Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fish Aff
Fish Aff............................................................................................................................................................................1
1AC (1/12)......................................................................................................................................................................4
1AC (2/12)......................................................................................................................................................................5
1AC (3/12)......................................................................................................................................................................6
1AC (4/12)......................................................................................................................................................................7
1AC (5/12)......................................................................................................................................................................8
1AC (6/12)......................................................................................................................................................................9
1AC (7/12)....................................................................................................................................................................10
1AC (8/12).....................................................................................................................................................................11
1AC (9/12)....................................................................................................................................................................12
1AC (10/12)..................................................................................................................................................................13
1AC (11/12)...................................................................................................................................................................14
1AC (12/12)..................................................................................................................................................................15
Topicality – Subsidies Don’t Include Vessel Decommissioning...................................................................................17
Topicality – Fisheries Includes Aquaculture.................................................................................................................18
Topicality – Subsidies Exclude “Normal Benefits”......................................................................................................19
Topicality – Subsidies are Confusing – Reasonability..................................................................................................20
Topicality – Subsidies are Limited................................................................................................................................21
Topicality – Subsidies – A2: FAO Definition...............................................................................................................22
Subsidies Bad – Overfishing (1/9)................................................................................................................................23
Overfishing – Up Now (1/3).........................................................................................................................................32
Overfishing – A2: SQ Solves........................................................................................................................................35
Overfishing – Solvency – A2: Post-Brink.....................................................................................................................36
Overfishing – A2: Fisheries Resilient (1/2)..................................................................................................................37
Overfishing – A2: Piracy T/O Solvency.......................................................................................................................39
Overfishing – A2: Migration Solves.............................................................................................................................40
Overfishing – A2: Species Extinction Long Timeframe...............................................................................................41
Overfishing – A2: Fish High on Food Chain................................................................................................................42
Overfishing – A2: Other Countries Key.......................................................................................................................43
Overfishing – A2: Warming Key..................................................................................................................................44
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse (1/4)......................................................................................................................45
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse – Predators Key....................................................................................................49
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse – Oceans Impact (1/4)...........................................................................................50
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse – Extinction (1/4)..................................................................................................54
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse – AT: Resilient: Tipping Point..............................................................................58
Overfishing – Ecosystem Collapse – AT: Resilient: Deep-Water.................................................................................59
Overfishing – Coral Reefs.............................................................................................................................................60
Overfishing – Fish Wars................................................................................................................................................61
Overfishing – Famine....................................................................................................................................................62
Overfishing – Famine – MoB.......................................................................................................................................63
Overfishing – Poverty (1/3)..........................................................................................................................................64
Overfishing – Poverty – Impact....................................................................................................................................67
Trawling Advantage – Subsidies Key...........................................................................................................................68
Trawling Advantage – Destroys Deep Sea....................................................................................................................69
Trawling Advantage – Sharks.......................................................................................................................................70
Trawling Advantage – Marine Species (1/3).................................................................................................................71
Trawling Advantage – Coral Reefs...............................................................................................................................74
Trawling Advantage – Coral Reefs...............................................................................................................................75
Bycatch – Subsidies Key...............................................................................................................................................76
Bycatch – Impacts.........................................................................................................................................................77
Bycatch – US Key.........................................................................................................................................................78
Longlining Advantage – It’s Up....................................................................................................................................79
Longlining Advantage – Subsidies Key........................................................................................................................80
Longlining Advantage – Marine Ecosystems Impact...................................................................................................81
Longlining Advantage – Sea Turtles Impact.................................................................................................................82
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 2
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
Longlining Advantage – Shark Impact.........................................................................................................................83
Salmon Advantage – Subsidies Key (1/3).....................................................................................................................84
Salmon Impacts – Species Loss (1/2)...........................................................................................................................87
Salmon Impacts – Economy (1/2).................................................................................................................................89
Tuna Advantage – US Key............................................................................................................................................91
Turtles Advantage – Trawling Links.............................................................................................................................92
Turtles Advantage – Longlining Links..........................................................................................................................93
Turtles Advantage – Species Impacts............................................................................................................................94
Turtles Advantage – Econ Impacts................................................................................................................................95
Turtles Advantage – US Key.........................................................................................................................................96
A2: Aquaculture Turn – NUQ – Aquaculture Up (1/2).................................................................................................97
A2: Aquaculture Turn – Link Turn: Subsidies Key......................................................................................................99
A2: Aquaculture Turn – No Impact: Ecosystems (1/3)...............................................................................................100
A2: Aquaculture Turn – A2: US Key..........................................................................................................................103
A2: Aquaculture Turn – Impact Turn – Econ..............................................................................................................104
A2: Aquaculture Turn – Impact Turn – Food..............................................................................................................105
A2: Aquaculture Turn – No Impact: Ecosystems........................................................................................................106
A2: Food Prices – Prices Up (1/3)..............................................................................................................................107
A2: Food Prices – Turn: Subsidies Increase Prices.....................................................................................................110
A2: Econ DA – UQ – Fishing Industry Down............................................................................................................112
A2: Econ DA – Link Turn: Fishing Industry (1/7)......................................................................................................113
A2: Econ DA – A2: Access Payments Link................................................................................................................120
A2: Econ DA – No I/L – Fisheries Not Key...............................................................................................................121
A2: Econ DA – Florida Econ Down...........................................................................................................................122
A2: Econ DA – A2: Fishing Key to FL Economy.......................................................................................................124
A2: Econ DA – Florida Resilient................................................................................................................................125
A2: Econ DA – A2: Florida Key to U.S./Global Econ...............................................................................................126
A2: Vessel Decomissioning Good (1/3)......................................................................................................................127
A2: Vessel Construction Subsidies Good....................................................................................................................130
A2: Capacity Reduction Subsidies Good....................................................................................................................131
A2: Conservation Subsidies Good..............................................................................................................................132
A2: Buyback Subsidies Good.....................................................................................................................................133
A2: Vessel Construction Subsidies Good....................................................................................................................134
A2: R&D Subsidies Good (1/2)..................................................................................................................................135
A2: Fuel Subsidies Good (1/3)....................................................................................................................................137
A2: Fuel Subsidies Good – Econ................................................................................................................................140
A2: Fuel Subsidies Good – A2: Coastal Fishing Bad – Deep Sea Fishing Key.........................................................141
A2: Management CP – No Modeling..........................................................................................................................142
A2: Management CP – Subsidies Key (1/2)...............................................................................................................143
A2: Management CP – No Solvency (1/5)..................................................................................................................145
A2: Marine Reserves CP – Perm Solvency.................................................................................................................150
A2: Marine Reserves CP – No Solvency – Overfishing (1/4)....................................................................................151
A2: Marine Reserves CP – No Solvency – Sharks ....................................................................................................155
A2: Marine Reserves CP – No Solvency – Coral.......................................................................................................156
A2: Marine Reserves CP – No Solvency – Land Based.............................................................................................157
A2: Marine Reserves CP – Turn: Bycatch..................................................................................................................158
A2: Marine Reserves CP – Turn: Species Shift..........................................................................................................160
A2: Marine Reserves CP – Turn: Anthropocentrism (1/2)..........................................................................................161
A2: ITQ CP – = Overfishing (1/2)..............................................................................................................................163
A2: ITQ CP – Turn: Bycatch.......................................................................................................................................165
A2: ITQ CP – A2: Solves Subsidies Harms................................................................................................................166
A2: ITQ CP – A2: Industry Net Ben...........................................................................................................................167
A2: ITQ CP – Turn: Small Fishers..............................................................................................................................168
A2: ITQs – Subsidies Key..........................................................................................................................................169
US Key (1/3)...............................................................................................................................................................170
A2: WTO CP – No Solvency – Technical Issues (1/2)...............................................................................................173
A2: WTO CP – No International Agreement..............................................................................................................175
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 3
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
A2: WTO CP – No Solvency: DOHA.........................................................................................................................176
A2: WTO CP – Relations............................................................................................................................................177
A2: WTO CP – Japan/EU Relations...........................................................................................................................178
A2: WTO CP – Japan Relations..................................................................................................................................179
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 4
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
1AC (1/12)
US fish stocks down, overfishing up
Saunders 7 (Doug, the chief of the Globe and Mail's London-based European Bureau, “A dose of global cod-liver oil”, May 26 )
th
To find out, Mr. Sumaila spent a decade building up two huge databases, using hordes of research assistants
travelling the world. One database showed the price of each type of fish in every nation since 1955; the other
showed exactly what each country's fishermen were being paid for. This, combined with Mr. Pauly's fish-stocks
databases, allowed him to see why the fish were disappearing. What he discovered, and documented in a series of
fascinating research reports last year, is that the self-balancing nature of fishing is thrown out of kilter by the
widespread government practice of giving fishermen subsidies for boat building and, especially, fuel. This money,
which he described as "bad subsidies," are exactly equivalent to the scale of overfishing - the subsidies make the
difference between a renewable resource and a dying resource. Not only that, but fuel subsidies, he discovered, are
responsible for the continuation of the most devastating practice in fishing, bottom trawling, which tears up the sea
and destroys species. Countries pay $152-million a year in fuel subsidies to trawlers, which accounts for 25 per cent
of their income. And the profit they make is only 10 per cent. "Without subsidies," he concluded, "the bulk of the
world's bottom-trawl fleet [would] operate at a loss, thereby reducing the current threat to ... fish stocks." Without
"bad" subsidies, which amount to $20-billion a year worldwide, there would be fewer people in the fishing business
around the world. But Mr. Sumaila concluded that this process would actually give the world more fish. "There is a
potential to actually increase the catch if we can agree to reduce the scale in the short term," he said, "and avoid
subsidizing the industry too much in the long term." It seems like an ideal solution. Governments don't like paying
taxpayer subsidies to industries - they do it because they believe that without them they'll lose the industry and its
political support.
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 5
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
1AC (2/12)
Even conservation subsidies increase overfishing
1AC (3/12)
Research subsidies make dangerous fishing practices profitable – Their risks outweigh
their benefits
Fuel subsidies allow exploitation of deep water fisheries. Destructive techniques threaten
vulnerable species and ancient corrals. Removing fuel subsidies would make deep sea
fishing unfeasible, promoting fishing of more resilient coastal species
Fleming 7 Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent in San Francisco “Scientists call for fuel subsidies ban to protect
fish” 19/02/2007 http://www.seaaroundus.org/newspapers/2007/Telegraph_ScientistsCallForFuelSubsidiesBan.pdf
Scientists have called for a worldwide ban on fuel subsidies paid to deep-sea fishing boats that are
putting vulnerable species at risk and damaging corals. Because many types of fish are declining in
shallow coastal waters across the world, fishing fleets are increasingly active in deep international waters.
Most of the high seas catch from deeper waters is carried out by bottom trawling which involves
dragging massive nets along the sea bed – a practice which can destroy deep- sea corals and sponge beds
that have taken centuries or millennia to grow. Fish such as orange roughy, roundnose grenadiers, black
scabbardfish and deep-water sharks live longer and reproduce later than shallow waters species, and so are
more vulnerable to steep declines in populations. Canadian researchers recently produced a report
showing much deep sea fishing is only profitable because of subsidies. … “From an ecological
perspective we cannot afford to destroy the deep-sea. From an economic perspective, deep-sea fisheries
cannot occur without government subsides. And the bottom line is that current deep fisheries are not
sustainable.” … “With globalised markets, the economic drivers of over-fishing are physically removed and
so fishermen have no stake in the natural systems they affect. “While it may be a good short-term business
practice to fish out stocks and move on, we now see global declines of targeted species. “The solution is not
going into the deep-sea, but better managing the shallow waters where fish live fast and die young but
ecosystems have a greater potential for resilience.”
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 7
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
1AC (4/12)
Fish are a crucial source of global food stocks
UN FAO 6 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ,The State of World Fisheries and
Aquaculture - 2006 (SOFIA), http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/A0699e/A0699E05.htm#5.1.3)
Global per capita fish16 consumption has increased over the past four decades, rising from 9.0 kg in
1961 to an estimated 16.5 kg in 2003. China has been responsible for most of this increase: its estimated share of world fish
production grew from 21 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2003, when its per capita fish supply stood at around 25.8 kg. If China is
excluded, the per capita fish supply is about 14.2 kg, almost the same as during the mid-1980s. During the 1990s, world per capita fish
supply, excluding China, was relatively stable at 13.2-13.8 kg. this can mainly be attributed to a higher population growth than that of
food fish supply during the 1990s (1.6 percent per annum compared with 1.1 percent, respectively). Since the early 2000s, there
has been an inversion of this trend, with higher food fish supply growth than that of population (2.4 percent per
annum compared with 1.1 percent). Preliminary estimates for 2004 indicate a slight increase of global per capita fish supply, to about
16.6 kg.
Global per capita food consumption has also been improving in recent decades. Nutritional standards
have shown positive long-term trends with worldwide increases in the average global calorie supply
per person (a rise of 16 percent since 1969–71 to reach 2 795 kcal/person/day in 2000-02, with the developing country average
expanding by more than 25 percent) and in the quantity of proteins per person (from 65.1 g in 1970 to 76.3 g in 2003). Yet
distributional disparities continue to exist. In 2001-03, according to FAO estimates, 856 million people in the world were
undernourished, 61 percent of whom were living in Asia and the Pacific and 820 million in the developing countries overall. The highest
prevalence of undernourishment is found in sub-Saharan Africa, where 32 percent of the population were undernourished, while an
estimated 16 percent of the population were estimated to be undernourished in Asia and the Pacific.
Fish is highly nutritious, rich in micronutrients, minerals, essential fatty acids and proteins, and
represents a valuable supplement to diets otherwise lacking essential vitamins and minerals. In many
countries, especially developing countries, the average per capita fish consumption may be low, but,
even in small quantities, fish can have a significant positive impact on improving the quality of dietary
protein by complementing the essential amino acids that are often present only in low quantities in vegetable-based diets. It is estimated that fish
contributes up to 180 kilocalories per person per day, but reaches such high levels only in a few countries where there is a lack of alternative foods, and
where a preference for fish has been developed and maintained (for example in Iceland, Japan and some small island developing states). Generally, on
average, fish provides about 20–30 kilocalories per person per day. The dietary contribution of fish is more significant in terms of fish proteins,
which are
a crucial component in some densely populated countries where total protein intake levels
may be low. For instance, fish contributes to, or exceeds, 50 percent of total animal protein intake in some small island developing states, as well as in Bangladesh, Equatorial
Guinea, the Gambia, Guinea, Indonesia, Myanmar, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. Globally, fish provides more than 2.8 billion people with almost 20 percent of their average
per capita intake of animal protein. The contribution of fish proteins to total world animal protein supplies rose from 13.7 percent in 1961 to a peak of 16.0 percent in 1996, before
declining somewhat to 15.5 percent in 2003. Corresponding figures for the world, excluding China, show an increase from 12.9 percent in 1961 to 15.4 percent in 1989, slightly
declining since then to 14.6 percent in 2003. Figure 22 presents the contributions of major food groups to total protein supplies.
Andre 92 (Claire and Velasquez, Manuel Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Andre and Velasquez are professors at SCU
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/hunger.html Spring)
Between now and tomorrow morning, 40,000 children will starve to death. The day after tomorrow, 40,000
more children will die, and so on throughout 1992. In a "world of plenty," the number of human beings
dying or suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and hunger-related diseases is staggering. According to
the World Bank, over 1 billion people—at least one quarter of the world's population—live in poverty.
Over half of these people live in South Asia; most of the remainder in sub-Saharan Africa and East
Asia. Many maintain that the citizens of rich nations have a moral obligation to aid poor nations. First, some
have argued, all persons have a moral obligation to prevent harm when doing so would not cause
comparable harm to themselves. It is clear that suffering and death from starvation are harms. It is
also clear that minor financial sacrifices on the part of people of rich nations can prevent massive
amounts of suffering and death from starvation. Thus, they conclude, people in rich nations have a
moral obligation to aid poor nations. Every week more than a quarter of a million children die from
malnutrition and illness. Many of these deaths are preventable.
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 8
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
1AC (5/12)
Overfishing impoverishes millions globally – Rich nations’ policies depress their income
Hall 6 (Ronnie, Society for International Development. Hall is a member of Friends of the Earth International
www.sidint.org/development 2006)
Negotiations in the fisheries sector show the same entrenched bias towards industrial interests. Global fish
stocks are already in a dire state, primarily because of increased fishing by distant water fishing fleets
from industrialized countries. WTO negotiations to liberalize the sector further may exacerbate an already
serious situation. Yet environmental and developmental concerns get short shrift in the WTO. Little attention
seems to have been paid to the fact that fishing generates food and finance for millions worldwide. Over
38 million people are involved in fisheries globally and over 80 per cent of these are employed in small-
scale artisanal fishing (FAO, 2004a, b), with 20 per cent of the world’s full-time fisherfolk earning less
than US$1per day (Sharma et al 2005). In other words, fisherfolk, especially women fishers, are
overwhelmingly poor and completely dependent on the state of fish stocks. Yet the world’s supply of
fish is already nearly exhausted, with over 70 per cent of wild fish stocks fully exploited, overexploited or
depleted. Any additional overfishing ^ which could be triggered through trade liberalization
agreements ^ will cause species to become commercially extinct and seriously hinder the process of their
regeneration. Local fishers and poor fishing communities will continue to suffer the impact of dying
seas, as large commercial fleets take the highest quality fish. And cheap fish imports will be dumped in
even larger quantities in many coastal countries, making it impossible for fishers to sell their catch
locally.
Gilligan 96 (James, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic Gilligan is a faculty member of the Harvard University
Dept of Psychology)
"[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be
killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as
many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews
over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the
world."
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 9
Russell’s Lab Fish Aff
1AC (6/12)
Marine environments around the United States are now dead zones. Overfishing kills the
top predators unbalancing the food chain leading to a great oceanic collapse
Guterl 3; With Kristin Kovner and Emily Flynn, “Troubled Seas” Newsweek, July 14 Fred)
On the one hand, that means the oceans are interrelated--and thus that the removal of predators can have
far-reaching effects. But it reveals nothing about the lower layers of the food chain. Scientists have only
piecemeal examples of what happens when marine eco-systems become unbalanced. The collapse of the cod
fisheries in the North Atlantic has been a boon to shrimp and sea urchins, the cod's prey. It's given
urchins free rein to devour the kelp forests, turning vast stretches of the sea floor into "urchin
barrens." In a study of coastal ecosystems two years ago, Jackson found overfishing of predators, rather
than pollution and global warming, to be the probable cause of oceanic "dead zones"--areas of complete
ecosystem collapse, where microbes fill the void left by fish and invertebrates.
Dead zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and the Baltic and Adriatic seas, and
they're spreading to the open oceans. Coral reefs in the Caribbean have been hurt by overfishing of algae-eating fish, such as parrot fish.
Sea urchins took up the slack for years, but when a disease outbreak wiped them out the corals grew fuzzy and green with algae, and died.
Since so little is known about marine ecosystems, scientists are reluctant to speculate where all this might lead. It doesn't take much imagination, though, to
If overfishing continues for the big predators, it's possible that many of them
extrapolate from what we do know.
may fall below a critical mass and lose the ability to reproduce, sending populations into a downward
spiral. That would throw millions of people who depend on the fishing industry out of work. If the cod
and herring fisheries are any guide, the damage would take decades to reverse. It would be a global crisis;
treaties would be signed; --the United Nations would be granted the power to enforce fishing bans--and
we'd all wait out the decades hoping the fish would return. But they might not, ever. The removal of so many
big fish could have a ripple effect, killing off invertebrate and microbial life forms we haven't even
heard of yet, but which serve as essential links in the food web. How long would it take--50 years? 100?--
to find that cod, tuna, halibut, mackerel, marlin and other big fish were creatures only of farms or museums?
Specifically, US trawling undermines critical coral reefs and kills unique sea turtle
Oceana 7 (http://www.oceana.org/north-america/what-we-do/stop-dirty-fishing/about/)
Trawls are large, cone-shaped nets that are towed along the bottom of the ocean, sweeping up just about
anything in their path. Through their actions, they clearcut the sea floor, which destroys ecosystems
that may have taken centuries to form (i.e. coral and rocky reefs, seagrass beds, etc.) and eliminates
hiding places that many marine species depend on for protection. It is estimated that trawlers annually scrape close to 6
million square miles of ocean floor. Globally, shrimp trawlers catch and throw back between five and 10 pounds of dead marine life for every pound of
Annually, in the U.S. South Atlantic and
shrimp landed. In all, shrimp fishing accounts for 35 percent of the world's unwanted catch.
Gulf of Mexico, shrimping operations reportedly discard as much as 2.5 billion pounds of fish while
drowning thousands of endangered and threatened sea turtles. Each year as the shrimp fishery season
opens off the coast of Texas, hundreds of sea turtles killed by shrimp trawl nets wash up on south Texas
beaches.
1AC (7/12)
Sea turtles are keystone species – They perform unique ecosystem services
Sea Turtle Survival League 2k [December 22 Sea Turtle Survival League is a conservation group of marine biologists.]
Why should humans care if sea turtles go extinct? There are two major ecological effects of sea turtle
extinction. 1. Sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are one of the very few animals to eat sea grass.
Like normal lawn grass, sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to be healthy and help it grow across
the sea floor rather than just getting longer grass blades. Sea turtles and manatees act as grazing animals
that cut the grass short and help maintain the health of the sea grass beds. Over the past decades, there
has been a decline in sea grass beds. This decline may be linked to the lower numbers of sea turtles. Sea
grass beds are important because they provide breeding and developmental grounds for many species
of fish, shellfish and crustaceans. Without sea grass beds, many marine species humans harvest would be
lost, as would the lower levels of the food chain. The reactions could result in many more marine
species being lost and eventually impacting humans. So if sea turtles go extinct, there would be a serious
decline in sea grass beds and a decline in all the other species dependant upon the grass beds for
survival. All parts of an ecosystem are important, if you lose one, the rest will eventually follow. 2.
Beaches and dune systems do not get very many nutrients during the year, so very little vegetation
grows on the dunes and no vegetation grows on the beach itself. This is because sand does not hold nutrients
very well. Sea turtles use beaches and the lower dunes to nest and lay their eggs. Sea turtles lay around
100 eggs in a nest and lay between 3 and 7 nests during the summer nesting season. Along a 20 mile stretch
of beach on the east coast of Florida sea turtles lay over 150,000 lbs of eggs in the sand. Not every nest
will hatch, not every egg in a nest will hatch, and not all of the hatchlings in a nest will make it out of the
nest. All the unhatched nests, eggs and trapped hatchlings are very good sources of nutrients for the
dune vegetation, even the left over egg shells from hatched eggs provide some nutrients. Dune vegetation is
able to grow and become stronger with the presence of nutrients from turtle eggs. As the dune
vegetation grows stronger and healthier, the health of the entire beach/dune ecosystem becomes better.
Stronger vegetation and root systems helps to hold the sand in the dunes and helps protect the beach
from erosion. As the number of turtles declines, fewer eggs are laid in the beaches, providing less
nutrients. If sea turtles went extinct, dune vegetation would lose a major source of nutrients and would
not be as healthy and would not be strong enough to maintain the dunes, resulting in increased erosion.
Once again, all parts of an ecosystem are important, if you lose one, the rest will eventually follow. Sea
turtles are part of two ecosystems, the beach/dune system and the marine system. If sea turtles went
extinct, both the marine and beach/dune ecosystems would be negatively affected. And since humans
utilize the marine ecosystem as a natural resource for food and since humans utilize the beach/dune system
for a wide variety of activities, a negative impact to these ecosystems would negatively affect humans.
1AC (8/12)
United States marine ecosystems are the most diverse in the world
Pew Oceans Commission 3
(http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Protecting_ocean_life/environment_pew_ocean
s_socioeconomic_perspectives.pdf)
American fishermen ply waters that boast some of the most diverse and productive ocean habitats of any
nation on earth. These range from the productive high relief areas of Georges Bank off New England to the vast open ocean waters that
characterize the U.S. footprint in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean. They include warm water coral reef ecosystems that
support reef fish assemblages of the South Atlantic, U.S. Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, and the globally significant and
extremely productive continental shelf ecosystem of the colder North Pacific Ocean off Alaska. Vital nearshore habitats
where many commercially valuable species spend part of their lives extend from the fishery significant
estuaries and inlets of the Mid- Atlantic region to the kelp forests, submarine canyons, rocky reefs, and coral communities off the shores of
California, Oregon, and Washington. These diverse ecosystems give rise to distinct differences in marine life, regional
fisheries, cultures, and communities. Across the regions, fishermen employ a variety of different fishing gear and vessels to catch different
species. The character of fishing operations runs the gamut from small, family-owned businesses to multi-national conglomerates. Fisheries range
from the highly industrialized Alaska offshore pollock trawl fleets to the day-boat lobster fleets of Maine to the traditional indigenous salmon
fisheries of Washington, Oregon, and California. American fishing communities range from truly remote fishery-dependent areas such as St. Paul
Island, Alaska — where 85 percent of the tax revenues come from fishing — to communities closer to urban population centers with a more
diversified economic base. Though fishing occurs off the shores of every U.S. coastal state, diversity is the defining characteristic of
U.S. fisheries.
