[LUM#10] This fishing practice is starving seabirds
Industrial fishing is reducing the amount of fish available to feed seabirds, whose populations are collapsing. According to David Grémillet, an oceanographer at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, this is a warning sign regarding the state of the oceans .
This is what one might call unfair competition. By catching ever-increasing quantities of fish, humans are leaving too few behind to provide a decent food supply for seabirds, which are now struggling to survive. To reach this conclusion, researchers assessed for the first time the competition between industrial fishing and seabirds worldwide between 1970 and 2010.
“To map fish catches across all the oceans and determine exactly how much fish is being harvested, we relied on data from the ‘The Sea Around Us’ project led by Daniel Pauly at the University of British Columbia,” explains David Grémillet. A massive project that took 20 years to complete and yielded data more reliable than the official statistics provided bythe Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
A massive project
At the same time, researchers collected data on 276 species of seabirds, representing 60% of the world’s seabird species. In total, more than a billion birds were tracked. “By studying their breeding ranges, their diet, and their weight, we were able to estimate the amount of fish consumed by seabirds, ” explains the oceanographer.
By cross-referencing these two databases, David Grémillet and his colleagues atthe University of British Columbia in Canada andthe University of Aberdeen in Scotland were able to assess the competition between fishermen and seabirds. And their findings are clear: fishing is starving seabirds, and this is happening in every ocean around the globe. “Between 1970–1989 and 1990–2010, the average annual catch of birds’ prey by fisheries increased from 59 to 65 million tons,” explains the researcher. “During that same period, the birds’ annual food consumption decreased from 70 to 57 million tons.”
Birds under pressure
Competition with serious consequences for seabirds. “Since 1950, seabird populations have declined by 70%, ” laments the oceanographer. Penguins, terns, frigatebirds, and boobies—all are seeing their numbers plummet. These animals are all the more vulnerable because they are already under intense pressure. “Seabirds are suffering the destruction of their breeding habitats due to human activities; they are being decimated by invasive species such as rats and cats; they are victims of bycatch in fishing gear; and they are enduring the effects of pollution and global warming. Competition with fishermen for food adds yet another layer of pressure, ” explains David Grémillet .
To ease this pressure and leave more fish for the birds, researchers recommend, as a top priority, banning fishmeal fishing—a practice that involves catching small pelagic fish such as sardines and anchovies to process them into oil and meal used primarily to feed farmed salmon and chickens. This practice alone accounts for 25% of the total fish catch, “an ecological disaster but also an ethical scandal; these fish should be used to feed people in the countries where they are caught, particularly in Africa, ” asserts David Grémillet.
The experts’ second recommendation: enforce fishing quotas. “Europe gets the worst marks in this area; the pressure from the fishing lobby is so intense that some countries, such as France, would rather pay fines than enforce the established quotas, ” explains David Grémillet.
Political will
Finally, the oceanographer recommends expanding the number of marine protected areas where fish populations can recover. “Studies show that if international waters were designated as marine protected areas, fish stocks would increase and fishermen could catch more.”
“All these recommendations depend on political will,” the researcher emphasizes. These solutions are all the more important given that seabirds serve as an early warning sign regarding the health of the entire ocean ecosystem. “Seabirds are an umbrella species; they serve as an indicator of the ocean’s health. If they are declining, it means that the entire health of the ocean is at risk, ” warns David Grémillet.
David Grémillet is the author of the first biography of Daniel Pauly, *Un océan de combat*, published by Wildproject in May 2019.
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