan pollock fishery today.
Fierce competition for limited resources has favored the biggest and best-financed vessel owners. Big, diversified companies can leverage larger amounts of investment capital, and they can afford to write off losses that send independent owners to bankruptcy court. For the biggest U.S.-owned factory trawl companies, their fleets represent a fraction of total corporate assets. Tyson Seafoods and American Seafoods, the two largest, are subsidiaries of much larger multinational companies. Tyson's Seafoods is dwarfed by the multi-billion-dollar-a-year Tyson poultry business, and American Seafoods is a U.S. subsidiary of the Norweigan-based Resource Group International (RGI). 177
Earlier this spring American Seafoods bought out Oceantrawl Inc.'s interest in three factory trawlers and purchased a fourth, the Ocean Rover, from Birting Fisheries. The buyouts come less than a year after RGI secured US$116 million in new capital from investors in Norway and the U.S., including US$8 million from the Norweigan government's Industry and Regional Development Fund. 178 Meanwhile Emerald Resource Management sold its fleet of three factory trawlers to All Alaska Seafoods in a deal financed by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency. Royal Seafoods, Royal King Fisheries, and Premier Pacific Seafoods have all gone bankrupt or claimed by creditors.
In all, 8 boats in the Seattle-based factory fleet have changed hands since the beginning of 1996 -- a sign of continued financial instability. But the failure to make money from the operation of these boats has not stopped any of them from fishing. By way of bankruptcies and buyouts the smaller companies are incorporated into bigger ones, where their losses can be more readily absorbed. But consolidation concentrates the benefits of the fisheries into fewer and fewer hands, controlled by those with the greatest access to capital.
8. The Distant Water Fishing Nations, Part 2 - Exporting Surplus Capacity to the World
The U.S. factory trawler fleet was developed to displace distant water fishing nations in U.S. territorial waters. Now the U.S. is sending its own fleet overseas to fish in distant waters, and it is no small irony that Russia, which once boasted the largest distant water fleet in the world, should now be welcoming these ships to fish its own waters.
Excess fishing capacity and quota limitations in U.S. waters have prompted factory trawler owners to move their boats to the Russian side of the Bering Sea since the early 1990s. The most recent example involves three vessels, the Claymore Sea, Saga Sea and Heather Sea, formerly owned by Emerald Resource Management. All three vessels are moving to the Russian Far East under a 10-year joint venture fishing agreement with the Russian government. The deal is being financed with a long-term $80 million loan guarantee from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. government agency. OPIC lent All Alaska Seafoods the money to purchase the boats from Emerald in the hopes that their exodus to the Russia side of the Bering Sea will relieve some of the overcapacity at home and improve the economics of the remaining boats. 179
The move by All Alaska Seafoods may reduce fishing pressure on the Alaskan side of the Bering Sea, but it adds pressure on already depleted stocks in the Russian zone. The most recent Stock Assessment report from the NPFMC shows Russian Far East pollock stocks in decline and confirms anecdotal reports in trade journals of increased catches of smaller, juvenile fish. 180 Pollock abundance appears to have fallen by half in the western portion of the Russian EEZ, and catches in both the western and northern portions of the Russian zone have dropped off sharply since 1993. 181 However, since the eastern Bering Sea stock migrates into the western Bering Sea, overfishing is bound to have implications for the American zone. For Russia, the risk of fisheries collapse is outweighed by the desperate need for foreign currency and seafood marketing expertise.
