JP/6/MIKEL

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.