Seafood Serengeti

Seafood in the Serengeti of Antarctica

We have a very interesting past few days with a series of lectures focussing on fishing in the Southern Ocean and the biological and political factors that are involved in such an activity. One term that will come up a lot is 'Antarctic Toothfish', marketed in the USA as 'Chilean Seabass'. Very little is known about this fish, which is a top predator in the Ross Sea region. The best estimates of scientists as to its longevity, spawning, reproductive age and growth rate have been fed into a fisheries model to estimate the biomass and set total allowable catch limits for CCAMLR member states who wish to harvest it. The fishing industry touts the Toothfish Fishery as the best managed fishery in the world and while it is true that allowable catches are more or less obeyed and they do have scientists hard at work trying to discover more about the creatures, at the moment they lack the information to know if their predictive models are anywhere near accurate and if the catch limits are appropriate.

New Zealand was the first to start fishing for Toothfish in 1996 and since then the floodgates have opened, with up to 21 vessels traveling to the fishing grounds in a season. We still send four boats down every season, which lasts from 1 December until the quota is full. It's a lucrative business, pumping around $30 million into our economy each year. We are also seen as leaders in fisheries management internationally and were the first country to introduce a Quota Management System. We generally use quite conservative estimates when setting quotas too, predicting how much could be harvested sustainably and then halving it to allow for a margin of error. The problem is that with the Toothfish we are still in the dark about many aspects of its life. The implications of overfishing a top predator like this are not known, and while the officials try to negotiate industry and environmental concerns when setting the quota each year, they tend to feel they have succeeded only once they have 'pissed everyone off'.

After all this debate on fish and fishing, it was interesting to hear from Dr Julia Jabour on Whaling. Most people seem to have no problem with fishing but absolutely draw the line at killing whales which is an interesting situation, particularly when the legislation in place in control both is very similar. Up until 1985 the International Whaling Commission did set quotas for minke whales, but the quota was temporarily set to zero until they had 'better science'. That moratorium has been in place ever since, despite increasing numbers of stock. The main argument against whaling? They are intelligent mammals. In fact the slide in this part of the presentation looked like it could have been lifted form a brochure on vegetarianism. 'The whales have done nothing wrong', 'whales have feelings too', 'whales are warm blooded', 'whales can communicate with each other'. All true. The strange thing is that most people who ardently argue that these attributes belong to whales see no contradiction in going to the supermarket and picking up a juicy processed steak or pork chop. The same argument could be applied: the pig is an intelligent mammal that did not do anything wrong and has feelings and can communicate. To be consistent surely you have to apply the same rules to both and either accept whaling or not eat any meat. Either that or accept that people are hypocritical and swayed by emotions, particularly when 'cute fuzzy' - or in this case 'massive and awe-inspiring' - animals are involved.

The problem is that whales count as cute, while fish do not. When it comes to fishing and whaling in the Southern Ocean contradictions abound. No one seems to be overly concerned that we are harvesting fish that we know very little about, including where they spawn or how long they live. Without this sort of data, the models that usually have a margin of error or +/- 20% are not particularly useful. People would not accept the harvesting of 30-50% of the biomass of whales. It is time they realised that ecosystems are connected, fish are important regardless of their aesthetic shortcomings and it is important to proceed with caution in order to keep things in a relatively balanced state.