Chinese misreporting masks dramatic decline in ocean fish catches, scientists say

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Chinese misreporting masks dramatic decline in ocean

fish catches, scientists say

 

Thursday, November 29, 2001

By John Heilprin, Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON — Overreporting by China has masked

dramatic declines in global fish catches for more than

a decade, researchers say.

The amount of seafood landed each year has actually

been decreasing during the 1990s by nearly 800 million

pounds per year, rather than increasing by 700 million

pounds annually, scientists based at the University of

British Columbia at Vancouver found.

 

The overreporting has thrown off the global fisheries

statistics that the Food and Agriculture Organization

of the United Nations compiles for use by all nations.

The FAO relies on voluntary reporting of catches from

countries to estimate the amount of fish the oceans

hold. The new studies being reported Thursday in the

journal Nature call into question the veracity of FAO

figures and its reporting system. Until now, the

statistics had never been subjected to an exhaustive

independent analysis.

 

" FAO must generally rely on the statistics provided by

member countries, even if it is doubtful that these

correspond to reality, " authors Reg Watson and Daniel

Pauly said.

 

Moreover, by subtracting just one fish from the

equation, the abundant Peruvian anchoveta, which is

used only for fish meal and whose population

fluctuates due to El Niño, an even more striking

decrease was apparent: 1.5 billion pounds a year less

seafood was available for human consumption.

 

This new picture of the world's oceans raises serious

concerns about the supply of fish and the world food

supply. Some believe that aquaculture, or fish

farming, can make up the difference. However, Watson

and Pauly warn that the current trends in fish farming

would have to fundamentally change for it to provide a

net gain.

 

The trend in aquaculture now is to raise carnivorous

fish such as salmon and shrimp, which require large

inputs of fish meal and oils that add pressure on the

seas. Already, one-third of all fish landed globally

go into fish meal and oils used for agriculture and

aquaculture. But raising more vegetarian fish like

tilapia and shellfish and not supplementing their food

with fish meal or oils would help alleviate the

problem, the authors said.

 

Since 1988, when the world's seafood supply peaked at

34 pounds per person each year, the combined effects

of overfishing and increasing human populations have

reduced the amount of fish and shellfish available to

only about 25 pounds a person per year now, according

to the findings. The trend is projected to continue

rapidly downward to less than 17 pounds a person each

year by 2020.

 

In China the government relies on local officials to

provide catch figures. Wan Cheng, a spokesman for the

Chinese Agricultural Ministry's Fisheries Department,

said the government had offered county and provincial

officials job promotions based on growth in those

figures, giving them incentive to inflate numbers.

 

That practice ended two years ago, when the government

put into effect a " zero growth " policy, saying catch

reports from oceans should not exceed 1998 levels of

about 35 billion pounds of fish and shellfish per

year.

 

" Local government officials have no incentive to

inflate their fishing output. Therefore, we believe

there is no intentional overreporting of statistics,

but only some possible statistical defects, " Wan said.

" The Chinese government has noted the problem of

falling fish stocks and is paying more attention to

the preservation of resources. "

 

Using statistics gathered by the FAO since 1950, the

scientists created maps of world fisheries catches and

then built a computer model to predict catch size in

different ocean regions. The model showed China's

reported catches were unrealistically high when

compared with catches from other ocean areas that have

similar characteristics such as depth, temperature,

and biological productivity.

 

The findings came as little surprise to Lee Alverson,

a global fisheries consultant in Seattle who headed

research for the National Marine Fisheries Service in

the Northwest and Alaska from 1970 to 1980.

 

" It takes a lot of nerve to make the sort of

accusation they did about China, but there were a lot

of scientists who felt nervous about those numbers, "

Alverson said. " If any of the nations are putting

bogus numbers into the accounting process, then our

ability to assess if overfishing is going on is in

jeopardy. "

 

Copyright 2001, Associated Press

 

 

 

 

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