The most comprehensive report ever published into overfishing will this week reveal the full extent of the damage done by trawling
Mark Townsend Sunday December 5, 2004 The Observer
It was in the murky waters of the North Sea that scientists first realised something had gone terribly wrong with our marine environment. In one of the most inhospitable sites under British sovereignty, they discovered magnificent coral blooms three times the height of a man and of a type previously unknown to science.
What followed was even more startling. Acoustic surveys revealed a series of mysterious wounds across the extraordinary formations. Eventually a culprit was identified: they had been gouged by deep-sea fishing equipment. Even here, beneath hundreds of feet of water, man had made his mark.
Having emptied Britain's shallow coastal strip of its once bountiful fish stocks, fishermen are now wrecking our last virgin territory: the sea bed.
Our seas have been stripped of fish and now the seabed is reduced to a featureless desert of sand and mud by massive dredgers hunting a dwindling prey.
This week the government will be offered its starkest warning yet of the consequences of permitting the continued farming of the sea to go unchecked. An 18-month investigation by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution will demand that 30 per cent of the waters around Britain be designated 'marine national parks'. It is a desperate plea from a leading authority, a final warning to an island with a proud seafaring tradition that it risks being surrounded by a lifeless sea.
Only by preventing trawlers from entering thousands of square miles of sea by the introduction of 'no-take zones', where fishermen are banned from taking depleted stocks, can the trend be arrested, conclude experts. Professor Sir Tom Blundell, the biochemist who advises Tony Blair and Parliament on environmental issues, has led the inquiry and has been startled by the evidence charting the decline of the nation's seas. He has found that there is practically nowhere in UK territorial waters which has not been savaged by boats now desperate to track down remaining fish stocks.
Of chief concern are the massive factory trawlers that indiscriminately drag gigantic chains, weighing up to 10 tonnes, across seabeds, a 'continuous battering' that is destroying a pristine resource. The trouble is that the seabed cannot be seen, which explains why damaging fishing practices have been allowed to continue for so long.
Only now is the true extent of the desecration of Britain's marine ecosystems coming to light, a point that will be hammered home on Tuesday when Blundell's work is unveiled amid his warnings that the UK's offshore environment stands at a critical point in history.
'Technological advances and economic pressures are leading to an intensification which has the potential to wreak as much damage on the oceans as intensive agriculture has on land over recent decades,' he said. Some conservationists already fear the damage may be irreversible, claiming that successive governments failed to resolve the balance between allowing a fishing industry to prosper and its obligation to future generations.
A perfect example of the desecration of Britain's deep water is provided by the extraordinary coral growths of the Darwin Mounds off the northwest coast of Scotland which provide a thriving home to fish like the orange roughy in a bleak, cold world. Then news reached Blundell's commission of the deep grooves etched into the 8,000-year-old coral. Orange roughy - which have only recently been fished in numbers - are being frantically scooped up by boats running out of species to catch. The ravaging of the Darwin Mounds has served as a wake-up call for environmentalists and has been the inspiration for the report.
A separate report, published tomorrow, will warn that the destruction of precious reefs is not just a domestic phenomenon. A definitive analysis by 240 international experts of the planet's coral reefs will reveal that two-thirds are now severely damaged, a fifth so profoundly that they are unlikely to recover. Some have been bleached to death as sea temperatures warm in the wake of the global warming, Others have suffered the same fate as the Darwin Mounds.
But few places in the world can match the North Sea for the intensity of its fishing. Last week scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory deduced that 90 per cent of the North Sea's floor is trawled at least once a year, in some places up to six times. Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, biodiversity policy officer of the Marine Conservation Society, which gave evidence to Blundell's investigation, warns that Britain has reached a point where the 'complete cessation of the population' of certain species in some areas had arrived.
What will happen in the next fear decades is uncertain, however. 'It's difficult to conceive how the effects of this fishing will take place,' said Solandt. 'Evidence suggests there is a real problem, but we are not exactly sure what is going on, or what is going on at the bottom of the sea. Neither do we know precisely how fish are being caught and then thrown overboard.'
The problem of 'by-catching' - where creatures are caught accidentally in the massive nets and tossed away - threatens key species such as the bottlenose dolphin. The Wildlife Trusts, a nationwide network of local charities, believes that the species could be wiped out within a decade. Last month figures claimed up to 10,000 dolphins and their close cousins, porpoises, are killed in the North Atlantic each year as 'by-catch'.
Even species such as swordfish which are found on the shelves of supermarkets are often from those deemed 'outside safe biological limits'. A study by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit into the profitability of the fishing sector found that half the fish landed under quota in the UK are from stocks that are either unsustainable or borderline.
Mainly because of its starring role in the national dish of fish and chips, cod has consistently been held up as the symbol of such decline. An adult cod should be expected to live for 40 years, but government advisers have found that just 0.5 per cent of the cod population is aged above five. Nine out of ten are less than two years old, suggesting that the cod's breeding pattern cycle has collapsed.
Concern was reaffirmed last month when the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, a group of marine scientists who specialise in the North Atlantic, released its annual survey of fish stocks.
To sustain a population of North Sea cod, it recommended that there should be no fewer than 150,000 tonnes of the fish; the current total is 46,000 tonnes. The WWF believes cod could disappear within 15 years. Conservationists now increasingly refer to Britain's seas in the context of the Grand Banks fishing grounds off Newfoundland in Canada, once the most plentiful cod grounds that the world has known. Relentless over-fishing soon meant that its seemingly infinite supplies were exhausted in a few decades.
For many experts, over-fishing crystallises the complexities between balancing economic competitiveness and the needs of nature. Fishing leaders are the first to acknowledge that they cannot expect to feed their families if there is nothing to catch, claiming that until recently they did not realise they had inadvertently sabotaged their livelihoods.
Now the vacuum left by dwindling wild stocks is being filled by the growth of fish farms, a practice that has transformed salmon from occasional luxury to often the cheapest fish on offer - although this week's report is likely to express concerns over its environmental viability. In particular the fact that disease has spread from farmed fish to their wild neighbours, threatening the very species they were meant to haul back from the brink of extinction, worries environmentalists.
This week's report by Blundell is intended to form a vital component of the Blair's promised Marine Bill next year. Excluding trawlers from vast areas of sea remains, for now, the favoured option, although Blair must first secure a European consensus.
On Wednesday the Royal Commission's findings will be revealed in Brussels in an attempt to pressurise Britain's maritime neighbours to halt the 'strip mining' of the Atlantic by massive factory ships.
Negotiations will coincide with talks to thwart another major threat to marine life: climate change. Delegates at crucial international negotiations in Argentina will discuss measures aimed at keeping temperatures less than two degrees higher than they stood a century ago, although the seas are now warming alarmingly. Some believe the brooding North Sea will even tually resemble the Mediterranean, at least in terms of warmth.
However, one ray of hope has appeared. Britain's haddock stocks have started flourishing amid studies suggesting that they can learn how to wriggle through fishing nets, with youngsters picking up the knack from their elders.
If Blundell's report fails to induce change, the first kernel of optimism may have emerged that nature's often extraordinary powers of recovery could provide the answer.
Oil that troubles the waters
More than 30,000 tonnes of oil is illegally discharged into the North Sea every year. An estimated 6,000 oil wells have been drilled into the seabed over the past 40 years.
Around 400,000 tonnes of crude oil is accidentally spilled every year by supertankers worldwide.
The Torrey Canyon, carrying 120,000 tonnes of oil, hit rocks near Land's End in 1967. In 1993 the Braer leaked 85,000 tonnes of oil off Scotland. Three years later, the Sea Empress crude oil tanker grounded in the waters off south-west Wales.
