Except for "green" activists, most people's approach to environmental issues tends to be that we consume what is available until the situation becomes so dangerous that it cannot be ignored. What human beings are doing to the oceans and the life existing in them falls into that category.
A recent study conducted by Canadian researchers at Dalhousie University reported the startling fact that commercial fishing in a short 50 years has reduced by 90 percent the oceans' stock of large predatory fishes, including tuna and cod, the formerly plentiful white fish.
This irresponsible feat has been made possible by modern techniques that permit trawlers to, in effect, vacuum the seas of fish, catching and killing everything that has the bad luck to wander into range of one of them. Methods of searching out schools of fish have become more sophisticated also and now include sonar and satellite tracking. The fish themselves are obviously not smart enough to figure out how to stay alive and out of the nets of modern fishermen. They can run, but they cannot hide.
No government can easily control such fishing. Two hundred miles beyond the shores is basically a free-fire zone for fishermen. Those that fly the flag of a country interested in preserving fish stocks, as opposed simply in their fishermen being financially successful, may be able to exert some controls, but the seas are full of ships with flags of countries that couldn't care less. The result is disastrous.
The subject was addressed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002 at which a pledge was made by some companies to restore fish stocks by 2015, a virtually meaningless gesture in the face of uncontrolled fishing by fleets from Japan, Taiwan, Russia and Spain, among others. The subject of depletion of fish stocks was also addressed symbolically at the Group of 8 summit in Evian, France, this month.
The United States professes to be serious about fish stocks off its shores. At the same time, there is major political opposition from members of Congress and other representatives of coastal states to any efforts to reduce government subsidies to fishermen, limit catches, control coastal development or reduce runoff pollution from cities and industrial farms.
The Bush administration can take in hand the situation off at least America's shores. It is not too late. Fish stocks can regenerate with protection. Otherwise, the price will be paid by Americans in terms of protein in our diets and destruction of our marine ecosystems. And fish farms are no substitute for the bounty of the oceans.
The Bush administration continues to insist against its critics that it does have an environmental policy. Here is a critical issue on which it can make good on that boast.
E-mail this story 
