After breakfast we headed to the university campus, where Sidney talked about Fish (never heard this topic by him before)!  His notes are also transcribed below.

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A talk at the University of Algarve, Portugal, 29 January 2010

Sidney Holt

Robber generations 2: Fishes and Fishing

I am devoted to a web-site named “Dr Mardy’s Quotes of the Week”.  Dr Mardy helps me fill the 45-minute vacuum of a scheduled talk.

I ended my talk yesterday, about whaling, with one from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, in 1937:

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

I followed that by saying that my theme in both talks is that:

“…the Industrial Revolution and the Capitalist economy have given living generations the power and the incentive to deprive future generations of access to non-renewable and renewable resources, and to saddle them with enormous debts”. Nothing new in that. But in limiting my talks to my own experience I hope I might find some things to say, which if not brand new or original, are fresh to at least some of you.

Today I revolve around two quotations from my first boss and mentor, Mr Michael Graham. Graham was England’s charismatic Director of Fisheries Research in the years following the end of the Second World War. In 1949 he had written, in a remarkable little book, a treasure  –“The Fish Gate” – what he called The Great Law of Fishing:

“Fisheries that are unlimited become unprofitable.” Graham pioneered, pre-war, the scientific theory of fishing.

Last year the World Bank published another little book – not nearly so much fun to read as Graham’s masterpiece – entitled “Sunken Billions”. It reported a study by experts from the Bank, FAO and the University of Reykjavik of the state of sea fisheries globally.  Their conclusions are stark. The cost of taking the present annual world catch of about 80 million tonnes is five billion dollars more than its market value; the difference is made up by explicit and hidden subsidies of various kinds. But if the total size of the fishing fleets was reduced by about one half, and over-fished stocks given a chance to recover, in a few years the total catch would be about the same as now, and worth 50-billion dollars more than the cost of taking it.[1] I think their general conclusions are probably correct but, using the same data but slightly different methodology, I have concluded that if the fleets were reduced by as much as two-thirds the global catch in a few years would be substantially more than now and the net profit might be 100-billion dollars or more.

My son, Tim, who read an early draft of the notes for this talk advised that I should speak early on about fishes, which are interesting, then move on to boring economics and politics. So here goes!

As I’m sure most of you know there are two entirely different kinds of fishes: the cartilaginous ones – the sharks, dogfishes and rays, called elasmobranches – and the bony ones, called teleosts. The elasmobrabchs are vulnerable to us because they have very low reproductive rates and some of them bite and sting; I think all of them are marine.  Many of them are very tasty. The first marine fish thought to have become extinct as a result of over-fishing was the skate of the North Sea. Then recently some appeared again, so that’s all right? No it isn’t; it turns out that there are two very similar species, recognized as such a century ago, then lumped together, now separated again, and one of them really is nearly extinct.  The blue skate is one of the most delectable ones. It was a Portuguese friend – Dr Mario Ruivo – who first introduced me, in Paris, to raie au beurre  noir, we English just used to know it deep fried in batter!

So, taxonomy is still highly relevant to management. We had the same problem with respect to the baleen whales. What the whalers called sei whales turned out to be two species: the sei and the Bryde’s whale. Then it was discovered that what were thought to be small blue whales were in fact another, pygmy species. And most recently it has been discovered that there is not one, but three species or perhaps sub-species of minke whale – not surprising considering that the populations in the northern and southern hemispheres, and in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, have been physically separated for millions of years.

As for the teleosts, the group that I studied as a young zoologist: their life histories are very interesting.  Dr Alan Longhurst, a British biological oceanographer living in Canada and France, has noticed that many, perhaps most, marine teleosts are cannibals, feeding on their own young. They nearly all lay extremely large numbers of eggs, and the mortality of the larvae and juveniles is correspondingly high. Longhurst has suggested [2] this is done not so much to ensure survival of numbers (so accounting for the great annual variability of recruitment into many species, ranging from anchovies and sardines to cod and haddock) but to provide a food supply for the parents. The young feed on organisms that are much too small for the adults to eat and as they grow, moving on to bigger and bigger foods, they provide a steady nutritional stream for their parents. This life-style arises from the fact that in the sea there are no big plants, as on land (except for kelps in some coastal waters) and the small diatoms are eaten by small herbivorous animals, that are in turn eaten by slightly bigger carnivores, and they by even bigger predators.  Isn’t that neat?