Geographically, the western Bering Sea is ideally located as a "frontier" resource for distant water fishing nations such as the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China, and Norway, allowing them to export surplus fishing capacity and to keep their processing, shipbuilding and repair, and marine supply industries intact. 182 Seattle-based American Seafoods and Tyson Seafoods are among those engaged in joint ventures in the Russian Far East. Since 1991, Tyson has participated in joint ventures with Russian ships fishing for pollock, cod, halibut and crab, some of which is then shipped to Tyson's Shanghai processing plant. American Seafoods, which now owns the largest factory trawler fleet by fishing capacity in the U.S., has also expanded operations to Russia and currently manages 9 boats there, including the Norweigan-designed and Spanish-built supertrawlers Gijon, Solidarnost, and Sozidanie -- all of which were designed for pollock operations in the North Pacific and Bering Sea. 183
The movement of distant water factory trawlers across oceans and national jurisdictions is a reflection of the movement of capital and markets in the globalized seafood trade. Competition for limited fish drives fleets to migrate from home waters in search of new resources and markets, but in the truest sense these ocean nomads have no home. Boats may be owned by investors in one country, registered in another, and crewed by citizens of a third. Forty million dollar supertrawlers designed in Norway and built in Spanish shipyards sail under the Russian flag, operated by an American-based company which is itself a subsidiary of a Norwegian firm. 184 Norwegian shipyards built 15 factory trawlers registered under the Russian flag for operation in the pollock fisheries of the Russian Far East, but these boats are managed by a Seattle-based seafood marketing and equipment supplier. 185
Increasingly, corporate factory fleets are able to dominate fisheries and markets around the world. Seattle-based American Seafoods owns or operates factory trawlers on both sides of the Bering Sea, and has recently expanded into South America. Its Norwegian parent company, Resource Group International, has built its reputation on midwater supertrawlers designed for pollock operations in the North Pacific, capable of harvesting 800,000 metric tons of fish per year. 186 Now RGI has purchased ownership control of a major Norwegian seafood exporter and a Danish processing company, and has investments in two Norwegian shipyards. 187 Like rival Tyson Seafoods, RGI has become a world-wide catcher, processor and marketing conglomerate, and is well-positioned to cash in on fisheries resources from bases on four continents, using its global infrastructure to market the product.
RGI and Tyson are not alone. In Europe, the Dutch Sea Frozen Fish Foundation, otherwise known as "The Group," markets seafood to 70 countries from the owners of 21 Dutch factory ships, at least 14 of which are factory stern trawlers, with a total catch of 500,000 metric tons per year. 188 The supertrawlers can steam to any ocean in search of fish to meet The Group's supply contracts. Quota reductions in European waters have prompted The Group's Dutch fleet to look for distant water opportunities in the southeast Atlantic. Last year the supertrawler Tetman Hette was sent to fish in Namibian waters and the Geertruid Margreta will fish in Mauritania this year, while other boats are dispatched for herring fisheries north of Iceland. 189
In all cases, mobility is the key to control of the resource. Mobility allows factory trawlers to escape quota restrictions and depleted stocks in one ocean by moving to new fishing grounds anywhere on earth. Factory fleet owners buy licenses and reflag their ships in countries around the globe, moving vessels and crews wherever the resources are. 190 Colonization of distant fishing grounds keeps the supply of raw material for the global fish trade high, but it also masks the overall decline in fisheries stocks and perpetuates the illusion that the oceans are a limitless cornucopia. As the collapse of the once-bountiful Grand Banks cod fishery demonstrates, the illusion is costly.
It is not surprising that coastal communities from Newfoundland to India to Alaska have protested the presence of these ships in their traditional waters. Large-scale factory removals from local fishing grounds eliminate opportunities for smaller, independent vessel owners and traditional fishing economies, and threaten a way of life that supports between 14-20 million people worldwide. 191 Factory fleets contribute little to shore-based, value-added manufacturing of fish products, because their processing is done on board and the product is delivered to the buyer at sea, or landed in distant ports.
Yet many national governments in poorer and developing countries enter into joint venture arrangements with factory trawlers out of economic desperation. By liquidating and selling off their marine resource assets, they earn much-needed foreign currency while factory fleets gain access to new supplies of raw material. As with other extraction industries, such as timber, mining, oil and gas, the lack of adequate environmental safeguards or regulatory controls in many of these countries is an inducement to plunder and encourages the transfer of resource wealth away from developing countries.
Factory trawler fleets are perpetuating the global fisheries crisis today. Their economic imperatives are leading to the impoverishment of marine ecosystems and traditional fishing communities everywhere. But globalization only postpones the inevitable reckoning with the limits of the oceans. Mobility, bigger nets, more horsepower and sophisticated fish-finding gear allow the world's factory fleets to maintain high catch levels even as fish stocks are dwindling, but they only temporarily mask the unsustainable nature of the technology.
9. Achieving Ecologically-Responsible Fishing
Fishing is changing the world's oceans in ways scientists cannot fully understand. All that can be said is that we may only learn about the nature and extent of the damage after it is too late to do anything to stop it. The writing on the wall has been ignored for too long.
To compensate for humanity's enormous lack of understanding of marine systems, fishing must be based on the precautionary approach. A precautionary approach to fisheries means that the health of ecosystems and species must be granted the benefit of the doubt, rather than placing the burden on the environment to show signs of crisis before corrective action is taken. This approach, among other things, shifts the burden of proof onto the fishing industry and institutions responsible for fisheries management to demonstrate that fishing operations pose minimal risk of serious harm to the ocean environment before those operations can go forward.
Through its ratification of the U.N. Treaty for the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in July 1996, the United States acknowledges that dramatic changes are needed to protect marine fisheries and ecosystems. Though not without limitations, the treaty sets in place new and important obligations, principles and precedents for fisheries conservation in international law. If implemented, these measures would improve the management of fish stocks and associated species, and the protection of marine and coastal habitats.
Greenpeace is challenging Congress, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the fishing industry to address the very serious problems that are destroying our fisheries, and to develop sustainable, risk-averse fishing policies and practices. In its Principles for Ecologically-Responsible Fisheries, Greenpeace presents a blueprint for transforming U.S. fisheries policy based on the following tenets:
- apply the precautionary principle;
- base the decision-making process in ecosystem-level management;
- severely restrict the overcapitalization and excessive industrialization of a fishery via gear restrictions, numbers of boats, and/or scale of operation, and other appropriate methods;
- promote gear selectivity and reduce bycatch and waste to levels approaching zero;
- protect critical habitat;
- cut all subsidies for unsustainable fishing practices and technologies;
- increase the use of local knowledge and the involvement of fishermen and women, and fishing communities in research and management;
- ensure that access to fishing and control of the oceans is not privatized;
- adopt effective mechanisms for the regulation, monitoring and enforcement of fishing operations;
- ensure transparency and full public participation in fisheries management decisions.
In practice, such principles would form the foundation for new fishery management policies, and act as benchmarks by which the National Marine Fisheries Service, the councils, and fishermen, are held accountable. Greenpeace is committed to working in partnership with scientists, fishing communities, industry representatives, NGOs, federal and state agencies, and the general public to achieve the goal of ecologically-responsible fisheries.
Efforts are already underway in a number of communities to implement principles similar to or based on those promoted by Greenpeace. In New England, a number of conservation-minded shoreside processing plants are using criteria to determine from whom they buy their fish. Fishermen and women in communities in California and Oregon are beginning to discuss and develop community-based management alternatives. In the state of Maine, in response to a poll conducted by the state's Department of Marine Resources, fishermen suggested using criteria identical to many of those advocated by Greenpeace in order to improve the way in which Maine manages its marine fisheries. Nationally, fishing communities and fishermen's organizations are banding together with Greenpeace and others to halt the privatization and further industrialization of U.S. fisheries.
The United States must meet this conservation challenge with an immediate commitment to rid U.S. waters of all factory trawlers. To this end, Greenpeace calls on the Department of Commerce to develop and implement a plan consistent with national and international legal obligations, and based on the Greenpeace Principles, to phase out factory trawling in U.S. waters. Such a plan would include:
- an immediate ban on the entry into U.S. fisheries by foreign factory trawlers;
While there are currently no foreign factory trawlers, fishing in U.S. waters, a ban should be mandated by U.S. fisheries policy.- an immediate prohibition on the introduction of additional domestic factory trawlers in U.S. fisheries;
This prohibition would serve to halt the expansion of the factory trawler fleet, and set the stage for the phase-out of existing factory trawlers.- an expedited phase-out of the U.S. factory trawler fleet by 2001.
By retiring these ships, additional fishing pressure would not be shifted to other domestic fisheries, the overwhelming majority of which are already fully or overexploited, nor would it be exported to other nations' EEZs or international waters. Any attempt to replace the fishing capacity of factory trawlers in a given fishery must be governed by the Greenpeace principles.Eliminating factory trawlers is not the panacea for all of the problems facing U.S. fisheries. However, once factory trawlers have ceased to dominate many of the country's most critical fisheries, as well as the political process, the replacement of the "bottom-line" fisheries mindset with one of environmental, social and economic sustainability can take hold.
A.1. Introduction - The Global Fishing Crisis
- Economist, March 19, 1994: 21.
- FAO, "Review of the State of the World Fishery Resources," 1995.
- S.M. Garcia and C. Newton, "Current Situation, Trends and Prospects In World Capture Fisheries," FAO, June 1994: 15-16.
- Economist, March 19, 1994: 21.
- Greenpeace Inc. (USA), 1996. Extrapolated from calculations of the factory trawler catch and the number of days in the off shore pollock season for 1994.