Loss of marine biodiversity leads renders the oceans defenseless against disasters and
climate change ending human survival
Craig 3 Indiana University, Robin Kundis, Winter, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, p. 264-266
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments
have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service
coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the
reefs' value for food production. Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. More
generally, "ocean
ecosystems play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that
represent the basic building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur,
as well as other less abundant but necessary elements." In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human
degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planet's ability to support life. Maintaining biodiversity
is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in
general, an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on
its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable." Coral reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on
their biodiversity. Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component species is
higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly
valued components is also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef
system. Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem
services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like
the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic
value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical
arguments also have considerable force and merit." At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know
about the sea - and about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect
marine ecosystems because it was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring -
even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef
ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea
and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can - especially when the United States has within its territory relatively
pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We may not know much about the sea, but we do know this much: if we
kill the ocean we kill ourselves, and we will take most of the biosphere with us. The Black Sea is almost dead, its
once-complex and productive ecosystem almost entirely replaced by a monoculture of comb jellies, "starving out fish and dolphins, emptying fishermen's
nets, and converting the web of life into brainless, wraith-like blobs of jelly." More importantly, the Black Sea is not necessarily unique. The Black Sea is a
microcosm of what is happening to the ocean systems at large. The
stresses piled up: overfishing, oil spills, industrial
discharges, nutrient pollution, wetlands destruction, the introduction of an alien species. The sea
weakened, slowly at first, then collapsed with shocking suddenness. The lessons of this tragedy should not be lost to the
rest of us, because much of what happened here is being repeated all over the world. The ecological stresses imposed on the Black Sea were not unique to
communism. Nor, sadly, was the failure of governments to respond to the emerging crisis. Oxygen-starved "dead zones" appear with increasing frequency
off the coasts of major cities and major rivers, forcing marine animals to flee and killing all that cannot. Ethics as well as enlightened self-interest thus
suggest that the
United States should protect fully-functioning marine ecosystems wherever possible - even
if a few fishers go out of business as a result.
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1AC (9/12)
Species loss causes ecosystem collapse culminating in extinction
Diner 94 (David, Judge Advocate’s General’s Corps of US Army, Military Law Review, Winter, L/N)
Why Do We Care? -- No species has ever dominated its fellow species as man has. In most cases, people have assumed the God-like power of life and death
-- extinction or survival -- over the plants and animals of the world. For most of history, mankind pursued this domination with a single-minded
In past mass extinction
determination to master the world, tame the wilderness, and exploit nature for the maximum benefit of the human race.
episodes, as many as ninety percent of the existing species perished, and yet the world moved forward,
and new species replaced the old. So why should the world be concerned now? The prime reason is the
world's survival. Like all animal life, humans live off of other species. At some point, the number of
species could decline to the point at which the ecosystem fails, and then humans also would become
extinct. No one knows how many [*171] species the world needs to support human life, and to find out
-- by allowing certain species to become extinct -- would not be sound policy. In addition to food, species
offer many direct and indirect benefits to mankind. 68 2. Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value
that species have in maintaining the environment. Pest, 69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits
certain species provide to man. Plants and animals also provide additional ecological services -- pollution
control, 70 oxygen production, sewage treatment, and biodegradation. 71 3. Scientific and Utilitarian Value.
-- Scientific value is the use of species for research into the physical processes of the world. 72 Without
plants and animals, a large portion of basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is
the direct utility humans draw from plants and animals. 73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species
have been examined, and mankind may someday desperately need the species that it is exterminating
today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew 74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect
role, because their extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. 75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the
simplicity. 77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally
has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within
species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. 78 [*173]
Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow
ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more
complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is
connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched
circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79 By causing widespread extinctions,
humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk
of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the
United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically,
each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause
total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like
a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer
to the abyss.
Oceana 7 [“Fisheries Subsidies: The good, the bad, and the ugly,” June 5 2007]
Massive government subsidies to the worldwide fishery industry are one of strongest drivers of the
continued increase of fishing capacity, which exacerbates overfishing and other destructive fishing
practices. These subsidies have produced a worldwide fleet that is up to 250 percent greater than that needed
to fish sustainably. With these levels of subsidies, no level of fishery management will effectively be able
to stop overfishing if these economic incentives continue to exist. Consequently, eliminating global
overfishing subsidies is likely the largest single action that can be taken to protect the world’s fisheries
and the communities that depend on them.
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1AC (10/12)
Cutting subsidies for fisheries will solve overfishing and the marine ecosystems that are key
to human life
U.S. must take the lead to gain the credibility to force other countries to follow.
1AC (11/12)
Our trading power gives the US unique ability to influence global fishing
1AC (12/12)
(Insert some K’s Here – You’ll have 1AC time)
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 16
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Topicality – Fish = Agriculture Support
Fisheries are included in the best USDA definition of agriculture
USDA 8 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE (USDA), 73 FR 45106, Vol. 73, No. 149 Rules and Regulations
August 1, 2008
The ERS CGE model uses data from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP database, version 7.2). The
database represents the world as of 2004 and includes information on macroeconomic variables, production,
consumption, trade, demand and supply elasticities, and policy measures. The GTAP database includes 57
commodities and 101 countries/regions. For this analysis, the regions were represented by the following
country/regions: The United States, Canada, Mexico, the European Union-25 (EU), Oceania, China, Other
East Asian Countries, India, Other South Asian Countries, South America and Central America, OPEC
Countries, Russia, Africa and the rest of the World. The agricultural sector is subdivided into the
following 7 commodity aggregations: Rice, wheat, corn, other feed grains (barley, sorghum), soybeans,
sugar (cane [*45140] and beets), vegetables and fresh fruits, other crops (cotton, peanuts), cattle and
sheep, hogs and goats, poultry, and fish. The food processing sectors are subdivided into the following 6
commodity aggregations, bovine cattle and sheep meat, pork meat, chicken meat, vegetable oils and fats,
other processed food products, beverages and tobacco, and fish. The remaining sectors in the database were
represented by 18 aggregated non-agricultural sectors.
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FAO 3 (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y4647e/Y4647e00.pdf)
The issue of subsidies is also complex in that there is no agreement even on what a subsidy is.
There is no agreement on how subsidies can be measured. There is no agreement on how the
effects of subsidies can be measured. In the policy realm, there is no agreement on when subsidies
are useful and when they are harmful. Part of the reason for the lack of agreement is the
complexity of the problem of evaluating the effects of subsidies on the economy, the
environment, international and internal trade, and the sustainability of fish stocks. Part of the
reason for lack of agreement on such basic issues as the definition of a subsidy is that since
subsidies are now being targeted for elimination, it may be politically unwise for a polity to admit
that a policy implies a subsidy.
Their definitions of subsidies are politically loaded and controversial – Err on middle
ground reasonable definition
FAO 3 (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y4647e/Y4647e00.pdf)
To illustrate: a government policy of aiding the fishing industry by offering firms a grant of 50
percent of the purchase price of a fishing vessel on the face of it would constitute a subsidy to
the fishing industry. Yet it is not so simple. Subsidies are only important for their effects. If the
subsidy were accompanied by a rule that the vessel must be built in the home country, then the
grant is possibly not a subsidy to the fishery at all but rather a subsidy to the shipbuilding
industry if that industry were to raise its prices by the amount of the subsidy. There would then
be no advantage to the fishery. Defining subsidies, except loosely, opens all kinds of
controversies, many of which have been discussed in the recent literature.1
The range of possible definitions is extensive, from the narrow “financial aid furnished by a state
or a public corporation in furtherance of an undertaking or the upkeep of a thing”2 to the broad
“government action (or inaction) that modifies (by increasing or decreasing) the potential profits
earned by the firm in the short-, medium- or long-term.”3 Between the one, with its focus on
direct government expenditures and the other, with its focus on the effect of a government’s
policies on a firm’s anticipated profits, lies an abyss, filled with alternative definitions that lie
between the two extremes.
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FAO 3 (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y4647e/Y4647e00.pdf)
The one exception is that the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) offers a precise definition of subsidies which has legal standing. The
reason for this precision is to avoid ambiguity in the evaluation of subsidies when used to justify
countervailing duties and other disciplines against nations that may violate the Agreement.
Subsidies in the Agreement are defined as direct or potentially direct transfers of funds from
governments to firms or individuals (e.g. grants, loans, loan guarantees, equity infusions),
government revenue foregone (e.g. tax waivers or deferrals), government provision of goods and
services, other than infrastructure, at less than market prices, and government support of prices
They’re employing definitions of economic assistance, which are distinct from subsidies
Cox & Schmidt 7 (6-4, Andrew & Carl, OECD, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/40/2507604.pdf)
In work undertaken in 1993 on measuring the economic assistance provided to the fisheries
sector, the OECD’s Committee for Fisheries operated with the concept of ‘economic assistance’ (OECD
1993). The Committee noted that economic assistance goes beyond the usual subsidy programs for
building vessels, modernization, price support, and so on, and includes all policies which improve the
fisheries environment and by that the living of those (that is, fishermen and processors) who are actively
involved in the industry. Every policy that is likely to significantly affect the domestic value of the fish,
such as the introduction of minimum import prices, tariffs, and so on, should be considered as economic
assistance. Institutional arrangements, such as organization of producers, may also have an effect on the
market.
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Saunders 7 (Doug, the chief of the Globe and Mail's London-based European Bureau, “A dose of global cod-liver oil”, May 26 )
th
To find out, Mr. Sumaila spent a decade building up two huge databases, using hordes of research assistants
travelling the world. One database showed the price of each type of fish in every nation since 1955; the other
showed exactly what each country's fishermen were being paid for. This, combined with Mr. Pauly's fish-stocks
databases, allowed him to see why the fish were disappearing. What he discovered, and documented in a series of
fascinating research reports last year, is that the self-balancing nature of fishing is thrown out of kilter by the
widespread government practice of giving fishermen subsidies for boat building and, especially, fuel. This money,
which he described as "bad subsidies," are exactly equivalent to the scale of overfishing - the subsidies make the
difference between a renewable resource and a dying resource. Not only that, but fuel subsidies, he discovered, are
responsible for the continuation of the most devastating practice in fishing, bottom trawling, which tears up the sea
and destroys species. Countries pay $152-million a year in fuel subsidies to trawlers, which accounts for 25 per cent
of their income. And the profit they make is only 10 per cent. "Without subsidies," he concluded, "the bulk of the
world's bottom-trawl fleet [would] operate at a loss, thereby reducing the current threat to ... fish stocks." Without
"bad" subsidies, which amount to $20-billion a year worldwide, there would be fewer people in the fishing business
around the world. But Mr. Sumaila concluded that this process would actually give the world more fish. "There is a
potential to actually increase the catch if we can agree to reduce the scale in the short term," he said, "and avoid
subsidizing the industry too much in the long term." It seems like an ideal solution. Governments don't like paying
taxpayer subsidies to industries - they do it because they believe that without them they'll lose the industry and its
political support.
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Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
Second, and most important, fisheries lack a sustainable system of rationing the valuable, but
increasingly scarce, resources. Today, the world's fisheries are predominantly open-access. It's first
come first serve, almost devoid of rules fostering responsible behavior.
Open-access subjects fisheries to the profound pathologies of the commons. Fisheries suffer from
overexploitation and declining profitability because fishermen behave predictably when access to a
valuable resource is open to all. In such circumstances individually and socially rational behavior
diverges. Self-restraint and conservation is trumped by incentives that encourage overfishing.
Individual fishermen reel in short-term profits from overfishing while society as a whole bears the
costs of economic and environmental waste.
Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
Overfishing is exacerbated by another pathology: overcapitalization. The race to reel in more and more
fish encourages fishing capacity far in excess of the fishery's reproductive carrying capacity. Economic
distortions couple environmental degradation with overinvestment in fishing capacity. Unbridled
competition produces bigger vessels, better sonar, and larger nets. Taxpayers subsidize newer boats
and better nets. This only aggravates the situation as national politics fights marine international
ecosystems.
Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
Individuals and society will benefit by overcoming the political costs of reform. Fishermen have become
addicted to government subsidies for survival in overcapitalized, overexploited fisheries. Up to now,
policy-makers have lacked the political will to restrain "rugged individualist" fishermen. Increasing
scarcity and environmental degradation are making privatization with monitored and enforceable
rules ever more attractive.
Pauly & Sumaila 7 (Daniel, Fisheries Centre, The University of British Columbia ;U. Rashid, member of Fisheries Economics Research
Unit, Fisheries Centre, The University of British Columbia; Nature, international weekly journal of science; “All fishing nations must unite to cut
subsidies”, 12/13/07, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7172/full/450945a.html) RKB
The threat of overfishing to world fisheries is well documented, but not enough attention has been paid to
government subsidies as an important factor in their decline. Subsidies, or government payments to the
fishing sector, estimated at US$30–34 billion a year, are key drivers of the unsustainable exploitation of the
world's depleted fish populations. Fish are the main source of protein for one fifth of the world's population,
but global fishing fleets are more than double the size the oceans can support.\
Empirical evidence proves subsidies encourage overcapacity and overfishing to the point of
depletion
Although open-access, common-pool fisheries are the fundamental cause of fishing fleet overcapacity,
subsidies also play a role in increasing capacity, and in some cases have also contributed significantly
to the velocity and degree of fishing fleet overcapacity and overfishing. The application of economic
theory to the fisheries sector demonstrates that in an open-access fishery, a revenue-enhancing or cost-
reducing subsidy increases marginal profits at each level of fishing effort and therefore leads to an
increased overall fishing effort. This may have the short-term effect of creating additional economic rent
for fishers active in the fishery. However, either new entrants or increased effort by existing fishers
stimulated by the subsidy will shift the level of effort to the point where rent is dissipated. If the fishery is
already at or near maximum sustainable yield, that level of effort will reduce fish biomass (Stone, 1997;
Munro, 1998; Arnason, 1999; Nordstrom and Vaughan, 1999; WTO/CTE 2000b; OECD, 2000b). In other
words, assuming that the management system does not effectively impose a sustainable level of catch, cost-
reducing and revenue-enhancing subsidies will drive the level of overcapacity and overall effort
even further than would an open-access, common-pool fishery in the absence of such subsidies.
Empirical evidence on the impact of subsidies on capacity and overfishing has been found mainly on
case studies of programmes involving loans, grants and risk-reduction programmes for vessel construction
and modernization. These cases, involving programmes from the 1960s through the 1980s, are particularly
important because they show how subsidies can speed up significantly the transition to
overcapacity and overfishing in a given fishery. These cases, which occurred in a con text in which no
fisheries management system maintained sustainable catch levels, subsidies for vessel construction and
modernization through grants and below-market loans or loan guarantees, produced major leaps in fleet
capacity. And those major increases in capacity contributed, in turn, to declining catches or even
collapse of commercial fish stocks. Although cyclical natural fluctuations may have also played a role in
precipitous stock depletion (OECD, 2000), it is clear that fleet overcapacity was the major factor in
stock collapse or decline.
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It is not sufficient to ask whether a particular fisheries subsidy leads to increased capacity. It is also important
to know whether or not the subsidy hinders efforts to reduce capacity. Vessel owners tend to delay exit from
the industry by scrapping boats because of high sunk costs (FAO, 1993). But the existence of subsidies
further inhibits the difficult process of capacity adjustment. Just as subsidies attract more
investment to the fishing industry in an under-exploited industry than would have occurred without
subsidies, they have the effect of slowing the exit of capital from the fishing industry, even when
the industry is in serious financial difficulty because of overcapacity and resource depletion
(Beddington and Rettig, 1983; FAO, 1993). An extreme example of the inhibiting effect of subsidies on
withdrawal of capital from an industry that is financially troubled because of declining catches is the case of
the increased Norwegian support for the fishing industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This support
masked the decline in fish catches and net value added and resulted in increases in the number of vessels,
fisheries and fleet engine power (OECD, 2000a). High levels of support thus effectively obscure the
signals from the fishery calling for capacity adjustment.
The majority of commercially valuable fish stocks is either overexploited or near its limits. This
entails serious and sometimes irreparable damage to marine resources and threatens the livelihoods
of many fishing communities. At the core of this crisis is a range of policies that have increased
production and trade in fish, including direct and indirect subsidies to the fishery sector. Fisheries
subsidies can potentially be harmful to fish stocks by contributing to increased fleet capacity and
overfishing, particularly in the absence of effective management. However, fishing subsidies can also
contribute to the achievement of sustainable fisheries if properly designed and effective safeguards are put in
place.
Dostal 5 (Derek, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law Dostal is an econ professor at UPenn )
http://www.heinonline.org.ezp.lib.rochester.edu/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/upjiel26&type=Text&id=8
33)
Ninety percent of the large fish population is overfished or depleted. Fisheries subsidies contribute to
overcapacity and distort the natural market equilibrium of the industry. These subsidies undermine many
previously proposed and implemented governmental mechanisms to cope with overcapacity. Additionally,
by minimizing operating costs, subsidies encourage new industry entrants who further aggravate the
overfishing problem. Admittedly, gradually eliminating all fisheries subsidies that contribute to
overcapacity and overfishing will not be a cure for all of the oceans' ills. Nonetheless, the eradication of
subsidies is an essential step in reducing overcapacity.
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Kemi 5 (Lewis, CEPMLP Kemi is a graduate student at the CEPMLP at University of Dundee 2005
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/cepmlp/car/html/car7_article6.pdf)
These subsidies have an adverse effect on sustaining and conserving the global fishing stock. Subsidies to the
fisheries sector has been conservatively estimated at U.S. $14.0 - $20.5 billion, approximately 20-25% of the
fisheries revenues.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the capacity in the main high-value
fisheries (comprising 70% of total catch value) is 30% above the required percentage for sustainable
exploitation.
It has become a major concern over the last years as to the depletion of the world's fisheries stock. The fear
that certain types of fish would become extinct, led to the call by various groups on governments to stop
subsidies to the fishing industry.
Pollution as a result of emission of noxious gases by the large number of boats, and disappearing coastlines,
as depleted fishing stock in one area means the movement of fishers to other unexploited areas, are other
worries and the environmental damage continues.
Eliminating subsidies are necessary to reduce over fishing and market distortions.
Andrei 99 (Mercedes Tira, BusinessWorld, Mercedes Tira Andrei is a D.C. news correspondent for The Filipino Reporter 3-16)
"Put simply, too many boats are chasing too few fish," said Terry Garcia, US assistant secretary of Commerce
for Oceans and Atmosphere. "We need to improve the balance between the fishing industry's productive
capacity and the availability of fish. This must be done by eliminating government subsidies that contribute
to overfishing worldwide."
Fishing efforts and harvesting capacity are at excessive levels, Ms. Barshefsky said in a statement Friday.
These activities "must be restrained to avoid depleting global fisheries stocks. It is also clear that
government subsidies that increase harvesting operations and capacity are a major contributing factor
in these problems."
The World Bank has estimated in a study last year that US$11 billion to $12 billion of environmentally
harmful subsidies are being granted each year by governments around the world to the fisheries sector.
This amount comprises as much as 25% of global fisheries revenues.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization as well as a number of environmental groups have also
highlighted the need to eliminate subsidies that contribute to overfishing. Because such subsidies also
distort trade by reducing harvesting costs and placing downward pressure on world seafood prices, the
five-nation initiative hopes that the WTO could play a constructive role in encouraging governments to
reduce or eliminate these subsidies.
Haysom 97 (Ian, The Gazette, Southam News Haysom is a staff writer for the Southam news: The Gazette 6-14)
The oceans, once a vast reservoir of limitless food and jobs, have been plundered continually over the past
four decades, said Berrill.
And now fishing communities in Indonesia, China, Africa, Europe and North America are dying as fish
stocks collapse.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Association says that two-thirds of the world's fish stocks are
either in serious decline, fished to capacity or "over-exploited."
It estimates that worldwide a million boats fish the seas and that $ 90 billion U.S. is spent to catch $ 70
billion worth of food. The difference is made up by loans and subsidies, an economic situation it says is
unrealistic and unsustainable.
"There is a global need for food and fish protein. Recreational fishing is wasteful. In terms of an efficient use
of the ocean, it's terrible. Sure, you can allow it in places where fish are plentiful, but not where fish stocks
are threatened."
This includes a radical overhaul of fisheries management, fleet reductions, elimination of subsidies, a
lowering of quotas and the possibility of temporary fishery shutdowns.
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WWF 8
(World Wildlife Fund, Accessed 7/31/08
http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/fishing/item8632.html) RKB
Even as fish stocks dwindle, some of the world’s richest nations are paying billions of dollars to keep
flagging fishing industries afloat through fishing subsidies. The result: a growing series of economic, social,
and environmental crises around the world.
Estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year, these subsidies are equivalent to roughly 20% to 25% of the
value of the landed fish catch worldwide. This scale of subsidization is a huge incentive to expand fishing
fleets and overfish.
Today’s global fishing fleet is estimated to be up to two and a half times the capacity needed to sustainably
fish the oceans. Even as stocks of valuable fish have shrunk, the size of the world’s fishing fleets has
exploded. Fishermen are using bigger and faster boats, with sophisticated devices to locate fish far below the
surface.
Taken all together, larger and more efficient fleets have dramatically raised the world’s fishing capacity, often
leading to excess fishing effort, which puts unacceptable pressure on fish stocks. And with fish more difficult
to find, the average fisherman must work harder to catch less. Government support to the fishing industry
urgently needs to be reduced and reformed.
Despite good intentions, fisheries subsidies must be lifted to solve the overfishing crisis
WWF 8
(World Wildlife Fund, Accessed 7/31/08
http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/fishing/item8632.html) RKB
The ultimate solution to the global fisheries crisis is better management of national and international
fisheries, using measures such as setting reasonable catch limits and limits on the use of destructive gear. But
better management alone will not solve the problem as long as there are irrational economic incentives to
increase fishing. Some major fisheries remain outside of current management plans, many of which are
inadequate or insufficiently enforced.
At the close of the 20th century, the world’s oceans are rife with illegal and uncontrolled fishing.
Governments can’t be blamed for wanting to encourage investment in a sector that helps provide food
security and that often offers jobs in struggling coastal regions. And some developing countries have a
legitimate need to expand their fishing industry, even as fishing capacity worldwide needs to shrink. Fishery
subsidies can also play an important role in promoting the adoption of environmentally friendly fishing
techniques, such as helping fishermen adapt to new bans on driftnets, or supporting small-scale
environmentally sustainable fishing. In fact, when properly designed, government supports can help reduce
overcapacity.
In short, not all fisheries subsidies are bad But most are far from good. A World Bank study suggests that at
most 5% of all fisheries subsidies have a positive environmental aim. And even subsidies designed to help
fleets shrink – such as ‘vessel buy-back’ or decommissioning programmes – have often failed to achieve their
goals. In several cases, buy-back programmes have actually provided funds that wind up being used for new
technologies that increase overall capacity. In other cases, capacity reductions have been achieved in one
nation’s waters by simply exporting capacity to foreign fishing grounds – a phenomenon that has played a
significant role in the ‘serial depletion’ of commercial fisheries.
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Stewart 8(Robert R., Dept of Oceanography at Texas A&M, Stewart is a professor at Texas A&M
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/policy-fisheries.htm 4-7)
Government subsidies have lead to overcapacity in all important fishing areas. At its core, the crisis in
over fishing stems from the fact that the world now has a substantial overabundance of fishing
capacity. Industrialized fleets aided by sonar, sophisticated satellite technology and highly efficient
gear are now capable of fishing out vast areas of the ocean in very short order. The predictable results
of overcapitalized fleets have been over fishing and depletion of stocks as well as substantial economic
losses. FAO estimates that to rehabilitate fisheries to 1970 abundance levels and catch rates would require the
removal of 23% of the existing gross weight tonnage of the world's fleet.
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Now is the time to end overfishing to recover our depleted fish stocks
Somma 3 (Angela Natural Resource Specialist, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service
“THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES AND ECONOMIC COSTS OF DEPLETING THE WORLD'S
OCEANS” Economic Perspectives – January, <http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0103/ijee/somma.htm)
Persistent overfishing can lead to the elimination of the largest and oldest individuals from a population or
stock. Overfished populations are characterized by less-productive fish that eventually lead to a decline
in stocks. In the United States, recent average yields of all U.S. fisheries resources are roughly 60 percent of
the best estimate of long-term potential yield from these resources.
Alternatively, if overfishing is curtailed and fishery resources sustainably managed, fisheries become
more productive, the cost per fish harvested declines, and harvests rise substantially. For example, in
1999 the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) established a 10-year
rebuilding program for overfished North Atlantic swordfish. Catch reductions were integral to stock
recovery. Four years into the rebuilding program, the stock size is estimated to be at 94 percent of its
healthy level. With the program well on track, ICCAT was able to increase catch levels at its 2002
meeting. …
In addition to the numerous environmental costs, overfishing has significant economic costs as well. If
fishery resources were sustainably managed, total harvests could rise an additional 10 million metric
tons, adding $16 billion to worldwide gross revenues annually.3 In the United States, rebuilding currently
overfished stocks and preventing overfishing in other fisheries could generate an additional $2.9 billion in
revenue each year. 4 Current revenues are $3.0-3.5 billion. Thus, sustainably managing marine fisheries in
the United States' 200-mile exclusive economic zone (the source of most of the U.S. catch) could nearly
double revenues in this sector of the economy. …
The International Herald Tribune 8 (“Where have all the fishes gone?” January 22, Pg. 6)
From time to time, international bodies try to do something to slow overfishing. The United Nations banned
huge drift nets in the 1990s, and recently asked its members to halt bottom trawling, a particularly ruthless form of industrial fishing, on
the high seas. Last fall, the European Union banned fishing for blue fin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The institution with the most potential leverage is the World Trade Organization.
Most of the world's fishing fleets receive
heavy government subsidies for boat building, equipment and fuel, America's fleet less so than others. Without
these subsidies, which amount to about $35 billion annually, fleets would shrink and many destructive practices
would become uneconomic. The WTO has never had a reputation for environmental zeal. But knowing that healthy fisheries are
important to world trade, the group has begun negotiating new trade rules aimed at reducing subsidies. It produced a promising draft in
late November, but there is no fixed schedule for a final agreement.
The world needs such an agreement, and soon. Many species may soon be so depleted that they will no
longer be able to reproduce themselves. As 125 respected scientists warned in a letter to the WTO last year, the world is at a
crossroads. One road leads to tremendously diminished marine life. The other leads to oceans again
teeming with abundance. The WTO can help choose the right one.