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Dead in the water: how we are killing the sea
The most comprehensive report ever published into overfishing will this week reveal the full extent of the damage done by trawling
Mark Townsend
Sunday December 5, 2004
The Observer
It was in the murky waters of the North Sea that scientists first realised something had gone terribly wrong with our marine environment. In one of the most inhospitable sites under British sovereignty, they discovered magnificent coral blooms three times the height of a man and of a type previously unknown to science.
What followed was even more startling. Acoustic surveys revealed a series of mysterious wounds across the extraordinary formations. Eventually a culprit was identified: they had been gouged by deep-sea fishing equipment. Even here, beneath hundreds of feet of water, man had made his mark.
Having emptied Britain's shallow coastal strip of its once bountiful fish stocks, fishermen are now wrecking our last virgin territory: the sea bed.
Our seas have been stripped of fish and now the seabed is reduced to a featureless desert of sand and mud by massive dredgers hunting a dwindling prey.
This week the government will be offered its starkest warning yet of the consequences of permitting the continued farming of the sea to go unchecked. An 18-month investigation by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution will demand that 30 per cent of the waters around Britain be designated 'marine national parks'. It is a desperate plea from a leading authority, a final warning to an island with a proud seafaring tradition that it risks being surrounded by a lifeless sea.
Only by preventing trawlers from entering thousands of square miles of sea by the introduction of 'no-take zones', where fishermen are banned from taking depleted stocks, can the trend be arrested, conclude experts.
Professor Sir Tom Blundell, the biochemist who advises Tony Blair and Parliament on environmental issues, has led the inquiry and has been startled by the evidence charting the decline of the nation's seas. He has found that there is practically nowhere in UK territorial waters which has not been savaged by boats now desperate to track down remaining fish stocks.
Of chief concern are the massive factory trawlers that indiscriminately drag gigantic chains, weighing up to 10 tonnes, across seabeds, a 'continuous battering' that is destroying a pristine resource. The trouble is that the seabed cannot be seen, which explains why damaging fishing practices have been allowed to continue for so long.
Only now is the true extent of the desecration of Britain's marine ecosystems coming to light, a point that will be hammered home on Tuesday when Blundell's work is unveiled amid his warnings that the UK's offshore environment stands at a critical point in history.
'Technological advances and economic pressures are leading to an intensification which has the potential to wreak as much damage on the oceans as intensive agriculture has on land over recent decades,' he said. Some conservationists already fear the damage may be irreversible, claiming that successive governments failed to resolve the balance between allowing a fishing industry to prosper and its obligation to future generations.
A perfect example of the desecration of Britain's deep water is provided by the extraordinary coral growths of the Darwin Mounds off the northwest coast of Scotland which provide a thriving home to fish like the orange roughy in a bleak, cold world. Then news reached Blundell's commission of the deep grooves etched into the 8,000-year-old coral. Orange roughy - which have only recently been fished in numbers - are being frantically scooped up by boats running out of species to catch. The ravaging of the Darwin Mounds has served as a wake-up call for environmentalists and has been the inspiration for the report.
A separate report, published tomorrow, will warn that the destruction of precious reefs is not just a domestic phenomenon. A definitive analysis by 240 international experts of the planet's coral reefs will reveal that two-thirds are now severely damaged, a fifth so profoundly that they are unlikely to recover. Some have been bleached to death as sea temperatures warm in the wake of the global warming, Others have suffered the same fate as the Darwin Mounds.
But few places in the world can match the North Sea for the intensity of its fishing. Last week scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory deduced that 90 per cent of the North Sea's floor is trawled at least once a year, in some places up to six times. Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, biodiversity policy officer of the Marine Conservation Society, which gave evidence to Blundell's investigation, warns that Britain has reached a point where the 'complete cessation of the population' of certain species in some areas had arrived.
