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By Glen Spain and Zeke Grader
Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
The debate on global warming is now over.
Several years of intensive, world-wide monitoring have verified as fact that, worldwide, average summer temperatures on both land and at sea rapidly increased in the last few decades, polar ice caps are melting, glaciers are disappearing, sea levels are rising, hurricanes, El Niño and other extreme weather events are getting more frequent and more severe, and snowpacks that provide much of the world’s river water are rapidly retreating. Debate today centers on how serious and widespread the consequences will be, not on whether the world’s climate is changing or whether humans had a hand in causing those changes.
Once derided as a crack-brained idea of a few alarmists, and hotly opposed by heavily funded campaigns by fossil-fuel industries, all that has now changed. Today only a few, mostly industry-funded, professional “skeptics” deny that global climate change is happening. Other major industries, particularly the insurance industry, are already paying $30 billion/year on damages caused by global warming and are urging steps to prevent economic catastrophe.
Even the Pentagon is taking global climate change seriously as a potential national security threat. In an October 2003 Pentagon report, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, Pentagon-commissioned planners outline an “unlikely but plausible” scenario of major world-wide population dislocation and warfare over diminishing food supplies (including clashes over fishing rights) that could occur as early as 2020 if the warming circulatory systems in the Atlantic were to slow down in response to widespread melting of the arctic ice caps. This is not so far-fetched as it seems, and has happened before in human history, causing the collapse of several civilizations. Signs that this may be happening again are now actually being observed.
We have written about global warming (or more precisely, “global climate change,” since not all places will experience it the same way, with some regions becoming markedly colder, other hotter) before in Fishermen’s News (see “Why Global Warming Matters,” January 1998 (online at: www.pcffa.org/fn-jan98.htm)). With six years of new research and climate models that are a lot more sophisticated, its time to reconsider the implications of this phenomenon to the fishing industry once again – and also discuss how to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Even the Bush Administration, after grudgingly admitting that global warming is actually occurring (though recommending no actions to stop it), now urges the country to “adapt” until more study can be done.
Given that recent UN reports and a majority of scientists now tell us that many of these impacts are now irreversible (at least within our lifetimes), adaptation seems to be a good strategy. The question then becomes: how to adapt?
Mark Twain loved to say, “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it.” What modern day climatologists are doing about changing weather patterns, though, is to first understand it, then be able to predict it, and from those predictions to draw up strategies for making long-term adaptations. Actually humans have been doing this (or trying to) for thousands of years in response to past ice ages, droughts, and famine. Today, though, we have a broad array of scientific tools to help make our responses to global climate change thoughtful, measured and truly global. Thus there is much cause for optimism.
Understanding the issue is always the first step to solving any problem. Global warming is caused by the rapid increase in the atmosphere of “greenhouse” gases (primarily carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and deforestation) since the industrial revolution, and particularly during the past 30 years. These gases trap heat from the sun (like glass in a greenhouse) and change the balance of solar heat gain versus radiant heat loss to space of the entire planet.
Greenhouse gases continue to increase in the atmosphere as a result of widespread fossil fuel industrialization, and we cannot predict where levels will finally top out. Before industrialization, atmospheric carbon dioxide was at about 280 parts per million (ppm). Today it is at 370 ppm and rose over the past decade by 1.8 ppm annually. Furthermore, the rate of increase appears to be accelerating – levels this year have risen by 3.0 ppm since just last year at this time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that if this problem goes unchecked, that by 2100 atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will be somewhere between 650 and 970 ppm, resulting in an average global temperature increase of between 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 10.4 degrees Farenheit) between 1990 and 2100. Temperature increases of this magnitude in that short a time could have catastrophic consequences.
What global climate problems mean, most fundamentally, is widespread change. Humanity is very dependent for its food and water on once-stable worldwide climate cycles that are now changing more and more rapidly. Those changes, however, are now to some degree predictable.
