The 'elephant in the room' for European fisheries reform

February 6th will be long remembered as a good day for European fisheries as a series of major reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy were voted through the European Parliament by a massive 502 to 157 majority. The Bill covers key issues such as a progressive ban on discarding non-target caught fish, on tighter regulation of fisheries to ensure Maximum Sustainable Yield, on eco-labelling and, most importantly, on the regionalisation of fisheries management. This is a key round in a long battle for sustainable fishing and even though the battle is far from over (negotiations must continue with fisheries ministers and the European Commission), those who have worked for years to convince legislators and the fishing industry have good reason to celebrate. But, as I am about to explain, there is still an ‘elephant in the room’...

In the steamy heat of the Indian Ocean, far away from the warren of committee rooms and offices in the European Parliament and well outside its legislative influence, a fisheries dispute was unfolding that is typical of many around the world.  I was attending a conference at India’s National Institute of Oceanography and wondered why some of the famous Goan fish curries were missing from the menu until I picked up a copy of the previous day’s Navhind Times: “Protest against hike in diesel price. Fishing trawlers to go on indefinite strike from Jan 29”.  Some 1,200 vessels had already been tied up for three days by the All Goa Fishing Trawler Owners Federation in protest at a 22% diesel price hike by the Indian Government. The Government doesn’t determine crude oil prices of course but regulates the cost of diesel to different sectors through taxation and subsidies. According to the 29th January Navhind Times, the government had reclassified the trawler owners as ‘commercial customers’ rather than ‘retail customers’, implying the removal of a subsidy equivalent to about US 10 cents per litre. That doesn’t sound much – an extra cost of US$20 per day for the average trawler, but it was enough to trigger a major strike and tells something about the tiny profit margins and unsustainability of this industry. By 30 January, the Government had changed its mind and trawler owners were reassured that they could purchase diesel from commercial forecourts and would have the subsidy reimbursed and that bulk buying arrangements would be renegotiated. Fish markets reopened on 31 January; the Goa Herald had reported a 250% increase in the price of small mackerel during the strike, a huge pressure on consumers.

The subsidies conflict in India is trivial compared to that brewing in the European Union.  For many years, most European fisheries have been heavily subsidised. Perhaps ‘heavily’ is an understatement; a report published 18 months ago by the NGO Oceana (you can link to it at the end of the entry) claimed that, in 2009, subsidies totalled a staggering €3.3 billion and that in 13 countries, subsidies were greater than the value of the catch! Research led by my colleague Sheila (JJ) Heymans (also linked to below) demonstrated that, in the case of North Sea fisheries, removal of the subsidies would increase the overall profitability of the fishery and the total biomass of commercially important species, despite reducing total catch and revenue. I discussed this issue last week with Struan Stevenson, Senior Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament Fisheries Commission. He explained how subsidies had been misused by some countries in the past by using funds designed to improve the efficiency and safety of vessels in order to strip them down to their bare hulls and rebuild them with hugely superior catching capability. He also noted that the issue of subsidies has not been part of the current bill and would be dealt with later this year. This is the ‘elephant in the room’ that I mentioned earlier.

Back in the negotiating rooms of Brussels, there is still a feeling of unease about the fate of the Common Fisheries Policy Reform approved by the European Parliament. The next step in the process will be the so-called ‘trialogue’; negotiations between the three powers determining the direction of the CFP. These are the European Commission with overall administrative power, the Fisheries Commission (consisting of Member State Ministers) who represent the executive power of governments, and the European Parliament with EU-level legislative power. The huge vote supporting reforms will make it difficult for the Fisheries Council to ‘water down’ the parliamentary proposals… but they will probably try. And there are many key details to be resolved such as what to do with all the smaller size fish that will be landed. Opinions are divided between supplying it to poorer people and selling it and creating a conservation fund with 50% of the profits, the remainder going to fishermen to cover fuel costs.

From my perspective, it is the nature and level of subsidies that will ultimately determine the shape of global fisheries and the effectiveness of measures to regulate them. In Scotland’s North Sea fishery for example, subsidies have been severely reduced and 60% of the fleet scrapped (with considerable pain for the industry) but the industry has proven resilient and profitable and is setting new standards for others to follow. Struan Stevenson told me that the European Union has until Jan 14, 2014 to set its own reformed rules for subsidies. The new European Maritime and Fisheries Fund will have a total budget of some €6.9 billion for a 6 year period and this has to cover all maritime activities, including marine planning. If the several thousand individual amendments tabled to proposals cannot be resolved by then, there will be a ‘fisheries fiscal cliff’ with no legal basis for further spending.  The fisheries reform story has a long way to run and it is no time for triumphalism; only a smile and a thank you to our European legislators and the fishing industry for their confidence in taking the first decisive steps.