- The Economist, March 19th, 1994: 13.
- Economist, March 19, 1994: 21.
- Peter Weber, "Worldwatch Paper 120," July 1994: 8.
- S.M Garcia and C. Newton, "Current Situation, Trends and Prospects In World Capture Fisheries," FAO, June 1994: 18-19.
- Kinoshita et al., "Economic Status of the Groundfish Fisheries Off Alaska," 1995.
- North Pacific Seafood Coalition, "The Inshore/Offshore Dispute: Impact of Factory Trawlers on Fisheries in the North Pacific and Proposals to Regulate the Fleet," March 1990: 52.
A.2. The Rise of Factory Trawlers and the Industrialisation of Fishing
- S.M. Garcia and C. Newton, "Current Situation, Trends and Prospects in World Capture Fisheries," FAO 1994: 17
- Peter Weber, Worldwatch Paper 120, July 1994: 27.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Fisheries and the United States, 1994" August 1995: 27.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Fisheries and the United States, 1994" August 1995: 78.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Fisheries and the United States, 1994" August 1995: 27.
- Robert Kunzig, "Twilight of the Cod," Discover, April 1995: 52.
- G.C. Eddie and P.D. Chaplin, "The Development of the Modern Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972: 5.
- Fishing News International, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1966: 8.
- John Burgess, "Quarterly Review of Fishing Vessels," April 1963: 181, 430.
- J.A. Hutchings, "Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Science and the Management of Protected Areas, Halifax, NS" May 1994: 43.
A.3. The Distant Water Fishing Nations
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:160.
- G.C. Eddie and P.D. Chaplin, "The Development of the Modern Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972: 8.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:160.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:160.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:161.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:183.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:183.
- J.A. Hutchings, "Seasonal Marine Protected Areas Within the Context of Spatio-Temporal Variation in the Northern Cod Fishery," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Science and Management of Protected Areas, Nova Scotia, 1995: 44.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "The Biological Collapse of Atlantic Cod Off Newfoundland and Labrador."
- NAFO data, 1966-68.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "What Can Be Learned from the Collapse of a Renewable Resource: Atlantic Cod of Newfoundland and Labrador," Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences,Vol.51, No.9, 1994: 2127.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "What Can Be Learned from the Collapse of a Renewable Resource: Atlantic Cod of Newfoundland and Labrador," Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences,Vol.51, No.9, 1994: 2127.
- J.A. Hutchings, "Seasonal Marine Protected Areas Within the Context of Spatio-Temporal Variation in the Northern Cod Fishery," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Science and the Management of Protected Areas, Halifax, NS, May 1994: 44.
- Northeast Fisheries Science Center, "Status of the Fishery Resources Off the Northeastern United States for 1994," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE-108, January 1995: 13.
- Northeast Fisheries Science Center, "Status of the Fishery Resources Off the Northeastern United States for 1994," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE-108, January 1995: 13.
- D.Pauly and V. Christensen, "Primary Production Required to Sustain Global Fisheries," Nature, Vol. 374, March 16, 1995.
- B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Ground Resources: 10 Years of Management Under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act," North American Journal of Fisheries Management, Vol.10, No.2, Spring 1990: 127.
- B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Ground Resources: 10 Years of Management Under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act," North American Journal of Fisheries Management,Vol.10, No.2, Spring 1990: 127, 134-36.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:165.
- G.C. Eddie et al, "The Stern Trawler," Fishing News Ltd. 1972:160.
- B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Groundfish Resources:10 Years of Management Under the MFCMA," North American Journal of Fisheries Management, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 1990: 129.
- Miles Alton, in: "Demersal Fish and Shellfish Resources of the Eastern Bering Sea in the Baseline Year 1975," NMFS/NOAA, Oct.1976:570, Table XI-1.
- NWAFC, "History of Regulation of Alaskan Groundfish Fisheries," Processed Report 87-07, March 1987: 14.
- R.G. Bakkala et al., "History of Commercial Exploitation of Demersal Fish and Shellfish in the Eastern Bering Sea," Oct. 1976: Table VI-4, International North Pacific Fisheries Council, "Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting," Oct 1974: Table 1, p. 231.
- NWAFC, "History of Regulation of Alaskan Groundfish Fisheries," Processed Report 87-07, March 1987: 27.
A.4. The Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976
- W.W. Warner, "Distant Water, The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman," Little, Brown and Co. 1977: 57
- G.B. Leape, "A Condensed Legislative History of the MFCMA of 1976."
- G.B. Leape, "A Condensed Legislative History of the MFCMA of 1976."
- G.B. Leape, "A Condensed Legislative History of the MFCMA of 1976."
- Center for Marine Conservation, "New England Groundfish: From Glory to Grief," April 1996: 83.
- Massachusetts Groundfish Task Force, 1990.
- NMFS, Fisheries Statistics Division, "Northeast Commercial Landings Statistics," 1995.
- National Fisherman, April 1996: 100.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "The Biological Collapse of Atlantic Cod Off Newfoundland and Labrador," 59.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "The Biological Collapse of Atlantic Cod Off Newfoundland and Labrador," 78.
- E. Pinkerton and M. Weinstein, "Fisheries That Work: Sustainability Through Community-Based Management," July 1995.
- J.A. Hutchings and R.A. Myers, "The Biological Collapse of Atlantic Cod Off Newfoundland and Labrador," 75.
- National Research Council, "The Bering Sea Ecosystem," National Academy Press, 1996: 212.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine Resources," Feb. 1996: 41.
- Friends of the Earth, "The Whale Manual," 1978: 68-69.
- National Research Council, "The Bering Sea Ecosystem," National Academy Press, 1996: 16.
- Center for Marine Conservation, "New England Groundfish: From Glory to Grief," April 1996: 33
A.5. Growth of the Domestic Factory Trawler Fleet
- B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Groundfish Resources: 10 Years of Management Under the MFCMA," North American Jounral of Fisheries Management, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 1990: 131
- Arctic Alaska Fisheries Corporation, Annual Report, 1991.
- Leah Harrison, Seattle Times, Aug. 31, 1993: D1 D6.
- From 1984-89, the NMFS-administered Fisheries Obligation Guarantee (GOF) program financed or refinanced 33 vessels (14,700 net tons) fishing in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, including 12 factory trawlers. From: James E. Douglas, Acting Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, NMFS, Fall 1989 in repsonse to FOIA request.
- Seafood Leader, March/April 1996: 72.
- Bob Lovitt, "Boats and Banks: How Foreign Banks Floated America's Factory Trawler Fleet," Deafood Leader, Nov/Dec 1993: 111.
- Bob Lovitt, "Boats and Banks: How Foreign Banks Floated America's Factory Trawler Fleet," Deafood Leader, Nov/Dec 1993: 111.
- D.L. Alverson, ""Fisheries Resources and Management in the 21st Century," February 1989: 19.
- Natural Resources Consultants, "Current Development of the Domestic Groundfish Fisheries in Alaska," June 1989: 25.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, Addendum I, "Regulatory Impact Review...of Proposed Inshore-Offshore Allocation Alternatives."
- Kinoshita et al, NMFS 1995.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Sector Descriptions and Preliminary SIA for Groundfish and Crab Fisheries," 1994: Table 3-3.
- D. Huppert, "Managing Alaska Groundfish: Current Problems and Management Alternatives,"" April 1988: 18. Tonnage calculations: Greenpeace 1996.
- Natural Resources Consultants, "Current Development of the Domestic Groundfish Fisheries in Alaska," June 1989: 39.
- North Pacific Management Council, "Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and Regulatory Review," March 1992: viii.
- Only includes factory tralwers >164 feet fishing in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands. 1984-1993 total numbers are higher.
- Catch statistics for 1984-1989: Queirolo et al., "Bycatch Utilization and Discards in the Commercial Groundfish Fisher ies of the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands/Gulf of Alaska," Nov. 1995: Table 1.
- Catch statistics for 1990-1993: Kinoshita et al., "Economic Status of the Groundfish Fisheries Off Alaska," 1995: Table 1.
- Beginning in 1991, total groundfish catch includes discards. Domestic percent share of catch appears lower than it would be without counting discards.
- North Pacific Management Council, "Sector Descriptions and Preliminary SIA for Groundfish and Crab Fisheries," October 1994: 157.
- Alaska Department of Labor, "Alaska Economic Trends," March 1996.
- PSPA, "The Economic Impact of the Shoreside Processing Industry Upon Alaska, 1993," Pacific Associates, 1995: Table 2-1.
- Alaska Department of Labor, "Alaska Economic Trends," March 1996.
- Alaska Department of Labor, "Alaska Economic Trends," March 1996.
