We Ate 90% of All The Fish In The Sea

There is lots of research to show that we are already living in a very different earth from that of a century ago as far as fish stocks are concerned. Everyone is familiar with the concept of "all the fish in the sea." Well, 90% of those fish are gone.

A fascinating study recently published in Nature shows that the amount of fish landed in England and Wales per unit of fishing power has declined more than 90% over the past 120 years. Increases in fishing power of new boats and equipment do not result in additional landings because the fish are gone. We ate them.

Landings per unit power figures suggest that the availability of bottom-living fish for the fleet fell by 94% from 1889 to 2007. This implies a massive loss of biomass of commercially fished bottom-living fish from seas exploited by the UK fleet. The loss is particularly serious as it encompasses an entire component of the marine ecosystem rather than a single species.

The collapse in fisheries productivity is brought into sharp relief by the landings data. In 1889, a largely sail-powered fleet landed twice as many fish into the United Kingdom than the present-day fleet of technologically sophisticated vessels. One hundred years ago, in 1910, the fleet landed four times more fish into the United Kingdom than it does today.

The Nature paper cites a number of other studies using various methods, all of which conclude that the particular fish stocks they analyzed have declined 90% or more over the period they studied.

What about other fish--are they gone too?

Separately a recent UN Environmental Program study says that 30% of all fish stocks are classified as "collapsed"--they yield less than 10% of their former potential.

Only around 25 per cent of commercial stocks--mostly of low-priced species--are considered to be in a healthy or reasonably healthy state.

On current trends, some researchers estimate that virtually all commercial fisheries will have collapsed by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to bring far more intelligent management to fisheries north and south.

Will governments and fishers get together and set up management systems that could allow stocks to recover, or avoid wiping out remaining stocks? On past form, don't bet on it. The UNEP study says better management could allow stocks to recover, would increase landings, and would increase the total value of landings and fishing household incomes substantially. But . . .  

The study also estimates that the total value of the 80 million tonnes of fish caught is about US$85 billion annually. Of this fishing households see income of about US$35 billion. But governments dole out subsidies totaling over US$27 billion, three-quarters of all fishing household income!

Governments and fishing organizations are willing to take $27 billion of taxpayers' money to be sure that in a few decades there will be practically no fish left in any major fishery. Ten percent or less of the quantity of fish that were there 100 years ago is not much.

Here is a Reuters story about the results of the study from Nature.

[photo of fishing boat from adstream via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/adstream/1537402364/]

[Cross posted from A Very Different Earth.]

The World Is My Taco

Where in the world did the contents of this taco come from? "The assignment was part of URBANlab, a program of The California College of the Arts that took place under the guidance of landscape architect David Fletcher and members of the art and design studio Rebar. ... According to the class findings, within a single taco, the ingredients had traveled a total of 64,000 miles ... ." (Read more about it here.)

The taco that ate the planet.

"'It was difficult to trace the origins of these foods because of the intense obfuscation by the corporations that produce them,' said Rebar’s John Bela at a recent unveiling of the research at San Francisco’s Studio for Urban Projects. The students spent hours on the phone, spoke to customer representatives in corporate offices and eventually gathered the data necessary to create a map that includes farms, corporate offices, and the exact routes traveled by planes, trucks, and shipping containers.

The taco the group deconstructed was from Juan’s Taco Truck in the city’s Mission District, where every ingredient had been purchased from either Costco or Restaurant Depot, and had been chosen because it was the absolute most economical option possible—making it the taco most people are likely to eat."

[This is reposted from the HaraBara Green Blog]

Cattle on Feed

Most of the beef produced and consumed in the U.S. comes from animals who spend their last months at feedlots. After being raised to about 700 pounds in weight during their first year or year and a half on pasture or range, they are transferred to feedlots to pack on another 400 pounds or so on a more concentrated diet of grain and other feeds.

If you have eaten a hamburger at In-N-Out Burger the steer it came from may have spent some time at the big Harris Ranch feedlot in California. (Harris Ranch Companies site here.) You may also have noticed this facility on the east side of Interstate 5 at Fresno-Coalinga Road if you have driven this highway between the Bay Area and L.A.

The Harris Ranch lot can feed 70,000 to 100,000 head at a time, and can process about 250,000 head a year. While there, cattle are fed corn brought in by train from the corn belt and other grains and feeds.

Notice the spur from the California Aqueduct bringing water toward the feedlot in this picture from Google Maps. The 800-acre feedlot is at the center of the image.

Animals raised here are slaughtered at the Harris Ranch Beef Company plant in Selma, California. This plant has annual output of nearly 200 million pounds of beef.

Other Google Maps views: