The Historical Development of Fisheries Science and Management
Taken from a lecture given at the Fisheries Centennial Celebration (1985) by William F. Royce
Part 2
A major contributor to the change in public perceptions, however, was a
biologist and editor who was employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service from 1936 to 1952 (and who made at least one cruise from Woods
Hole on board the Albatross 111). Rachel Carson, who had written so
emotionally about the sea, turned her attention to the impact of
pesticides on the environment with her book "Silent Spring" published
in 1962. The use of chemicals came to be seen by many people as the
result of the application of science to control and abuse our
environment.
The distrust was exacerbated by the inability of scientists to predict
the ecological effects with the assurance that people demanded. The
interactions of the organisms, with each other and with their
environment, were discovered to be extremely complex, and we still rec-
ognize their great complexity. Some of the chemicals had effects in
quantities so minute as to be difficult even to detect. Governments
were seen to be unresponsive to the public will as they tried
unpersuasively to find compromises between use and abuse of the
environment.
The conservation movement based on "wise use" became the environmental
protection movement based on avoidance of use and preservation ,of
the environment. Value judgements about the environment came to be
dominant factors in new laws.
One of the most significant steps toward environmental management came
in the United States with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
of 1969. This required that all policies, regulations, and public
laws of the United States shall be interpreted and administered in
accordance with it, and that all Federal Agencies shall--
"(A) utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach which will
insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the
environmental design arts in planning and in decision making which may
have an impact on man's environment;
"(B) identify and develop methods and procedures. . .which will insure
that presently unquantified environmental amenities and values may be
given appropriate consideration in decision making along with
economic and technical considerations; . . ."
The Act also required preparation of a detailed Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) for all Federal actions, including fishery
regulations. In addition, the Act touched the roots of environmental
policy in other countries as it stimulated similar laws, and as its
provisions were vigorously promoted by the United Nations
Environmental Program. Other U.S. Acts that directly affected the
fisheries include the Endangered Species Act of 1969 and the Marine
Mammal Protection Act of 1972. These gave a higher priority to a public
sense of value in rare species and marine mammals than to economic
considerations or any concept of use by individuals.
A manifestation of special environmental values in the recreational
fisheries is the movement to preserve "wild" stocks of salmon, trout,
and other species. Wild may be interpreted to mean stocks unsullied
by hatchery fish, but in some circumstances, "wild" fishing in
wilderness-type surroundings has been advocated even though the fish
are stocked from hatcheries.
One of the consequences of the environmental movement was to regard
solution of environmental problems as entirely a political action. An
example was the approach of the Sierra Club (Mitchell and Stallings,
1970). That "Handbook for Environment Activists" includes statements
about the need to restructure society in a conservation revolution, and
the need to deal with a system of suppression and oppression. It gave
no recognition to the long history of the development of professional
environmental sciences, or even to the use of science in solving
society's environmental problems.
Nor have some leading academic ecologists recognized professional con-
servation science. In two comprehensive "ecology" texts (Ehrlich et
al., 1977; Moran et al., 1980) there is no recognition of the
conservation movement as we know it; rather, it is portrayed as a fight
to save endangered species, to prevent oil drilling, to save whales, to
save energy, and to reach other broad political goals. They convey no
sense of the use of science in order to attain specific environmental
objectives, as steps toward long-term goals. They make no mention of a
century during which forest, wildlife, soil, water, agriculture,
ocean, atmospheric, fishery, and other professional environmental
sciences have developed in hundreds of departments in leading
universities, nor how scientists in these disciplines contribute
daily to civilized problem solving. They merely advocate a general
environmental political movement.
The ecologists are, however, beginning to stress the need for
understanding and managing the combination of natural and
socioeconomic systems, but it is not clear that they have reached the
point of using cost-benefit analysis or widely adopted a
problem-solving approach in a social milieu (Barrett, 1985; Risser,
1985).
Perhaps it was a quirk of fate that at this same time, in the early
1970's, the expansion era of the world's fisheries ended. Since the
late 1940's, after the fishing fleets recovered from the impact of
World War II, fishery production had been increasing at a rate close to
7 percent annually, or doubling every decade.
Then, about 1970, the rate suddenly decreased. Now, fishing
production is slowly increasing, perhaps at a rate of about 1 percent
annually; but, certainly the great era of expansion--of rewards for an
industry able to invest in superb long-range ships, find new resources,
and get them to market, is over. It is quite clear that there are no
more significant opportunities in the conventional ocean fishery
resources. A few coastal countries have some major resources
within their 200-mile zone and may be relatively fortunate. Canada is
one of the countries with exceptional fishery resources off its coasts,
but by 1980, it had failed to develop policies that would control the
coastal unemployment, or coastal employment, and overcome the
resistance to modernization of the traditional fisheries in eastern
Canada. In western Canada they have had similar problems with gross
overinvestment, especially in the salmonid fishery (Copes, 1980).
Many of the smaller nations, and segments of the fishing industries
in northern America, expected great benefits from the movement of
controls by their governments out to 200 miles. The prevailing view
in the United .States was that fishery regulation was for the for-
eigners, not for us; we want to get out there and catch all of those
fish.
But the profitability of the common fisheries vanishes as fishermen
expect more, fish harder, and invest more when the resource will
sustain no more production. We are close to that stage now, although
some of the production off Alaska might be directed toward more
domestic fisheries. But even so, any benefits will have a short term
effect. Fishermen expect government to protect their way of life, and
this is a very deep- rooted public tradition. A large portion of the
public admire fishermen and are all in favor of protecting traditional
fisheries; they have a very powerful political position.
What I have described is not a phenomenon unique to North America, I
have also mentioned problems in other countries. Here are a few
examples extracted from the Country Experience Papers submitted to
the FAO Conference on Fisheries Management and Development in 1984.
Norway: The state supports about half of the income of the fishing
industry, and the state support has stimulated increased
participation in fishing and complicated the corrective efforts.
Portugal: The fishing industry faces one of the worst times in its
history. Nationalization of large enterprises in 1974 decreased their
productivity.
Spain: Coastal fishing capacity is excessive. Extensive subsidies are
provided to the fleet.
Canada: Investment in fishing approximately doubled during the
1970's. The majority of fishing enterprises are incapable of
generating a revenue surplus or even an adequate income. Major fi-
nancial crisis by 1981. Government correction is paralyzed by
prospects of more unemployment. [The increased employment, even
though supported in large part by government subsidy, is regarded as
beneficial because of the dependence of many coastal communities on the
fisheries (Doubleday et al.2)].
Malaysia: There is overcapitalization in both the private and public
sectors, far too many artisanal fishermen and severe overfishing.
Japan: Production is sustained in part by a fortunate increase in local
sardine stocks. Most fisheries have limited entry and, in many, the
numbers of licensees have been reduced. (They have an interesting
system of reducing the number of licenses. They pay the fishermen who
give up their licenses, but they also charge the fishermen who remain
more for their licenses, in effect, making them pay for their share.)
Peru: The industry is in a major crisis with overinvestment in both
fish meal and fish canning.
A summary of 26 papers submitted to the FAO conference (Cleveland,
1985) presents the general view that countries benefited from control
or, in many cases, elimination of foreign fishing within their 200-mile
zones. However, it did not address the domestic social and economic
problems that commonly followed because of the overoptimism and
overcapitalization in many countries. The end of the expansion era of
the world's commercial fisheries has stimulated other changes that
are certain to cause a long-term economic and social impact. The most
important of these, in my judgement, is the consequence of development
of the technical and organizational skills by the large businesses
that have participated in the expansion. An illustration of the
economic strength of such businesses appeared in a report on the
Japanese fish companies during the middle 1960's (FNI, 1968).
The end of the expansion era has also brought an increase in the price
of fish, relative to other foods, with the consequence that fish used
as subsistence food for poor coastal communities became shifted to city
markets or into international trade. This, of course, has been
accompanied by complete changes in the handling, processing, and
distribution systems.
With the markets for fish expanding faster than the supply, there has
been an increased incentive to farm fish. Fish farming has been
increasing at a rate of about 7 percent annually. In other words, it
has doubled in production in the past 10 years. The quality is easy to
control, and large successful farms in many countries involve
sophisticated financing, technical, and management practices.
In addition to the profound changes in the commercial fisheries, the
recreational fisheries are expanding rapidly in the developed
countries--i.e., a doubling in the numbers of anglers since 1955 in
the United States. Here there are more than 200 anglers for each com-
mercial fisherman. They are also expanding in the lesser developed
countries with the influx of tourists.
The management of these recreational fisheries, compared with that of
the commercial fisheries, has been remarkably successful. Most
freshwater stocks in northern America, and many other developed
countries, were allocated long ago to recreational fishermen, and
recently a few saltwater stocks have been reserved for angler use. New
fishing waters have been added as reservoirs have been constructed.
Research on the stocks, the regulatory systems, and the enhancement
potential has been well supported since the 1950's, and has resulted
in a steady increase in knowledge pertinent to management. The findings
have been made known to the anglers through their clubs and advisory
groups, and have resulted in steady improvement of the management
(Grover, 1980; Radonski and Martin, 1985).
A major complicating factor is change in aquatic environments. We abuse
the water more and more, and I would note that the fishery agencies are
frequently at the forefront of the aquatic environmental problems
because the fish are perceived to be indices of the quality of water,
and people think that if the fish survive well, the water is likely to
be relatively good. The fishery scientists also have greatly broadened
their needs to become sensitive to the problems of water use, which is
at least as political a problem as the use of the fisheries.
So after a great transition in the fisheries and our fishery science,
some roles of fishery science remain the same. Despite the surge in
fishery research and the increasing public confidence in fishery
scientists, the solution of problems always includes consideration of
an unstable mixture of scientific facts and value judgments. To go back
to Milt James again, we remind ourselves that "The fishery
administrator starts his functioning with a background of a vast
unorganized ignorance." We must keep in mind that the administrator
always has to be dealing with the future and with predictions less
accurate than everyone desires.
The potential production from the wild resources is unquestionably less
than the demand for recreation and food. This was discovered long ago
in the fresh waters of the world, where a large proportion of the
production was allocated by law to recreational fishermen, or by
custom and law to poor artisanal fishermen. But now we have de-
molished the premise in the old "Law of the Sea" that the ocean
fisheries were unlimited. They, too, are limited, and our production is
close to that limit3.
The recent growth in wild fish production is less than the rate of
growth of the world population even with relatively optimistic
analyses (Wise, 1984), and a higher proportion of the products is
continuing to go into distant markets, rather than being sold fresh in
nearby markets. The price of fish relative to other foods is
increasing, so we have a continuing shift away from the traditional
fisheries.
Fish farming is spreading, and I expect this is going to be the
growth sector. As was mentioned this morning, the opportunities for
fish pathologists, fish veterinarians if you will, is growing very
rapidly, and will be essential to the development of fish farming. I
make special mention of commercial fish farming. This is already much
larger in the United States than public fish farming which produces
fish to be stocked. Probably less than 5 percent of the U.S.
production is currently produced in public hatcheries for stocking
purposes; the balance of more than 95 percent is produced directly
for markets.
Outdoor recreation is certainly continuing to grow very rapidly in
the developed countries, and spreading quickly to the less
developed countries. This includes recreational fishing and the large
commercial interests supported by it--fishing tackle, recreational
boats and highway vehicles, and the hotel and restaurant businesses
near good fishing.
With a shortage of wild stocks in most places for both food and
recreation, one issue is "How well can we conserve them in the sense of
maintaining an optimum yield?" This depends on our scientific
knowledge of the resources gained through research and monitoring,
and on acceptance of controls on the fishing by the fishermen--which
depends at least partly on the public perception of our reliability.
Our research, although pursued with great vigor as we try to deal with
these mounting problems, comes up against some relatively intractable
problems about circumstances that we find exceedingly difficult to
predict. One of the problems is the extreme variability in the
interspecies relationships; the relationships between, for example,
large larval stages of a commercial species and its predators, or
between adults and their food organisms, between competitors, as well
as between predators and prey (Valiela, 1984). I'm quite pessimistic
about the early solution of many of the problems after a recent paper
in Science which dealt with the very simple ecological situation of
trying to change the acidity of a small Canadian lake (Schindler et
al., 1985). The conclusion was that even with just trying to change
one factor, they could not predict the sequence of changes in the
biological populations in that small lake.
Another equally difficult problem is understanding the genetic
evolution in populations under selective fishing (and all fishing is
more or less selective), and with changing environmental impacts and
interspecies relationships. Such changes operate on a time scale of
decades, and again we have barely gotten acquainted with the kinds of
problems we are likely to have in this area.
Certainly, if we try to base our fishery management on rapidly
increasing research, I fear that we are going to have a rebellion on
the part of people who finance that research. We are not likely to have
early results for the very difficult problems that we face to enhance
management in the near future. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, and
I think our great challenge here, for the science, is to find the
balance between pursuing these long-term problems, with good science,
and satisfying our public that we are managing the fisheries as well
as possible.
Even if we learn how to make better predictions through better and more
research, these will be expensive. When added to the substantial
costs of monitoring the fisheries, negotiating regulations, and
enforcement, the total may be prohibitive. Already the costs of many
ocean fishery management programs in the United States and Canada are
running from about one-fourth to as much as fully equal to the first
sale value of the fish caught.
The conventional ecological or economic research, moreover, appears
likely to have little impact on the pervasive problem of
overinvestment in the commercial fisheries. Solution of this prob-
lem requires political action on the part of the people concerned to
develop a wholly new policy in most countries of the world. The people
concerned are those in the fish businesses at all levels from fishing
through processing and marketing plus the public at large because of
the substantial transfer payments required to sustain not only the
management of the commercial fisheries, but the operations as well.
Such transfer payments in the commercial fisheries contrast strongly
with the relative absence of such payments in the recreational
fisheries, even though the latter support large commercial interests.
This situation appears to have arisen in our policy-making process be-
cause of the difference between business and conservation interests.
The recreational fishermen, on the other hand, have a special role
because of the public appreciation of outdoor recreation, and of a
clean environment that goes with it, and recognize that those must be
conserved or preserved. The reduction in efficiency of fishing re-
quired to spread the catch among the recreational fishermen does not
create a commensurate decrease in the enjoyment, which conceivably
may even be maintained with no catch at all by requiring fish to be
released alive.
The recreational fisheries help to support a large commercial serviee
business which is seldom adversely affected by the fishery
management. Such businesses also support the ideal of conservation
and the principle of open access to fishing. They have no reason to
claim government help if management restricts the catches. In fact,
they would probably object if the management did not spread the catches
among all who wanted to fish. The more people who want to fish, the
more there are who will buy equipment, meals, lodging, boats, or
whatever. Since about 20 percent of the population goes fishing for
fun, these fishermen have a very large influence on our fishery
policy.
The public has had a long experience, 30 years or more, of steadily
increasing confidence in the recreational fishery management. On
the other hand, most of our commercial fisheries in the salt waters,
except for a few under international treaties, have not been regu-
lated. We have not established that give and take, that degree of
mutual understanding among science, business, and government, that I
think we must have in the long term for commercial fishery regulation.
This contrast between the management policies of recreational and
commercial fisheries provides my closing argument. Restrictions on
recreational fishing that divide the allowable catch among all who want
to fish are accepted because they satisfy the public ideals of equal
access and fairness in the interests of conservation. Restrictions on
commercial fishing which divide the catch among all who want to fish
satisfy the public ideals of equal access and fairness but conflict
directly with the business needs of the fishermen.
Recreational fishery regulations have been devised over several decades
to fit the ideals. Future commercial fishery regulations must
compromise the ideal of open access for commercial purposes. The
ancient ideal of open access fits the use of the public resources for
personal food or fun, as long as a perception of fairness is
maintained and conservation is achieved, but not their use for profit.
In the sense that the commercial fisheries are a human activity, we
have never managed them as a business activity except by subsidizing
the consequences of government interference. Subsidies were seldom
necessary during the great expansion era of fishing during the 1950's
and 1960's, and unfortunately, that era left the visions of great
profits that might be realized after nations had authority to control
their fisheries out to 200 miles.
Now we need a new commercial fishery management policy in most of the
oceanic fisheries of the world. How to achieve this has been debated
extensively, (recently in Frady, 1985) and I do not propose to get
into the thicket of a detailed discussion. I suggest that a new
policy must be based on a widespread publie aeeeptanee of a change in
public rights in fish as a resource of the commons. The public must
agree that fishing can be pursued by anyone as a source of personal
food or fun, but fishing for profit cannot. The pragmatic reason is
simply that governments are in the fish business as the owner of
limited resources, and by allowing unlimited opportunities to
establish private busmesses, governments are preventmg each business
from managing properly a fundamental function of any business--
matching the investment to the expected return.
That business function could be achieved if the rights in the resources
were known over time enough to plan and recover investments. Therefore,
the rights should be owned, be transferable, and be divisable, so that
sale or purchase of them would let a fishing business become
efficient (Pearse, 1981).
Our research and our debate over how to achieve such a change in policy
needs a change in direction. All of the scholarly analyses that limited
entry is essential are being immediately rejected by the fishing
industry, and we are not going to accomplish much unless we find out
how to deal with the immediate problems of the business that is
involved. Perhaps the approach that might work is one of making it
clear that the fishermen who remain in business will have a
substantial cost for a license and then making a substantial payment to
those who agree to give up the business.
