Can anyone explain to me about fish ?

[venta]

I'm a little confused by the current business about the fishing quotas.

According to the news bulletins I've heard today:

(a) fish populations are falling like mad, thus there must be limits on the number of fish caught to prevent extinction
(b) fisherman are up in arms about the quota cuts, saying it will destroy their livelihood

Now, I can see their point in (b). However, (a) suggests to me that if the fishing isn't limited now, their livelihood is going to be pretty stuffed anyway.

But:

None of the interviewers I heard today asked any kind of questions about this of the fisherman they were interviewing.

Now, I'm assuming that the people who work trawlers can draw this kind of logical conclusion for themselves, and, if it were this simple, would be able to see past the cuts this year. Am I missing something ?

Comments

[zotz]

No, you're not missing anything (Hi, by the way) - that's essentially how it is. How soon the fisheries would collapse if current fishing levels were to continue, though, is uncertain, as is how strict the quotas need to be to avoid that - the estimates are based on the best available evidence, but they're still estimates. The fishermen - who have large investments in boats and employed crew, and a living to lose - favour higher quotas than the marine biologists, who don't.

Personally, I think that it's been obvious for twenty or thirty years that this day has been coming, and investment decisions should have been made with that in mind, but then what do I know?

And why didn't the reporters ask harsher questions of the fishermen? I don't know. They didn't, to be fair, ask dreadfully difficult questions about the quality of the fish population projections either.

I was wondering this a few weeks back...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

...and the answer I was given, which enlightened me no end, was roughly as follows:

'Your average fisherman is not very bright'.

I feel that satisfactorily explains most things.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I think the fishermen are taking an extremely short-termist viewpoint on such matters. Many of them are quite old and don't care about the future of fishing in the UK beyond the rest of their working life. Reports on local news suggested there was considerable inflexibility of skills (and attitudes theretowards) among the fisherman community, even though the fishermen have tended to be making an extremely low hourly rate for dangerous work.

That's the free market for you. Could well be that Britain has no fishing industry in the future and just imports the vast majority of its fish. I'd cry no tears over this.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing because they're more concerned about whether they'll be able to feed their children tomorrow than in ten year's time. Which is understandable, really. But possibly they're just trying to make people/the government aware just how bad their position will be if the quotas come in, and that they're going to need some serious help. For example, it's not just that they won't have any income, also they'll be saddled with a huge boat that they can't sell because noone else can fish either, in a community where most other people are in the same situation. Small Cornish coastal villages (for example) are going to be in an awful lot of trouble.

I do agree quotas are necessary. However, it's also going to be necessary to come up with some kind of solution to the sudden bankruptcy of thousands of families as well, and I haven't heard any plans for that yet.

[triskellian]

I've been wondering this, too! Thought I must have missed something obvious. Like lanfykins' point, in fact ;-)

And of course, there's more to it than this...

[ieyasu.livejournal.com]

A few points:

a) Fishermen aren't stupid--any explanation that rests upon merely writing off the intelligence of someone you oppose is almost certainly wrong (and potentially offensive)
b) Scientists aren't ridiculously lacking in self-interest
c) To truly screw things up this badly requires the long arm of government
d) Blaming this on the free market (as some above did) shows a lamentable lack of knowledge of the facts--the fishing industry is hardly a 'free' market
e) I will bet $1000 to anyone here that in the next ten years, whether governmenst take action or no, none of the fish under debate for legislation now will be fished to extinction. (This, by the way, is a sucker bet--don't anyone take it unless they're just secretly trying to finance my education.)

What's going on with fish populations is a bit misunderstood--they are falling, but whether they'll fall below a level where it's no longer viable to fish them is a big question. (E.g. as number of fish fall, price of those same fish go up, scarcity forces some fishermen out of the market, etc.)

The question is about government quotas and government subsidies--fishing is a highly subsidized industry in many EU countries. This means that a) your taxes are higher than they 'should' be, b) the price of fish in the supermarket is less than it 'should' be, c) more fish are caught than 'should' be, and d) there are more fishermen in a declining industry than there 'should' be.

So what people are really debating is a 'beggar thy neighbor' debate: everyone agrees that fewer fish probably ought to be caught. But if you're Spanish, you'd prefer the British caught fewer fish, and vice versa. :)

Now, if you actually wanted to get rid of the problem, get rid of the subsidies, let the price of fish in the supermarket rise, and all of a sudden some of these fishermen find it less viable to continue their work (and some of them start to look at fish-farming, which becomes a bit more economically viable). But none of these happen while fish is artificially cheap.