In the 16th century, the coastal waters of what are now called Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were
teeming with life. Even after centuries of fishing by the Mi’kmaq and Malecite peoples indigenous to
the region, European fishermen wrote extensively of the abundance of life in the northern Atlantic.
One account from veteran sailor Charles Leigh describes “the greatest multitude of lobsters
that we ever heard of” catching over 140 lobsters in just one haul. While another
account from Father Pierrre Biard claims that spawning fish were often so abundant that
“you cannot put your hand into the water, without encountering them.” But by 1992,
that oceanic abundance had completely collapsed. North American cod populations
dropped to 1% of their historical population level. Over the course of four centuries,
the Northwest Atlantic seas went from absolute abundance to decimation. What happened? And
what threats do our vast oceans face from a world based on capitalist exploitation?
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Is Ocean Plastic the Only Threat? Right now YouTube is awash in a push
to clean up trash in our waterways and oceans. It’s exciting to see people get motivated about
environmental issues, but ocean trash is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to unlocking
exactly what endangers our seas. In fact, there are a number of other, less visible but
nevertheless catastrophic, threats that our seas face like heightened acidity, temperature rise,
and dead zones. Today, however, I want to focus on just one: overfishing. A problem that not
only affects our global marine ecosystem but the 59.5 million fisherfolk spread across the world.
The State of Fish Back to Newfoundland in 1992:
fishing boats went out to sea expecting their usual catch, only to come back empty handed. The
Atlantic cod population had completely collapsed, and with it, the livelihoods of thousands of
people intertwined with the North Atlantic fishing industry. To this day, Cod populations in the
Northwest Atlantic have yet to recover. In 2000, the World Wildlife Fund even placed Atlantic Cod
on their endangered species list. But this species collapse due to relentless fishing practices
is not exclusive to Cod and the Northwest Atlantic, overfishing is happening all over the
world. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, from 1990 to 2017, the percentage of
global fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels dropped from 90% to 65.8%. In part, this is
due to the continued increase of fishing across the world. As of 2018 we caught and consumed
the most sea life ever in a year. And while we dine on tuna, lobster and salmon, fish populations
are paying the price. The number of fish in the sea is not infinite, and with increased stressors
like higher ocean temperatures and acidity which weaken fish eggs and stunt species resilience,
industrial overfishing practices are the last drop in the bucket that have pushed
various fish species careening towards crisis. One study estimated that our oceans have “lost more
than 90% of large predatory fishes,” while another analysis reveals that 82% of global fisheries are
in a dangerous decline. But fishing can take a wide variety of forms from subsistence catching to
industrial scale trawling, so is there one fishing practice that is more harrmful than others?
How do we fish?
Fishing can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For a subsistence fisher in Bangladesh,
fishing might look like a fishing rod and line catching one fish at a time,
while for an industrial fisher along the coast of China, fishing might mean dragging large nets
across the ocean floor to capture schools of fish all at once, a practice known as trawling.
In total, industrial trawling represents a third of all fishing practices, and when combined with
net purse fishing, large-scale industrial fishing accounts for over half of all fish
caught. This is a problem because big net fishing, especially trawling is one of the most destructive
ways to fish. In the process of dragging large nets across the seabed, fisherfolk
destroy fragile ecosystems on the ocean floor as well indiscriminately catch what’s known as
bycatch. Or, in other words, marine life that is not commercially viable and often dies or
gets thrown back into the water after the net is hauled in the boat. Think Dory in Finding Nemo.
Trawling and big net purse fishing have facilitated a rise in overfishing due to
the sheer volume fishing boats are able to capture per hour. In part,
this industrialization of fishing gear combined with advancements in on-boat refrigeration,
processing, and storage has led to increased fishery declines since the 1950s. But,
industrialization and new technologies aren’t the only reason why we see a nearly global
decline in fish stocks. These technologies are rooted in a market-based approach to fishing
that has meant a constant need for growth and profit for fisherfolk, or in other words,
they need to continuously outfish and outsell their competitors in order to survive.
Why are fisheries suffering? “The rationale for people consuming
wildlife from the sea is a response to marketing… because it’s a business or it’s their profit
that they’re looking for.” That’s Dr. Sylvia Earle, an expert in marine life, with over 30
years of experience in the ocean. For her, the massive rise in fish consumption over the last
half century has been driven by marketing, which at its root is a product of capitalist
profit-driven pursuits. If we turn back to the Northwest Atlantic coast, we can see that before
european fisherfolk crossed the ocean in pursuit of richer fisheries, the waters there were teeming
with fish despite the fact that the Mi’kmaq and Malecite fished those waters for sustenance.
Only once fisherfolk involved in a burgeoning capitalist market economy began to extensively
fish for cod did the ecosystems begin to dwindle. Much like other capitalist extraction industries,
fishing under capitalism has commodified certain fish like cod or blue fin tuna and is fishing them
to near extinction. In a competitive fishing market, the fisherfolk who are
able to catch the most amount of fish in the shortest amount of time will come out on top.
A model that incentivizes large net trawling and mechanization processes that,
when left unchecked, have decimated fisheries. To add insult to injury,
as Brett Clarke and Rebecca Clausen argue in their paper on oceanic decline and capitalism,
“competitive markets create incentives to expand production, regardless of resource decline. Thus,
in reaction to decreased stocks due to overfishing, groundfishing fleets
moved farther offshore.” Essentially, in a capitalist market devoid of regulation,
profit incentives push the fishing industry not to maintain the marine ecosystem, but instead
to fish it to death and then move on to richer waters. So then how do we challenge this paradigm?
How we save our seas
When it comes to the declining health of our global waterways there’s a lot more at work than
just plastic trash. In fact extractive fishing is just one of many threats causing marine ecosystems
to crumble. Which is why saving our seas has to encompass a lot more than ocean clean ups. Because
clean-ups are just a band-aid solution. Even if we take every piece of trash out of our waterways
right now, the equivalent of a garbage truck full plastic still continues to flow into our oceans
every single minute. Only larger, more structural approaches like regulating fishing industries,
implementing sustainable and regenerative fishing practices guided by indigenous knowledge, or for
some that are able, not eating fish altogether. In fact, a portion of ocean trash is debris from
industrial fishing like old nets and lines. But “saving the oceans” is also intertwined with
blocking new oil pipelines, disrupting fossil fuel operations that create emissions, plastics
and deadly oil spills. Which means, standing in solidarity with water protectors who stood in the
way of the Keystone XL, Dakota Access, Line 3 and Line 5 pipelines and many more is also crucial.
Ultimately, there countless movements and organizers already working to overthrow the fossil
fuel industry and extraction paradigms. Paradigms that lead to ocean trash and decimated fish
populations. So to truly “save” the seas, we need to mobilize ourselves, find a place to plug in,
whether that be a mutual aid organization, a local socialist chapter, or eco-sabotage group, and a
fight for a future where life on land and in the water isn’t in danger of tipping over the edge.
During this video, you might have noticed that I left out a growing industry that’s slowly piling
more fish onto our plates: aquaculture! It’s a huge topic and I felt that it deserved more than
just a one-sentence mention in this video, so instead, I wrote a small section covering the
key issues of fish farming. But I cut it out of this video because it felt like a tangent and I
wanted to appease the Youtube algorithm. Instead, I’ve uploaded that section as an extended edition
of this video on the streaming platform my creator friends and I built called Nebula.
The bonus content replaces this ad because there aren’t any ads on Nebula. And you’ll not only see
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