- Alaska Department of Labor, "Alaska Economic Trends," March 1996.
- C.C. Riley, "Economic Review of the Proposed Inshore-Offshore Pollock Allocation in the North Pacific," March 1991.
- C.C. Riley, "Economic Review of the Proposed Inshore-Offshore Pollock Allocation in the North Pacific," March 1991.
- C.C. Riley, "Economic Review of the Proposed Inshore-Offshore Pollock Allocation in the North Pacific," March 1991.
- Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 1995.
- L.E. Queirolo et al., "Byatch, Utilization, and Discards in the Commercial Groundfish Fisheries of the GOA, EBS and AI," NOAA-NMFS, Nov. 1995.
- IPHC, 72nd Annual Meeting, 1996.
A.6. Cascading Effects: Ecosystem Impacts of Overfishing
- J.A. Wilson et al., "Chaos, Complexity and Community Management of Fisheries," Marine Policy 18(4), 1994: 291-305.
- K.J. Sainsbury, "The Ecological Basis of Multispecies Fisheries and Management a Demersal Fisheryin Tropical Australia : Fish Population Dynamics1988: 349-382.
- R.W. Furness, "Declining Seabird PopulationsJournal of Zoology 2191989: 177-180.
- Johannes Hamre, "Some Aspects of the Interrelation Between Herring in Norwegian Sea and Stocks Capelin Cod BarentsPelagic Fish CommitteeInternational Council for Exploration1988.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off AlaskaNOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27Jan. 1994: 9.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation," 1996: 2-16.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 11-6.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 11-6.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 11-5.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 11-7.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 11-17.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska,1993," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27, Jan. 1994: 9. See also: North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation, 1996: 2-18.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska,1993," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27, January 1994: 17-18.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska,1993," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27, January 1994: 17-18.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska,1993," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27, January 1994: 30-31.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska,1993," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27, January 1994: 20-21.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 8-4.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 8-6.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation," 1996: 2-2.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off AlaskaNOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27January 1994: 14-16.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation1996: 2-12.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Our Living Oceans: The First Annual Report on Status of U.S. Marine ResourcesNOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-F/SPO-1November 1991: 85Table 19-2.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off AlaskaNOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27January 1994: 22-28.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations1995: 5,61.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations1995: 5,61.
- National Research Council, "The Bering Sea EcosystemNational Academy Press1996: 159.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations1995: 24.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation1993.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation1996: Appendix G.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska1993NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27January 1994: 22-28.
- R. Goni, H. Hartman and K. Mathews, "Groundfish Fisheries and Dynamics of the Northeastern Pacific EcosystemsMarch 1993: 19.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation1996: 1-3 1-19Table 1.3.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation1996: 1-9.
- Pacific Fishing, August 1996: 23-24.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management CouncilStock Assessment and Evaluation1996: 1-15.
- Pacific Fishing, August 1996: 23-24.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management CouncilEcosystem Considerations 1995Dec. 1994p.45.
- U.S. Dept. of Commerce, "Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine Resources1995: 121.
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Region 7, "Alaska Seabird Management PlanDec. 1992: 1.
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Region 7, "Alaska Seabird Management PlanDec. 1992: 47.
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Region 7, "Alaska Seabird Management PlanDec. 1992: 47.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations 1995Dec. 1994: 60.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations" 1995, Dec. 1994: 46.
- L.F. Lowry and T. R. Loughlin, "New Conservation Efforts Begin for Alaska's Steller Sea Lions," Alaska's Wildlife, July-August, 1990: 7-8.
- L. Fritz et al., Marine Fisheries Review 57(2), 1996: 18-19.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment Report for Groundfish Resources of the Gulf of Alaska," Sept.1995, Table 1.10.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation," Nov.1995, p.11-6.
- R.C. Ferrero and L.W. Fritz, "Comparisons of Walleye Pollock Harvest to Steller Sea Lion Abundance in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-43, Sept.1994, Tables 4-5.
- R.C. Ferrero and L.W. Fritz, "Comparisons of Walleye Pollock Harvest to Steller Sea Lion Abundance in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska," NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-43, Sept.1994: Tables 4-5.
- L. Fritz et al., Marine Fisheries Review 57 (2), 1996: 21.
- L. Fritz et al., Marine Fisheries Review 57(2), 1996: 19.