Now let me return to my theme for the day. When I began my career in fisheries research and management the over-fished stocks were mostly ground fishes caught by bottom trawls. Small pelagic species such as herring and sardines were thought – even by most scientists – to be invulnerable because they were so numerous.  The herring had for centuries provided abundant food for the humans living near the North, Norwegian and Baltic Seas. Annual catches fluctuated and this phenomenon occupied the attention of scientists, especially in Norway, who thought it would be useful to be able to predict catches from one year to the next. There were no signs of long-term decline. But in a short presentation to the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilisation of Resources (UNSCUR), convened in New York in 1949, Michael Graham had warned:

“The World does not stand still while scientists put their minds in order” [3]

Indeed! The Norwegian and Danish fishing industries were then already preparing their assault on young herring for the purpose of making fish oil and meal.  A few decades on and the herring was practically an endangered species. As to the value of predictions, long ago an American colleague – Dr Martin Burkenroad – stayed at my home in Rome. He had worked out a scheme whereby next year’s catch of shrimps – another resource with great recruitment variability – in the Gulf of Panama could be predicted. The only trouble was that the cost of making the prediction would be higher than the value of the catch! Furthermore, even if predictions were to be simpler, cheaper and better, it was unclear what real benefit the fishing industry or markets could gain from them.

My two older sons will never forget Martin Burkenroad. He lived in Panama and throughout his stay, in the Roman summer, he never took his overcoat or hat of in the house; he was cold. Martin died still believing that over-fishing is self correcting, because the fishermen give up when the catch rate falls too low; he was not convinced that increase in prices of scarce commodities would offset that.

[Diagram: catch value and cost against effort]

Until now most assessments of the states of fish stocks, on which management measures would be based, have been made by building a mathematical population model, estimating the values of its parameters and calculating sustainable catches as a function of either population size or, better, the fishing mortality (exploitation) rate. Even when allowance is made for data and structural uncertainties it has been shown – using simulations of the management process – that such a procedure usually leads to undesired depletion of the stocks; this important basic study was made by an Australian engineer, Dr William de la Mare, in the context of the management of whaling.[4] It led the scientists of the International Whaling Commission to spend years inventing, refining and testing a completely new approach. They had time because when the moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted in 1982 they had little else to do, having been released from the chore of calculating TACs of every whale population every year. Several teams of scientists tried to do this; there was a sort of competition, with rigorous ground rules, and it was won jointly by de la Mare, and Dr Justin Cooke (an English biologist living in Germany). The IWC’s Scientific Committee marginally preferred Cooke’s version of the so-called Catch Limit Algorithm (CLA) although Justin himself unusually said he preferred Bill’s.  Although accepted by the Commission’s decision-makers it has never been implemented because the IWC has not been able to agree on arrangements to ensure compliance with management rules, added to which is the growing inclination of many governments to oppose commercial whaling in principle. Both Justin and Bill have gone on to work on the application of their new approach more widely to fisheries problems, such as tuna and krill (the shrimp-like euphausid food of many of the whales), and others have also taken up the challenge.

The essence of the new approach is to find algorithms that are efficient in meeting specific criteria, regardless of whether a population model is good or bad, and to do this by modeling the management process and only the general features of the dynamics of the fish population. Thank goodness for computers that now make such modeling possible – along with climate change and the flow of ocean currents. Maximum Sustainable Yield, which few scientists believe in anyway, is not sought, nor is it attainable by this means. Instead the practicable objective is to obtain as high a cumulative yield (or average annual catch) over a prolonged but defined period, without in the attempt ever causing the fish population to be depleted accidentally below a defined threshold, with a defined probability.[5]

But I think the critical difference from the old way is that once an algorithm has been tested and adopted, its output in the form of proposed catch limits MUST be written into the regulations, and the process continued for many years. “Managers” – politicians and administrators and socio-economic bean counters – cannot interfere by purporting to negotiate with Nature. (The practice in the EU has for years been that the scientists offer a number that they think is safe and would be sustainable, the Commission suggests a bigger number to the Council of Ministers, who then approve an even higher number. No wonder so many European fisheries are in trouble! I and others have proposed to the European Union authorities that the IWC’s approach be followed for all fisheries in the on-going re-appraisal of Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy; references to my own contributions to this process are given in the footnote We shall see.[6]

That’s enough biology, now I’ll go back to my theme. When I worked in Unesco for a few years in the early 1970s a Maltese economist named Salvino Busuttil had a project to develop a draft UN Declaration or Charter on the Rights of Future Generations – of humans, that is; the as yet unborn. I worked with Salvino on that and we produced a draft Charter, but that fell by the wayside, mainly because our Third World colleagues said, understandably, that we had enough to do to ensure the rights of present generations. Professor Busuttil, now back in Malta and, like me, older and perhaps a bit wiser, has told me that his Fondation de Malte is launching a project for a UN Declaration of Human Duties, mirroring the Declaration of Human Rights of, with among such duties the requirement to care for future generations. I hope some of us live to see that happen, giving us a tool with, among other uses, the leverage to insist that we use living marine resources sustainably and take serious steps to conserve marine biodiversity and biological productivity.[7]

Now is the time for more quotations, four of them. Three of them are quotations about quotations, part of a potentially infinite regression; the fourth is about uncertainty, central to my theme:

“Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.” That’s from US Supreme Court judge, Justice Learned Hand.

But now, let’s hear Michel De Montaigne:

“I quote others in order better to express myself”.

Then, Ira Gershwin:

“Ev’ry corner that you turn you meet a notable with a statement that is eminently quotable.”

And, lastly, my favorite, by a writer named Robert Byrne, whom I have translated from American into English:

“Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people’s laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to sweets. I gave up sweets and now I seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.“

–

[1] World Bank (2009) The Sunken Billions: the economic justification for fisheries reform. 100pp. The World Bank and FAO, Washington DC and Rome, Italy. [The authors of this study were Rolf Willmann, Kieran Helleher and Ragnar Arnason. A digital pdf version is available as an ebook.]   Holt, S. J. (2009a). Sunken Billions – But how many? Fish. Res. 97: 3-10.  Holt, S. J. (2009b) The Evolution of the Objectives, Science and Procedures of Fisheries Management. Contribution to the 12^th Conference of the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association (NAFHA) Norfolk, Virginia.

[2] Longhurst, A. (2008) The Sustainability Myth. Contribution to Western Groundfish meeting, 16pp. Santa Cruz, Ca , USA

[3] For more about those times see Holt, S. (2008) Three Lumps of Coal: Doing Fisheries Research in Lowestoft in the 1940s. A talk to CEFAS, 29 April 2008. 19pp. PDF available from CEFAS, Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK, or the author.

[4] de la Mare, W. K. (1986a) Simulation studies on management procedures.Rep. Int. Whal. Commn 36: 429-50.

[5] For more on this see: Holt, S. J. (2006) The Notion of Sustainability. Pp43-81 in Lavigne, D. M. (2006) Gaining Ground. IFAW, Yarmouth Port, MA, 425pp.

[6] Holt, S. J. (2007) New Policy Objectives and Management Procedures for EU Fisheries. A Commentary and Suggestions. 55pp. A briefing paper prepared for the European Policy Office of the WWF. Brussels 26 January 2007.  A similar paper, containing mathematical equations and graphs, is Holt, S. J. (Jan 2007) New Policy Objectives and Management Procedures for EU Fisheries. A Commentary and Suggestions to The Greens/European Free Alliance in  the European Parliament. Also, Holt, S, J, (Nov.2009) Brief to the Commission of the European Communities on the GREEN PAPER: Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (Document  COM(2009)163 final, 22.4.2009)

[7] This idea is developed in Holt, S. J. (2008)  Greed Enthroned: Shall Future Generations eat Fish or Whales? A lecture at Gresham College, London, Wednesday, 19 November, 20pp. For “ALL AT SEA – A GRESHAM DAY ON SUSTAINABLE SEAS”.

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Followed by Dan Pauly:

Dan Pauly was more technical with a focus on topics I never heard before. I knew some about his work from some personal reading and obviously the groundbreaking documentary, “The End of the Line”.

However he shaded some more light on my perception of the current state of fisheries.  Now we have to go further and further south (i.e. into Africa) to get more fish since we have depleted most of the fish stock close to the developed countries boundaries, also with the water warming up, due to climate change, and its acidification, fish will tend to migrate to different areas of the world, and the whole world’s ecosystems as we know them will change.

He also spoke on the impact of artisanal fisheries that even that being better economically and feeding more people than commercial fisheries they do have an impact on the world’s fish stocks depletion.

It is now clear that we have to change our dietary habits related to the species of fish we eat, if we want to save them, and also if we want to in the future keep eating them. For this we have power as consumers to chose what we eat, also governments have to create more Marine Protected Areas and enforce them via monitoring and legal implementation.

It was a very impressive presentation.

After we had lunch at the university and soon after that I had to leave, to catch my bus home. Unfortunately I couldn’t go and check Ricardo’s didgeridoos and I wanted the day before, said goodbye to Sidney, Tim, Dan, Emidgio and Margarida, and headed to the bus station.

I do thank the University of the Algarve, and specially Margarida Castro, for being a great host and made possible for me to attend that 2 days lectures, and spend some time with the Holt’s.

To them my deepest sympathy and thanks.

I’ll stay with Sidney’s son, Tim Holt, also a good buddy, very kind for letting me share his room. Will take the bus from Lisbon at 0815 to arrive at 1130, and hopefully have lunch with the Holt’s.

Sidney has his first speech at 1400, with the title, Robber Generations 1 – The case of Great Whales.

Then on the 29th (Thrusday), Sidney will give a speech entitled Robber Generations 2 – The Case of Marine Fishes, at 1000. Following Dan Pauly will present the title Impact of global fisheries and global warming on marine ecosystems at 1100.

The event is hosted by the University of the Algarve.

More info here

A semana passada, uma pessoa do Oceanário de Lisboa perguntou-me se as pessoas ligadas a instituições como a Greenpeace e o Fundo Internacional para a Protecção da Vida Animal (IFAW), como é o meu caso, viam ou não com bons olhos o trabalho desenvolvido pelo Oceanário de Lisboa.

Esse penso ser um estigma já ultrapassado, porque acredito que desde que sejam dadas as devidas condições para os animais serem mantidos em cativeiro, e existem vários indicadores de bem-estar que podem ser monitorizados, estes transformam-se autênticos embaixadores do mundo oceânico, que permitem a milhares de pessoas (o oceanário festejou recentemente a visita do visitante 12 milhões) ter contacto com um mundo submerso que de outra forma seria totalmente impossível.

Mas uma coisa é a posição oficial da Greenpeace ou IFAW, outra é as pessoas que trabalham com eles, que nem sempre reflectem a posição pública da ONG, e que muitas vezes é algo extremista.

Penso ainda que existe uma diferença abismal entre uma instituição como o Oceanário de Lisboa e por exemplo, empresas como delfinários (onde se proporcionam espectáculos com golfinhos e outros animais, que fazem truques e acrobacias a troco de comida, para contentamento da audiência), em que nestes não é possível proporcionar um bem-estar adequado. Os golfinhos baseiam a sua vida na acústica, e para um animal que consegue distinguir uma bola com 6,5cm de outra com 7,5cm a 70 metros de distância, através de meios acústicos, uma vida numa piscina em que cada uso do seu sistema de ecolocação  se converte em tortura com o reflexo do som em todas as paredes do tanque onde estão cativos a entrar nos seus cérebros e a descarregar informação de confinamento. Estes em cativeiro deixam mesmo de usar o seu sistema de percepção sensorial.
Claro que a solução não é libertar estes animais, visto que muitos deles, já nascidos em cativeiro (que é um evento não muito comum, difícil de acontecer naturalmente e de manter as crias vivas até à idade adulta), não se adaptariam ao meio natural.
Contudo oponho-me à captura destes animais, do seu ambiente natural para piscinas de entretenimento, para satisfazer a um público que fica com uma ideia totalmente deturpada do comportamento natural destes cetáceos, da sua fisiologia, ecologia e  dignidade.

O papel do Oceanário de Lisboa, bem diferente de um delfinário, e de instituições similares na actualidade é vital para a conservação e consciencialização social para os problemas que assolam os oceanos e as criaturas que vivem e de ele dependem.

“O Oceanário celebra a vida na Terra através de uma visão deslumbrante da vasta e complexa diversidade de seres vivos que habitam este Oceano Global, evocando o papel vital que este exerce na saúde e evolução planetária.”
Francisca Menezes Ferreira in “Pavilhão do Oceanos – Exposição Mundial de Lisboa de 1998″

As pessoas quando vêm acreditam, quando lêem, nem sempre. Ou é uma realidade tão distante que não se conseguem relacionar. É esse o papel do oceanário, aproximar realidades, e deslumbrar-nos, sempre que olhamos para aquele enorme tanque.

E esta é uma história de que como este papel é importante.