What will happen in the next fear decades is uncertain, however. 'It's difficult to conceive how the effects of this fishing will take place,' said Solandt. 'Evidence suggests there is a real problem, but we are not exactly sure what is going on, or what is going on at the bottom of the sea. Neither do we know precisely how fish are being caught and then thrown overboard.'
The problem of 'by-catching' - where creatures are caught accidentally in the massive nets and tossed away - threatens key species such as the bottlenose dolphin. The Wildlife Trusts, a nationwide network of local charities, believes that the species could be wiped out within a decade. Last month figures claimed up to 10,000 dolphins and their close cousins, porpoises, are killed in the North Atlantic each year as 'by-catch'.
Even species such as swordfish which are found on the shelves of supermarkets are often from those deemed 'outside safe biological limits'. A study by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit into the profitability of the fishing sector found that half the fish landed under quota in the UK are from stocks that are either unsustainable or borderline.
Mainly because of its starring role in the national dish of fish and chips, cod has consistently been held up as the symbol of such decline. An adult cod should be expected to live for 40 years, but government advisers have found that just 0.5 per cent of the cod population is aged above five. Nine out of ten are less than two years old, suggesting that the cod's breeding pattern cycle has collapsed.
Concern was reaffirmed last month when the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, a group of marine scientists who specialise in the North Atlantic, released its annual survey of fish stocks.
To sustain a population of North Sea cod, it recommended that there should be no fewer than 150,000 tonnes of the fish; the current total is 46,000 tonnes. The WWF believes cod could disappear within 15 years. Conservationists now increasingly refer to Britain's seas in the context of the Grand Banks fishing grounds off Newfoundland in Canada, once the most plentiful cod grounds that the world has known. Relentless over-fishing soon meant that its seemingly infinite supplies were exhausted in a few decades.
For many experts, over-fishing crystallises the complexities between balancing economic competitiveness and the needs of nature. Fishing leaders are the first to acknowledge that they cannot expect to feed their families if there is nothing to catch, claiming that until recently they did not realise they had inadvertently sabotaged their livelihoods.
Now the vacuum left by dwindling wild stocks is being filled by the growth of fish farms, a practice that has transformed salmon from occasional luxury to often the cheapest fish on offer - although this week's report is likely to express concerns over its environmental viability. In particular the fact that disease has spread from farmed fish to their wild neighbours, threatening the very species they were meant to haul back from the brink of extinction, worries environmentalists.
This week's report by Blundell is intended to form a vital component of the Blair's promised Marine Bill next year. Excluding trawlers from vast areas of sea remains, for now, the favoured option, although Blair must first secure a European consensus.
On Wednesday the Royal Commission's findings will be revealed in Brussels in an attempt to pressurise Britain's maritime neighbours to halt the 'strip mining' of the Atlantic by massive factory ships.
Negotiations will coincide with talks to thwart another major threat to marine life: climate change. Delegates at crucial international negotiations in Argentina will discuss measures aimed at keeping temperatures less than two degrees higher than they stood a century ago, although the seas are now warming alarmingly. Some believe the brooding North Sea will even tually resemble the Mediterranean, at least in terms of warmth.
However, one ray of hope has appeared. Britain's haddock stocks have started flourishing amid studies suggesting that they can learn how to wriggle through fishing nets, with youngsters picking up the knack from their elders.
If Blundell's report fails to induce change, the first kernel of optimism may have emerged that nature's often extraordinary powers of recovery could provide the answer.
Oil that troubles the waters
More than 30,000 tonnes of oil is illegally discharged into the North Sea every year. An estimated 6,000 oil wells have been drilled into the seabed over the past 40 years.
Around 400,000 tonnes of crude oil is accidentally spilled every year by supertankers worldwide.
The Torrey Canyon, carrying 120,000 tonnes of oil, hit rocks near Land's End in 1967. In 1993 the Braer leaked 85,000 tonnes of oil off Scotland. Three years later, the Sea Empress crude oil tanker grounded in the waters off south-west Wales.
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