- T.R. Loughlin and R.L. Merrick, "Comparison of Commercial Harvest of Walleye Pollock and Northern Sea Lion Abundance in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands," Proceedings of the International Symposium on Biology and Management of Walleye Pollock, 1988: 694-95.
- L. Fritz et al., Marine Fisheries Review 57 (2), 1996: 20.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management CouncilEcosystem Considerations1995: 21.
- Goni, Hartmann and Mathews, "Groundfish Fisheries and Dynamics of the Northeastern Pacific EcoystemsMarch 1993: 18.
- Bakkaka et al, "Distribution and Stock Structure of Pollock in the North Pacific OceanINPFC Bulletin No.45Oct. 1983: 3.
- P.A. Livingston, "Importance of Predation by GroundfishMarine Mammals and Birds on Walleye Pollock Pacific Herring in the EBS Ecology Press SeriesVol.102:205-2151993: 210.
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Region 7, "Alaska Seabird Management PlanDec. 1992: 38.
- Goni, Hartmann and Mathews, "Groundfish Fisheries and Dynamics of the Northeastern Pacific EcoystemsMarch 1993: 18.
- NOAA/NMFS, "Status of Living Marine Resources Off Alaska1993NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-27Jan. 1994: 12.
- Seafood Leader, Mar/April 1996: 69.
- Seafood LeaderMar/April 1996: 69.
- Cooper and Lybrand, "Economic Impacts of the North Pacific Factory Trawler FleetJanuary 1990: 2.
- National Research Council, "The Bering Sea EcosystemNational Academy Press1996: 4.
- Michael Crowley, "Does Dragging Harm the Habitat?National FishermanApril 1996: 39-40.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Ecosystem Considerations 1995Dec. 1994: 32.
- FAO, "A Global Assessment ofFisheries Bycatch and Discards Technical Paper 339Rome1994: 91-92.
- Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, 1995.
A.7. The Debt-Driven Economics of Factory Trawling
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Sector Descriptions & Preliminary SIA for Groundfish and Crab Fisheries," 1994.
- G.C. Eddie, "Engineering, Economics and Fisheries Management," Fishing News Books, Ltd., 1983: 31.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, "Sector Descriptions & Preliminary SIA for Groundfish and Crab Fisheries," 1994.
- Morton Miller et al., "Profile of Change: A Review of Offshore Factory Trawler Operations in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pollock Fishery," Oct. 1994: 30.
- M. Miller et al., "A Profile of Change: A Review of Offshore Factory Trawler Operations in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pollock Fishery," Oct.1994: 20.
- M. Miller et al., "A Profile of Change: A Review of Offshore Factory Trawler Operations in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pollock Fishery," Oct.1994: 29.
- Seattle P-I, Dec. 13, 1994: B4,8.
- Peter Weber, "Worldwatch Paper 120," July 1994: 34.
- M. Miller et al., "A Profile of Change: A Review of Offshore Factory Trawler Operations in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pollock Fishery," Oct.1994: 20.
- Declaration of Tom Erickson, First Vice President of Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Western District of Washington, File No. 93-055574, Sept. 11, 1993.
- Steve Finley, personal communication, June 1996.
- Mariusz Mazurek, TCW, personal communication, April 1996.
- Mariusz Mazurek, TCW, personal communication, April 1996.
- Declaration of Kenneth Liang, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Western District of Washington, File No. 96-04645, April 25, 1996.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 9.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 9.
A.8. The Distant Water Fishing Nations, Part 2 - Exporting Surplus Capacity to the World
- Seattle Post-Intelligencier, March 14, 1996.
- Seafood Leader, March / April 1996: 76.
- North Pacific Fisheries Management Council Stock Assessment Report for BS/AI Walleye Pollock, 1996: 1-1415.
- V.M. Kaczynski, "Joint Ventures and Transfer of Capital Technology Know-How: The Russion Far East Perspective", Seattle-Vladivostock, 1994.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 9.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 6-7.
- Fishing News International, March 1996: 5.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 7.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995: 7-9.
- Fishing News International, Feb. 1996.
- Fishing News International, Feb. 1996.
- Fishing News International, Oct. 1995 7-9.