Computer models do tell us what the future world will most likely look like at various future greenhouse gas levels. From this we can develop strategies for adapting to those changes until more permanent actions to actually cap and reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be developed. However, even then, it would take many decades for such measures to make much difference. This is why scientists now say that major global climate changes over the next 50 to 100 years are now inevitable.
Climatologists can now say with increasing confidence, based on a number of increasingly powerful computer climate models, that global climate change over the next 50-100 years will most likely lead to: (1) increasing uncertainty in predicting future climate impacts, both at sea and on land; (2) higher worldwide sea levels; (3) more frequent and more severe El Niño events in the Pacific; (4) more severe and more frequent hurricanes and other extreme weather events; (5) changing fish migratory patterns in the oceans as species respond to warmer ocean waters at lower latitudes; (6) more frequent terrestrial crop failures and extended droughts in major food production areas; (7) reduced winter snowpack at lower elevations, particularly in the already arid U.S. west coast; (8) loss of many coral reefs throughout the world; (9) widespread species extinctions among species that cannot rapidly adapt or migrate to better habitat conditions.
Lets look at what strategies can be crafted to respond positively to each of these potential problems, and do so in a way that also leads to increased sustainability of our fisheries, more productive ports and more economic stability for fishing-dependent communities in a changing world.
Fisheries management (and all prediction of the future) is based on the assumption that the future will be much like the past. With worldwide climate changing in ways that are unprecedented, this is an assumption that may no longer be valid.
Whenever the future becomes unpredictable, there is an increased need for early warning systems. This is often called “monitoring.” It’s also a common-sense notion that it’s a good idea, when in strange territory, to post sentries. In essence, that’s what scientific research does. Good science serves both as an early warning system to warn us of hidden dangers as well as to help us see the consequences of our actions so we can make adjustments as necessary to get the desired outcome.
One of the most disturbing aspects of fishery management today is that there is so little rigorous scientific monitoring of fish populations, including changes in those populations caused by fishing or other impacts. Lack of proactive and comprehensive monitoring or data collection programs necessary to find out sustainable yield levels of fish populations has lead to many instances of accidental overfishing that have been economically disastrous to fishing communities. When the health of stocks is even less certain, the need for better monitoring to establish faster feedback loops to fisheries managers is that much more important. This leads us to the following adaptive strategies:
Strategy: Establish permanent, more frequent, more comprehensive and better funded at-sea monitoring of fish stocks, with faster feedback loops into fisheries management decisions on allowable catch.
PCFFA has written elsewhere about the need to provide more reliable as well as more stably funded monitoring programs to collect essential data needed for good fisheries management (see Fishermen’s News of August 2003, “Planning and Paying for Future Fisheries Research,” on the Internet at: www.pcffa.org/fn-aug03.htm). These sorts of monitoring programs can only benefit fishermen. It only makes sense to have early warning of changes in ocean conditions ranging from annual impacts such as El Niòos to widespread impacts of global warming, to use that information to predict how fish stocks might respond, and to adapt fishing seasons and impacts accordingly.
There are also potentially much larger ocean changes that some scientists believe might be triggered by the ongoing global melting of ice caps, both north and south, which is now well underway. Adding such large volumes of fresh water to the ocean could disturb delicate salinity balances and slow down the worldwide deep-ocean heat exchange currents that create much of the world’s temperate climates and rainfall, particularly in Europe and the East Coast of the United States.
Such a major change in ocean heat circulation systems would create massive climate changes within a space of a decade, plunging Europe and North America into a mini-ice age and disrupting rainfall patterns in most of the world’s major agricultural regions. This is the “Big One” the Pentagon report investigated and, though not considered probable, is still a distinct possibility that becomes more likely the higher atmospheric greenhouse gas levels go. Recent changes in the Atlantic Ocean’s salinity levels are indeed moving the oceans in that direction. Clearly this is one to watch closely, and major research and monitoring funds will be needed to keep an eye on this trend.
