Paul Greenberg's article in the New York Times Magazine documents the decline of fish species across the world, focusing primarily on the recent demise of the Chilean Sea Bass fishery. There's little new in this article for those that have been watching fisheries over time. But what Greenberg doesn't emphasize sufficiently is the extent to which the very nature of fishing is changing.
If you think about it, your prototypical ocean fisheries is little more than a glorified hunter gatherer operation in which the hunters chase fish that reproduce and move at the whims of nature. However, this typical fishery is quickly becoming a relic, being replaced by intensively managed fisheries and aquaculture that, like it or not, are the future of the products behind the fish counter at your local supermarket.
James Anderson, in a wonderful 2002 paper on the topic begins with the following metaphor:
Imagine a meeting of town managers in 1903. They are trying to think of innovative ways to create property rights that will internalize the externalities created by the waste left by horse-drawn carriages in town. As they are deliberating, a noisy new gasoline powered Oldsmobile Curved-Dash Runabout interrupts their debate. They pause for a minute, then resume talking. They have heard and seen the future of transportation and the new problems it will bring, but they continue to discuss the soon-to-be past.
Such is the case of fisheries today. Catfish are cultivated in ponds, salmon are raised in cages in the ocean, and tuna are caught by the school and then herded to market, being fed all the way. The problems of open access will remain, but the new challenges in the oceans will be different: pollution from fish farming, loss of genetic diversity due to monoculture, conflicts within regulated fisheries, monopoly power, and so on. A major unanswered question will be how to sustain elaborate feeding operations that depend on massive harvests of fish for feed.
The buffalo herds were wiped out long ago in the U.S., replaced by massive contained animal feeding operations. Personally, I doubt that the future of ocean fisheries be all that different.