“O Pollock do Alasca (Theragra chalcogramma) caiu de “a melhor escolha” para “uma boa alternativa” para os consumidores, na última avaliação da espécie pelo Monterey Bay Aquarium, que publica a lista/cartão Seafood Watch usado por milhões de restaurantes quando encomendam peixe.”

E com as falhas na governança internacional a todos os níveis que esta tenta actuar resta-nos a nós, através de instrumentos como este fazer uma escolha, e que essa seja um futuro melhor para nós e as gerações vindouras.

Exmos(as) Senhores(as),

Venho convidá-los para as palestras proferidas pelos professores Sidney Holt
e Daniel Pauly nos dias 28 e 29 de Janeiro no Campus de Gambelas da Universidade do Algarve. Os professores Holt e Pauly são os investigadores que maior influência tiveram na gestão mundial dos recursos marinhos nos últimos 50 anos. As palestras são de entrada livre.

I invite you to the lectures by professors Sidney Holt and Daniel Pauly on January 28th and 29th at Campus de Gambelas, University of Algarve. Professors Holt and Pauly are two of the most influential scientists in the management of the world living marine resources in the last 50 years. Entrance is open to all.

Adelino Canário
Director of CCMAR

Programa / Program

CV – Sidney J. Holt
CV – Daniel Pauly

CCMAR – Centro de Ciências do Mar
Universidade do AlgarveCampus de Gambelas
Edifício 7 – Gabinete 2.87
8005 – 139 FARO
http://ccmar.ualg.pt

Then during the Rip Curl Pro Search, surf championship, in Peniche (October), Portugal, I had the chance, thanks to Melanie Salmon and George Duffield (producer of the movie) of screening it to a small audience, and see their faces of astonishment for the facts lay down before them.

Last November, the Portuguese Platform of Non Governmental Organizations, PESCA (meaning fishery in Portuguese), hosted a great event at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, followed by a debate on the state of fisheries, worldwide. Present at the discussion was the author the book that inspired the movie, Charles Clover; César Deben from the European Commisson; representatives from NGOs and Portuguese fisheries. It was very interesting, and I was impressed by Mr. Clover direct and intense responses at the EU politician present, basically saying that “what your are doing is not enough, do better, do it now!”. Superb!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bedirwk95Oc

About the movie:
I was blown away by it, and felt a few shivers down my spine, when confronted with the facts and concrete reality of today’s oceans, our responsibility towards them. Fish is running out, and we (humans) are not slowing down to get every last one of them! The United Nations state the ocean as property, not of fisherman, not of any company or multinational, nor from an entity but from the citizen, like you and me. It is time to claim them back, care about them and allow it to heal, recover, and so we can still use the resources it offer us, on a sustainable way, and perpetuate its uses into the future.

Now, it is clear, we have reached the limits of what the ocean is capable of providing; the end of a finite resource that will run-out if we do not take appropriate measures, NOW!

“Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

The End of the Line chronicles how demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world, how hi-tech fishing vessels leave no escape routes for fish populations and how farmed fish as a solution is a myth.

The film lays the responsibility squarely on consumers who innocently buy endangered fish, politicians who ignore the advice and pleas of scientists, fishermen who break quotas and fish illegally, and the global fishing industry that is slow to react to an impending disaster.

The End of the Line points to solutions that are simple and doable, but political will and activism are crucial to solve this international problem.

We need to control fishing by reducing the number of fishing boats across the world, protect large areas of the ocean through a network of marine reserves off limits to fishing, and educate consumers that they have a choice by purchasing fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries.”
Read more here!

Greenpeace developed a Seafood Red List. Using it you can power yourself to change things around by your ultimate decision-making as a consumer. If there is no market, there is no industry for it, pretty simple.

The problems of the ocean are easy to forget, with calm seas, blue skies, a gentle breeze, a wonderful sunset the problems beneath the surface, are far from sight, thus far from mind.

We need to save the oceans from harm sway. If we want to see the Tuna, Shark, Cod, Salmon, Shrimp and so many other species, strive and recover and the endangered stamp they have been “awarded” taken away.

It is time for something; we humans are normally afraid, CHANGE.

CHANGE in fishing methods;
CHANGE in fishing practices;
CHANGE in fish consuming habits;
(to allow fish stocks to recover)
CHANGE the way we think about the oceans;
(and the need of Marine Protected Areas off limits to fisheries)
CHANGE our MIND and CLAIM the oceans back to us!