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Anyanova 8 – Ekaterina, Lecturer in the law of the sea, I. Kant State University of Russia Ph.D
candidate, Hamburg University, Germany
[Rescuing the Inexhaustible…(The Issue of Fisheries Subsidies in the International Trade policy)∗,
http://www.jiclt.com/index.php/JICLT/article/viewFile/68/54]
The freedom of fishing on the high seas (at least until the 20th century) and high prices for tuna, billfish,
salmon and squid promoted high competition between states and, as a consequence, development of
modernized vessels and more effective fishing methods. Governments, under these conditions of high
competition, increased their fleets’ capacity as much as possible, providing partial subsidies to their fishing
industries. This led to what we have now: fishing fleets that are “overbuilt” (Warren, 1994 p. 2). In other
words, the amount of input money or capital oversteps the oceans’ productive capacity. First, too
many fishing fleets are catching too few fish (overcapitalization). Second, the new, more effective
ways of fishing, like largescale drift nets or advanced gear types and new technologies such as GPS, have
drastically increased the fleets’ capacity. Natural checks on overfishing, such as the “self-renewal”
of fish stocks, no longer help since fish no longer have time to reproduce their numbers (Peel, 1995
p. 1). Fisheries resources are finite—that’s why proper management and certain restrictions upon catches
are unavoidable if fish stocks are to be preserved at any level (Johnston, 1987 p. 3).
More evidence…
Harrison, Salt, and Reid 6 Brian Harrison Walker, David Salt, Walter V. Reid “Resilience Thinking:
Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World” Island Press, 2006 Google Books Page 36
Besides being inherently unpredictable, complex adaptive systems can also have more than one "stable
state."' A change in a system can move it over a threshold into a different "stability regime," sometimes
called an "alternate stable state"(Scheffer et al. 2001). A social-ecological system based on a wild fishery,
for example, can cross a threshold and experience a catastrophic collapse in fish numbers. The fishing
then stops but the fish population does not recover. The system has moved to a different stable state, a
state in which the commercial levels of the fish population are absent. (The notion of multi-stable states
and thresholds are discussed in greater detail in chapter 3.)
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Even if fish are naturally resilient, fishers don’t give them the time to replenish themselves
Oceana 7 (June 1,
http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/dirty_fishing/cut_the_bait/2007_Subs_out
reach_kit/Impacts_on_US_Fishermen_FINAL_01.doc)
The impact of overfishing is reflected in the decline in U.S. landings of pelagic species such as tunas,
swordfish, oceanic sharks and dolphinfish, which decreased dramatically from 186,000 MT in 1980
(worth $247 million) to 47,000 MT in 1985 (worth $90 million). These landings were at an all-time low of
25,000 MT in 2005 (worth $108 million). Fishing subsidies have been linked to the promotion of illegal,
unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing. In the past two years, Oceana’s research vessel, the Ranger,
has caught numerous boats deploying illegal driftnet gear in the Mediterranean Sea. Many of these boats
were the recipients of subsidies from the European Union - totaling over 200 million Euros ($240 million) -
to convert to a more selective, legal gear. This case, which is now with the European Anti-Fraud Office and
the Italian authorities, is just one example of the misuse of subsidies in the European Union.
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road to extinction. It is much less well known, but equally important, that enormous numbers of
these species are confined to a few "hotspots" of biodiversity, far beyond the norm for the average
region of comparable size. These hotspots are the key to the future of life on this planet. To understand why, we
must first examine the degree of risk to which earth's biodiversity is exposed today.
Clausen 8 (August, Rebecca, Doctoral student studying Environmental Sociology at the University of Oregon The Oceanic Crisis,
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystems, EBSCOHost)
At the start of the twenty-first century marine scientists focused on the rapid depletion of marine fish, revealing that
75 percent of major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. It is estimated “that the global ocean has
lost more than 90% of large predatory fishes.” The depletion of ocean fish stock due to overfishing has disrupted
metabolic relations within the oceanic ecosystem at multiple trophic and spatial scales.2 Despite warnings of
impending collapse of fish stock, the oceanic crisis has only worsened. The severity is made evident in a recent
effort to map the scale of human impact on the world ocean. A team of scientists analyzed seventeen types of
anthropogenic drivers of ecological change (e.g., organic pollution from agricultural runoff, overfishing, carbon
dioxide emissions, etc.) for marine ecosystems. The findings are clear: No area of the world ocean “is unaffected by
human influence,” and over 40 percent of marine ecosystems are heavily affected by multiple factors. Polar seas are
on the verge of significant change. Coral reefs and continental shelves have suffered severe deterioration.
Additionally, the world ocean is a crucial factor in the carbon cycle, absorbing approximately a third to a half of the
carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The increase in the portion of carbon dioxide has led to an increase in
ocean temperature and a slow drop in the pH of surface waters—making them more acidic—disrupting shell-
forming plankton and reef-building species. Furthermore, invasive species have negatively affected 84 percent of the
world’s coastal waters—decreasing biodiversity and further undermining already stressed fisheries.
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Subsidies have led to fishermen catching organisms much lower on the foodchain. Also lower
organisms are caught and killed in the bycatch. Unless subsidies are removed, krill and
zooplankton will soon be harvested.
Myers and Kent 1 Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent, International Institute for Sustainable Development,
“Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy” Google Books Page 154-
5. 2001
In addition, subsidies encourage gross wastage. Fishermen make enough profit on their subsidized
operations, albeit at the cost of progressively depleted fisheries, that they throw away many fish that
could be marketed but do not command best prices. (For details on this bycatch, see Box 7.1.) Because
the most favored species have often been exploited to commercial extinction, many fishermen are now
content to catch "trash" fish for sale, with several such species now fetching $3 or more per kilogram. But
again, trash fishing means that the structure of marine food webs, that is, the proportion of organisms
at each trophic level, is shifting. To cite a leading analyst, Elliott None, "We've eliminated the marine
equivalent of lions and bears, and we are moving towards taking rats, cockroaches and dandelions." If
current trends continue, fishermen could eventually find themselves obliged to catch jellyfish, krill, and
even zooplankton.
Every fourth creature taken from the sea is unwanted. Worldwide, these discards total at least 27 million
tonnes per year, equivalent to one-third or even one-half of fish landings. Discards, or bycatch, could he as
much as half of the entire catch by weight, but nobody really knows because they do not have to be
recorded and it is in the fishermen's interests to keep quiet about them. In fact, if we were to include all sea
urchins, sponges, and other marine life hauled up with commercial fish and then discarded, the
amount would readily be several times greater.' Discards of king crab in the Bering Sea in 1990 amounted
to 16 million individuals, more than five times the number landed and weighing 340,000 tonnes. Off the
northern coast of Norway in the 1986-1987 season, as many as 80 million cod, weighing almost 100,000
tonnes, were discarded because they were too small. In Europe's North Sea, about half of the haddock and
whiting caught for human consumption each year is discarded, usually because the fish are too small or of
inferior quality.; In some U.S. shrimp fisheries, 10 tonnes or even IS tonnes of fish arc dumped for every
1 tonne of shrimp landed, making up 175,000 tonnes per year; in the Gulf of Mexico during the past twenty
years, this bycatch has contributed to an 85 percent decline in populations of seafloor species such as
snapper and grouper. Most of the bycatch is thrown back either dead or in such a weakened state
that it forms easy prey for predators.
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Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
When fish cross boundaries, pathologies multiply. There is no guarantee that fish leaving one nation's
waters will ever return, so the impetus is to catch as much as possible before the fish migrate.
Fishermen play one area off against the other. The jurisdiction with the weakest regulations becomes
the most popular -- and the anarchic "high seas" beats them all. Some fishermen fill their quota at
home, then travel to foreign waters and fish again.
There is a fisheries crisis indeed. The pathologies involve ecology, ethics, economics, and politics. Dozens
of fisheries are depleted, many have collapsed. Subsidies, price supports, dislocated fishermen, and
sportsfishing restictions all take their toll. The fisheries crisis caused nearly thirty international
conflicts in 1994 alone.
Avoiding the problems and preventing the tragedy of the commons requires institutional reform. Currently,
institutions usually reward fishermen for lobbying to increase subsidies and quotas, for increasing fleet
capacity, for entering a fishery, and for maximizing landings in the short term.
But there is reason for cautious hope. The astronomical costs of maintaining fisheries commons present
political entrepreneurs opportunities to innovate. Market forces and property rights have proven effective
tools for sensitive and sensible resource management. Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), as a sort of
private-property fishing rights, are finding success in New Zealand and some Alaskan fisheries.
United States waters are dangerously overfished – commercial species are on the brink of
collapse
Festa, Regas, and Boomhower 8 (DAVID, Dir of Science and Tech; DIANE, Mang Dir of Science and Tech
; JUDSON, Fellow of Environmental Defense; “Sharing the Catch,Conserving the Fish” Science and Technology,
http://www.issues.org/24.2/festa.html)
Two major blue ribbon commissions, the U.S. Gommission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Gommission, concluded that the
United States faces an ocean crisis. And although climate change is a serious threat to future ocean
productivity, overfishing bas had a bigger impact. The United Nations-mandated Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, the most thorough look at Earth's ecosystems ever, concluded that overfishing is "having
the most widespread and the dominant direct impact on food provisioning services, which will affect
future generations."
Ovetz 5 [Roberts, PhD Sea Turtles Restoration Project, “Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy”]
Subsidies Obscure the True Costs of Longlining. Globally, governments are estimated to subsidize
fishing at a rate of 20-25 cents for every dollar earned by fishermen. Members of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) plus China account for approximately 75 percent of the $14-$20 billion7 in subsidies that are doled out each year.
This estimate may be extremely low, as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found in 1993 that such subsidies may amount to as much as $50
billion.8 The European Union and its member states provide an estimated $1.5 billion in annual subsidies, Japan close to $3 billion, and the United States
an estimated $2.5 billion per year is
$868.43 million, $150 million of which consists of tax rebates on marine diesel fuel. 9 In all,
pumped into the multinational North Atlantic fleets alone. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
worldwide fishing revenue amounted to only $70 billion while total operating costs totaled $85 billion.
As we will see, a significant proportion of the U.S. longline fleet has been unprofitable in recent years. An even
larger portion would have been unprofitable without the government subsidies that cushion potential
losses. Such losses do not include additional significant direct and external costs to the ocean ecosystem
and coastal communities that rely upon it.
Ovetz 5 [Roberts, PhD Sea Turtles Restoration Project, “Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy”]
Longlining is also a major contributor of climate warming carbon dioxide gases. The fisheries in this
study consumed a staggering 1 billion liters of diesel fuel, each liter of fuel producing 2.66 kilograms of
CO2. The very small island nations that rely on meager royalties from the foreign longline catch in their EEZ
are caught in a paradox. Threatened by rising sea levels from global climate change, they rely heavily on
royalties from an industry that is a significant contributor of CO2 responsible for creating climate
change.
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Overfishing has left large fish are in critical condition. The destruction of these predator
species will bring about disastrous effects for marine ecosystems
Hinman 5, Ken Hinman, National Coalition for Marine Conservation, NCMC Issue Paper “ECOSYSTEM
PRINCIPLES, OVERFISHING AND BYCATCH IN MARINE FISHERIES” 06/23/2005
<http://www.savethefish.org/PDF_files/ecosystem_principles.pdf>
The ocean’s giant fishes are among the most threatened animals in the sea. Virtually all species of large
pelagic fish in the Atlantic Ocean are overfished or approaching that condition. In September of last
year, the National Marine Fisheries Service released a Report to Congress on the Status of U.S. Fisheries. Of
the 86 species designated as “overfished,” 26 are Atlantic large pelagics: bluefin tuna, swordfish, blue
marlin, white marlin, and 22 species of large coastal sharks. Bigeye tuna, following a November 1997
stock assessment, will be added to the list later this year. The billfishes, sharks and tunas are keystone
predators in the sea. They help maintain a healthy balance in marine ecosystems by contributing to
stability, structure and predictability. By removing so many of these predators, we are weakening an
entire tier at the top of the food chain, with unpredictable but certainly unhappy ecological
consequences, far beyond the social, economic and moral costs of depleted fisheries. Never before has
such a broad range of large ocean pelagics been exploited so heavily, or have their numbers been so low.
What effect could widespread depletion of these big predators have on the ocean ecosystem? On other
species of fish? We’ve entered uncharted waters. Overexploitation of large predators could conceivably have
a greater, more enduring impact on the stability of an ecosystem than removing species farther down the
chain, according to the late Canadian fisheries biologist Peter Larkin. Predators are generally longer-lived
than their prey, and are thus slower to respond to changes in their environment, or to fill niches left by
the disappearance of other predators. (Larkin 1979) In addition, says Larkin, because fisheries for
predators usually harvest a range of predators - and that’s certainly true in the opportunistic and nonselective
longline fisheries for tunas and swordfish - increased exploitation means the total amount of predation in the
ecosystem is reduced. The resultant increase in prey species could dramatically alter the makeup of
their ecological tier, with some species thriving at the expense of others, or trigger an environmental
backlash of parasites, disease and depletion of forage species. These changes could in turn interfere
with our efforts to rebuild predator populations. Pauley et al recently noted a global trend toward
fishing down marine food webs, to lower and lower trophic levels as populations at higher tropic levels
are overexploited. He postulates that this trend, if it is allowed to continue, could lead to widespread
fisheries collapses. (Pauley 1998)
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Somma 3 (Angela, Natural Resource Specialist, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service “THE
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES AND ECONOMIC COSTS OF DEPLETING THE WORLD'S OCEANS” Economic Perspectives –
January <http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0103/ijee/somma.htm>
Overfishing can have broader adverse effects on the ecosystem as well. As noted above, in the 1990s total
world catch reached a plateau. In some cases, this plateau in production was maintained by changes in
species composition and by "fishing down the food chain." Top predatory species tend to be fished for first.
Once depleted, fishing moves down the food chain and can simplify the marine ecosystem. This, along with
environmental changes to important habitat areas, can affect future fish production levels. Overfishing can
cause changes in marine food webs, adversely affecting other species. For example, the decline of Steller
sea lions in Alaska has been attributed in part to overfishing of the Stellers' main food sources: pollock,
cod, and mackerel. Overfishing also has the potential to indirectly change ecosystems such as coral reef
ecosystems. When plant-eating fish are removed from coral reef ecosystems, grazing is reduced,
allowing the algae that coexist with corals to flourish and potentially take over, especially if the water
contains high levels of nitrogen. Because they often reduce light that enters the water, these algae
contribute to the loss of corals, which depend upon light.
Marine environments around the United States are now dead zones. Overfishing kills the
top predators unbalancing the food chain leading to a great oceanic collapse
Guterl 3; With Kristin Kovner and Emily Flynn, “Troubled Seas” Newsweek, July 14 Fred)
On the one hand, that means the oceans are interrelated--and thus that the removal of predators can have
far-reaching effects. But it reveals nothing about the lower layers of the food chain. Scientists have only
piecemeal examples of what happens when marine eco-systems become unbalanced. The collapse of the cod
fisheries in the North Atlantic has been a boon to shrimp and sea urchins, the cod's prey. It's given
urchins free rein to devour the kelp forests, turning vast stretches of the sea floor into "urchin
barrens." In a study of coastal ecosystems two years ago, Jackson found overfishing of predators, rather
than pollution and global warming, to be the probable cause of oceanic "dead zones"--areas of complete
ecosystem collapse, where microbes fill the void left by fish and invertebrates.
Dead zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and the Baltic and Adriatic seas, and
they're spreading to the open oceans. Coral reefs in the Caribbean have been hurt by overfishing of algae-
eating fish, such as parrot fish. Sea urchins took up the slack for years, but when a disease outbreak wiped
them out the corals grew fuzzy and green with algae, and died.
Since so little is known about marine ecosystems, scientists are reluctant to speculate where all this might
lead. It doesn't take much imagination, though, to extrapolate from what we do know. If overfishing
continues for the big predators, it's possible that many of them may fall below a critical mass and lose
the ability to reproduce, sending populations into a downward spiral. That would throw millions of
people who depend on the fishing industry out of work. If the cod and herring fisheries are any guide, the
damage would take decades to reverse. It would be a global crisis; treaties would be signed; --the United
Nations would be granted the power to enforce fishing bans--and we'd all wait out the decades hoping the
fish would return. But they might not, ever. The removal of so many big fish could have a ripple effect,
killing off invertebrate and microbial life forms we haven't even heard of yet, but which serve as
essential links in the food web. How long would it take--50 years? 100?--to find that cod, tuna, halibut,
mackerel, marlin and other big fish were creatures only of farms or museums?
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The natural consequence is rising environmental pressure -- according to the biannual report of the
U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization, about two-thirds of world marine fishery stocks are either
fully exploited or fished so heavily as to cause permanent damage. The heavy fishing of recent
decades can: (1) create extremely severe threats to high-value single species such as the Caspian
sturgeon (source of beluga and sevruga caviar), or the slow-growing deep-sea Patagonian toothfish; (2)
bring about the long-term collapse of historic fishing grounds for pollock, cod, sardines, and
similar staples; and (3) lead to indirect and unexpected effects on other parts of ocean systems --
i.e. loss of seabirds and mammals that feed on fish, or explosions in reef-eating sea urchins once
controlled by fish. Sometimes quotas and limits help fish recover; but not always -- despite a decade of
strict limits, Atlantic cod fisheries have yet to recover.
EPA 7
[Nov., Threats to Aquatic Biodiversity, http://www.epa.gov/bioiweb1/aquatic/threats.html]
Human activities are causing species to disappear at an alarming rate. It has been estimated that between 1975 and
2015, species extinction will occur at a rate of 1 to 11 percent per decade. Aquatic species are at a higher risk of extinction
than mammals and birds. Losses of this magnitude impact the entire ecosystem, depriving valuable
resources used to provide food, medicines, and industrial materials to human beings. While freshwater and marine
ecosystems face similar threats, there are some differences regarding the severity of each threat. Runoff from agricultural and urban areas, the invasion of
exotic species, and the creation of dams and water diversion have been identified as the greatest challenges to freshwater environments (Allan and Flecker
1993; Scientific American 1997). Overfishing
is the greatest threat to marine environments, thus the need for
sustainable fisheries has been identified by the Environmental Defense Fund as the key priority in
preserving marine biodiversity.
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Nuttall 6 – Nick, Head of Media Services, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi, Kenya
[Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity, http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?storyID=800#]
Despite its crucial importance for the survival of humanity, marine biodiversity is in ever-greater
danger, with the depletion of fisheries among biggest concerns. Fishing is central to the livelihood
and food security of 200 million people, especially in the developing world, while one of five people on this planet
depends on fish as the primary source of protein. According to UN agencies, aquaculture - the farming and stocking of aquatic
organisms including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants - is growing more rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors. But amid facts
and figures about aquaculture's soaring worldwide production rates, other, more sobering, statistics reveal that global
main marine fish
stocks are in jeopardy, increasingly pressured by overfishing and environmental degradation. “Overfishing
cannot continue,” warned Nitin Desai, Secretary General of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable
Development, which took place in Johannesburg. “The depletion of fisheries poses a major threat to the food
supply of millions of people.” The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation calls for the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which
many experts believe may hold the key to conserving and boosting fish stocks. Yet, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) World
Conservation Monitoring Centre, in Cambridge, UK, less than one per cent of the world’s oceans and seas are currently in MPAs. The
magnitude
of the problem of overfishing is often overlooked, given the competing claims of deforestation,
desertification, energy resource exploitation and other biodiversity depletion dilemmas. The rapid growth
in demand for fish and fish products is leading to fish prices increasing faster than prices of meat. As a result, fisheries investments have become more
attractive to both entrepreneurs and governments, much to the detriment of small-scale fishing and fishing communities all over the world. In the last
decade, in the north Atlantic region, commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock and flounder have fallen
by as much as 95%, prompting calls for urgent measures. Some are even recommending zero catches to allow for
regeneration of stocks, much to the ire of the fishing industry. According to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 70% of the
world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. The dramatic increase of destructive
fishing techniques worldwide destroys marine mammals and entire ecosystems. FAO reports that illegal,
unreported and unregulated fishing worldwide appears to be increasing as fishermen seek to avoid stricter rules in many places in response to shrinking
catches and declining fish stocks. Few, if any, developing countries and only a limited number of developed ones are on track to put into effect by this year
the International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Unreported and Unregulated Fishing. Despite that fact that each region has its Regional Sea
Conventions, and some 108 governments and the European Commission have adopted the UNEP Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the
Marine Environment from Land based Activities, oceans are cleared at twice the rate of forests.
Overfishing destroys ecosystems – predatory species, marine food webs, and competing
species prove
Wilson 9 Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University “The Diversity of Life” 1999 Google Books Page 176
To the forces that increase biodiversity, add predators. In a celebrated experiment on the seacoast of
Washington state, Robert Paine discovered that carnivores, far from destroying their prey species, can
protect them from extinction and thereby salvage diversity. The starfish Pisaster ochraceus is a keystone
predator of mollusks living in rock-bound tidal waters, including mussels, limpets, and chitons. It also attacks
barnacles, which look like mollusks but are actually shellencased crustaceans that remain rooted to one spot.
Where the Pisaster starfish occurred in Paine's study area, fifteen species of the mollusk and barnacle species
coexisted. When Paine removed the starfish by hand, the number of species declined to eight. What occurred
was unexpected but in hindsight logical. Free of the depredations of Pisaster, mussels and barnacles
increased to abnormally high densities and crowded out seven of the other species. In other words, the
predator in this case was less dangerous than the competitors. The assembly rule is this: insert a
certain predator, and more species of sedentary animals can invade the community later. Still another
dimension of complexity is added by symbiosis, defined broadly as the intimate association of two or more
species. Biologists recognize three classes of symbiosis. In parasitism, the first, the symbiont is dependent on
the host and harms but does not kill it. Put another way, parasitism is predation in which the predator eats the
prey in units of less than one. Being eaten one small piece at a time and surviving, often well, a host
organism is able to support an entire population of another species. It can also sustain many species
simultaneously. A single unfortunate and unmedicated human being might, theoretically at least, support head
lice (Pediculus 1114M117114S CapitiS), body lice (Pediculus humarius humanus), crab lice (Pthi- rus pubis),
human fleas (Pulex irritans), human bot flies (Dermatobia hominis), and a multitude of roundworms,
tapeworms, flukes, pro- tozoans, fungi, and bacteria, all metabolically adapted for life on the human body.
Each species of organism, especially each kind of larger plant or animal, is host to such a customized fauna
and flora of parasites. The gorilla, for example, has its own crab louse, Pthirus gorillae, which closely
resembles the one on Homo sapiens. A mite has been found that lives entirely on the blood it sucks from the
hind feet of the soldier caste of one kind of South American army ant. Tiny wasps are known whose larvae
parasitize the larvae of still other kinds of wasps that live inside the bodies of the caterpillars of certain
species of moths that feed on certain kinds of plants that live on other plants.
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Earle 4 [Dr. Sylvia. Our oceans, ourselves. October, 2004. Earth and Sky. <http://www.earthsky.org/article/sylvia-
earle-interview> Accessed: July 16, 2008 10:59 PM]
Earle: The ocean is our life–support system. It’s the source of most of the oxygen in the atmosphere. With
every breath we take, we should be grateful that there is an ocean out there. For every drop of water that we consume, we should be grateful that there is an
97% of Earth’s water is in the ocean. What falls on the land and sea as rain, and sleet
ocean out there, because
and snow, ultimately originates, largely, out there in the sea. So, if we want to take care of ourselves, we
need to start by taking care of the ocean. Salazar: You’ve spent a great deal of your life studying the oceans. What are some
of the changes you’ve seen in that time? Earle: In my lifetime, since the time that I was a little girl living along the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico, I personally have witnessed the decline of coral reefs, of sea grass meadows, of the kinds of systems that really lend a good
health to the ocean. I’ve also seen the disappearance of many things that once were common – things such as nassau groupers, pink
conch, and a lot of small creatures that once abounded in near shore waters that are simply gone. These are not signs of good health. In
fact, we’ve seen in 50 years, the loss or serious decline of half the coral reefs around the world. We’ve seen
the loss of 90% of the big fish – they’re simply gone – in 50 years, as a direct consequence of both how many we’re taking, and the
destructive techniques that disrupt the places that fish require to recover. Not just fish, but shrimp and lobster and the whole suite of
organisms that we tend to like to eat. Now, that doesn’t mean that we can’t figure out ways to basically have our fish and eat them too.
But we’re not doing it now. We need to be much more assertive about protecting broad areas of the ocean that fish and other marine life
require, that the ocean itself requires in order to maintain integrity, the health of the systems. Right now, most of the ocean is
up for grabs. It’s being over–fished, it’s being over–polluted, and the consequences are not just a matter of
concern if you care about dolphins and whales and things. But, it should be a fundamental concern to everybody on the
planet, no matter where they live, because the ocean is the cornerstone of what makes this blue planet
function as it does. Anyone who looks over the shoulders of astronauts considers the world from afar, Those
images from space show that this planet is mostly ocean. Without oceans, consider what we would have
instead, a planet much like Mars, where people may someday set up housekeeping, but not six billion of us,
and not anytime soon. Water is fundamentally the cornerstone, the key. But it’s life in the ocean that drives
the way the world works. It generates the oxygen, absorbs carbon dioxide that shapes the chemistry of
the planet itself. Without life in the ocean, Earth would still be a fairly barren place. There was plenty of
life a billion years ago, entirely microbial. It’s only in the last half billion years or so that Earth has become
hospitable to the likes of us, when enough oxygen was generated to make the planet a place that we can
simply enjoy, without special space suits or spacecraft, or habitations that are protected from the outside,
whatever it is. Earth owes its existence as we know it, the congenial, healthy, friendly atmosphere,
because there is an ocean, and it is filled with life.
Novacek & Cleland 1 [Michael J. Novacek American Museum of Natural History, New York and Elsa E.
Cleland, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University. The current biodiversity extinction event:
Scenarios for mitigation and recovery. May 8, 2001. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 May 8; 98(10): 5466–5470.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=33235 Accessed: July 16, 2008 8:49 PM]
The devastating impact of the current biodiversity crisis moves us to consider the possibilities for the
recovery of the biota. Here, there are several options. First, a rebound could occur from a natural
reversal in trends. Such a pattern would, however, require an unacceptably long timescale; recoveries
from mass extinction in the fossil record are measured in millions or tens of millions of years (10).