Strategy: Continue (and make permanent) comprehensive monitoring of ocean conditions so that changes in oceans conditions (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, current shifts, upwellings, etc.) can be charted over time. Develop the models to predict the impacts on ocean fisheries of these changes.
Another problem is that fisheries management is trending toward inflexibility at a time when more flexibility may be needed, as ocean ecosystems change rapidly in unprecedented ways. In an era where fisheries management is tending toward greater rigidity (e.g., fixed quotas, state permit caps, limited entry, barriers to entry of new boats and geographically bounded ocean zoning), we may need to keep more flexibility in the system.
Strategy: Fishery management needs to be flexible enough to rapidly respond to changing biological conditions. Flexible and rapid response will help prevent major fishery failures as well as take advantage of new fishery opportunities. Permanent mechanisms for moving traditional fishing grounds (both in time and space) in response to sudden changes in ocean migration patterns (including across state lines), and permanent mechanisms for buying out or adding to fleet capacity in rapid response to changes in stock composition and populations (i.e., “right sizing” the fleet to stay always within sustainable harvest levels) should be institutionalized. Fixed quota systems should be discouraged unless they can rapidly respond to biological changes in stocks.
To small island nations already feeling the impact of salt-water intrusion into wells, loss of beaches and increasingly violent storms, the projected rise in future sea levels spells disaster under most likely scenarios. Some island nations are already planning for possible evacuations, and very low-lying areas of the world already subject to flooding (like parts of Bangledesh or Holland) may disappear entirely within the next 50 years. Coastal cities and ports in poorer areas of the world might be very hard hit indeed unless they are better prepared to respond.
One of the more serious issues for marine fisheries is coastal wetlands loss. Fish are harvested in the ocean but more often than not originate in coastal wetlands. In fact three-quarters of the United States’ $152 billion/year fishing economy depends on species who in turn depend on estuaries, marshes and other wetlands environments. Wetlands dependent marine species include pollock, crabs, halibut, shrimp, menhaden, salmon, lobsters, bluefish and many others (see: Fisheries, Wetlands and Jobs: The Value of Wetlands to America’s Fisheries (1998), available on the Internet at: www.pcffa.org/reports.htm). With more than half of U.S. coastal wetlands already lost due to development, we cannot afford to lose more.
With rising sea levels the United States is already experiencing serious encroaching wetlands losses in Louisiana and its Gulf States, which means losses of breeding habitat for wetlands-dependent shrimp and other species in those areas. How big an impact this may mean on these fisheries is unknown – if new wetlands can be developed around new shorelines, whether naturally or with help by humans, these impacts may be mitigated. Fifty years is an eye blink in geological terms, but time enough to take steps to prevent fisheries losses on a human scale, if both the will and the means are there. Low-lying port cities along the Gulf of Mexico may not fare as well.
In west coast ports and cities, the impact of a several foot rise in average sea levels by 2100 may not be so severe. Over the next 50 years many ports would ordinarily be rebuilding their dock infrastructure and sea walls anyway. However, local and state coastal land use planning authorities need to factor in probable rises in sea levels, as well as increased severity of future storm events, and plan future development accordingly. It may not be a smart idea to build on beach-front property.
Strategy: Local and state coastal planning authorities and port authorities need to anticipate future sea level rises and plan future reconstruction of port infrastructure with that in mind.
Strategy: More violent storm events, coupled with rising average sea levels, need to be anticipated and planned for in low-lying coastal communities. Reconstruction in areas potentially at risk needs to be limited or curtailed.
Strategy: Wetlands areas need to be protected and, if necessary, new wetlands areas created to provide substitute breeding and rearing habitat for wetlands-dependent fish species all along the coastlines.
Many of these changes would benefit coastal communities regardless of the outcome of climate changes, making these communities more resistant to flooding, hurricanes and other events which, although likely more severe in the future, happen in any event. Making port infrastructure more durable can only help.