- Peter Weber, "Worldwatch Paper 120, July 1994: 28,34
B. Partial List of Species Caught as Bycatch by Factory Trawlers in the North Pacific
SALMON
CHUM SALMON
CHINOOK (KING) SALMON
SILVER (COHO) SALMON
PINK (HUMPBACK) SALMON
CRAB
TANNER CRAB
BAIRDI CRAB
BLUE KING CRAB
BROWN KING CRAB
RED KING CRAB
CANCER CRAB
DECORATED CRAB
KOREN HORSEHAIR CRAB
GOLDEN KING CRAB
LYRE CRAB
SCALED CRAB
BIRD SPECIES
UNIDENTIFIED
SHARKS
PACIFIC SLEEPER SHARK
SPINY DOGFISH SHARK
SALMON SHARK
SIX GILL SHARKFLATFISH
PACIFIC HALIBUT
GREENLAND TURBOT
FLATHEAD SOLE
ROCK SOLE
REX SOLE
ALASKA PLACE
DOVER SOLE
ENGLISH SOLE
BUTTER SOLE
DEEPSEA SOLE
PETRALE SOLE
SAND SOLE
YELLOWFIN SOLE
ARROWTOOTH FLOUNDER
STARRY FLOUNDER
BERING FLOUNDER
KAMCHATKA FLOUNDER
LOGHEAD DOB
ROCKFISH
PACIFIC OCEAN PERCH
BOCCACCIO
NORTHERN ROCKFISH
WIDOW ROCKFISH
BLACK ROCKFISH
ROUGHEYE ROCKFISH
RED BANDED ROCKFISH
SILVER GREY ROCKFISH
DARK BLOTCHED ROCKFISH
BLUE ROCKFISH
BLACKGILL ROCKFISH
YELLOW MOUTH ROCKFISH
YELLOWEYE ROCKFISH
HARLEQUIN ROCKFISH
REDSTRIPE ROCKFISH
SHORTRAKER ROCKFISH
LIGHT DUSKY ROCKFISH
DARK DUSKY ROCKFISH
VEMILLION ROCKFISHOTHER FISH
WALLEYE POLLOCK
PACIFIC COD
BLACK COD
ATKA MACKEREL
PROWFISH
PACIFIC HADE
JACK MACKEREL
SAFFRON COD
PACIFIC FLATNOSE
ARCTIC COD
PACIFIC SADFISH
RONQUIL
NORTHERN RONQUIL
SEARCHER
CUSK-EEL
EEL POUT
RAGFISH
OXEYE OREO
OPAH
HAGFISH
RADIAL
LONGNOSE SKATE
SPOTTED SKATE
LAMPREY
SHORTSPINE THORNYHEAD
LARGEFIN THORNYHEAD
LONGSPINE THORNYHEAD
WHITESPOTTED GREELING
KELP GREELING
SPINY SCULPIN
BAGMOUTH SCULPIN
GREAT SCULPIN
CRESTED SCULPIN
IRISH LORD
MYOCEPHALUS
SNAILFISH
PACIFIC SPINY LUMPSOCKER
SMOOTH LUMPSOCKER
STRUGEON POACHER
EULACHON
SMELT
BLACKSMELT
CAPELIN
PACIFIC HERRING
PACIFIC SAND LANCE
SEA DEVIL
DREAMER
LANTERNFISH
NORTHERN LANTERNFISH
VIPERFISH
PRICKLEBACK
BARRACUDINA
MANEFISH
WOLFEEL
BERING WOLFISH
LONGNOSE LANCETFISHOTHER MARINE LIFE
SHRIMP SPECIES
COUSI KING
PARALOMIS MULTISPINA
BASKET STARFISH
BRITTLE STARFISH
TELMESSUS STARFISH
SEA SLUG SPECIES
SPONGE SPECIES
BRACHIOPOS SPECIES
SCALLOP SPECIES
CLAM SPECIES
SNAIL SPECIES
CORAL SPECIES
BRYAZOAN SPECIES
JELLYFISH SPECIES
SEA URCHIN SPECIES
SAND DOLLAR SPECIES
SEA CUCUMBER SPECIES
SEA ONIONS SPECIES
SEA SQUIRT SPECIES
CHITON SPECIES
LIMPET SPECIES
BARNACLES SPECIES
SQUID SPECIES
GIANT SQUID
CRINOID SPECIES
POLYCAETE SPECIES
SEA ANEMONE SPECIES
SEA SPIDER
SEA POTATO
SEA PENIWHIP
SEA MOUSE
OCTOPUS
PELAGIC OCTOPUS
PEANUT WORM
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