Second, recovery could result from unacceptably Malthusian compensation—namely, marked
reduction in the world population of human consumers. Third, some degree of recovery could result from
a policy that protects key habitats even with minimal protection of ecosystems already altered or encroached
on by human activity (i.e., protecting “hotspots”).
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The Ocean Foundation 05 [The Ocean Foundation. We are the Ocean Planet. 2005.
<http://www.oceanfdn.org/index.php?tg=articles&topics=32> Accessed: July 16, 2008 11:27 PM]
The health of the ocean is essential to human survival. The ocean is a major source of food, medicine,
and jobs. Fish from the ocean currently are the primary source of protein for one in six people on
earth. And, nearly a million people in the US have jobs that directly depend on the ocean and that add
$12 billion to our GDP. However, while the ocean supports the greatest diversity of life and ecosystems on
our planet, it is largely unexplored.
The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate. In fact it is the ocean that makes our planet
habitable. Without the ocean as a heat sink, our days would be unbearably hot, and our nights would
be freezing cold. The ocean naturally recycles our water and our air, constantly cleaning it for us to use
over and again 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In fact, 86% of the water we drink comes from the
ocean; and the ocean produces more oxygen than the rainforests. It even absorbs 48% of the carbon
that we humans put into the atmosphere. The ocean is the best protection we could hope for. We must
be good stewards of this part of our living world.
The overarching threat to the ocean is of course climate change. We cannot stop climate change, but we can
reduce the amount by which the planet warms. Aside from the threat of climate change, the biggest direct
threat to the ocean is overexploitation of its resources. The public has not yet caught up with these realities
and 87% view pollution, and oil spills in particular, as the most challenging threats to the ocean.
The ocean touches everyone and everything. It is essential to life and human survival. We all have a
strong, personal connection to the ocean (whether we realize it or not). Protecting the ocean protects
our health, our economy, and our children’s future.
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Norse 93 Chief Scientist at the Center for Marine Conservation, 1993 Ed. Global Marine Biological Diversity, p. xvii-xix Elliott
As the 20th century ends, the Cold War that drained so much of the world’s resources is finally over. Although we are by no means free of political strife
and there is deepening concern about nuclear proliferation, thespecter of nuclear holocaust enveloping our entire planet has
all but vanished. For this, all humankind can celebrate. Nonetheless, the joy of celebration dims as we realize that the Cold War diverted attention
from global threats even more grave than nuclear war. In trying to fulfill our needs, as individuals and nations, we have been ruining our home. The
Earth’s living resources are showing unmistakable signs of breaking down: Biological diversity is
decreasing sharply and our planetary metabolism is being pushed ever further out of equilibrium. How
to accommodate our material needs and growing desires while not degrading the life-support systems of a world that was not designed to accommodate
billions of us is the greatest challenge facing human species….This document differs from the Global Biodiversity Strategy in that it contains more
background information (Chapters 1 through 8) and less specific prescription (Chapter 9) because the need for conserving life in the sea and the principles
for doing so are less appreciated than for the land; marine conservation lags terrestrial conservation by roughly two decades. Even a book-length document,
however, cannot delve very deeply into a topic as marine biodiversity. Furthermore, although CMC has made every effort to make this a truly global
Strategy, a disproportionate amount of information comes from the USA. Given a few more years, this document undoubtedly would be better…but the
health of the marine environment would be even worse, and our options for curing the ills would be even fewer. The Strategy, therefore, is a first attempt to
lay out basic principles and recommendations for people whose decisions affect the health of the seas. Of course, understanding is of little value unless it is
a prelude to action. As the UN Conference on Environment and Development showed, there is an urgent need for decision makers worldwide to build
networks to put these principles into action. It is now clear that the
threat to the biological integrity of our planet is an
unequal emergency: We have the whole world in our hands. We can destroy it or coexist in it. If this document and others like it inspire our
leaders to protect, study, and sustainable use biological diversity, people will continue to benefit from the products and services of life on Earth. There is an
encouraging precedent for success: Our species managed to end the Cold War before we destroyed ourselves. Now we must work together to
end the destruction of our planet, lest we follow a different path to the same fate.
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• The key interactions among species within an ecosystem are essential to maintain if ecosystem services
are to be delivered. Ecosystems are highly interactive and strongly linked. Removing or damaging some
species can dramatically affect others and disrupt the ability of the system to provide desired services.
However, not all interactions are equally important. The consequences of some species’ interactions strongly
influence the overall behavior of ecosystems. Small changes to these key interactions can produce large
ecosystem responses. For example, the absence of large-bodied predators at the apex of marine food
webs can result in large-scale changes in the relative abundances of other species. Ecosystem-based
management therefore entails identifying and focusing on the role of key interactions, rather than on all
possible interactions.
• The dynamic and complex nature of ecosystems requires a long-term focus and the understanding that
abrupt, unanticipated changes are possible. The abundances of species are inherently difficult to predict,
especially over longer time periods, in part because they may change abruptly and with little warning. For
example, decadal-scale changes (such as the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation)
significantly alter ecosystem dynamics and population sizes. Such long-term changes tend to be less
predictable because they are associated with large-scale environmental changes. Management must thus
anticipate and be able to adjust to these changes.
• Ecosystems can recover from many kinds of disturbance, but are not infinitely resilient. There is often a
threshold beyond which an altered ecosystem may not return to its previous state. The tipping point for
these irreversible changes may be impossible to predict. Thus, increased levels of precaution are
prudent as ecosystems are pushed further from pre-existing states. Features that enhance the ability of an
ecosystem to resist or recover from disturbance include the full natural complement of species, genetic
diversity within species, multiple representative stands (copies) of each habitat type and lack of degrading
stress from other sources.
• Ecosystem services are nearly always undervalued. Although some goods (fish and shellfish) have
significant economic value, most other essential services are neither appreciated nor commonly assigned
economic worth. Examples of services that are at risk because they are undervalued include protection
of shorelines from erosion, nutrient recycling, control of disease and pests, climate regulation, cultural
heritage and spiritual benefits. Current economic systems attach no dollar values to these services; they are
typically not considered in policy decisions and many are at risk.
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Royal Society 7, Veronica B. Garcıa, Luis O. Lucifora and Ransom A. Myers, Department of Biology, Dalhousie
University. 5 October 2007 <http://www.fmap.ca/ramweb/papers-total/Proc_R_Soc_B_in_press.pdf>
Regardless of the model used, our results indicate that the life-history traits and the extinction risk of
chondrichthyans are highly associated with habitat. Deep-water chondrichthyans have longer turnover
times (i.e. slower growth, later age at maturity and higher longevity) and, as a consequence, higher
extinction risk than oceanic and continental shelf chondrichthyans. Also, chondrichthyanstend to have a
higher extinction risk if they are matrotrophically viviparous (i.e. embryos are nourished by their mothers
during development) and, less importantly, have large body size. As extinction risk, as well as age at
maturity, was highly correlated with phylogeny the loss of species will be accompanied with a loss of
phylogenetic diversity. Extinction risk was significantly affected by reproductive mode; it was lowest for oviparity, increased
with lecithotrophic viviparity and was highest in adelphophagic, oophagic, histotrophic and placental viviparity. This sequence implies
that non-matrotrophic modes have the lowest extinction risk. Matrotrophy increases the energetic cost of reproduction to females
andmakes them less able to reproduce more often or have larger litters than non-matrotrophic modes (Wourms & Lombardi 1992). Thus,
an increased reproductive output by non-matrotrophic females results in a lower extinction risk at the population level. Our estimate
indicates that an average fishing mortality approximately 58 and 38% of that applied to continental
shelf and oceanic species, respectively, is sufficient to drive deep-sea chondrichthyans to extinction.
Remarkably, the pattern is apparent without incorporating the putatively less productive deep-water chondrichthyans in the analysis (i.e.
sleeper sharks Somniosus spp., bramble sharks Echinorhinus spp., sixgill shark Hexanchus griseus, bigeye sand tiger shark Odontaspis
noronhai, goblin shark Mitsukurina owstoni, false catshark Pseudotriakis microdon, some longnose skates Dipturus spp. and giant
stingaree Plesiobatis daviesi ) for which no data on age at maturity are available (Kyne et al. 2006). We acknowledge that life-history
variation among species within the same major marine habitat may exist, as documented for other taxa. Mesopelagic, bathypelagic and
seamount-associated fishes differ in their growth, maturity and longevity (Childress et al. 1980) and a similar situation may occur
between benthic and pelagic continental shelf fishes. Future information on chondrichthyan life history will make possible to group
species in a more fine-scale habitat categorization representing the wide range of chondrichthyan ecological variation (Compagno 1990).
The evidence linking body size to extinction risk in cartilaginous fishes is contradictory. Smith et al. (1998) estimated the rebound
potential (a measure of resilience to exploitation) of 28 shallow-water Pacific sharks. They found that there was a continuum of
resilience with age at maturity and body size, with the earliest-maturing and smallest species being more resilient
than late-maturing and larger ones. Dulvy et al. (2000) studied changes in species abundance and species composition of
skate communities of the Northeast Atlantic after prolonged exploitation and found that large species tended to decrease in abundance
and to be replaced by smaller species. Finally, Dulvy & Reynolds (2002) showed that among body size, latitudinal and depth range, only
body size predicted extinction risk in skates. By contrast, Corte´s (2002) found no correlation between the intrinsic rate of increase and
body size for 38 species of shallow-water sharks. Frisk et al. (2001) calculated the intrinsic rate of increase for 34 species of shallow-
water sharks and skates, and found that body size was only loosely correlated to it (r 2Z0.17). These contrasting results regarding
therelationship between body size and extinction risk are probably due to the correlation between body size and many other, more
meaningful, life-history traits, such as age at maturity, litter size or longevity (Blueweiss et al. 1978; Purvis et al. 2000). Our results
suggest that body size has a slight effect on extinction risk (probably due to a correlation with age at maturity) that may become apparent
at the extremes of the body size range. Our analysis identified the clades containing the order Lamniformes (mackerel sharks) and
Squaliformes (dogfishes) as the most extinction-prone groups. Mackerel sharks comprise some of the largest
chondrichthyans and some of the species most seriously threatened with extinction, such as the sand tiger shark
Carcharias taurus, the basking shark Cetorhinus maximus, the porbeagle Lamna nasus and the white shark Carcharodon carcharias
(Compagno et al. 2005). Dogfishes are generally small species (excluding sleeper sharks Somniosus spp.) that inhabit almost exclusively
deep-sea ecosystems, the habitat associated with the highest extinction risk. Management and conservation measurements are usually set
based on indirect proxies of extinction risk like body size, when information on life-history traits or population trends are unavailable
(Reynolds et al. 2005). Nevertheless, we found vulnerable species at both extremes of the size continuum, from
the big mackerel sharks to the small dogfishes. Focusing conservation efforts only on large species will
leave highly vulnerable species without any protection. Given their high extinction risk, we recommend
that all deep-water chondrichthyans should be given high conservation priority regardless of its size.
Deep-sea fisheries are expanding rapidly and the very low levels of fishing mortality needed to drive
deep-sea chondrichthyans to extinction may have already been reached in some areas (Graham et al.
2001; Devine et al. 2006; Morato et al. 2006). In addition, deep-sea fisheries appear to have already
reached the maximum depths attainable by chondrichthyans, leaving them without any depth refuges
(Priede et al. 2006). Minimizing fishing mortality in deep-water habitats already exploited and
preventing new deep-water ecosystems to be exploited are necessary to avoid the extinction of these
species.
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Pomeroy et al 7 (Robert, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics/CT Sea Grant, University of Connecticut,” Fish wars:
Conflict and collaboration in fisheries management in Southeast Asia”, March,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCD-
4NVK1YP1&_user=56861&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000059542&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=568
61&md5=3a83d3333f2fabb6f84edd1b77663538)
Conflicts and wars related to the rights over the use of land and water have been important human
issues throughout recorded history. Although many of us are probably more aware of wars fought over
religious freedom, political ideologies and social issues, conflicts over fishing rights and resources are
just as common, if less reported. Since the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) were established in the 1970s,
disputes have become more frequent and more violent than ever before. Due to the establishment of EEZs,
access to the world’s oceans has been radically reorganized and the access rights of foreign fishing vessels have been curtailed.
Negotiations, international fisheries agreements (such as those between European and African countries), and recourse to an
international tribunal have sometimes succeeded in resolving conflicts. More often than not, however, foreign boats from territorial
waters and EEZs or migrant fishermen from other locations in the country are expelled by force. Vessels are boarded and crew
imprisoned. Occasionally, weapons are used and people are killed. Fights have broken out, for example,
between Vietnam and Cambodia and between the Philippines and China over access to territorial
waters. Thousands of Indonesian fishers have been incarcerated as a result of illegal fishing in
Australian waters. While sovereignty issues are generally at the root of, they are also the manifestation of
competition for access to fish stocks, in coastal waters as much as on the high seas. In addition, the use of flags
of convenience serves to exacerbate the problem. The country where a boat does not necessarily identify its country of origin, and this
loophole enables fishing companies to flout international fishing and labor conventions with impunity.
Pomeroy et al 7 (Robert, Grant, University of Connecticut, John Parksb, Richard Pollnacc, Tammy Campsond,
Emmanuel Genioe, Cliff Marlessyf, Elizabeth Holleg, Michael Pidoh, Ayut Nissapai, Somsak Boromthanarati, Nguyen Thu Huej ” Fish wars:
Conflict and collaboration in fisheries management in Southeast Asia”, March,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCD4NVK1YP1&_user=56861&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&v
iew=c&_acct=C000059542&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=56861&md5=3a83d3333f2fabb6f84edd1b77663538)
The result of overfishing and multiple sources of fishing pressure in Southeast Asian coastal waters is the reduction or
collapse of important fishery populations, leading to high levels of conflict among different users over
remaining stocks [12]. A complex, negative feedback cycle is created in this situation, whereby rapid population growth paralleled
by fewer economic opportunities and access to land increases the number of people living in the coastal zone dependent on fishery
resources and thus the number of fishers. Increased fishing pressure results in fish population declines and stock
collapses and increased resource competition, both between fishers and scales of fishing operation (e.g., small vs.
commercial). The result is reduced income and food security, increased poverty, and a lower overall
standard of living and national welfare. This in turn drives users to employ more destructive and over efficient fishing
technologies in the ‘‘rush’’ to catch what remains, thereby further depleting fishery populations. These factors lead to further
increased user competition, and thus higher rates and probabilities of human conflict, over remaining
stocks. This destructive cycle leads to a pattern of self-reinforcing ‘‘fish wars’’ with deteriorating social
and environmental consequences. Decreasing fish stocks combined with increasing conflict are driving some people out of
the fishery. This is leading to increasing unemployment in many rural areas. This added level of instability is thought to fuel national
levels of social unrest and political instability, thereby acting as a powerful and destabilizing risk factor to regional and global security
concerns.
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Overfishing – Famine
Seafood is critical to the global food supply and general health
More and more poor people are becoming reliant on fish for sustenance – especially in
developing countries
Tibbets 4 (John, Environmental Health Perspectives 112.5 (April): pA282, “Eating away at a global food source: the state of the oceans, Part 1”)
Seafood has long been a primary source of protein, vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty, acids for the world's poor.
Human populations have risen significantly in many developing countries where fish consumption patterns have
historically been high, says Nikolas Wada, a senior research assistant at the Washington, D.C.-based International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and coauthor of the October 2003 report Outlook far Fish to 2020: Meeting
Global Demand. As populations become increasingly urbanized, per capita fish consumption tends to rise because of
exposure to new markets and dietary patterns. Moreover, Wada says, FAO and IFPRI studies have shown that as
incomes rise, people consume more fish on average. "Since the past several decades have seen tremendous growth
in the urban populations of poor countries with traditional fish diets, along with income growth in these
populations," he says, "it is no surprise that fish consumption has exploded." And in wealthier nations--where heart
disease, obesity, and other "diseases of affluence" run rampant--people are seeking healthier sources of animal
protein. But with this explosion in consumption has come an explosion in environmental health consequences.
Among these are exhaustion of many wild fish stocks, pollution associated with aquaculture, marine habitat
destruction, spread of seafood-borne diseases, exposure to pollutants that bioaccumulate in fish, and growing
disparity between who in the world can afford to eat fish and those who cannot.
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Nickerson 94 (Colin, The Boston Globe Nickerson is a Boston Globe staff writer 12-11)
That grim argument is heard again and again in saltwater communities all across Asia, Africa and other parts
of the Third World, where rapacious overfishing together with the destruction of coral reefs, coastal
mangrove forests and other critical sea-life habitats are wiping out the fish stocks upon which tens of
millions of the earth's poorest people depend for employment and sustenance.
According to the United Nations, the world's 15 million fishermen and 23 million tons of fishing vessels
represent twice as much fishing power - the ability to catch fish - as major stocks can sustain.
Most of the tonnage, of course, belongs to the fishing fleets of rich nations. Most of the fishermen are
poverty-stricken inhabitants of developing countries. Driven by greed, on the one hand, and desperation
on the other, both the too-effective machinery of modern fishing and the too-many fish catchers in the Third
World are busily destroying a precious resource.
In the Philippines, by contrast, there are fishing communities where already 50 percent of the children suffer
from serious malnutrition. In Bangladesh, Ecuador, Tanzania and other countries, levels of poverty and
malnutrition in fishing communities are even worse.
In the rural Third World there are no factory jobs, no fallback, no social safety nets.
"In poor countries, people who depend on fishing are extraordinarily vulnerable," said Thomas
Kocherry, an activist who works with subsistence fishermen in southern India. "For people in this low social
strata, the only alternative to going hungry is going hungrier."
"And the alternative to going hungrier?" Kocherry asked. "Starving. Going dead. This happens."
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Hall 6 (Ronnie, Society for International Development. Hall is a member of Friends of the Earth International
www.sidint.org/development 2006)
In the Philippines, for example, the artisanal fishing industry has already fared extremely poorly in the
face of trade liberalization. The Filipino fishing sector employs 1.6 million artisanal fisherfolk, and
approximately 6 million people depend upon the industry for their livelihoods. Over the past decade,
the Philippines has slashed tariffs from 30 to 5 per cent, and this has paved the way for foreign fishing
fleets increasingly to fish offshore, bringing their catch into Filipino ports. Although the government of
the Philippines attempted to limit the dumping of fish imports with its Fisheries Code of 1998, which banned
the sale of imported fish on wet markets, this law is rarely enforced and smuggling is common. All in all, it is
estimated that 20 per cent of small and medium- scale commercial fishers have lost their livelihoods in
the Philippines. Poverty rates among fishers are higher than among the total population, and the majority of
the poorest provinces are coastal ones (Tan, 2002).
Williams 2 (Frances, Financial Times (London,England) Williams is a writer for the Financial Times 8-23)
At the Bali preparatory meeting in June, poor countries accused the US, European Union and other
industrialised nations of hypocrisy in pushing their free trade agenda while maintaining high trade
barriers to developing country exports of farm goods and textiles.
Developing countries complained that while they have been forced, often under IMF-World Bank
programmes, to slash tariffs and open markets, the industrialised world is paying out more than Dollars
1bn a day to support their farmers and another Dollars 1bn a week in fishing subsidies.
As environmental groups point out, these subsidies not only damage the livelihoods of poor farmers and
fishermen by undercutting prices in domestic and foreign markets. They also damage the environment
by stimulating agricultural overproduction and depleting fish stocks to dangerously low levels.
At the launch of global trade talks in Doha, Qatar, last November, WTO ministers agreed to negotiate big
reductions in agricultural subsidies and "improved disciplines" on fishery subsidies.
But the EU and Japan, the biggest subsidisers, are dragging their heels, and the US, which has led the
campaign for slashing farm supports, has angered trading partners with a new law extending some
Dollars 170bn in subsidies to US farmers over 10 years.
Camacho 5 (Keite, Brazil Magazine Camacho is a writer for the Brazil Magazine 4-18
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/2085/54/)
The overexploitation of the fishing sector in the last years has caused a reduction in world fish stocks,
especially in the North of the planet, where developed countries are located.
"There is an international movement for the decrease of subsidies countries offer for the development of
world fishing activity. These subsidies must be eliminated, as per this world understanding, because the
high subsidies offered by developed countries to fishing activities, including fleet construction and
infrastructure financing, created a super production, a super exploitation with a consequent stock
reduction in several regions of the world," explained Minister José Fritsch, of the Special Secretariat for
Aquiculture and Fishing (Seap).
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Kourous 7 (George, FAO Kourous is head of media relations for the FAO 4-27
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000544/index.html)
The rights of poor fishermen to harvest and manage local fish stocks need to be strengthened in order
to fight poverty and reduce overexploitation of threatened coastal and inland fisheries, FAO said today.
"While fishing's role in helping people in the world's poorest communities feed themselves and stave off
destitution cannot be understated, our studies reveal that despite the food and income that fishing provides
many fisherfolk still live in poverty, while social ills and health problems are disturbingly prevalent in
their communities," said Ichiro Nomura, Assistant Director-General of FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture
Department.
"Stronger efforts to tackle the diverse factors underlying this reality are needed, or else these
communities will simply continue to tread water, surviving from day to day, living in poverty, and not
managing local fish stocks as well as they might," he added.
Subsidies depress fish prices which puts poor African fisherman out of work
Gilligan 96 (James, Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for the Study
of Violence, and a Member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence,
“Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes,” p191-196
The deadliest form of violence is poverty You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our
prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly rcminded of the
extwme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their
families and friends. you arc: forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi's observation that the deadliest form of
violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent
behavior in purety individual terms is i~npossible and wrong-headed.- Any theory of violence, especiallya
psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of nlcn in maximum security prisons and hospitals for
the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are
not where the major violence in our society takes place, and thc perpetrators who fill them are far from being
the main causes of most violent dcaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look
at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what
we define as murder could distract us examining and llearning from those shuctural causes of violent
dcath that are far more significant from a numerical or public health. or human, standpoint. By
"structural violence" 1 mean the increased rates of death. and disability suffered by those who occupy the
bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death ratcs experienced by tho% who arc
above them Those exLxss deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class
structure: and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices. concerning how to
distribute the collective wealth of the socicty. These are not acts of God. 1 am contrasting "structural"
with "behavioral violence," by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by
specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we anribute to homicide,
suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral
violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuouslv,
rather than sporadically. whereas murders, suicides, executions. wars, and other forms of behavioral
violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual
acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may
nevertheless have lethal consequences Cor others. "Structural violence is normally invisible. because it
may appear to have had other (natural or violent] causes. [Continued... (9 Paragraphs Later...)] The finding
that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violcnce does is not liinilcd to this
country. Rohler and Alcock attempted to anive a[ the number of excess deaths caused by sociorcvnomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Swedcn was
their modcl of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in incom and living standards, and the lowest
discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they coinparcd the life expectancies of those
living in the other socioeconomic systems against Swdcn, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed the "structural violence" to which the
During the last decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor
citizens of all the other nations were being subjected.
nations have increased dramaticallv and alarmingly. The 14 to I8 rniilion deaths a vear caused by
structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this
frequencv of deaths from structural violence to the frequencv of those caused by major military and
political violence, such as World War I1 (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, includin~
thosc bv genocide-or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps
575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear
exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R . (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to
compare with structural violence. which continues vear after year. In other words, every fifteen years,
on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide
of the Jews over a six-year veriod. This is, in effect. the equivalent of an ongoing, unending~ in fact
accelerating. thermonuclear war, or genocide. perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of everv
decade. throughout the world. Structural violence is also thc main cause of behavioral violence on a
socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The
question as to which of the two forms of violcnce-structural or behavioral-is more important,
dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as causc to effect.
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Gianna 4 [Matthew, The World Conservation Union Advisor, World Wildlife Fund, 2004]
The development of new fishing technologies and markets for deep-sea fish products have enabled
fishing vessels to begin exploiting these diverse but poorly understood deep sea ecosystems. By far the
most widespread activity affecting the biodiversity of the deep-sea is bottom trawl fishing. A number of
surveys and studies have shown bottom trawl fishing to be highly destructive to the biodiversity
associated with deep-sea ecosystems and concluded that it is likely to pose significant risks to this
biodiversity, including species extinction. The conservation and management of fisheries and the protection
of biodiversity within Exclusive Economic Zones is largely a matter of coastal state responsibility. However,
the international community as a whole has a collective responsibility to ensure the conservation of fish
stocks and the protection of biodiversity on the high seas.
Gianna 4 [Matthew, The World Conservation Union Advisor, World Wildlife Fund, 2004]
This paper presents summary findings on the extent, location, and current governance of high seas bottom
trawl fishing, drawing on available sources. It highlights the need for urgent action to protect seamounts,
deepwater corals and other biodiversity hotspots from high seas bottom trawl fishing and to avoid the
serial depletion of commercially exploited species of fish in these areas while gaps in knowledge and
governance are addressed. The key findings, which will be elaborated in the full report are as follows: Given
the localized distribution and high degree of endemism associated with seamount and other deep-sea
ecosystems, a large percentage of species belonging to these ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to
extinction. High seas bottom trawl fishing poses a major threat to the biodiversity of vulnerable deep-
sea habitats and ecosystems. High seas bottom trawl fishing has often led to the serial or sequential
depletion of targeted deep-sea fish stocks.
