Check out this answer from Consensus:
While the challenges to sustainable fishing are significant, they are not insurmountable. By adopting low-impact fishing practices, implementing rights-based management systems, and promoting sustainable practices in specific contexts, it is possible to move towards more sustainable fisheries. However, achieving this goal requires concerted efforts from policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the global community to ensure the long-term health of marine ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.
The sustainability of global fisheries is a pressing concern as overfishing, environmental degradation, and economic pressures threaten marine ecosystems and the livelihoods dependent on them. This article explores whether sustainable fishing is achievable by examining various aspects of fisheries management, ecological impacts, and socio-economic factors.
Challenges to Sustainable Fishing
Overfishing and Ecosystem Degradation
Overfishing has led to the collapse of many coastal fisheries, pushing industrial fishing operations into deeper waters. Deep-sea fisheries, however, are inherently unsustainable due to the low productivity and resilience of deep-sea fish populations. These fisheries often rely on bottom trawling, which has high bycatch rates and significant impacts on non-target species and habitats1. The economic incentives to exploit these low-productivity populations further exacerbate the problem, making sustainable management difficult1.
Economic and Social Impacts
The economic viability of fisheries is often compromised by high fuel consumption and the environmental impacts of certain fishing methods. For instance, towed gears like bottom trawls are less fuel-efficient and more damaging to marine environments compared to passive gears such as pots and traps6. Additionally, overfishing and environmental degradation can lead to reduced fish stocks, declining incomes, and job losses, particularly in rural communities4.
Management and Regulatory Challenges
Effective fisheries management is crucial for sustainability but is often hampered by weak regulatory frameworks and insufficient enforcement. The need for strong reductions in subsidies and the implementation of marine reserves and limited fishing zones are essential steps towards sustainable fisheries8. However, achieving these measures requires significant political will and international cooperation.
Pathways to Sustainable Fishing
Technological and Behavioral Changes
Adopting low-impact and fuel-efficient fishing practices can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of fisheries. Technological improvements and changes in fishing behavior can help decrease damage to aquatic ecosystems, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lower fuel costs, contributing to more sustainable and economically viable fisheries6.
Rights-Based Management Systems
Rights-based management systems, which allocate specific fishing rights to individuals or communities, have shown promise in achieving the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. These systems can help reconcile ecological health with economic profitability and social objectives, suggesting that well-designed management frameworks can support sustainable fisheries7.
Sustainable Practices in Specific Contexts
Certain fisheries have demonstrated that sustainable practices are feasible. For example, approximately 9% of the global shark catch is biologically sustainable, indicating that with proper management, even vulnerable species can be fished sustainably2. Additionally, promoting artisanal fishing and incorporating replacement rates of fish stock can benefit both the environment and the fishing industry, as seen in the sustainable fisheries model in Spain4.
Is sustainable fishing impossible?
Douglas Fenner has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Marine Biology
Sustainable fishing is not easy, but it is certainly possible. In some places, people have been fishing for thousands of years, and there are still fish. On the other hand, there are a few fish species that have been driven to local extinction some places, such as bumphead parrotfish on a few islands in Fiji.
Fisheries scientists mostly judge the sustainability of fishing by whether it is at “maximal sustainable yield.” (MSY) If you fish more than that, then that level of fish catch is not sustainable. You can keep taking more than MSY for a while, but after that there will be fewer and fewer fish to catch and your catch will go down whether you like it or not.
One problem is that humans prefer an immediate reward over a delayed reward (animals do the same). People may prefer a small immediate reward over a delayed larger reward. If you don’t catch all the fish immediately, you just catch a small proportion of the fish today, then you can continue to catch fish. Another way to express it is the story of killing the goose that lays golden eggs to get all the eggs right away. If you don’t kill it, it may continue to lay golden eggs indefinitely. If people get some extra money, many people will spend it right away. Some will invest it and get more over the long run.