I don't believe that commercial fishermen are going to give up as
long as the government continues to subsidize them. They can play the
government subsidies on one hand and the management on the other, and
are continuing to do so. Every commercial trade publication,
commercial fishery trade publication, contains the essence of this
contradiction in the complaints about limited entry on the one hand and
the ineptitude of the management councils, on the other hand. That
publication is sustained by all of the advertisements for bigger
vessels, faster vessels, new equipment, better nets, and better ways
to go fishing. Here is the nutshell of the conflict.
Perhaps the next step for the economists is to elucidate the entire
public costs that are involved in this, the continuing transfer
payments, and most importantly, that there is no indication of an end
to the transfer payments. There is no way that these big, new fleets
operating out of New England, which have doubled and tripled in
capacity, are going to be indefinitely operated unless there are
continuing subsidies, even with protection against imports.
So much for some of the current challanges. I am sure that fishery
scientists will meet them as we have the previous challanges. We have
had a glorious century in which we have matured as a public service
profession. We have developed our sciences, our professional values,
our social awareness, and an educational philosophy. We have enriched
and permanently changed the political process of fishery management.
More importantly, we are changing with society, and we will continue to
serve it professionally.
|
The promise of conservation implied in the new laws concerning
fisheries, as well as other environmental issues, was not enough. Our
consumption of all resources came to be seen as excessive and leading
to disaster in the long-term (Galbraith, 1958). Others pointed out the
failure of governments to deal with resource issues in a comprehensive
way (White, 1958). Both government and science became suspect.
The new fishery treaties and the new environmental laws that became
effective during the 1950's and 1960's were enough to change greatly
the practice of fishery science, but an even greater stimulus for
change came in the 1970's. The long struggle to develop a new in-
ternational Law of the Sea (LOS), begun in the 1950's, continued with
desultory and inconclusive negotiations during the 1960's and early
1970's, and was finally agreed upon in early 1974. Although this
concept was not officially ratified until 1982, somewhat more than 100
countries agreed with the concept, and immediately thereafter many
of them declared 200-mile economic zones, especially to control
fisheries and any seabed resources off their coasts.
At that time, four large companies in Japan accounted for about 63
percent of Japanese catches, or about 8 percent of the world catch.
Also, that 63 percent was a greater quantity of fish than the entire
production of the United States and Canada combined. Those four com-
panies with their economic power, became leaders in world competition
through their organizations, and marketing on a world scale. They now
dominate a large part of the world fish business and remain
powerful competitors in any kind of business. I would further note that
three of those Japanese fish companies are currently listed, and I
believe are the only fish companies so listed, in the Fortune 500 list
of the largest industrial corporations outside of the United States.
These companies have a major impact on their government's policies, and
it must be so recognized as we deal with them. We cannot just exercise
crude political pressures without expecting vigorous economic pres-
sures in return.
How can our history guide our judgment of our future? I propose to
take a speculative look ahead by describing the driving forces in the
fisheries that influence policy and suggesting an approach to what I
regard as the most urgent problems. I think the principal forces are
the demand for fish relative to the size of the resources, the
commercial interests in the resources, both in recreational and
commercial fisheries, and the special values held by the public about
the resources--the noneconomic, nonquantifiable values.
I mention the relative absence of transfer payments supporting
recreational fisheries because our political scientists point out,
conclusively, that business has a privileged role in policy making as
it contributes social and economic benefits (Lindblom, 1980). I think
some of our past difficulties have arisen because of failure to
communicate adequately with the businesses, or perhaps among the
business people, the government policy makers, and the scientists.
Commercial fishing creates employment and supports numerous coastal
communities in northern America. Access to the resources is regarded
as a basic right that commercial fishermen can exercise, and the
economic plight of the traditional fishermen generates sympathetic
government assistance, frequently because there is no other
employment opportunity in such communities. The conservation
objectives of commercial fisheries management have been achieved
largely by a reduction in the efficiency of the fishermen, and the re-
sulting costs of this inefficiency to the fishermen and their
communities are borne by government through subsidies. This happens in
spite of the fact that commercial fishermen make up less than 1 percent
of the electorate in northern America.
|
www.nefsc.noaa.gov |
Search |
Link Disclaimer |
webMASTER |
Privacy Policy |
(Modified Feb. 05 2007) |