Gianna 4 [Matthew, The World Conservation Union Advisor, World Wildlife Fund, 2004]
The three major gear types used in deep-sea bottom fishing – gillnets, longlines, and bottom trawls --
are all believed to have some degree of impact on corals and other bottom dwelling organisms. Bottom
trawling, which consists of dragging heavy chains, nets and steel plates across the ocean bottom, is
considered by far to be the most damaging and is the most common gear used in deep-sea bottom
fishing throughout the world. Its destructive impact has been clearly documented in a number of areas
of the Northeast Atlantic and Southwest Pacific Oceans, both on seamounts as well as along the
continental slope.1
1
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Trawling in the Gulf of Mexico destroys marine ecosystems there and produces excessive
bycatch
The U.S. trawls in the Southeast and Gulf destroying fish species and sea turtles
The U.S. trawls for shrimp in the Southeast and Gulf which destroys marine biodiversity
and coral
Oceana 7
(http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/reports/NewEnglandTrawlReport_low.p
df)
Deep sea corals are extremely sensitive to destructive fishing practices because of their fragile branches
and extremely slow growth. Fishing gear that disturbs the seafloor can be fatal to these corals, and is
especially harmful to deep coral ecosystems, sponges, and sea whips when conducted on a large scale. In the
Northeast United States and around the world, bottom trawl and dredge fisheries have wreaked havoc
wherever they overlap with deep sea corals [ Figure 1 ]. Bottom trawling is a method of fishing that
involves dragging weighted nets and trawl doors - large, flat metal panels weighing several hundred pounds -
across the ocean floor. The fish are captured in the back of the net which is held open by the two trawl doors
several yards apart from each other. When the trawl doors are dragged along the seafloor, everything in
their path is disturbed or damaged if not completely destroyed. Fragile and slow-growing deep sea
corals are extremely sensitive to this physical disturbance. In addition to the trawl doors, weighted metal
balls called bobbins or hard rubber wheels called rollers are often attached to the foot rope of the net, to
plow through any obstacles in their path.64 This heavy trawl gear will reduce most coral to rubble,
with little chance of recovery. The effect of trawling on all seafloor habitats is homogenization of the
physical environment,55 destruction of any attached living coral, and disturbance of associated fish and
marine life. Dragging bottom trawl gear reduces the complexity and upright structure of the seafloor
and limits the possibilities for regrowth. One of the most notorious examples of adverse impacts of
bottom trawling is on the Oculina Banks of Florida, the only known location of extensive reef-building
by the ivory tree coral, Oculina varicosa, in the world. These reefs were explored by submarine, and later
expeditions documented destruction of the majority of the reefs. Bottom trawl tracks could be seen
through the coral in some cases.50 Trawling for undersized rock shrimp in this area is thought to be
responsible for the destruction of Oculina colonies up to ten feet in diameter50 and the majority of a unique
deep sea coral reef bank. A study of trawl impacts in the Gulf of Alaska found that seven years after a
single trawl in a habitat with deep sea coral, seven of 31 colonies in the area were missing 80-99 percent
of their branches. The boulders in the area, which had provided habitat for coral, had been detached
and dragged, removing the fragile coral and disrupting the delicate ecosystem. All damage was
restricted to the path where the trawl net had been dragged.84 When the coral is destroyed, regeneration is
often impossible or so slow that it is difficult to measure. Additional research from the North Pacific
found that sea whips can also be broken or uprooted by trawl gear.6
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 74
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Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
This process spawns other pathologies. Bycatch, the incidental landings of unsellable species, wastes
enormous quantities of fish every year (Discards in shrimp fisheries can outweigh shrimp landings eight to
one.). Many fishermen practice high-grading, throwing out less valuable fish. Fishermen lack
incentives to conserve the discarded fish, because they do not bear the costs of waste.
Bycatch – Impacts
Bycatch worsens conservation and biodiversity.
Harrington 5(Jennie M., et. al. Fish and Fisheries Harrington et. al. are professors at various US universities
http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/Big_Fish_Report/faf_201.pdf)
The unintentional capture of non-target species of fish, mammals, turtles, birds and invertebrates is a well-
recognized feature of fisheries around the world. Usually termed by-catch, some of the captured organisms
may be retained for sale or use, while others are discarded back into the sea because of either low value or
regulatory requirements. Survival rates for discarded by-catch are highly variable (Chopin and Arimoto 1995;
reviewed in Alverson et al. 1994; Davis 2002), as are the impacts of by-catch on marine ecosystems (Hall et
al. 2000), but it is widely accepted that the ecological impacts of by-catch are substantial (Kelleher 2005).
By-catch, particularly discarded by-catch, is a serious conservation problem because valuable living
resources are wasted, populations of endangered and rare species are threatened, stocks that are
already heavily exploited are further impacted and ecosystem changes in the overall structure of
trophic webs and habitats may result (Alverson and Hughes 1996; Crowder and Murawski 1998; Morgan
and Chuenpagdee 2003). Discarding also results in substantial waste of potential food resources. As
global marine fisheries catches have begun to decline (Watson and Pauly 2001) and competition for
increasingly depleted stocks has intensified, the ecological, social and economic arguments to decrease
by-catch have received greater attention from policy makers, industry and the general public (Pitcher
and Chuenpagdee 1994; Alverson and Hughes 1996; FAO 2005; UN 2005).
Bycatch is high and is the greatest threat to ocean life – it exists as long as there is fishing.
1/3 of all US fish tonnage are discarded, higher than FAO estimates for other countries.
Harrington 5(Jennie M., et. al. Fish and Fisheries Harrington et. al. are professors at various US universities
http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/Big_Fish_Report/faf_201.pdf)
This analysis shows that the estimated discarded tonnage of fish for all federally managed USA fisheries
combined was 28% of the landed tonnage or 1.06 million metric tons. This number is higher than FAO’s
estimate that 8% of the world’s landed catch is discarded (Kelleher 2005), but is comparable to the FAO
estimate of by-catch for the USA (927 599 tonnes or 21.7% of the total nominal catch).
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 78
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Bycatch – US Key
US has the highest by-catch rates in the world.
Harrington 5(Jennie M., et. al. Fish and Fisheries Harrington et. al. are professors at various US universities
http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/Big_Fish_Report/faf_201.pdf)
Our estimate may be higher than the global fisheries by-catch estimate because in many world fisheries, there
is a substantial amount of landed bycatch in addition to discards (Zeller and Pauly 2005). In addition,
according to the FAO report on by-catch (Kelleher 2005), small-scale fisheries tend to have lower by-catch
rates than industrialized fisheries, particularly trawl fisheries for shrimp and ground fish. As the USA
fishery consists of a high number of these higher by-catch fisheries, the USA may have higher discard
rates than the rest of the world.
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 79
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Levin Institute 6 (12-07, “Collapse: End of Global Fish Stock by 2050?”, <
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=75>)
Declining Stocks A study published in the November 3 issue of Science has raised the alarm about the declining number of fish species in the world. Using
historical analysis, it projects the collapse of all fish stock by 2048. This was the first study on a global scale to investigate the role of biodiversity in marine
ecosystems. The four-year study was conducted by an international group of ecologists and economists at the National Center of Ecological Analysis and
Synthesis (NCEAS), at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The scientists examined fish catch reports from 1950-2003 for 64 ocean-wide regions
The biodiversity of 48 marine reserves and areas near fishing
that represented 83 percent of fish species in the world.
grounds were then examined.1 The results show that the “collapse”, a decline of over 90 percent of
stock, of one fish species can threaten an entire marine system. The reduction of biodiversity
impairs an ecosystem’s ability to recover from environmental stresses and promotes instability.
This can lead to the collapse of other species in that system. The study shows that deterioration of
an ecosystem happens more rapidly in low-diversity regions compared to high-diversity ones,
suggesting that deterioration toward overall fish stock collapse accelerates as the number of species
in a marine system starts disappearing. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over
70 percent of fish species are currently in danger of collapse. Monitoring 600 groups of fish
species, the FAO deems 52 percent to be fully exploited, 17 percent overexploited, 7 percent
depleted, and 1 percent recovering.2 The FAO estimates that global capture of fish totaled 95 million tons in 2005.3 In recent years, fish
capture have remained at maximum levels, putting many fish population in serious jeopardy and further ending existing stocks.4 Increasing Consumption
Pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are all cited as reasons for declining fish stock5 but it is human demand for fish that has contributed most
significantly to the threat of global fish collapse. Faced with higher aggregate and per capita demand globally, fish consumption has doubled since 1973.6
In developed countries, both wealth and health concerns have contributed to changing diet preferences in favor of fish. With higher income levels, people
now regard fish as an everyday meal choice. Health issues too are causing people to turn to fish as a source of protein. Fish as a proportion of animal protein
intake has increased over the decades and currently accounts for a 16 percent share in the average global diet.7 In recent years, the amount of fish consumed
in developed countries has stabilized due to lower population growth and calorie saturation of diets. Further growth in consumption will likely come from
developing countries. In Thailand, China, and Bangladesh, fish consumption already represents 70 percent of average animal protein intake.8 Because fish
is often more expensive than other sources of protein, rising income from low levels should increase the demand for fish. Studies have also shown that
urbanization leads to higher per capita consumption of fish.9 The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects an increase of 40 million tons in annual
fish consumption by 2015.10 Growth in Aquaculture One possible solution to future fish demand is aquaculture, or fish farming. Aquaculture has grown
from nine percent of fish production by weight in 1980 to 43 percent or 45.5 million tons in 2005.11 Over 90 percent of global aquaculture occurs in Asia,
commercial aquaculture is used to supply popular seafood items such
mostly in small ponds.12 In North America,
as salmon and shrimp. However, the industry has faced increasing scrutiny in recent years. North American
fish farms raise seafood in ocean cages that are rarely closed from its ocean environment. Inadequate waste
treatment leads to high nitrogen levels. This promotes algae bloom and creates “dead zones”
around fish farms. In addition, sea lice common in salmon farms have impacted other species, in
some cases killing 95 percent of the juvenile wild salmon in surrounding areas.13 Farmed salmon
contributes to the worsening global fish stock situation in another way. It generally requires
between two to five kgs of wild fish to grow one kg of farmed salmon.14 Consequently, some have advocated the
farming of herbivores like carp and tilapia, two species that have been cultivated for thousands of years in Asia.15 Policy Responses Increasingly, policy
makers are dealing with the world’s declining fish stock. The 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) saw leaders commit
to restoring fish stock to sustainable yield levels by 2015.16 The FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) has been a leader in international fish stock policy. In
the United States, the Magnuson-Stevens Act is the primary federal legislation governing fisheries management, setting out requirements to prevent
overfishing, minimize bycatch, and protect fish habitats.17 The current WTO Doha Round of international trade negotiations includes proposals to limit
Total subsidies to support the $90 billion global fishing industry are estimated
subsidies to fishing industries.
to be around $15 billion.18 Limiting subsidies would be a step forward to reducing overcapacity in
fishing. In some fish industries with species collapse, e.g. North Atlantic cod, subsidies to support
jobs in fishing communities continue to encourage overcapacity and overfishing. Despite these policy efforts,
both national laws and international treaties have been difficult to enforce. FAO has become increasingly concerned with “IUU fishing” (illegal, unreported,
unregulated).19 The International Plan of Action (IPOA-IUU) was developed by the FAO in 2001 as a Code of Conduct for countries to combat IUU
fishing. Chilean Sea Bass is a prime example of an IUU fishing victim.
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Salmon are a keystone species – a population crash would have devastating impacts
LA Times 8
[Infested fish may bear scars of global warming; Alaska salmon has been a rare success story among exploited
fisheries. A species crash could be disaster. Los Angeles Times June 15, 2008 Sunday, LEXIS]
Besides supporting fishermen, salmon
are a keystone species in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, supporting
wildlife from birds to bears and orcas. A crash could cripple dependent creatures. Mary Ruckelshaus, a federal
biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, has been running climate models to peer into the future for Pacific Northwest salmon.
Those models predict that salmon will become extinct without aggressive efforts to preserve the clear, cool streams needed for spawning, such as planting
trees to shade streams and curtailing the amount of water siphoned off by farmers. "It's
sort of a time bomb," Ruckelshaus said.
"If people don't have a plan for it, it can be disastrous when it hits."
Salmon are a keystone species – more than 500 species depend on its survival
LA Times 8
[Sharks vs. salmon; Decades of legal and political stalling have stymied protection of the fish and spawned a crisis.
Los Angeles Times May 18, 2008 Sunday, LEXIS]
Last month, while late-winter storms pounded the Cascade and Sierra mountains and flooded dozens of salmon streams in the Pacific Northwest, members
of the Pacific Fishery Management Council huddled around a table in Seattle and pored over marine
biologists' latest predictions for
West Coast salmon. The news was shocking: The spring and summer runs of chinook salmon, once numbering in the
millions, in California's Sacramento River had dwindled to a few thousand. The message in the data was unmistakable: Like many of its
cousins to the north, the Sacramento chinook could be extinct within a few seasons. In response, the council canceled all
summer commercial salmon fishing off the California and Oregon coasts, a projected $200-million hit to the industry and the coastal communities that
depend on it to survive. But more than economics was at stake. The
salmon is the coastal ecosystem's "keystone" species,
one on which more than 500 other species depend for their own survival.
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Gende 2
(“http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xI00t1SYPGYJ:www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_
2002_gende001.pdf+US+fishing+subsidies+salmon&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=157&gl=us>)
In addition to the direct effects of salmon subsidies, there are several indirect ecological ramifications of
these subsidies. We note three possible examples: (1) Salmon are a major source of food for bears, but bears
also con- sume fleshy fruits and thus serve as important seed dis- persal agents for numerous plant species
in coastal forests (e.g., Willson 1993). Without salmon, bear densities would be lower and seed dispersal
patterns could be altered, with unknown consequences. (2) Fertilization of plants com- monly leads to
higher nutrient content and enhanced growth, and some herbivorous insects attack fertilized plants at high
rates (Price 1991). Birds feed on many her- bivorous insects and, in some circumstances, are capable of
reducing the herbivore load on plants, thus fostering better plant growth (Marquis and Whelan 1994). Higher
densities of insectivorous breeding birds along salmon streams in spring (Gende and Willson 2001) might mean that
natural control of herbivorous insects is better in salmon-subsidized forests. (3) Because salmon subsidies
can lead to enhanced growth and survival of stream-resident fish (Bilby et al. 1998), life-history strat- egies
that are dependent on juvenile growth rates may change. For instance, the timing and even the probability of
migration from fresh water to the sea may vary with juvenile growth rates (Healy and Heard 1984), which in turn
affects body size, patterns of spawning competition, and fecundity, with ramifications for population produc- tivity
and thus for consumers and commercial harvests
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Greenberg 7
(Paul, a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy fellow, “A Tuna Meltdown”, The New York Times
Section 14CY; Column 0; The City Weekly Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 19, November 4th)
IT is tuna time in New York. I don't mean it's time for local bistros to put salade nicoise on their menus. I mean it's
the time when real, live tuna -- some of them eight feet long -- enter our waters en route to their spawning grounds
in the Gulf of Mexico. Here in the miraculous roiling currents of the Mudhole, 17 miles southeast of Manhattan, and
further out at hotspots like the Dip, off Montauk, tuna hunt squid and speed at 30 miles per hour alongside whales,
porpoises and sea turtles. It is the wildest display of unbridled nature a New York sport fisherman like myself can
ever hope to see. But for those of us who think tuna fishing is an undeniable rite of fall, things are looking deniable.
Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages America's wild fish, called for a halt to catching
Eastern Atlantic bluefin, the largest tuna species that visits our shores. ''Continued overfishing of this seriously
depleted stock has convinced me,'' said Bill Hogarth, the service's director, ''to seek a moratorium on this fishery for
three to five years to give the stock time to begin recovery.'' That I and my fellow sport fishermen played a part in
depleting the bluefin is without doubt. Sport fishing accounts today for roughly a fifth of bluefin mortality in United
States waters and in the past many of those fish were simply photographed and thrown in the trash. But matching
these bad practices is a world that has grown voracious for tuna and a fishing industry that has answered that
demand with equal voraciousness. In the last 30 years, commercial fishing has reduced bluefin populations by as
much as 90 percent, according to some estimates. In the heyday of commercial tuna fishing, vessels called ''purse
seiners'' equipped with advanced sonar and spotter planes located and scooped up entire schools of small tuna.
Today, the bluefin that remain are pursued by boats called long-liners that set out miles of line and tens of thousands
of baited hooks. A long-line does not discriminate what it catches. Most devastating of all, large-scale commercial
long-lining is practiced with vigor in the Gulf of Mexico, the bluefin's breeding ground. Unfortunately bluefin will
continue to perish even if Mr. Hogarth manages to convince the 44 other nations that have signed onto a tuna-
conservation treaty to agree to a moratorium. Long-liners will merely dump any bluefin they catch -- usually dead at
that stage -- back into the water to avoid fines and turn to mining other prey.
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Oceana 7 [“Global subsidies are fishing our oceans to death. It’s time to cut the bait,” Feb 2007]
These subsidies are not only environmentally destructive, but preserve uneconomic and inefficient practices and reduce industry competitiveness. For
a recent study found that the environmentally destructive practice of high seas bottom trawling
example,
would not be profitable without government subsidies. This practice is so harmful that the United
Nations tried to ban it – an action supported by President and key members of Congress – but was unsuccessful because of opposition
from major fishing countries, including Iceland, Russia, China, and South Korea.
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 93
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Ovetz 5 [Roberts, PhD Sea Turtles Restoration Project, “Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy”]
The impact of high seas longline fishing in the Pacific, which consists of the largest tuna fishery in the
world, can be felt throughout our planet. Industrial longline fishing not only threatens marine wildlife
but human societies that rely on the ocean for their own wellbeing. Sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals
and other threatened marine species are caught, injured and killed by industrial longlines in large
numbers and pushed to the edge of extinction.
Ovetz 5 [Roberts, PhD Sea Turtles Restoration Project, “Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy”]
Subsidies Obscure the True Costs of Longlining. Globally, governments are estimated to subsidize
fishing at a rate of 20-25 cents for every dollar earned by fishermen. Members of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) plus China account for approximately 75 percent of the $14-$20 billion7 in subsidies that are doled out each year.
This estimate may be extremely low, as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found in 1993 that such subsidies may amount to as much as $50
billion.8 The European Union and its member states provide an estimated $1.5 billion in annual subsidies, Japan close to $3 billion, and the United States
an estimated $2.5 billion per year is
$868.43 million, $150 million of which consists of tax rebates on marine diesel fuel. 9 In all,
pumped into the multinational North Atlantic fleets alone. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
worldwide fishing revenue amounted to only $70 billion while total operating costs totaled $85 billion.
As we will see, a significant proportion of the U.S. longline fleet has been unprofitable in recent years. An even
larger portion would have been unprofitable without the government subsidies that cushion potential
losses. Such losses do not include additional significant direct and external costs to the ocean ecosystem
and coastal communities that rely upon it.
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Ovetz 5 [Roberts, PhD Sea Turtles Restoration Project, “Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy”]
Reducing sea turtle mortality through reductions in longline bycatch would save money by reducing the need for costly,
emergency sea turtle conservation efforts that are not calculated in the true costs of industrial fishing. Governments spend money on sea turtle conservation
the role turtles play in maintaining healthy sea grass and coral reef ecosystems, reducing sponges and
because of
jellyfish, preserving the cultural and spiritual heritage of island and coastal communities, and
attracting eco-tourism. These efforts will continue to be undermined as long as the market fails to account for the economic costs to
communities and countries from the destruction of sea turtles. Current spending on sea turtle conservation efforts is estimated at U.S. $20 million per year. A
recent study documented the replacement cost of raising sea turtles in captivity rather than protecting them in their habitat. It has been estimated that the
cost of raising one leatherback to maturity at the nursery in Rantau Abang, Malaysia over the course of 10 years would be $72,632. “Failure to
reverse marine turtle decline would imply a replacement cost for nesting females through captive
breeding estimated at U.S. $245.9 million–$263.3 million for green turtles and $2.5 billion for leatherback turtles. The
cost of rearing turtles in captivity suggests that conservation of marine turtles in the wild is less
expensive.” In effect, the necessary cost to recover the critically endangered leatherback sea turtle is equal to one-half the global annual revenue
earned by longline fishing, the largest threat to its survival. Sea turtles offer an ideal case study of the potential
complementary relationship between conservation and sustainable development. Developing countries
account for a striking 78-91 percent of the countries where five of the seven species of sea turtles live, and 61 percent of
these countries are home to two or more turtle species. As a consequence of the global distribution of sea turtles, “the future of marine turtle populations and
their potential to generate benefits to human societies depend mainly on policies implemented in countries with developing economies. These
are the
countries that stand to lose most from continued marine turtle decline. Conversely, developing
countries would benefit most from increasing sea turtle populations.”63 These benefits are not insubstantial.
“Nonconsumptive use [of sea turtles] generates more revenue, has greater economic multiplying
effects, greater potential for economic growth, creates more support for management, and generates
proportionally more jobs, social development and employment opportunities for women than consumptive
uses.”
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Prescott 95 [John, Dir Emeritus New England Aquarium, 1995, Federal News Service]
Federal support is needed due to the nature of our fisheries and fisheries management methods. Unlike Japan
and other several other national fisheries, such as Spain, the United States fisheries consist mainly of
individual fishermen and not large corporations. While our fisheries are described as over capitalized (too
many boats) the fishing industry does not have the capital capability of developing innovative aquaculture
alternatives without federal support. We believe that the expertise of the Aquarium is an appropriate resource
for developing aquaculture technologies for exotic species such as the Bluefin tuna. Supplemental
Congressional funding is needed for an agency which still views its role as regulatory management of wild
stocks, not the development of alternative strategies.
The Boston Globe 7 (“US aquaculture vital in global market”, The Boston Globe, March 26, pg A8
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4274717326&format=GNBFI&sort=RE
LEVANCE&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T4274717332&cisb=22_T4274717331&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8110&docNo=4
5)
THE GLOBE missed a golden opportunity to help end public confusion about aquaculture ("Fishy proposal from Commerce," Editorial,
March 18). Aquaculture, as a complement to wild fisheries, can ultimately benefit New England fishermen through stock replenishment
and new job opportunities. Research and technology advancements over the last three decades have solved
many problems of the past regarding water pollution, aquatic animal health, use of fish meal, and
escapes of farm fish into the wild. For example, vaccines have largely replaced antibiotics in aquaculture. The United
States is the genesis of these technological advancements, but most have gone overseas, benefiting
countries that embrace aquaculture.
Parker 8 (Mike, Dept chief of Young’s Seafood, The Guardian, 7-9, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/09/fishing.food)
A very negative image of aquaculture - or fish farming - was created in an article by Fred Pearce in these pages on April 23,
citing all manner of social injustices and environmental destruction. This fits in with a sustained campaign by NGOs
against aquaculture as an industry, with one core message: that aquaculture is bad - and highlighting
instances of bad practice, both social and environmental. There is a danger that the public may be misled into
believing that these instances of bad practice are the whole story. They most certainly are not. In a new
era of rising food prices and possible emerging food shortages, caused by increasing population and
climate change, aquaculture will be an important tool in helping combat the problem and feed the
global population - especially in south Asia and China. In China, the farming of carp is one of the largest
examples in the world of a low-intensive, very old food production technology providing essential good
quality protein to rural populations. In Europe, we have the Scottish and Norwegian salmon farming industries, both very
important in economic and food terms. These industries are very sensitive to criticism of their practices, and are
constantly raising environmental standards. Fish is an excellent food - very healthy, with high-quality protein and low
in fat. It is an integral part of a healthy diet and is seen as an aspirational food in the developing world.
With declining wild fish stocks, the only way to produce more fish is by various forms of aquaculture. This can be a low-
intensive, low-capital business, allowing populations in developing countries to increase food supply
without large industrial capital requirements. It is mostly small-scale, run by local communities and
families working one or two ponds, fed with food waste. The Young's seafood group researches its suppliers very
carefully and ensures that they comply with strict social and environmental criteria. It is in this way that the industry can enforce
minimum standards of behaviour, and provide a mechanism for raising standards over time. Of course, it is also necessary to ensure that
these standards are not just another trade barrier to products from developing countries. But, with care, this balance between standards
and trade barriers can be achieved. Journalists and NGOs are right to highlight abuses - whether to do with
employment rights, environmental damage, or any other unsustainable practice. What is wrong is to
characterise the whole aquaculture industry as bad. The truth is that, without aquaculture, fish will
become exclusively a rich man's food. It is this issue of social justice and fair shares that should be at
the heart of the debate about the future of aquaculture. In a long-term food supply strategy, aquaculture will be an
important component of supplying good quality protein to developing nations and poorer populations.
Bastien 3 [Yves, Comm. for Aquaculture Development Conference on Marine Aquaculture, 2003
http://www.psmfc.org/ans_presentations/BastienY.pdf]
Another reason for the divide between aquaculturists and fishermen has been the alleged impacts of
aquaculture on the environment and wild stocks. This argument has been amply utilized by well known
environmental groups to foster opposition between the two sectors. The reality is that both sectors have
their environmental challenges but both sectors have significantly improved their environmental
performance during recent years, thanks to all of our critics. A little over two weeks ago, during
Aquaculture Canada 2003 in Victoria, I said that aquaculture, as practiced in Canada, is environmentally
sustainable. Many environmental groups would challenge this statement, especially here on the West Coast.
However, as a biologist with a good portion of my career devoted to environmental protection and wild
salmon conservation, I am very comfortable saying it. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that
aquaculture in general or salmon farming in particular produce no impacts on the environment. They
obviously do. Every human industrial activity does, including the traditional capture fishery. But to
assess the environmental sustainability of aquaculture requires that its environmental impacts be
viewed in a more global context. The argument is quite simple, but it is worthwhile to state it again bluntly.
It is what Peter Drucker was getting to in his opinion on the opportunity of aquaculture. For the same reason
that hunting deer and moose, and gathering wild fruits and berries to feed North Americans would not be
environmentally sustainable, and would destroy these wild resources, it is clear that supplying the growing
fish and seafood demand by wild harvest is not a viable, long-term environmentally sustainable scenario. On
land, the solution has been modern agriculture. And although all types of agriculture, whether extensive,
organic or other, require that forests be cut down and existing plant and animal life be removed, no one
is suggesting that agriculture be abandoned and that we return to scouring the forests and grasslands for
our food. So, why not aquaculture? Why not accept aquaculture as a good thing and a way to go for our
long-term supply of fish and seafood? Because all the evidence demonstrates that it is exactly that.
Overall, aquaculture has little impact on the environment. In fact, the relative area under aquaculture in
Canada is miniscule. In 2002, it totaled 30,971 hectares, equivalent to an area 17.6 km long by 17.6 km wide
or roughly the size of the core area of almost any one of Canada’s provincial capital cities. In this very small
area, the aquaculture industry produced approximately 24 percent of the value of all Canadian fish landings.