In addition, there is the problem of the “tragedy of the commons.” If no one owns the fish, it is scramble competition. If you don’t take them right now, someone else may and you will get nothing. So it is a scramble to see who can get them first. Net effect is this speeds up the destruction of the resource. If individuals own some portion of the resource, this no longer applies and the race for fish can disappear. If the license that indicates you own a certain portion of the fish is transferrable, and its value depends on how much fish remains in the sea, then there is an incentive not to destroy the resource. In Australia, lobster fishing is regulated that way. In the US in the state of Maine, fishermen fish as long as they can 7 days a week to catch as much as possible, and used to get something like $2 a pound. In Australia, when I went to a lobster fisherman’s house, he was having fun in the house playing video games. He comes out and shows me some lobsters, which are $70 each. He doesn’t act like he really wants to sell them to me. Turns out, his lobster license is worth enough to retire on, and the fewer he sells, the more in the water and the more valuable his license is. He doesn’t work hard and he lives well. But lobsters are a luxury, and the world has 8 billion people who need to be fed, many of whom are poor, so the pressures on fish are intense.
To answer your question, a fair proportion of the world’s major fisheries are pretty close to MSY, and so are success stories. Some are overfished, some are in recovery, and almost none are fished less than MSY. So a mixed bag, but it is definitely possible to sustainably fish, its being done as we speak. Conservationists (and I’m one) often exaggerate the dangers to try to get people to do a better job of not destroying the planet. And as a species, we’re doing a terrible job, not much question. But, we just have to fairly represent the facts. And it is quite possible that the number of fisheries that are overfished may be higher among species that are not large fisheries and don’t have the expensive, expertise-intensive studies need to find out if they are overfished. If they are in developing countries that don’t have the money or expertise to do these studies, the chances they are overfished is surely higher, though no way to prove it.
Some fish are much more difficult to manage well than others. The faster a fish grows and the more it reproduces, the easier it is to manage well and keep from being overfished. The slower a fish grows, the later it starts reproducing, and the fewer young it produces, the harder it is to keep from being overfished. Squid and octopus are almost ideal, most species only live one year, and grow incredibly fast and produce lots of eggs. Orange roughy is the opposite, they live about 100 years and are 40 years old before they reproduce. VERY difficult to manage. Also, they are in big schools, you just drop a big net and if you hit a school, you can get a vast amount. That is near impossible for people to resist. But you just wiped them out, it may take them 100 years or more to recover. Being in schools makes it easier to catch them, and harder to figure out if they are overfished, so makes management more difficult. Sharks are also very difficult to fish sustainably because they are longer lived than some other fish and only produce a few pups a year. I know of no shark species that are fished sustainably. Diversity makes it more difficult, there are only about a half dozen species of tuna, but about 100-200 species are commonly caught on coral reefs. If a fishery makes a lot of money, it gets high priority from governments to manage well and there is money to do it. If the fish catch feeds lots of poor people who would starve otherwise but makes almost no money then it is very difficult.
Probably the most famous case of overfishing is Canadian cod. The managers didn’t know it was overfished, even though they have good scientists. It was overfished and when they found out it was already very badly overfished, not many left. They closed the fishery, and it is still closed decades later, the stocks have not recovered nearly enough. They lost a BILLION dollar fishery, which was a major major mistake and tragedy.
So, there are fish that are being sustainably fished and others that are being overfished.
Is sustainable fishing impossible?
Mike Risk has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from McMaster University in Marine Ecology
In a perfect world, of course fishing can be sustainable. I have been catching trout in our backyard stream for 40 years. Being humans, of course, greed always wins over reason, and the commons is degraded. I know of no wild fisheries that are sustainable, although intelligent regulations, adhered to and enforced, can delay the downgrading.
Open-net aquaculture should never have been allowed, and should be shut down where it presently operates. The oceans in general suffer from an oversupply of nutrients, with “dead zones” expanding and proliferating. The LAST thing the oceans need is a massive increase in nutrients delivered from open-net aquaculture.
Land-based aquaculture is possible, and sustainable. The problem is (see “humans”, above) that, although one can make money operating sustainable land-based aquaculture, one makes money faster in a net-pen operation.
In short: in a perfect world, sure. With us running things? No way.
Is sustainable fishing impossible?
Amy Diedrich has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from James Cook University in Social Sciences
Fisheries are a renewable resource and there are many examples of sustainably fished fisheries around the world. The challenges (which are not insurmountable) lie developing and enforcing (includes compliance measures) effective fisheries management regulations.