Water, water

Next time you sidle up to your local supermarket seafood counter, notice the artistic displays that showcase the bounty of surrounding waters.

In a huge tank, perhaps 200 to 300 fat Dungeness crabs scrabble over each other like Sunday skiers trying to get on the lift. Wide-eyed salmon nestle cozily in a mini snowdrift.  Succulent shrimp are piled high, waiting to be whisked home and dipped in cocktail sauce.

Almost all these delicacies will be sold and consumed by day’s end, and there’s more where they came from.  But for how long?

Past generations viewed our oceans as a limitless resource.  However, things are changing.  Today, we hear ominous phrases like “the empty ocean” and “exhausted seas.”  How could this happen?

Worldwide, fisheries are in danger of collapsing, and some already have.  There are several reasons.  Runaway human population growth naturally leads to over fishing.  Add a new emphasis on fish as a healthy food choice, improvements in the way fish are caught and processed, and most significant, national policies that ignore science and fail to keep fisheries sustainable. 

To meet the burgeoning demand for seafood, fishers have to mine deeper waters, working farther from shore.  Our continental shelves are prime fish habitat (or at least they were); unfortunately, the open sea doesn’t support much life and thus presents no solution as a fall-back fishing zone.

Scariest of all, we are now “fishing down.” Translation: we’ve removed so many large marine animals – those at the top of the food web – that we now take the next smaller-sized species, as well as younger generations of once-abundant large predators.

Studies from 2003 show that 90 percent of the active marine predators like cod, flounder and tuna, no longer exist in commercially viable numbers.  This imbalance ricochets right down the food web, disrupting the oceans’ delicate life balance.

What’s to be done?  We can restrict the use of (or downright ban) destructive fishing gear such as those that dredge and systematically destroy whole ocean ecosystems, like bottom habitat.  We can establish more Marine Protected Areas, where species can rebuild their numbers without interference.  Most important, we can manage fisheries sensibly.

What about fish farms?  Environmentally, they’re controversial, and some actually consume more fish than they produce (it can take three pounds of fish meal to feed one pound of salmon). 

The oceans’ resources are finite.  Yet the demand for fish and other marine edibles continues to grow while supplies dwindle.  Perhaps our most urgent need is to face the problem squarely, placing politics and special interests on the back shelf, in the search for practical solutions.

Nancy Sefton is a marine naturalist living in North Kitsap.  She produces educational DVDs about the northwest environment, for regional schools.