Sat, Jul 02, 2011 page2

• INTERVIEW: Greenpeace seeks to protect global fisheries

  Sarah Duthie, head of Greenpeace International’s oceans campaign unit, leads the environmental protection organization’s driving strategy and oversees oceans projects across its offices around the world. Duthie and Kao Yu-fen, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Taiwan, shared their thoughts on Taiwan’s role in the issue of global overfishing and the importance of setting up marine reserves to protect ocean life with “Taipei Times” staff reporter Lee I-chia last month

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  Taipei Times (TT): Why is it important to have marine reserves?

  Sarah Duthie: Firstly, looking at our oceans globally, 85 percent of fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited, or recovering from depletion. We simply put too much pressure on the vast majority of fisheries over the last decades and fish are running out.

  At the same time, we see fishing fleets globally increase [to have] more vessels, [and] bigger and more powerful ones. So currently, there are more than two-and-a-half times as many fishing vessels as there is sustainable fish available. There’s an enormous mismatch with an enormous amount of vessels chasing a dwindling supply of fish, so our oceans are really being pushed to the limit.

  Also, destructive fishing practices are destroying the habitat, such as trawling, swiping out everything in its path, or a huge amount of by-catch — catching other species that aren’t intended to be caught — coming up in the nets and just shoveled overboard dead and wasted.

  And with the pressures of climate change, marine reserves will become even more important as migration patterns and ecosystems change.

  With all of those impacts on oceans, it means we need to reduce the amount of fishing pressure and give our oceans a chance to recover and replenish. We need a global network of marine reserves to build in the buffer for recovery, so the fishing industry can actually survive to the next millennia.

  TT: Can there be any activities inside a marine reserve, or are they totally prohibited?

  Duthie: We have strict definitions of marine reserves. There should be no destructive uses, that is no fishing, no drilling for oil or gas or others, none of those activities. There are literally hundreds of different definitions of marine reserves or protected areas that are used by different places around the world, but our vision is for a very high-level protection — “no-take” marine reserves.

  Less than 1 percent of oceans globally are actually totally protected in that way now, so there’s a really long way to go.

  In some of New Zealand’s marine reserves close to shore, there’s actually quite a good balance between fishing that happens outside the marine reserves. And they’re noticing positive benefits from marine reserves that have been established for 20 or 30 years now.

  TT: What are the positive benefits that you were talking about?

  Duthie: Call a halt to the fishing in those areas so you can let the habitat and ecosystem recover, because obviously fish rely on the entire ecosystem that’s around them. We have seen evidence that it allows the fish populations to -rebuild. It also has spill-over benefits outside the marine reserves.

  It wouldn’t happen over night, some of the species of fish are slow breeding, but with marine reserves in place over a very long period of time, we can actually see the rebuilding of healthy oceans and fish stocks.

  TT: What is the relevance of marine reserves for Taiwan?

  Duthie: Greenpeace International’s oceans campaign has global goals to set up networks of marine reserves all around the world, to cover 40 percent of the world’s oceans, as well as to stop overfishing globally. And these two things work together.

  Taiwan has a lot of distant water fishing vessels that fish all around the world’s oceans, and particularly in the Pacific areas, and they really are a global player on that.

  TT: According to information released by Greenpeace, Taiwan has the largest number of tuna fishing vessels in the world.

  Kao Yu-fen (高于棻): The Pacific Ocean is the most important tuna fishery in the world and Taiwan has got the biggest number of fleets operating here, which is about 30 percent of the vessels in the region. And that’s not including Taiwan’s investments in vessels of other countries [using] flags of convenience. So Taiwan is actually the biggest player in this area.

  Duthie: It’s an interesting thing globally. Japan has the highest consumption of fish globally, but they may not have the biggest number of fishing vessels in any region. They import a lot of fish, whether it’s tuna or other species. So Taiwan will be out fishing, but a lot of the fish will be for the export market, to feed those big markets.

  TT: Can you tell us why Taiwan is able to fish so much? Are we regulated by international laws?

  Duthie: Different places have different rules and different levels of policing the vessels, and making sure that they obey the regulations, the national ones. But in large areas, like the Pacific Ocean, you [have] got small island countries that have vast ocean areas around them, and actually making sure the rules are properly enforced is very difficult.

  Kao: Every player in the region is regulated by the regional fishery management organization. For example, Taiwan belongs to West Central Pacific Fishery Commission, which is responsible for the management of the fish resources. But Taiwan always refuses those proposals proposed by those west Pacific countries. So that’s why we step in and to tell them, try to push them onto the right track.

  TT: There is an environmental civic group in Taiwan that is promoting making 12 percent of the oceans marine reserves by 2012. So why does Greenpeace promote 40 percent?

  Duthie: Our call for 40 percent marine reserves was developed over a number of years and was working with the commitments that have been made in various forums, through the convention of biological diversity, the world summit on sustainable development and also looking at recommendations from the scientific community.

  There is some debate about the exact size, 40 percent sounds huge, but if you think about the history of how we’ve used the oceans, fishing was much more inshore when you didn’t have motorized boats or refrigeration freezer capacity on board. It actually means that a vast majority of our oceans, 99 percent were effectively marine reserves for most of human history. So it’s really about pulling back down the balance to sustainable levels.

  TT: What can consumers of seafood do if they want to also protect the oceans?

  Duthie: When we look globally, I think it’s important to ask questions of governments to find out what’s happening with oceans and what roles your own government plays.

  Also, people eat fish, they need to think about where it comes from, how it’s being caught, what impact it has and make choices to avoid the most unsustainable species or species caught in the most destructive ways. It’s a difficult thing to do, because often fish are unlabeled. So it’s really asking the local fishing markets or restaurants where the fish came from.

  In some countries in Europe, recently there is a regulation agreed to make pirate-caught fish illegal. In some oceans around the world, illegal fishing makes up 20 to 30 percent of the catches. It’s a huge problem. It is difficult because they are global commodities and global fisheries that you’re talking about and two-thirds of fish caught is consumed a continent away from where it’s caught.

  Traceability is not simple, but it’s not impossible. People have managed to do traceability for other food. So it’s about willingness to do it for fisheries.
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