To do a fair assessment of the environmental impacts produced by aquaculture on this tiny portion of our
aquatic ecosystem, one has to compare these impacts to the ones produced by our Canadian strategy to
produce the other 75% of the fish landing value: commercial fisheries. As we have seen in the literature over
the last 10 years, commercial fisheries impacts are serious, complex and occurring far and wide along
all our coasts. Again, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should shut down all fisheries in favour of
producing fish only through aquaculture. In North America, we have a luxury that many others don’t; we still
have plentiful ocean resources and many environmentally sustainable fisheries. These should continue to be
carefully protected, managed and utilized as they have in the past, and continue making an invaluable
contribution to the economic activity and social fabric of our coastal communities. What I am saying is that,
despite the criticism of well known environmental groups that aquaculture poses significant
environmental problems, aquaculture is still very much an environmentally sustainable activity by
which we can produce fish for future generations.
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Goldburg & Naylor 5 (Rebecca and Rosamond, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Feb)
One recent, comprehensive analysis (Delgado et al. 2003) identifies fish, fishmeal and fish oil as a
commodity almost certain to increase in price by the year 2020, while prices for commodities such as beef,
eggs, and vegetable meals are likely to come down. Rising prices for fish will probably cause further
exploitation of the oceans for fishing and aquaculture, and make competition for marine resources more
intense. Protecting ocean resources may require deliberative processes to partition them- for example,
designating certain areas of the ocean for certain uses or for non-use. The development of marine protected
areas where fishing and other activities are not permitted is under activ etesting as a tool for both
conservation and fisheries maangement (Lubchernco et el. 2003), but there has been little systematic
investigation of possibilities for demarcating the ocean in other ways (eg temporally) or for other purposes
(eg aquaculture).
The future prospects for fisheries appear grim given current trends in fish production. Many capture fisheries
are declining, and marine aquaculture- the alleged escape valve for fisheries-- offers its own challenges,
including a heavy dependence on robust fisheries resources. Establishing viable, long term solutions to
problems in fisheries and marine aquaculture will require the incorporation of ecological perspectives into
the politics governing fisheries management, aquaculture systems, and the rationalization of ocean resources.
Oil and overfarming have led to high fish prices- this extends to aquacultures
Potts 8 David Potts “Food versus fuel: something to chew on” The Sun Herald. July 27, 2008
Fish prices are booming due to overfarming of the sea. Australia has several aquaculture stocks, all
minnows but for that reason offering unlimited potential if they get it right. The biggest and most successful
is the Tassal Group which is also the only one making a profit. Indeed, a succession of healthy profits. It
breeds and harvests Atlantic salmon, a fish popular here and in Japan where it commands premium prices.
Salmon is also well-regarded nutritionally but has been let down by poor marketing. However even Atlantic
salmon isn't spared the global impact of high oil prices. While it isn't a candidate for ethanol production, it
faces the same problems of rising feed prices as well as transport costs. Two other aquaculture stocks,
Australis Aquaculture and Cell Aquaculture, breed barramundi. Australis is marketing barramundi in North
America while Cell markets its "hatch to dispatch" technology. Clean Seas Tuna is a hatchery for southern
bluefin tuna, mulloway and kingfish. The recently listed Western Kingfish, most noted for having Lachlan
Murdoch on its books, is licensed to fish for yellowtail kingfish off Western Australia. So far none of the
aquaculture stocks have swum against the market tide, though that could mean you're getting in cheaply.
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Gronewold 8 Nathanial Gronewold, Greenwire reporter “FISHERIES: Seafood appears poised to ride
commodity-price escalator” July 15, 2008 < http://www.eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2008/07/15/4>
There are signs that seafood will be added soon to a long list of commodities with spiraling prices.For
the first time in more than a decade, fish prices are rising in real terms. That is good news for commercial fishers
who have struggled to stay afloat in the face of fierce competition, fickle consumer tastes and the emergence of aquaculture, but some
wonder if it is not already too late for many. Soaring fuel prices have dramatically raised the cost of going to sea.
And active fishing fleets are shrinking. For example, Shinnecock Inlet, a popular fishing port in Long Island, N.Y., was
home three years ago to 48 vessels fishing for whiting, squid and other species. This year, four vessels have left port, with the vast
majority of operators refusing to send out boats because they cannot recover costs."What it tells you is that the fisherman is not
being able to recover his losses on fuel with respect to the buying on the wholesale level from the
boats," said Roger Tollefson, a New York Seafood Council board member. While producers have so far
largely eaten the extra costs, that is changing. Tuna prices have almost doubled, raising the cost of
canned tuna sharply for the first time in 20 years. Prices for many bottom feeders like whiting and
monkfish are up by 10 percent or more. And the price of Alaska pollock, used in a wide variety of frozen products, jumped
suddenly this year after being flat for a long time. "It is mainly a reaction to higher fuel prices, which also led fishing fleets to stop
production," said Helga Josupeit, a fish industry officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)… The accelerating cost of
diesel is now the main worry for the fishing industry. So far, fleets have had to bear the brunt of record oil prices -- the economics of
seafood do not make it easy for them to pass on costs to consumers. But as more boats refuse to head out to sea and catches decline, this
is unlikely to last. Consumers who have yet to see fish prices rise as sharply as other food commodities should brace themselves,
experts say. The sliding value of the dollar has helped deaden some of the impact of high fuel costs for overseas seafood suppliers, but
industry insiders fear that the global seafood industry is fast approaching a tipping point. "We, and others
with strong currencies vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, have avoided a little of the impact, but the impact is now overwhelming," said Alastair
Macfarlane, a general trade and information manager at the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council. "The fact is that that fuel has
increased from being about 20 to 30 percent of the operational cost of fishing to now being around 50 percent or more of the cost of a
trip," he said. Vessels are also sitting idle in New Zealand ports, he added, as they are up and down the U.S. East Coast. Reshaping
fisheries. Last month, for example, commercial fishers in Alaska's Aleutian Islands went on strike,
protesting the price for red salmon being offered by the main purchasers there. At 70 cents a pound, the
returns were too low for them to recover their losses from high diesel fuel costs. The dispute underscores
how volatile the market for seafood can be, with no automatic supply-demand signals setting prices as with
most other commodities. … But fish prices are visibly trending upward now, and FAO says it may soon
develop an index to get a better grasp of the market. Icelandic cod is up by about 50 percent, ultimately
forcing restaurants to pass the higher costs on to their customers. Fish and chips restaurants in the United
Kingdom will likely have to sharply raise the price of the national dish to cope. And a major disruption to
any regional market could have a catalytic effect, sending prices higher globally. In Japan, commercial fishers
have said they will keep their vessels in port for one day to protest high fuel costs. As Japan has one of the world's largest fishing fleets,
it is not yet clear what one day of inactivity by the Japanese fleet would do to worldwide fish prices. Stressed fish stocks The price
of crude oil and growing demand for fish in developing countries like China are not the only factors at
play. There is mounting evidence that some fisheries are being exploited to the brink, sending prices for
popular fish higher in the face of actual resource depletion. For instance, FAO believes that one of the reasons prices for Alaska pollock
rose so quickly is that the U.S. government sharply cut the quota for the season after NOAA scientists grew concerned over the fishery's
sustainability. Depletion is a growing problem, and for no other fish is this truer than for tunas. Prices in Asia for bluefin tuna, the most
prized item used in the highest-grade sushi and sashimi, have skyrocketed as catch numbers and the overall size of adults brought in
have declined. Bluefins have become so expensive in Japan -- the largest adults sometimes go for $100,000 or more at auction in
Tokyo's giant Tsukiji fish market -- that sushi restaurants there are now forced to sell it at a loss, hoping to make up the difference in
sales of other items. Prices for yellowfin tuna, another popular but lower-quality sushi item, are also now on the rise. Overfishing in the
South Pacific is starting to take its toll, sending prices for yellowfin steadily upward in recent years. Both FAO and the International
Food Policy Research Institute report that most wild fisheries, especially for the difficult-to-regulate highly migratory species like large
tunas, are at or near their maximum exploitation levels. "Fish are highly likely to continue becoming more expensive
to consumers compared with other food products over the next two decades," researchers at the
International Food Policy Research Institute warned in a recent assessment. "Prices for food fish, fishmeal,
and fish oil are likely to rise under nearly all scenarios." The triple threat of high oil prices, burgeoning demand and
stock depletion -- or in some cases, like with Mediterranean bluefin tuna, possible collapse -- have commercial fishers and seafood
wholesalers on edge. Since fish consumption tends to be more discretionary, especially in the United States, where fish is mostly eaten in
restaurants, it is not clear if the market will accept the impending higher costs and keep the industry thriving. "Nobody wants to sell
seafood at a high price," said Tollefson of the New York Seafood Council. "It's very perishable product; you have to take very good care
of it and everything else. And if you have to cut your profit margins down, you sometimes can get into trouble if you don't know what
you're doing."
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Population decline, inefficient trawlers, and closing fisheries prove fishing industry down now
AP 8 (June 17, LEXIS)
As of Tuesday, the average cost for a gallon of diesel was near $4.80, according to AAA. That's up from an
average of about $2.90 a gallon a year ago. That means boat captains are having to raise prices or add hefty
fuel surcharges to fees that before this season were already around $800 to $1,500 for a full day. Some in the
charter fishing industry estimate that business is off anywhere from 20 to 90 percent because customers
just can't afford the added costs. "Some guys are just sitting on the docks waiting for business and it
ain't happening," said Steve Leopold, president of the Islamorada Charter Boat Association. "There's people
who come down and don't even ask the price of my charters. Then there's people who ... say, 'Wow, can you
cut me a break?' I say, 'If you bring your own fuel.'" On a recent sunny afternoon at Whale Harbor Marina in
the Florida Keys, Chris Adams, 41, had just returned from a half-day charter trip. "We probably would have
spent the whole day out but it would have been $400 more," Adams said. His half-day trip this year cost
$800, about what a full day on the water cost last year. There's less money to spend on vacation, Adams said,
when you also factor in how much more it cost him just fill his own gas tank for the drive. Adams has driven
down from Connecticut for the past three years, a round trip he said would cost him about $600 more this
year than it did last year. Pensacola Charter Boat Association President Paul Redman said even the cost of
bait has gone up because of higher fuel costs. Redman said he charged customers $1,200 for a recent six-
hour trip on the water but $500 for fuel, $100 for bait and tackle, and $100 for his deckhand meant his profit
was a mere $300. Five years ago, it would have topped $800. "It's just about not worth doing it anymore,"
Redman said. The charter fishing fleet generated more than $1.1 billion in revenues nationwide, including
some related sales, in 2000, the latest figures available, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Commercial and charter fishing industry representatives from around the country plan to meet with members
of Congress on Wednesday in Washington, seeking some kind of financial relief to help offset losses. Some
regions are suffering from a one-two punch of higher fuel prices and the closure or shortening of
seasons for popular fish species, said Bob Zales, president of the National Association of Charter Boat
Operators. In the Florida Panhandle along the Gulf of Mexico, anglers come from across the country to fish
for red snapper. But combined federal and state limits have reduced the catch allowed per charter boat and
shortened the season. Zales said he estimates that up to half the entire Gulf charter fishing fleet from
Texas to Florida could be out of business by December. On the West Coast, where the federal
government has closed all sport and commercial salmon fishing off California and most of Oregon due to
a population collapse, the result has been "absolutely devastating," said Captain William Smith, who
runs the 40-foot Riptide out of Half Moon Bay, Calif., just south of San Francisco. Coupled with rising fuel
costs, "I'm stupid to even stay in the business," Smith said. "But even if I was to try to sell my boat,
nobody's buying. "Profits?" he quipped. "I'm in the hole." Smith has diversified his business, adding
trips to scatter cremation ashes and for whale watching, and has even had to pick up work as a handyman.
The nation's commercial fishing fleet is also taking a hit as many fisherman can't bring in enough added
catch to keep profits ahead of fuel costs, said Sean McKeon, president of the North Carolina Fisheries
Association. The commercial fishing industry's catch was worth about $40 billion in 2006. McKeon said that
while Americans may not see less fish in their grocery stores, they could begin seeing more imports, not to
mention jobs lost in the industry and the resulting economic impacts to communities. Adding to the problem
is that many boats in the commercial and charter sectors have been on the water for decades and are not fuel
efficient. A typical twin-engine charter fishing boat uses about 10 gallons of diesel per hour. A pair of newer,
more fuel-efficient engines can cost more than $100,000. In the commercial industry, trawlers, like shrimp
boats that drag nets, typically burn the most fuel. Captain Louis Stephenson, who operates an 85-foot
shrimp boat out of Galveston, Texas, said the average trawler burns up to 25 gallons of diesel an hour.
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Fishing industry down and fish prices low, but returning fish stocks, reduced fleets, and
higher prices would save the industry
Somma 3 (Angela Natural Resource Specialist, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service
“THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES AND ECONOMIC COSTS OF DEPLETING THE WORLD'S
OCEANS” Economic Perspectives – January, <http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0103/ijee/somma.htm)
Clearly, overfishing has substantial economic as well as environmental costs. Stopping overfishing and
allowing the stocks to rebuild would increase the productivity of the stocks and maximize revenues to the
industry in the long run. Such action is necessary to stabilize both the resource and the industry.
Fishing subsidies are economically unsustainable and hurt the economy by taking resources
out of more productive sectors
OECD 5 [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Subsidies: a Way towards Sustainable
Fisheries?” 2008, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/54/35802686.pdf]
While government support for fisheries has an effect on all three sustainable development aspects,
financial transfers are basically an economic policy instrument designed to reduce the costs or raise the
incomes of fishers and others in the sector. However, ironically, the positive short-term effects on profits
can undermine economic sustainability in the longer run. By changing the incentives facing fishers, the
economic effects will flow through to the environmental and social dimensions. Transfers such as
subsidized loans or grants to build or modernize fishing boats have a direct impact on profits, while
others such as government funding of management services or ports have an indirect effect by reducing
industry-wide costs. The overall impact of such transfers will depend on the type of management system in place, how effectively management
regulations are enforced, and whether there is overfishing or underfishing of stocks. If there are no restrictions on fishing and little or no effective
management, government financial support will lead to investment in new equipment and more intensive use of
existing vessels. In the short term, this will result in increased catches but, in the long term, it will reduce fish stocks,
ultimately leading to lower catches with higher costs and lower revenue. If governments decide to avoid such effects by
limiting the amount of fish that can be caught, then financial transfers will not necessarily have an adverse effect on fish stocks or catches, as long as the
limit is set to achieve a sustainable yield, and regulations are perfectly enforced. However, if the catch controls are not perfectly enforced, then the effects
will tend to be similar to those of an unrestricted (or open access) system. Moves aimed simply at controlling fishing effort will only be partially successful,
as this involves attempts to regulate diverse elements such as time at sea, vessel size and power, the type of fishing gear used, the number of people
this situation, transfers will again have the long-term
employed, etc, and it is very difficult to effectively regulate all these aspects. In
effect of reduced fish stocks, lower catches and lower profitability. However, if governments introduce individual rights to
catch at appropriate levels, and enforce them effectively, fishers focus on landing their allowed catch at minimum cost. In principle, financial transfers have
Financial support
no impact on fish stocks but will increase the profits from fishing, as well as the market value of the access rights to the fishery.
to the fishing sector also affects the economy as a whole. While the fishing sector is relatively small in
most OECD economies, often accounting for less than 1% of GDP and an even smaller proportion of the total workforce, it often
accounts for a high proportion of employment and income in coastal regions. Transfers will attract
human and other resources into the fishing industry where they may yield a lower return than in the
economy at large.
Burnett 4 [H. Sterling, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, “Ocean Fisheries: Common
Heritage or Tragic Commons,” 2004, http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba581/]
The first step is to end subsidies and tax breaks that encourage overinvestment in commercial fisheries.
Government should stop subsidizing fishermen's purchases of boats, fuel and other equipment. In
addition, the government should end price supports that artificially increase the market value of fish.
Ending subsidies would eliminate the incentive for inefficient businesses to keep building boats and
hiring deck hands, and give them an incentive to operate more efficiently or look for employment
elsewhere. It would help already efficient fishermen by reducing the number of less efficient competitors and
by allowing them to expand their operations.
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MIT 8 – Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Mission 2011, group of scientists and students who
study public policy and the ocean
[Jul 6, Saving the Oceans, http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2011/finalwebsite/solutions/sconsiderations.shtml]
The introduction of new rules and regulations will undoubtedly have an impact on the livelihoods of
fishermen and other members of the fishing community. Quotas, taxes, technological regulations, and marine
protected areas will all restrict the freedom fishermen to fish and the elimination of subsidies will likely
increase the costs of fishing. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the proposals of Mission 2011 are not
aimed at destroying the fishing industry -- we, too, realize the importance of fish in our lives and that
many are not willing to switch to a fish-free diet -- but rather, to begin a transition from depleting fish
stocks to sustaining them. This transition is necessary in order to secure the supply of fish and
success of the fishing industry in the years and decades to come. That said, a change from the status quo
is inevitable. There are no solutions to the problems facing global fisheries that do not involve
reducing the number of fish that are caught, and, in turn, reducing the number of people who make a
living through the fishing. Just as workers in the automotive industry have been displaced by machines, the
abacus has been replaced by computers, and leaded gasoline has been phased out in order to accommodate
catalytic converters (Lovei, 1998), circumstances will force some fishermen to leave the industry over time.
Even without the regulations we are suggesting, declining fish stocks mean that fishing can never be as
profitable as it was in the past. Communities centered around fishing need to adapt to a system that
limits fishing or else risk a sudden, irreparable economic downturn when the remaining fish
populations collapse. It should also be noted that if our proposals are carried out and successfully achieve
their goals, then the fishing industry will ultimately benefit. While fishermen may be hurt in the
initial stages of implementation, over the long run, as populations return to and are sustained at more
natural levels, more fish can be harvested without the risk of population collapse. On the other hand,
if fishing continues as it is being done now, populations will experience commercial extinction and
entire fisheries will be lost (Munro, 2006).
Removing subsidies would allow fish populations to replenish decreasing the price of fish and
increasing the availability resulting in a 66% increase in income for the fishing industry
Myers and Kent 1 Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent, International Institute for Sustainable Development,
“Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy” Google Books Page
153-4. 2001
Subsidies arise from the efforts of governments to preserve their fishermen's jobs. Regrettably, these incentives have
long induced investors to finance more industrial fishing ships than the fish stocks could
possibly sustain. During 1970-1989, the world's fishing fleet grew at twice the rate of the global catch, until it
amounted to twice the capitalized capacity needed to catch what the oceans could sustainably produce, after allowing for
rebuilding of fish stocks (Figure 7.24.3°
Because this excessive capacity has rapidly depleted the amount of fish available, profitability
has generally plunged, reducing the ships' value. Unable to sell their chief assets without
major financial loss, shipowners have found themselves forced to keep on fishing—or, rather,
overfishing—in order to repay their loans. They are caught in an economic trap. In response, they have mobilized
political pressure on governments to refrain from cutting the inflated fishing quotas.3'
The costs to fisheries are substantial. If, in the case of the United States, the principal
fish species in question were
allowed to rebuild to their long-term potential, sustainable harvesting would add $8 billion
to GDP and provide some 300,000 jobs.32 Within U.S. federal waters, today's catch is only
60 percent as valuable as it could be if fish stocks were allowed to recover.
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Pew Oceans Commission 3 (“Socioeconomic Perspectives on Marine Fisheries in the United States” , http://www.pewtrusts.org
/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Protecting_ocean_life/environment_pew_oceans_socioeconomic_perspectives.pdf)
The economic status of U.S. commercial marine fisheries is declining. Excess competition and poor management are
dissipating value in today’s fisheries, costing tens of thousands of jobs, harming the economies of our coastal
communities, and placing a valuable natural and cultural heritage at risk. The decline in fishery productivity below
its potential has worsened in the last decade. There appears to be scope for more than doubling current catches if
conservative policies are pursued and depleted fish populations are rebuilt. Increasing annual catches to long-term
sustainable levels could add at least $1.3 billion to the U.S. economy. Rebuilding U.S. fisheries has the potential to
restore and create tens of thousands of family wage jobs and to substantially boost local and regional fishing
economies. Restoring marine ecosystems and fish populations to a status capable of supporting higher but
sustainable yields will require an era of transition en route to a more sustainable future.
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Safina 7 (Carl, president of the Blue Ocean Institute in Cold Spring Harbor)
New studies continue to chronicle how overfishing and poor management have severely hurt the U.S.
commercial fishing industry. Thus, it makes sense to examine the effectiveness of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which overhauled
federal legislation guiding fisheries management. At the time, I predicted that, if properly implemented, the act would do much to bolster recovery and
sustainable management of the nation's fisheries. Today, I see some encouraging signs but still overall a mixed picture. The 1996 legislation amended the
Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of two decades earlier. The original law had claimed waters within 200 miles of the coast of the United States
and its possessions (equivalent to some two-thirds of the U.S. continental landmass) as an "exclusive economic zone." In so doing, it set the stage for
eliminating the foreign fishing that had devastated commercially important fish and other marine life populations. Although it set up a complicated
management scheme involving regional councils, the original legislation failed to direct fishery managers to prohibit overfishing or to rebuild depleted fish
Under purely U.S.
populations. Nor did it do anything to protect habitat for fishery resources or to reduce bycatch of nontarget species.
control, many fish and shellfish populations sank to record low levels. The only sensible course is to
move forward: to eliminate overfishing, reduce bycatch, and protect and improve habitat. The 1996 act
addressed many of those management problems, especially the ones connected with overfishing and rebuilding. In the previous reauthorization of the earlier
act, for example, the goal of "optimum yield" had been defined as "the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as modified by any relevant social,
economic, or ecological factor." A tendency of fishery managers to act on short-term economic considerations had often led to modifications upward,
resulting in catch goals that exceeded sustainable levels and hence in overfishing, depletion, and the loss of economic viability in numerous fisheries. The
Sustainable Fisheries Act changed the word "modified" to "reduced." In other words, fishery managers may no longer allow catches exceeding sustainable
yields. Other new language defined a mandatory recovery process and created a list of overfished species. When a fish stock was listed as overfished,
managers were given a time limit to enact a recovery plan. Because undersized fish and nontarget species caught incidentally and discarded dead account for
about a quarter of the total catch, the law enabled fishery managers to require bycatch-reduction devices. Although I had high hopes for the act when it was
passed, its actual implementation, which began only in 1998, has been less than uniform. Fishery groups have sued to slow or block recovery plans, because
the first step in those plans is usually to restrict fishing. Meanwhile, conservation groups have sued to spur implementation. In that contentious climate,
progress has been somewhat halting. On the one hand, overfishing continues for some species, and many fish populations remain depleted. One of the most
commercially important fish--Atlantic cod--has yet to show strong increases despite tighter fishing restrictions. On the other hand, in cases in which
recovery plans have actually been produced, fish populations have done well. For example, New England has some of the most depleted stocks in U.S.
waters. But remedies that in some cases began even before the law was reformed--closures of important breeding areas, regulation of net size, and
reductions in fishing pressure--have resulted in encouraging upswings in the numbers of some overfished species. Not least among the rebounding species
are scallops, yellowtail flounder, and haddock. Goals have been met for rebuilding sea scallops on Georges Bank and waters off the mid-Atlantic states.
There has even been a sudden increase in juvenile abundance of notoriously overfished Atlantic swordfish. That is because federal managers, responding to
consumer pressure and to lawsuits from conservation groups, closed swordfish nursery areas where bycatch of undersized fish had been high and cut
swordfishing quotas. Some other overfished species, among them Atlantic summer flounder, certain mackerel off the Southeast, red snapper in the Gulf of
Mexico, and tanner and snow crabs off Alaska, are rebounding nicely. The trend in recovery efforts is generally upward. The number of fish populations
with sustainable catch rates and healthy numbers has been increasing, and the number that are overfished declining. And rebuilding programs are now
finally in place or being developed for nearly all overfished species. Maintaining
healthy fish populations is not just good for
the ocean, of course, but also for commerce: Fish are worth money. Ocean fishing contributes $50 billion to the U.S. gross domestic
product annually, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But because fish are worth money only after they are caught, not
everyone is pleased with aggressive efforts to ensure that there will be more fish tomorrow. Some people want more fish today. Restrictions designed to
rebuild depleted stocks are costing them money in the short term. For that reason, various amendments have been introduced in Congress that would weaken
the gains of the Sustainable Fisheries Act and jeopardize fisheries. In particular, industry interests have sought to lengthen recovery times. Currently, the law
requires plans for rebuilding most fish populations within a decade, with exceptions for slow-growing species. (Many fish could recover twice as fast if
fishing was severely limited, but a decade was deemed a reasonable amount of time: It is practical biologically, meaningful within the working lifetime of
individual fishers, and yet rapid enough to allow trends to be perceived and adjustments made if necessary.) Longer rebuilding schedules make it harder to
assess whether a fish population is growing or shrinking in response to management efforts. The danger is that overfishing
will continue in the
short term, leading to tighter restrictions and greater hardship later on. Recovered fish populations would
contribute substantially to the U.S. economy and to the welfare of fishing communities. In just five years since
the Sustainable Fisheries Act went into effect, the outlook for U.S. fisheries has improved noticeably, for the first time in decades. The only sensible course
is to move forward: to eliminate overfishing, reduce bycatch, and protect and improve habitat. It would be foolish to move backward and allow hard-gotten
gains to unravel just when they are gaining traction. Yet the debate continues.
Subsidies and the resulting overfishing cost the fishing industry billions
Overfishing causes the fishing industry to make half the revenue it could under sustainable
practices
Access payments not key – they go to the other country rather than our domestic industry
Dept of Labor 7 [U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 2007, http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs001.htm]
The agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry sector is expected to continue to produce more with greater efficiency through the use of
increasingly productive machinery and greater use of science. Jobs in most parts of the sector are expected to continue to decline.
Employment change. Employment in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing is projected to decline 8 percent over the 2006-2016 period. Rising costs,
greater productivity, increasing urbanization, and greater imports of food, lumber and fish will cause many workers to leave this industry.