Links:

• Oceana report: The European Union & Fishing Subsidies 
• PLOS ONE: The Impact of Subsidies on the Ecological Sustainability and Future Profits for North Sea Fisheries

Breathless in Bombay

Slum housing along the perimeter fence of Mumbai Airport

Most people would associate marine science with the bracing sea air and sound of the wind and sea. It is getting increasingly hard to find anywhere remote from the imprint of humanity and when an attractive place is ‘discovered’ and gets into a travel guide, the visitors soon begin to roll in. So much effort is placed on the ‘remote’ or ‘pristine’ that it is easy to ignore the other end of the spectrum; the coastal megacities where a quarter of a billion people live. Recently, I was sharply reminded of this when my plane landed in Mumbai on a hazy day and I felt my lungs filling with the acrid air of this city of over 18 million people. India’s increasing prosperity, like China’s, is putting a lot of pressure on the environment.

Last month, I was part of a group of 17 co-authors of a paper examining this issue and titled Megacities and Large Urban Agglomerations in the Coastal Zone: Interactions Between Atmosphere, Land, and Marine Ecosystems. My interest in mega-cities was a very practical one because I spent some years living in them. In 1987 I did a routine medical when I left Mexico City after living there for about three years. The doctor showed me the striations on my chest x-ray that were typical of a heavy smoker. “But I don’t smoke” I protested. “I know, but I do,” he said with a sheepish smile. “Imagine what mine look like!”  Six years later, I moved to Istanbul at a time when massive amounts of lignite were burned to keep the apartment blocks and houses warm in the winter. The air was full of yellow fumes made worse by the heavy traffic and there were few days when I didn’t wake up with a headache. But then the city switched to gas and things dramatically improved and serious efforts began to curb the millions of tons of raw sewage discharged to the Bosporus, the vital connection between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

But the issues of such dense human agglomerations go far beyond the problems that can be fixed by means of simple engineering. As we demonstrate in our paper, the cities act as heat islands and change the flow of air between land and sea, transporting pollution for tens to hundreds of kilometres over the ocean. They have strong influences over overfishing, harmful algal blooms, eutrophication (the over-fertilisation of the sea) and cause feedbacks to the atmosphere via marine emissions. So far, as scientists we have been unable to keep pace with the rapidly developing and complex array of problems. Our paper suggests a strategy for how some of the poorly researched issues can be tackled and hopefully serves as wake-up call. Already 16% of the world’s population lives in cities of more than 5 million people (the population of Norway or Scotland) and they place a huge resource demand on surrounding areas, also separating people from their natural environment and making it more difficult to instil a caring attitude towards it from an early age. Reconnecting people with their environment is a huge task that parallels the need to study and solve the problems technologically, for if there is no willingness to pay the costs, nothing will change.




Further information
Roland von Glasgow et al (2013) Megacities and Large Urban Agglomerations in Coastal Zones: Interactions Between Atmosphere, Land, and Marine Ecosystems. AMBIO 42: 13-28 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-012-0343-9

Sad time of reflection at SAMS

Two tragic deaths have stunned the staff and students at SAMS. Just a week after we were trying to come to terms with the loss of one of our bright PhD students, Christopher Bell, we received the news of another loss, the researcher in Physics, Sea Ice and Technology, Dr Tim Boyd. Chris and three other friends were killed by an avalanche in the Glencoe Mountains and Tim by a lightning strike while walking his dog on a coastal boardwalk.  These were freak events, both Chris and Tim were very competent and experienced outdoors people and the deaths were an awful coincidence.

Chris was a second year PhD student working on the physics of narrow tidal straits and how they contribute to larger scale ocean processes in western Scotland. In particular, he had been working on the infamous Corryvreckan and its extraordinary tidal race. He had already made major advances in his studies. Chris also made a big contribution to the social life of SAMS and the Oban region, particularly in his prowess as a mountain biker, climber and runner and for his practical encouragement of his peers in these activities.

Tim was a physical oceanographer who came to SAMS from Oregon State University with a long track record in Arctic science. He had been at SAMS for a year when I joined and was quick to catch up with me (almost literally, he was on his bike) to make sure that I knew about his endeavour to purchase an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for SAMS. His friendly persistence worked! Tim used the same gentle persuasion to encourage the US and UK navies and others to continue to measure sea ice thickness from their submarines and to cooperate in Arctic oceanography. Tim was a popular lecturer and a great team worker and will be sorely missed.

This double tragedy was stunning for the SAMS community as students and staff struggled to comprehend the disappearance of two popular and respected colleagues from the same Physics, Sea Ice and Technology Department under such awful circumstances. There was particular compassion for Chris and Tim’s families whose lives have been instantly changed. As a caring and supportive community, my colleagues in SAMS neither hid their grief nor shied away from comforting those closest to them. Over fifty student and staff travelled to Blackburn to attend Chris’s funeral and there will be a memorial service for Tim in Oban on Thursday Feb 7th. A book of tributes was opened for Chris and website has been set up to gather tributes for Tim. To contribute, please go to http://tim-boyd.tumblr.com/.

Grief should not be confused with despair. As Chris and Tim are mourned, their close colleagues have appreciated how much their lives were enriched by them and feel the need to celebrate their work and friendship. The pain and solemnity of loss is accompanied by the feeling that their work and enthusiasm should continue and we will certainly do our utmost to make that possible.