Fate of fishing boats poaching in RI waters

Fate of fishing boats poaching in RI waters

Michael Richardson, Singapore

Relations between China and Indonesia have become a casualty
of action by an Indonesian warship last week in opening fire on a
Chinese fishing boat, killing a crewman and wounding two others.
But given the increasingly close ties between the two countries,
which forged a strategic partnership in April, the damage is
likely to be shortlived.

More significant is the underlying cause of the incident --
illegal fishing in Indonesian waters by vessels from China and
other nations that range far from home because fishing grounds in
their own waters have been depleted by over-harvesting.

China is just one of Asia's so-called distant water fishing
nations. Other major Asian fishing powers include Thailand,
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Their vessels frequently run into
trouble in Indonesian waters where the navy has been seeking to
crack down on foreign fishermen operating without permits.

Poaching is not just an Asian problem. It is happening around
the world as too many boats (often subsidized by governments)
chase too few fish, causing clashes of interest with other
nations that still have attractive fishing rounds. But the
problem is especially acute in Asia.

The region has the world's largest fishing fleet, with 42
percent of the its registered tonnage. The Asian Development Bank
says that these vessels have twice the capacity needed to extract
what the oceans can sustainably produce. The result, according to
the ADB, is "a vicious circle: As catches per vessel fall,
profits plummet, and fishers overfish to maintain supplies,
causing serious depletion of stocks and endangering long-term
availability."

While over-fishing is a global problem, its implications for
Asia are more serious than for any other part of the world. Fish
is a staple food in the region and a major source of protein. The
ADB predicts that demand for fish in Asia will continue to rise,
reaching about 69 million tons by 2010 and accounting for 60
percent of world food fish demand, compared to some 53 percent in
1990.

Although Japan will remain the biggest fish consumer on a per
capita basis, China -- with a projected population of 1.4 billion
-- will take by far the biggest amount of fish by 2010, an
estimated 28 million tons. Can wild fisheries and aqaculture meet
the demand from Asia and the rest of the planet?

Last March the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization issued a grim snapshot of the state of world
fisheries in a biannual report that warned of growing pressures
on stocks since 2002 that was unsustainable amid rising
consumption.

The FAO said that 52 percent of world fish stocks were fully
exploited, compared with 47 percent three years ago, while nearly
25 percent were over-exploited. It said that seven of the top 10
marine fish species were already stretched to their limits or in
decline, including Chilean jack mackeral, Alaska pollock,
Japanese anchovy and blue whiting.

"Stock depletion has implications for food security and
economic development," said Ichiro Nomura, the FAO's Assistant
Director General for Fisheries. "It reduces social welfare in
countries around the world and undermines the well being of
underwater ecosystems."

The UN agency forecast that total world consumption of fish
may rise by more than 25 percent to 179 million tons by 2015,
underscoring the urgent need to rebuild depleted wild fish stocks
while increasing coastal farm fish production. Yet the latter,
now widely practiced in Asia, is problematic because it often
causes environmental damage.

Over the past few decades, coastal aquaculture development in
Asia, especially shrimp farming, has led to the destruction of
hundreds of thousands of hectares of mangrove forests, which are
vital for filtering nutrients, cleansing water and protecting
coastlines from floods and storms. In the Philippines, for
example, it has been estimated that as much as 65 percent of the
original 450,000 hectares of mangroves have been converted to
other uses, chiefly brackish water fishponds.

Effluent from aquaculture ponds and pens is frequently
released, polluting surrounding waterways. The effluent includes
fertilizer, undigested feed and biological waste from the fish
that are bred this way. Farmed fish that escape into the wild can
threaten native species by acting as predators, competing for
food and habitat, or inter-breeding and changing the genetic
pools of wild organisms.

Rapidly increasing demand in Asia for animal feed with high
fish-protein content is also contributing to pressure on the wild
stocks from which these products are derived. Meanwhile, imposing
quotas so that over-fished areas can recover is unpopular and
difficult to enforce.

Can Asia meet future demand fish? The ADB says that the answer
will be positive only if strong action is taken to improve wild
fisheries resource management, develop aquiculture in a
responsible way and better protect the environment. Otherwise, it
warns, the region could face a serious shortage of fish.

One promising avenue would be to reduce waste. Wild-fishing
operations capture, kill and discard a massive quantity of by
catch -- fish that are the wrong size, a commercially
unattractive species or otherwise undesirable. They concentrate
on filling their freezers with only the most profitable fish.

The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington
DC has calculated that more than 20 million tons a year of fish
and other marine organisms are discarded at sea. This is the
equivalent of nearly 20 percent of annual amount of fish eaten in
the world.

The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald
Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a personal comment.