In addition, fishers face growing restrictions on where they can fish and how much they can harvest
because many fisheries, or fish habitats, have been depleted because of years of overfishing.
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WTO 2k [World Trade Organization Committee on Trade and Environment, “Subsidies in the Fisheries Sector:
Update on Recent Work Conducted by New Zealand,” http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news00_e/w134.doc]
In terms of developing countries, a recent FAO study has observed "that the number of subsidies in
developing countries has been greatly reduced in recent years. The remaining subsidies are for off-shore
fishing, artisanal fisheries and fisheries cooperatives as well as fishing operations in remote and
underdeveloped areas. They were mainly available in the form of capital subsidies and reduced duty on
fuel, and even these were in the process of being further reduced." In a brief summary of work done for the
FAO COFI Sub-Committee on Fish Trade in 1998, the FAO Fisheries Department concluded that the
evidence indicated "very low subsidies in the developing world: not more than US$1,200 million/year,
mainly in Asia. Subsidies in fisheries are practically unknown in Latin America and Africa." A more
recent FAO technical paper concluded that "in most developing countries in Asia, West Africa and Latin
America, subsidies are no longer available."
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UNEP 4 “Analyzing the Resource Impact of Fisheries Subsidies” United Nations Environment Programme,
United Nations Environment 2004 Google Books Page 25
Decommissioning and license withdrawal programmes influence the economic behaviour of the fishing
industry on multiple levels. Although their objective is to reduce the level of fishing capacity in a fishery,
decommissioning schemes also have unintended impacts on industry behaviour that undermine that
objective. The mechanism on which the programmes rely is a cash transfer to vessel and/or license owners
for withdrawing either vessel or license or both. This in turn creates quasi-rents in the fishery by
increasing catch per vessel and per unit of effort. Given the "race for fish" in any but an ideally
managed fishery. however, this rent in fishery will spur efforts to capture more of the rent through
"capital stuffing" by the vessel owners remaining in the fishery (Townsend. 1985).
The removal of some active capacity from the fishery also increases demand for idle vessels in the
fishery (Gates et at, 1997; Holland and Sutinen, 1998). The vessel owner who receives the
decommissioning premium has an economic incentive to use the additional capital to reinvest in the
same fishery or another that is well regulated. If the decommissioning scheme gives vessel owners the
discretion to resell the vessels to be withdrawn, rather than scrapping them, it further increases the
incentive to invest in more additional fishing capacity.
The differences in technological capabilities between newer and older vessels of the same tonnage and
engine power is so great that decommissioning programmes are virtually certain to increase the level of
fleet capacity they target the oldest or least productive vessels in the fishery, and then allow a lesser number
of new vessels to enter the fishery based on a formula using similar physical characteristics (De Wilde, 1999:
Coghill et at, 2000; Eggen. 2001; Pascoe et at, 2002).
Beyond these direct effect of the availability of additional capital and the temporary increase in rents,
moreover, it has been widely observed that the existence of vessel buy-back programs encourages vessel
owners and potential investors to believe that the risk of additional capital investments in fishing is
significantly reduced. even if stocks have been or are being depleted. This belief would tend to increase
investment in the fishery or to discourage disinvestment from it (Gates et at, 1997a; Amason, 1999;
Munro, 1999; Jorgensen and Jensen, 1999; Munro and Sumaila, 1999; OECD, 2000b). However, no
statistical methodology exists to estimate such an indirect effect. Unless the management reidme discourages
additional capacity through ITQs or community-based management. or by tight controls ova technological
improvement and increased effort, over time decommissioning subsidies will not prevent and will even
contribute to the replacement of all the withdrawn capacity and the addition of more capacity. Even a
programme that ostensibly purchase, destructive fishing technologies, such as the Indonesian buy-back of
trawlers, would pose the problem of premiums being used for reinvestment in another overexploited fishery.
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WTO 2k [World Trade Organization Committee on Trade and Environment, “Subsidies in the Fisheries Sector:
Update on Recent Work Conducted by New Zealand,” http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news00_e/w134.doc]
9. Based on the data and material sourced by New Zealand, it is estimated that in 1996 Japan provided
financial support of US$4 billion to its marine fishing industry, with US$1.8 billion provided in the EU, and
US$1 billion in the US. These figures represent 32%, 21% and 27% of the landed catch value of each
respectively. These figures do not, however, provide any indication of the types of financial support provided
in relation to the fisheries sector, and it is necessary to look at the different types of the support to get a
clearer picture of patterns of subsidization. There is clearly considerable variation between Japan, the EU
and the US in regard to the types of financial support provided. In the US, for example, 61% of total
support was provided in the form of government expenditure on research, resource management and
enforcement, which Milazzo describes as the "Resource Rent" category. While this category of support has
also been estimated as the largest for the EU, it represented only 37% of total EU support and 5% of Japanese
support. The proportion of direct budgetary support for fisheries in both domestic and foreign waters varied
widely between the EU (45%), Japan (28%) and the US (6%). 10. Some Members have in the past
highlighted the "positive" use of subsidies to reduce fishing capacity. The review carried out by New
Zealand indicated that in the overall picture of fish subsidies, such support (classified under the
"conservation" category) appears to be relatively small.
Subsidies can’t reduce overfishing – incentives will never solve the race for the fish
Under ideal circumstances, programmes to reduce capacity by retiring vessels or licences could make
a major contribution to capacity reduction worldwide. A recent study based on case studies submitted by
OECD member countries (OECD 2000a) found that transfers aimed at capacity reduction, “combined with
appropriate management measures, can reduce pressures on fish stocks”. However, experience with such
subsidies in a number of countries shows that it is extremely difficult to design a decommissioning
scheme that will stem the continued growth of fishing capacity as long as the overall incentive
structure in the sector continues to encourage the “race for fish”. These programmes may temporarily
remove vessel capacity from the fleet, but those who remain in the industry will still be motivated to
make additional investment in greater total effort or more efficient gear (i.e. “input stuffing”) and will
have additional resources with which to do so. The eventual increase in capacity can easily drown
out the initial reductions in capacity obtained by the decommissioning or buy-backs (Munro 1999).
Immediate reductions in capacity obtained by buy-backs have been overwhelmed by “input
stuffing” in a number of fisheries, including the Australian southern shark fishery, the British Columbia
salmon fishery, and others in Denmark and the Netherlands (Gates et al. 1997b).
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Clark 5(Colin W., et. al. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Clark, et. al. are professors at the
1-25)
University of British Columbia
In spite of their current popularity, buyback subsidies have several severe disadvantages. First, an
expensive buyback program may at best remove only a marginal portion of the fishing fleet, as less
efficient vessels depart while ‘‘high-liners’’ remain in the fishery. Consequently, actual fishing capacity
may not decline to a notable degree. Second, upon completion of the buybacks, additional capacity may
gradually seep back into the fishery through upgrading of the remaining fleet [15], necessitating a
further round of buybacks [31]. For example, Canada’s Pacific salmon fisheries recently experienced their
third buyback program. A third disadvantage centers on the possibility that buybacks may come to be
anticipated by fishermen. This is an instance of the well-known inconsistency of optimal plans [20].
Specifically, once it becomes known that a government is in the habit of buying up excess capacity,
fishermen will be motivated to acquire vessels, even if the prospects of making a normal return on
their investments are low. Thus the anticipation of future buybacks can, and doubtlessly does, lead to
greater overcapacity than would otherwise occur.
Clark 5(Colin W., et. al. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Clark, et. al. are professors at the
1-25)
University of British Columbia
If vessel buyback programs can overcome the seepage problem, they can have a beneficial impact on
fisheries conservation and can reduce economic waste—provided that vessel owners’ expectations
pertaining to resource managers’ policy are myopic. If the buybacks are anticipated, however, then
even though the seepage problem has been eliminated, the subsidies can have a strong negative impact,
both in terms of conservation of the resource, and in terms of economic efficiency. This conclusion is
not particularly radical, and is really an acknowledgement of the fact that it is follyto assume that vessel
owners are myopic in their investment decision making.
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Greenpeace_98(May,http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:CNNNjOXftJwJ:archive.greenpeace.org/oceans/globaloverfishing/deadahead.html+ban+on+
government+subsidies+construction+fishing+vessels+ship&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us)
Industrialized vessels and fleets are capable of roaming the world's oceans and depleting fish stocks at
will, in many instances operating beyond nation-state regulation. Industrialized fleets are engaged in illegal fishing on the high seas, in
the Southern Ocean, and in numerous developing country EEZs (200 mile limits). They are involved in new and
exploratory fisheries in deep ocean areas, exploiting previously unperturbed species and ecosystems.
And industrialized fleets are involved in conflicts with small-scale and coastal fishers and communities worldwide. These fleets
receive the lion's share of Government subsidies which, according to UN FAO and World Bank estimates, range from 25
to 50 billion dollars annually. These handouts are for a variety of purposes - from subsidizing fuel costs to
supporting wealthy investors in building monstrous, high tech fishing factories up to 137 meters in
length that are capable of roaming the world's oceans to devastate fish stocks. The industrialized
vessels are most often the boats that use the largest-scale technology. This in turn equals high bycatch,
heavy fishing pressure, and a host of other problems. And industrialized fleets (unlike much of the small-scale sector)
generally are not those providing food for local communities in areas of the world where food needs are most acute, but fisheries
products for the global market.
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Leal & Meiners 2 Donald R. Leal, Roger E. Meiners “Government Vs. Environment” 2002 Google Books Page
54
In the political setting, government decision makers have incentives to provide constituents with
products and services they want at little or no cost to them. Political entrepreneurs in this arena are
rewarded with more votes, more authority, and more control over taxpayer dollars, but they do not face the
reality check of profitability that entrepreneurs in the private sector face. Moreover, in the case of
commercial fisheries the long-term health of the resource is being sacrificed for short-term political
goals. Government regulation fails to curtail the incentive that fishers face to overfish in a commons,
which generates wastes. An effective cure to overfishing must be organized around well-defined
property rights to either the resource or shares of the catch. A step in this direction is the application of
individual, transferable quotas (ITQs) in ocean fisheries. ITQs have already registered major successes in
curtailing overcapacity and in helping rebuild fish stocks in ocean fisheries in New Zealand and Iceland (Leal
2000, 8-10). Government subsidies exacerbate the commons and regulatory problems plaguing ocean
fisheries. They also create vested interests in the status quo of overcapitalized fisheries. They may be
politically expedient in the short term, but they inevitably harm the resource and the economy down
the road. Canadian citizens found this out when the federal government doled out tax breaks, loan
guarantees, and lavish unemployment benefits to boost employment in Atlantic Canada's fishing industry,
all of which contributed to the creation and perpetuation of fishing excesses and subsequent collapse of
the northern cod fishery.
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Tech subsidies reduce costs, increasing overfishing and retention of rust-bucket vessels
Fish et al 8 (July 24, Reaction Statement, Birdlfe, Oceana, WWF, Seas at Risk, North Sea)
Supposedly introduced to support the cost of fishing operations, such cash grants can be used to finance fuel
expenses. Allowing fuel subsidies in the fishing sector is a complete waste of money and a
counterproductive measure. The “de minimis” aid will generate further overfishing, by making fuel
cheaper, which will encourage fishermen to fish more and longer. It will also back fishermen to
continue using energy-thirsty and environmentally damaging fishing gear, such as trawling, posing a
serious threat to the marine environment.
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Fuel subsidies are the promote the worst practices, bigger fleets, and massive overcapacity
More ev…
A2: Fuel Subsidies Good – A2: Coastal Fishing Bad – Deep Sea Fishing Key
Benitah 4 [Marc, Professor Of International Law At The University Of Quebec, “Ongoing Wto Negotiations On
Fisheries Subsidies,” 2004, http://Www.Asil.Org/Insights/Insigh136.Htm#_Edn4]
Second, fisheries subsidies contribute to the inefficiency of management and conservation regimes. It is
likely that excess investments in harvesting capacity, stimulated by fisheries subsidies, encourage a
tendency to "free ride," which undermines effective management. In the fisheries sector, such behavior
assumes many forms, including non-compliance with fishing regulations (quota busting), illegal fishing,
[5] or reluctance to accept the judgments of scientists regarding resource sustainability.
OECD 5 [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Subsidies: a Way Towards Sustainable
Fisheries?” 2008, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/54/35802686.pdf]
If governments decide to avoid such effects by limiting the amount of fish that can be caught, then
financial transfers will not necessarily have an adverse effect on fish stocks or catches, as long as the
limit is set to achieve a sustainable yield, and regulations are perfectly enforced. However, if the catch
controls are not perfectly enforced, then the effects will tend to be similar to those of an unrestricted (or
open access) system. Moves aimed simply at controlling fishing effort will only be partially successful,
as this involves attempts to regulate diverse elements such as time at sea, vessel size and power, the type
of fishing gear used, the number of people employed, etc, and it is very difficult to effectively regulate
all these aspects. In this situation, transfers will again have the long-term effect of reduced fish stocks,
lower catches and lower profitability. However, if governments introduce individual rights to catch at appropriate levels, and enforce
them effectively, fishers focus on landing their allowed catch at minimum cost. In principle, financial transfers have no impact on fish stocks but will
increase the profits from fishing, as well as the market value of the access rights to the fishery.
OECD 5 [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Subsidies: a Way towards Sustainable
Fisheries?” 2008, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/54/35802686.pdf]
If governments decide to avoid such effects by limiting the amount of fish that can be caught, then financial
transfers will not necessarily have an adverse effect on fish stocks or catches, as long as the limit is set to
achieve a sustainable yield, and regulations are perfectly enforced. However, if the catch controls are not
perfectly enforced, then the effects will tend to be similar to those of an unrestricted (or open access) system.
Moves aimed simply at controlling fishing effort will only be partially successful, as this involves attempts to
regulate diverse elements such as time at sea, vessel size and power, the type of fishing gear used, the number
of people employed, etc, and it is very difficult to effectively regulate all these aspects.
Other methods to solve overfishing fail – the problem is economic and subsidies are key
Anyanova 8 – Ekaterina, Lecturer in the law of the sea, I. Kant State University of Russia Ph.D
candidate, Hamburg University, Germany
[Rescuing the Inexhaustible…(The Issue of Fisheries Subsidies in the International Trade policy)∗,
http://www.jiclt.com/index.php/JICLT/article/viewFile/68/54]
The international community has started to combat over fishing by different means and techniques:
fishing of some species is totally prohibited, while for other species seasonal quotas, protection
during the spawning season and minimum mesh sizes have been established (Tomasevich, 1971 p.
46). Biological solutions like these have not worked out, however. This is not surprising, since the
main causes of over fishing are not biological or environmental, but rather economic
overexploitation of the ocean’s fishing resources. Since the problem is an economic one, the appropriate
response to it also has to be an economic one. Proper fisheries management and restrictions on fleets’
capacity (including the issue of fishery subsidies) also would be very effective.
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Levin, Holmes, Piner, & Harvey 6 (Phillips S, .National Marine Fisheries Service biologist who is an
expert on the demography of fish; Elizabeth E., Scientist in the Conservation Biology Division at the Center
National Marine Fisheries Service)
As in many regions of the world, marine fishes and invertebrates along the West coast of the United
States have long been subjected to overexploitation. The collapse of the California sardine fishery is infamous and
foreshadowed the nature of fisheries crises for much of the twentieth century (Wolf 1992; Rodriguez-Sanchez et al. 2002). Perhaps less
well known are substantial historic declines in a variety of fish populations along the U.S. Pacific coast. For example, black and white
seabass (Stereolepis gigas and Atractoscion nobilis, respectively) and perhaps yellowtail (Seriola lalandi), were heavily fished and
considerably depleted in southern California waters in the 1920s and 1930s (MacCall 1996; Dayton et al. 1998); soupfin (Galeorhinus
galeus), basking (Cetorhinus maximus), and dogfish (Squalus acanthias) sharks were severely depleted during World War II (Ripley
1946; Ketchen 1986; Holts 1988) and northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax) stocks declined dramatically under high rates of
exploitation in combination with a reduction of ocean productivity (Rodriguez-Sanchez et al. 2002). In recent years, concern over a
number of rockfishes (Sebastes spp.; Parker et al. 2000) has resulted in the implementation of large scale fishery closures along the
continental shelf, with an expected annual cost to coastal communities of about $60 million (PFMC 2003a). Although it is clear
that many fish species along the U.S. Pacific coast are in trouble, there is generally a lack of
information on the current status of west coast fishes. The federal agency charged with managing fish
stocks, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, has formally assessed the
status of only 20% of the nearly 90 demersal fishes it manages along this coast (NMFS 2003).
Gathering the data required to use traditional assessment methodologies to evaluate the status of
unassessed populations of ground fish species is a daunting task that is unlikely to be accomplished in
the foreseeable future. Even so, the demise of fisheries around the globe (Baum et al. 2003; Christensen et al. 2003;
Myers&Worm2003) demands that we should evaluate the status of all exploited fishes—not just those few for
which detailed data are available. Additionally, as the tenets of ecosystem-based management begin to
be adopted, it is clear that the entire fish community, not just species targeted by fisheries, will need to
be assessed. Here, we present an analysis of the status of the demersal fish assemblage along the U.S. Pacific coast. We used simple
count data from fishery independent trawls to examine general trends in numbers and weights of 31 fish species along the continental
shelf. Although not as detailed as traditional stock assessments, our approach allows us to move beyond the few species that have been
assessed formally to provide the first synthetic study of the status of the groundfish assemblage of the U.S. West coast.
Baden 95 (John A. and Noonan, Douglas S. The Seattle Times Baden, Ph.D. is the chairman of FREE http://www.free-
eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=285
12-06)
Regulating restraint through quotas on catch levels, minimum mesh sizes, and shortened seasons, often
worsens matters. Fishermen lobby for overinflated quotas and more subisidies for boats capable of
grabbing a bigger slice of the pie. More overcapitalization brings satellites, surveillance planes, and the
latest in technology to bear in a mad scramble for fish. Cutthroat competition in derby-style seasons
presses captains to employ dangerous tactics in already hazardous fishing conditions.
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Sanchirico and Susan 5 (James, fellow at Resources for the Future; Hanna, professor at Oregon State University, The Providence
Journal,12-26, http://www.rff.org/rff/News/Features/Taking-stock-of-US-Fisheries-Policy.cfm)
Here's a Snapshot of the U.S fishing industry today: fleets race into ocean habitats that suffer from
depleted fish stocks and stressed ecosystems, while fishermen confront stagnant incomes and increased
regulatory conflicts. Continuing this strategy is simply unsustainable: many ocean-grown food
varieties -- shark, red snapper, blue crab, and cod, among other popular species -- are overfished,
threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers who depend on this industry. Despite this situation, pressures to cast
the nets wider and increase the catch continue to rise. As it stands now, U.S. fisheries are governed by policies that
lack clarity and organization. Roughly 140 laws and a dozen agencies and departments have jurisdiction over marine ecosystems.
Current regulations try to control every aspect of fishing, leaving a fisherman with no right of ownership over his fish
until they are caught. This reality only triggers increased competition and circles back to threaten fish
populations. At this critical juncture, President Bush now has an opportunity to right the ship of fisheries management in this country.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy released its preliminary report on marine resources and a variety of ocean and coastal
uses. This report marked the first time in 35 years that such a systematic and wide-ranging assessment has been conducted on this country's ocean
policy. The law required the president to respond to the report last week. Several simple actions taken now in this response could dramatically
improve the fisheries outlook in this country for decades to come. First, using an Executive Order, the president could direct all fishery-
management councils -- regional bodies that determine catch levels and fishery regulations -- to examine the "catch as much as I can" incentives
of fishing interests and allow managers to implement guidelines to pair responsibility for ocean-ecosystem health with rights to catches. Those
who use these public resources also must be held accountable for their impact on the fish stocks and ecosystem. These guidelines might include
individual fishing quotas that would guarantee all fishermen a share of the total catch, or fishing cooperatives that could decide the allocation
among their fleets. Experience to date illustrates that both systems can improve the bottom line of the fishing industry and rebuild fish
populations. Both higher incomes for fishermen and healthier stocks of fish are needed to shift the focus from short-term gain to long-run
sustainability. Second, the president should direct policymakers to require that all major U.S. fisheries set hard limits on annual catches, and that
these limits take into account the effects of overfishing on the ocean ecosystem. Some current approaches try to meet this need
rather than catch size limits, letting fishermen catch as much as they want during a
through time limits,
specific period. While this might seem to give fishermen greater freedom over their fishing habits, it can lead to the
collapse of fish stocks, as it has with New England cod. Hard caps, or total allowable catches, must be combined with
policies that address fishermen incentives; otherwise, the race for fish will continue unabated. Third, the president must recognize that what
benefits fishermen in the short term is not always in the best interest of the marine ecosystem. To ensure that guidelines are met without
compromising fish conservation needs, the administration must stipulate that the decision-making process on ocean harvests should be overhauled
to ensure that the best available natural- and social-science data are used. Some regional councils do not have functional
scientific advisory panels. Separating the decision on "how many fish can be caught" from the
question of "by who, when, and where" will also help to shift the focus to the long-term health of the
ecosystem. These are but three needed changes in U.S. ocean policy. However, none of these solutions requires legislative action or
major institutional reorganization; they can be achieved solely through presidential leadership. Addressing these immediate
needs will provide the building blocks necessary for greater change. They must be met first to restrain
the race for fish and to stop the damage to the industry and the environment. Only then can longer-
term, fundamental changes be implemented, and indeed succeed. In his response to the U.S. Commission on Ocean
Policy report, President Bush can turn the tide and preserve the long-term health of our maritime resources. Getting it wrong will not
only cause permanent damage to this critical ecosystem, but also will hurt the livelihoods of all those dependent upon it.
Arizona Debate Institute 2008 148
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Lubchenco and Palumbi 3 [Jane and Steven, Oregan State and Harvard University 2003]
Research is demonstrating that marine reserves are powerful management and conservation tools, but
they are not a panacea; they cannot alleviate all problems, such as pollution, climate change, or
overfishing, that originate outside reserve boundaries. Marine reserves are thus emerging as a
powerful tool, but one that should be complemented by other fishing.
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Hannesson 98, R. “Marine Reserves: What Would They Accomplish?” IIFET '98 Tromso conference
A marine reserve is defined as an area closed to fishing and is assumed to be a part of the area over which a
fish stock is dispersed. The paper investigates what will happen to fishing outside the marine reserve and to
the stock size in the entire area as a result of establishing a marine reserve. Three regimes are compared: (i)
open access to the entire area; (ii) open access to the area outside the marine reserve; and (ii) optimum
fishing in the entire area. Two models are used: (i) a continuous time model, and (ii) a discrete time model,
both using the logistic growth equation. Both models are deterministic equilibrium models. The
conservation effects of a marine reserve is critically dependent on the size of the marine reserve and
the migration rate of fish. A marine reserve will increase fishing costs and overcapitalization in the
fishing industry, to the extent it has any conservation effect on the stock, and in a seasonal fishery it
will shorten the fishing season. For stocks with moderate to high migration rates a marine reserve of a
moderate size will have only a small conservation effect, compared with open access to the entire area
inhabited by a stock. The higher the migration rate of fish, the larger the marine reserve will have to be
in order to achieve a given level of stock conservation. A marine reserve of an appropriate size would
achieve the same conservation effect as optimum fishing, but with a smaller catch.
Marine Protected areas lead to fishing conflict, more fuel use, and merely shift overfishing
to other species.
Sanchirico 2 [James, Fellow @ Quality Environment Division at Resources for the Future, May, www.rff.org]
Reducing the amount of area open to fishing implies that, at least in the short-run, vessels could
experience higher levels of congestion on the remaining grounds. Congestion effects could result in
increases in fuel usage and high capital costs (e.g., fish finding equipment). In addition, significantly
reducing the amount of the fishable waters could also lead to increased conflicts between users of the
resource, such as allocation disputes and gear entanglements. A potential conflict could arise, for example,
from a trawler discplaced by an MPA venturing into an area traditionally occupied by fixed-gear
fisherman only. In this example, the costs of harvesting increase not only for the displaced trawler but also
for the fixed-gear fisherman, who otherwise might not have been affected directly by the closures.
Congestion effects might not only be concentrated in the fishery for which the closure was
implemented as establishment of an MPA could shift fishing pressure from one species to another,
thereby increasing the competition for the catch of that catch of that second species.
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Sanchirico 2 [James, Fellow @ Quality Environment Division at Resources for the Future, May, www.rff.org]
Many proponents of MPAs claim that they will provide broad ecosystem benefits including
improvements in habitat and restoration of healthy marine life communities throughout the ocean ecosystem.
These benefits are most likely to be felt within protected area, but again outside the area the effects are
unclear. Closing off an area will prompt fisherman to go elsewhere, putting new pressures on the
remaining open grounds. This shift could mitigate any broad ecosystem benefits, because it could
increase the intensity level of activities in the remaining nonprotected areas, further degrading habitat,
and potentially creating a marine environment dotted with islands of productive habitat surrounded
by vast expanses of depleted habitat. Fishing in some of the areas where fisherman choose to go in the
face of closures could be more biologically detrimental than the areas declared off-limits.
More ev…
Shipp 2 (Robert L. Ph.D. A Report to the Fishamerica Foundation. May 23. http://republicans.resourcescommittee.house.gov/
archives/ii00/archives/107cong/fisheries/2002may23/shipp.htm)
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are portions of the marine environment which are protected from some or all
human activity. Often these are proposed as a safeguard against collapse of fish stocks, although there are
numerous other suggested purposes for their establishment. “No take” MPAs (hereafter referenced as
nMPAs) are those from which no harvest is allowed. Other types include those where certain types of harvest
are prohibited, which are reserved for certain user groups, or which are protected from other human activities
such as drilling or dredging. Establishment of nMPAs may have numerous beneficial purposes. However, as
a tool for fisheries management, where optimal and/or maximum sustainable yield is the objective, nMPAs
are generally not as effective as traditional management measures, and are not appropriate for the vast
majority of marine species. This is because most marine species are far too mobile to remain within an nMPA
and/or are not overfished. For those few species which could receive benefit, creation of nMPAs would have
an adverse effect on optimal management of sympatric forms. Eight percent of US fish stocks of the
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are reported to be experiencing overfishing. The finfish stocks included in
this number are primarily pelagic or highly mobile species, movement patterns that don’t lend themselves to
benefit from nMPAs. Thus a very small percentage, something less than 2 %, depending on mobility
potentials, is likely to benefit from creation of these no-take zones. However, many of these species have
come under management within the last decade, employing more traditional fishery management measures,
and are experiencing recovery.
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De Alessi 4 (Michael, director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation. Florida Museum of Natural History.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/InNews/laws2004.htm)
The greatest threat to the oceans is what is referred to as the "the tragedy of the commons," when the race
goes to the swift fisherman, all commercial fishermen have little choice but to deplete the seas because any
fish they leave behind will simply be caught be someone else, rather than left to grow and reproduce for
another year. Marine reserves don't solve this key part of the crisis; they simply force fishermen to relocate.
And the problem is frequently compounded by state or federal regulations that attempt to restrict fishing, but
fail to address the reasons fish are over-harvested in the first place.
Turn: Shunned fishers create fixed areas with levels of activity intense enough to deplete
the habitat
Sanchirico 00 (James, fellow in RFF’s Quality of the Environment Division. Summer, www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/
Sanchirico/RFF-Resources-140-marinepro.pdf)
Many proponents of MPAs claim that they will provide broad ecosystem benefits including improvements in
habitat and restoration of healthy marine life communi- ties throughout the ocean ecosystem. These benefits
are most likely to be felt within the protected area, but again outside of this area the effects are unclear.
Closing off an area will prompt fishermen to go else- where, putting new pressures on the remaining open
grounds. This shift could mitigate any broad ecosystem benefits, because it could increase the intensity level
of activities in the remain- ing nonprotected areas, further degrading habitat, and potentially creating a
marine environment dotted with islands of produc- tive habitat surrounded by vast expanses of depleted
habitat. predict the magnitude and forms of the changes in advance. Some advocates also claim that MPAs
will provide Fishing in some of the areas where fishermen choose to go in the face of closures could be more
biologically detrimental than in the areas declared off-limits.
Sanchirico 00 (James, fellow in RFF’s Quality of the Environment Division. Summer, www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/
Sanchirico/RFF-Resources-140-marinepro.pdf)
What role should protected areas play in fishery regulation of the new century? MPAs seem particularly
important as an instrument to ensure that special treasures, like unique habi- tat and biodiversity, are preserved
for posterity. MPAs also have the potential to provide a margin of safety and perhaps even enhance the
productivity of some fisheries. But their usefulness as a fisheries management tool to mitigate the ills of
overfish- ing is less clear. Fisheries are common property resources, and individual users of the resource do not
face the proper incen- tives to conserve the stock. While MPAs might provide a safe buffer under certain
circumstances, they are still addressing a symptom and not the fundamental cause of overfishing and waste in
fisheries. Until institutions are designed that change the incentives fishermen experience, policymakers will
continue to face the overcapacity problems that have given rise to the recent momentum for increasing the scale
and scope of MPAs.
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Marine reserves don’t solve land pollution of marine ecosystems – this is the significant
source.
Lewison 4(Rebecca L. et. al. Duke University Marine Laboratory, Lewison et. al. are professors at DUML
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/eeb/academics/articles/Lewison_et_al.pdf November)
Fisheries management policies (e.g. time and area closures or moratoria on fisheries) have also been
implemented to reduce bycatch. Although these policies provide an immediate solution to reducing
bycatch by temporarily reducing or displacing fishing effort, closures can also introduce additional
problems, including the reallocation of fishing effort, which can lead to higher bycatch of other
vulnerable species
Alverson 96 (Dayton L., FAO, Alverson et. al. are research consultants for marine resources
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/t4890e/T4890E00.HTM)
Finally, the amounts of discard may be aggravated by regulatory regimes which (1) use time/area
controls to mitigate losses to one species, but do not consider bycatch and discard effects on other
species in more intensely fished alternate areas or in the same areas by alternative fishing gears or
methods, (2) allow fishing effort greatly to exceed that required to attain sustainable annual harvest levels,
(3) allocate catch of a particular species to a single gear type without regard to, and the time/areal catch
composition of, different gear types, and (4) promote “Olympic” type fishing activities
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A2: ITQ CP – = Overfishing
ITQs empower corporations who allow fish stocks die out.
ITQ’s allows for corporate control which will gut the industry driving up food prices.
Fox 94 (Warwick, philosopher and ethicis. Deep ecology for the 21st Century, www.dhushara.com/book/renewal/voices2/deep.htm)
That anthropocentrism has served as the most fundamental kind of legitimatron employed by whatever
powerful class of social actors one wishes to focus on can also be seen by considering the fundamental kind
of legitimation that has habitually been employed with regard to large-scale or high-cost social enterprises
such as war, scientific and technological development, or environmental exploitation. Such enterprises have
habitually been undertaken not simply in the name of men, capitalists, whites, or Westerners, for example, but rather in the name
of God (and thus our essential humanity-or our anthropocentric projection upon the cosmos, depending upon one's perspective) or
simply in the name of humanity in general. (This applies notwithstanding the often sexist expression of these sentiments in
terms of "man," mankind," and so on, and notwithstanding the fact that certain classes of social actors benefit disproportionately from
these enterprises.) Thus, to take some favorite examples, Francis Bacon and Descartes ushered in the development of modern science by
promising, respectively, that it would lead to "enlarging the bounds of Human Empire" and that it would render
humanity the "masters and possessors of nature."10 Approximately three and a half centuries later, Nell Armstrong's moon
walk-the culmination of a massive, politically directed, scientific and technological development effort-epitomized both the literal acting
out of this vision of "enlarging the bounds of Human Empire" and the literal expression of its anthropocentric spirit: Armstrong's moon
walk was, in his own words at the time, a "small step" for him, but a giant leap for mankind." Here on Earth, not only do
examples abound of environmental exploitation being undertaken in the name of humanity, but this also
constitutes the fundamental kind of legitimation that is still most often employed for environmental
conservation and preservation-it is implicit in every argument for the conservation or preservation of the
nonhuman world on account of its use value to humans (.e.g, its scientific, recreational, or aesthetic value)
rather than for its own sake or its use value to nonhuman beings. The cultural pervasiveness of
anthropocentrism in general and anthropocentric legitimations in particular are further illustrated when one
turns to consi 'der those social movements that have opposed the dominant classes of social actors to which I have
been referring. With respect to the pervasiveness of anthropocentrism in general, it can be seen that those countermovements that have
been most concerned with exposing discriminatory assumptions and undoing their effects have typically confined their interests to the
human realm (i.e., to such issues as imperalism, race, socioeconomic class, and gender). With respect to the pervasiveness of
anthropocentric legitimations in particular, it can equally be seen that these countermovements have not sought to legitimate their own
claims on the basis that they are, for example, women, workers, black, or non-Western per se, but rather on the grounds that they too
have exemplified-at least equally with those to whom they have been opposedeither whatever it is that has been taken to constitute the
essence of humanness or else some redefined essence of humanness. While it would, in any case, be contrary to the (human-centered)
egalitarian concerns of these countermovements to seek to legitimate their own claims by the former kind of approach (i.e., on the basis
that they are, for example, women, workers, black, or nonWestern per se), the pity is (from a deep ecological perspective) that these
countermovements have not been egalitarian enough. Rather than attempting to replace the ideology of anthropocentrism with some
broader, ecocentrically inclined perspective, these countermovements have only served to reinforce it. It should be clear from this brief
survey that the history of anthropocentrism takes in not only the assumption of the centrality and superiority of humans i.n general, but
also the various claims and counterclaims that various classes of humans have made with regard to the exemplification of whatever
attributes have been considered to be quintessentially human. Deep ecologists recognize that the actual historical reasons for the
domination of one class by another (and here I also refer to the domination that humans as a class now exert over the nonhuman world)
cannot be identified in any simplistic manner; they can be as complex as any ecological web or the evolutionary path of any organism.
However, deep ecologists also recognize that claims to some form of human exclusiveness have tyically been
employed to legitimate the bringing about and perpetuation of historical and evolutionary outcomes
involving unwarranted domination. In consequence, deep ecologists have been attempting to get people to
see that historical and evolutionary outcomes simply represent "the way things happen to have turned
out"-nothing more-and that self-serving anthropocentric legitimations for these outcomes are just that.
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Icsf 99 [International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, SAMUDRA Report No. 23, September 1999,
http://www.icsf.net/icsf2006/uploads/publications/dossier/pdf/english/issue_82/chapter668.pdf]
In ITQ fisheries, the total allowable catch (TAC) needs to be set firmly at the beginning of a season or fishing period, as participants
need to know in advance what their quota (share of the TAC) is. The credibility of the system depends on honouring the set quotas, but
sound management requires constant monitoring of stocks, with in-season changes in TACs and fishery closures, according to observed
stock conditions. The inflexible TACs of ITQ systems lead to harmful overfishing if they are set too high, or wasteful underfishing if
they are set too low. ITQ systems are notorious for cheating (‘quota busting’), with participants taking, but
failing to report, catches in excess of quota. Enforcement of quotas is difficult, expensive and, in many
fisheries, impossible to achieve. Where enforcement of quotas is reasonably successful, a different problem
arises, that of `high-grading’. In order to maximize income from their (quantitative) quotas, fishers are
induced to throw away fish that have a lower value per pound, which often means a significant part of
their otherwise saleable catch will be discarded and go to waste. Even worse is the practice of ‘price
dumping’ in some ITQ fisheries, where the entire catch of a trip is discarded if, on the way back to
port, it is found that the day’s market price is low.
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Icsf 99 [International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, SAMUDRA Report No. 23, September 1999,
http://www.icsf.net/icsf2006/uploads/publications/dossier/pdf/english/issue_82/chapter668.pdf]
ITQs are frequently promoted as a device to ‘privatize’ the fishery. It is asserted that they would abolish the common-property nature of fish stocks, and
The notion that
bring about private ownership of the fishery, with the efficiency advantages that attach to such ownership. This vision is wrong.
ITQs will remove the common-property nature of fish stocks and make the fishery ‘just like’ other
industries is utterly unrealistic. It needs to be realized that fish in the ocean are fugitive and can not be
segregated, identified and assigned to different owners. The ecology that nurtures them is the seamless
multi-use ocean environment that is common for fishing, recreation, transportation and many other purposes.
Fish stocks and the ocean environment that produces them, by their very nature, are common-use and
common-property resources. They can not be divided into self-contained and separately managed units
to which comprehensively specified private property rights may be attached. For privatization of the fishery to be
substantially complete and to meet the test of economic efficiency, it would be required to give every fishing enterprise exclusive property rights to, and
exclusive control over, a particular identified set of fish, along with a particular ecology that produces those fish, in the same way that a farmer owns and
controls specific animals and all the productive facilities of the farm necessary to raise and bring those animals to market. It is patently impossible to operate
in such a fashion in the marine fisheries, because of the physically determined common-use nature of the resource. ITQs do not give property
rights to the fish stocks, but only privileged access rights to a pool of fish that quota holders continue to
exploit in common. It has been demonstrated that ITQs will often help to rationalize fishing capacity. On the other hand, as shown above, they will
also frequently result in distributional inequities. Of further concern is the fact that, in many cases, they are demonstrated to be
damaging to fisheries conservation.
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WWF 8 (http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/marine/problems/bycatch/issue/critical_fisheries/index.cfm)
Used to catch the vast majority of tropical shrimp, trawl nets entrap 5-20kgs of bycatch for each kilogram of
shrimp. Species caught include marine turtles, juvenile fish, cetaceans, dugongs, sharks, seahorses, seabirds,
sea snakes, and corals and other invertebrates such as crabs and starfish. In the Gulf of Mexico, for example,
shrimp trawlers catch as many as 35 million juvenile red snappers each year, enough to have an impact on the
population. As a further example, in the Gulf of California, entanglement in shrimp trawler nets threatens the
world's smallest and most endangered small marine cetacean - the vaquita - with potential extinction.
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US Key (1/3)
US key to over fishing.
Burns 3 (Scott, Economic Perspectives, Scott Burns is a member and writer for the WWF, Jan.
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0103/ijee/burns.htm)
The United States should play a stronger role in encouraging the development of measures to address the
problem of fishing fleet overcapacity. Overcapacity is a root cause of the collapse of New England's cod
population and is at the heart of the crises in the Pacific rockfish and Alaska crab fisheries. It also poses a
major threat to the health of international fisheries that are of critical importance to U.S. fishermen and
markets.
Where overcapacity exists, fishermen must fish harder and spend more to catch fewer fish but earn less.
Overcapacity also increases habitat destruction and the bycatch of marine life. While reducing the size of
fleets is perhaps the single most important step that can be taken to improve the long-term viability of
fisheries and protect biological diversity and the economic interests of fishermen, international efforts to
better manage fleet size have made little progress. The FAO Plan of Action for managing fishing capacity is
largely a paper exercise. In those few cases where steps are being taken to control fleet growth, they are "too
little, too late."
Unilateral subsidy cuts by the U.S. will demonstrate economic leadership and cause an
international spillover effect
Armour-Garb 95 – Allison Rees, editor of the New York University Environmental Law Journal
[MINIMIZING HUMAN IMPACTS ON THE GLOBAL NITROGEN CYCLE: NITROGEN FERTILIZER AND
POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES,
http://www.law.nyu.edu/JOURNALS/ENVTLLAW/issues/vol4/2/4nyuelj339.html]
Because the United States plays a role in world leadership, unilateral liberalization of U.S. agricultural policies may
pave the way for other countries to follow our example. Under this scenario, U.S. agribusiness might push for international
liberalization of agriculture in order to create a 'level playing field.' Such a scenario could create positive
international spillover effects. 122 Many politicians have cautioned against unilateral cuts of agricultural
subsidies, however. Once again, military metaphors dominate this dialogue. Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) commented:
Our chief competitor is Europe. They clearly have a plan and a strategy for dominating future agricultural trade. . . . They think we're going to back down
and that they can take control of world agriculture markets. . . . For those who say we ought to eliminate export subsidy, that strikes me as unilateral
disarmament. I don't think anyone would recommend it in the face of a military conflict. I don't think we should be pursuing that policy with respect to a
trade conflict. 123 To support his statements, Senator Conrad noted that while U.S. agricultural support totaled $8.4 billion in fiscal year 1994, Europe's
totaled over $30 billion. In the area of export subsidies, the disparity was even greater: between 1990 and 1994, the United States spent $1.7 billion per year,
versus Europe's nearly $11 billion per year. Under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the gap has been projected to widen further. 124
Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) echoed Senator Conrad's remarks, stating that 'a unilateral cut of any significant size . . . would hurt American farmers very
significantly.' 125 Likewise, *363 Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has voiced his agreement with Senator Conrad's position and his opposition to the
idea of 'unilateral disarmament' in the area of agricultural trade. 126 While the foregoing 'dilemmas' need to be considered, removal
of market
distortions, on balance, would be likely to yield environmental benefits by helping to reverse the negative
incentives discussed above. Liberalization of the agricultural sector should be accompanied by a strengthening of environmental policies
targeting nitrogen pollution from agricultural sources. In Part IV, this Student Article explores the role that U.S. environmental policies play in controlling
the environmental costs of nitrogen fertilizer use.
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US Key (2/3)
International efforts can't solve.
Corcoran 95 (Terence, The Globe and the Mail Corcoran is a writer for the Canadian news source 3-15
http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezp.lib.rochester.edu/us/lnacademic/returnTo.do?returnToKey=20_T4279633263)
Predictably, Greenpeace's solution to the ocean fishery mess is to reinforce the collectivist view of the oceans
as a great "common property resource" that can only be managed by negotiated international treaties
that give everybody equal access. Putting one's faith in multilateral action to solve ocean fishing crises is
a little like turning to the International Communist League to devise a new model for the Russian economy.
We've been there already, and it doesn't work. Most of the world's current international fisheries
organizations are direct descendants of scores of ineffective agencies that have come into existence over
the past 50 years. Their names are heavy with purpose, such as the 1958 Convention on Fishing and
Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas, but their achievement is failure. Despite their
weighty declarations over the decades, the oceans have indeed been plundered, as Greenpeace suggests,
but by the very nations who periodically gather - as they will again in New York later this month - to
solemnly declare their commitment to save the oceans.
Turner 2 (John, Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and
Scientific Affairs,
http://www.oceancommission.gov/meetings/oct30_02/turner_testimony.pdf)
I think we would all agree that U.S. leadership is essential and should take several forms. First, we
obviously need to be a model ourselves. We must practice at home what we want others to practice
abroad. The Commission’s recommendations are critically important in putting us in a position to be leaders
in the future in this respect. For example, the plan of action from the World Summit calls for
implementation of an ecosystem approach to oceans. Yet, I think we would admit that the U.S. and many
other nations are only beginning to understand what that means in terms of management. We need to be
forward looking domestically in developing such approaches so that we can join with others
internationally in applying these principles.
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US Key (3/3)
Fisheries are in serious decline – the U.S. needs to take unilateral action to spur
international action
The U.S. needs to play an international leadership role and cut subsidies to act as a model
for other nations
Agritrade 8 (ICTSD BRIDGES, Vol. 12, No. 18, 5/210/08, http://www.ictsd.org:80/weekly/08-05-21/story3.htm) RKB
During the May 2008 session of the WTO negotiating group on rules, China, India and Indonesia proposed
exemptions on fishing subsidies, whereby developing countries would be able to subsidise small-scale
fishing vessels up to 24 metres in length instead of up to 10 meters as proposed in the current negotiating
draft.
Most members are sympathetic to granting flexibility to artisanal fishing, but fear that an unduly lax
definition could encourage overfishing. The proposal to allow developing nations to subsidise high-seas
fishing also proved sensitive.
The sponsors of the proposal argued that it was appropriate for developing countries to subsidise fishing
activity on the high seas because of the benefits that developed nations have historically enjoyed from
subsidised high-seas fishing. The environmental NGO Oceana claim that this gives a ‘blank cheque’ to
developing countries, some of whom are already big producers of fish, to subsidise commercial operations
on the high seas far from home
Whilst there is a general consensus on the value of technical assistance to fisheries in developing countries,
the exact aid required by developing countries needs to be made clear. The Chair clarified that his draft
would exempt LDCs from any prohibitions of fisheries subsidies without any attached conditions. He also
highlighted the fact that the WTO did not have the expertise to address technical fisheries matters; any
assessment for technical assistance would thus have to be addressed by outside organisations, such as the
FAO or the UNDP.
Benitah 4 [Marc, Professor Of International Law At The University Of Quebec, “Ongoing Wto Negotiations On
Fisheries Subsidies,” 2004, http://Www.Asil.Org/Insights/Insigh136.Htm#_Edn4]
The "no need" approach does not address some fundamental issues. First, why is the present SCM*
Agreement not employed as a means for dealing with WTO Members that are granting prohibited
fisheries subsidies or fisheries subsidies causing adverse trade effects? [4] Part of the answer is that there is
very poor disclosure and notification of fisheries subsidies. Moreover, it is difficult to find countries that
could not be accused of granting fisheries subsidies, so no government desires to expose itself to
countercharges by accusing another government. However, another part of the answer is linked to a
diffuse feeling that the current SCM* Agreement is not adapted to the special context of the fisheries
sector and that lodging a complaint in this context amounts to skating on thin ice. Legal and extra-legal
costs of such a complaint are easily identifiable, but the possible benefits are dubious.
*the current WTO Subsidies Agreement (SCM)
Subsidy cuts through the WTO fail – they target the wrong subsidies and countries
underreport
Toepfer & Leape 5 – Klaus, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment
Programme, and James, Director General of WWF International [Dec.,
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=459&ArticleID=5
086&l=en]
However, WTO rules only disallow fishing subsidies that interfere with efforts to export, and in most
cases governments must mount elaborate proofs of sales distortions in specific markets. Subsidies that
support unsustainable production are not currently subject to effective discipline. For fishermen —
who must catch fish before they can sell them — such rules do little to prevent subsidies that lead to
depleted stocks. Moreover, existing WTO rules requiring disclosure of subsidy programmes have been
ineffective. Repeated studies have concluded that governments underreport their fishing subsidies by
nearly 90% — and the little information they provide is often too vague to be of use.
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Despite the general agreement that certain aspects of fisheries subsidies programs need to be reformed and
clarified, there is very little data available on fisheries subsidy programs (WTO, 2006b). Developed
country subsidy programs are complex and often linked to general subsidy programs; reporting has
been vague and incomplete. Available data on fisheries subsidies in OECD and APEC countries give a
general notion of how much support different fleets receive from their governments and which categories of
current subsidies might be considered harmful or beneficial in trade, environmental and socioeconomic
terms. There are, however, several shortcomings with these data. First, they are nearly ten years old
and it is difficult to know how much the subsidy quantities or types have changed during this time
period. Second, although data have been disaggregated by country, they are not disaggregated by fleet or
by fishing region so it is difficult to know which fisheries and fishers are most affected by the
subsidies. Finally, discrepancies among subsidy programs reported to the OECD, APEC and the
WTO indicate that there are severe gaps in reporting. Further compounding data analysis difficulties,
the various organisations compiling subsidies data for the fisheries sector rely on different definitions of
subsidies. Nonetheless, the OECD, APEC and the WTO have compiled comparative data. Table 6.2 provides
a sense of the extent to which key fishing nations support their industries.
Jacques 6 Peter Jacques Ph.D. Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida “globalization and
the world ocean” 2006 Google Books Page 36
In addition, it is worth noting that information is almost universally organized through, and monitored,
controlled, and manipulated by the State. One clear example of this is the manipulation of marine fish catch
numbers by the Chinese government: these numbers are understood to be grossly, overestimated. A more
subtle form of control is the lack of information on social conditions like poverty in the South Pacific, though
this may be more of a symptom of a lack of capacity of or interest by the World Bank. Thus, most of the
information used in this book is in some way compromised by this limit, which is part of a nationalist
ideology.
Kemi 5 (Lewis, CEPMLP Kemi is a graduate student at the CEPMLP at University of Dundee 2005
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/cepmlp/car/html/car7_article6.pdf)
Currently, there exists no specific WTO provision on this contentious issue of fisheries subsidies. The SCM
Agreement, under which at present the issue of fisheries subsidies fall, cannot deal with it as
comprehensively as a specific agreement could.
For instance, the rules within the SCM agreement do not address environmental and development impacts of
subsidies, which are the main adverse effects of fisheries subsidies. The SCM deals with market distortions,
which it is just a fraction of the harmful effects of subsidizing the fishing sector. However, the heterogeneous
nature of fisheries has been identified as the difficulty behind identifying the sort of market distortions at
which SCM provisions are directed.
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IHT 7 (5-1)
The United States called Tuesday for global trade talks to include a ban on billions of dollars worth of
ecology-damaging subsidies linked to excess capacity of fleets, overfishing and depletion of fish stocks.
"The stakes are high for the world's oceans and for the fishing communities that depend on them," said Peter
Allgeier, the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization. "High subsidy levels are part of the reason
the global fishing capacity is significantly greater than needed to catch what the oceans can produce sustain
ably," Allgeier told officials from 150 countries taking part in the WTO-sponsored of talks in Doha, Qatar.
The proposal, by Washington, rallied support from many countries including Chile, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, China, Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil.
But it also drew objections from the European Union and other countries with influential industry lobbies
including Norway, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
The Korean delegation, for example, said that it did not accept that subsidies in general should be prohibited.
Japan argued that aid for infrastructure such as fishing ports should be exempted.
IHT 7 (5-1)
Japan was the biggest fisheries subsidizer, providing about $5.3 billion a year, followed by the EU and China
with $3.1 billion each; India, $2.4 billion; Russia, $1.9 billion; Brazil, $1.3 billion, and the United States,
$1.2 billion, according to an economic study cited by Oceana.
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Franklin 8 (Matthew, The Australian News Franklin is a staff writer for the Australian News 7-31
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24104904-601,00.html)
The long-running Doha Round required co-operation between developed and developing nations, with the
US and Europe under pressure to bring down trade barriers to give poor nations greater access to their huge
consumer markets.
But despite expectations earlier in the week of a breakthrough, the Doha talks were abandoned early
yesterday, Australian time, after the US and India failed to compromise to solve a dispute over tariffs on farm
products. The collapse sparked an angry response from Australian exporters, as well as accusations from
senior Australian trade officials that US trade negotiator Susan Schwab lost her political nerve and
deliberately scuttled the negotiations.
Japan, Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and China all oppose blanket fishery cuts- a US
push would hurt relations
ICTSD 5 (1/21/05, Bridges Trade BioRes, Volume 5 number 1
http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/9250/)
Japan opposed the proposal for a general prohibition on fisheries subsidies, and once again argued for a ‘bottom up’
approach that would require Members to evaluate each type of subsidy and slate it for preservation or elimination
depending on its effect. The American submission countered that the Japanese approach would "contemplate a very
small number of prohibited subsidies and a large number of permitted subsidies", and that it "could potentially lead
to a set of disciplines weaker than the current rules". Korea, which supports the Japanese approach, said that the
fisheries subsidies talks were proceeding far too quickly given that the issue was only put on the WTO agenda at the
November 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference. On the other hand, the EC said that the simple fact that Members
generally agree that harmful subsidies must stop already represented significant progress. It also urged participants
not to take hard-line positions in favour of the top-down approach on the grounds that the alternative approach might
also yield results. India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and China emphasised developing countries’ need for special and
differential treatment.
Japan hates the plan- it’s the world’s largest fish subsidizer
ABC 7 (11/8/07
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/08/2085265.htm?site=water)
The United States called in March for a total WTO ban on fishing subsidies - a move opposed by Japan and South
Korea.
Japan is the world's largest fishing subsidiser with annual payments amounting to $5.7 billion a year, figures
provided by Oceana say. "Many of these subsidies drive increases in capacity, which in turn results in overfishing
and promotes other destructive fishing practices," Oceana said.
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