If you want to know what ocean fisheries will most likely look like in the future, look at the impact of El Niños. These natural periods of ocean warming are dress rehearsals for global warming. Statistical analysis shows that, during the last part of the Twentieth Century, El Niño events were more frequent and more severe as compared to prior time periods, and that a trend toward more such events is emerging.
In recent years a worldwide El Niño-driven effort to track ocean temperature changes on site, coupled with advanced satellite technology able to do so in areas that cannot be easily reached by boat, has created a wonderful database allowing us to predict the onset and severity of El Niño events with increasing confidence. Some fisheries data has also been compiled for those same time periods, showing us the fisheries impacts (i.e., changes in migration patterns, predator migrations, stock population and composition changes, etc.), but to date that data has not been well correlated with ocean temperature changes to be a useful predictor. More of those cross-connections in data sets should be made.
Strategy: Periodic impacts of El Niños events are similar to what would occur permanently with widespread ocean warming. Studies should be encouraged linking ocean temperature change data from El Niño studies with biological change data in ocean ecosystems and fish stocks as an approximation of future ocean conditions with global warming.
Again, information and predictive models developed with unknown global ocean warming impacts in mind will also benefit fisheries managers in being able to predict and respond to the impact of known phenomena such as El Niños.
Just as occurs with regular El Niño events, worldwide extreme weather events follow increased ocean surface temperatures. Preparing for extreme weather events is already being done through federal disaster response organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and though state and local planning agencies. The way to approach this in response to unpredictable global climate change impacts is no different than it has always been – hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
Strategy: Coastal states and communities should be prepared for more frequent and more severe extreme weather events in the future (hurricanes, flooding, drought and ice storms, etc.). This may mean, for instance, curtailing development in flood plains and hurricane or tsunami zones, and improving emergency response time and preparedness. It may also mean taking steps to protect small port infrastructure made more vulnerable to such events by elevated average sea levels (see above).
How the fishing fleet could respond is a bit different, but not all that much so. As always, fishermen need to know well in advance what the weather has in store, and if at sea be prepare to ride it out or get to shelter. Potential strategies include:
Strategy: Increased funding for real-time weather monitoring and provide full-coverage early warning alert systems to alert fishing boats of upcoming weather conditions.
Strategy: Increase suitable safe-harbor port anchorages from extreme weather events, and increase both boat safety and crew ability to respond to emergency events.
These common-sense improvements would also protect fishermen just as much from all-too-common emergencies of different kinds, and improve survival rates at sea.
Unfortunately, the federal government is going in the wrong direction on many of these measures. For instance, a number of coastal weather monitoring programs and emergency radio alert beacon’s have been lost recently through Congressional defunding. The federal government has also stopped funding important small coast port dredging programs, making emergency anchorage more treacherous, and some ports are also deliberately decreasing safe-harbor anchorage space by turning portions of bays over to aquaculture operations or to other coastal development.
Many species of fish harvested are highly migratory. Also, their migratory patterns can change to avoid adverse ocean conditions, an evolutionary adaptation to El Niòo events, changes in ocean upwellings and other natural phenomenon. Naturally, fish go where the feeding is best if they can.
Projections based on past El Niòo events, correlated with how fish abundance and migratory patterns changed in response to those events, can give us useful information on how those patterns might change in response to the nearly permanent El Niòo of global ocean warming.
Strategy: More research funding should be put toward studies finding out how fish stocks and fish migration patterns change in response to changing ocean conditions. Additional research should be done to identify climate “triggers” that cause such changes, as a predictor of future response to global ocean warming trends.
Again, better knowledge of ocean migration patterns of major fish species can only help us understand fish population dynamics better, and make sustainable fisheries more achievable.
One constant of human life is that we must all eat. One thing global climate change probably means is that normal rainfall patterns are likely to shift, and many agricultural areas will suffer from drought. If terrestrial crops fail, ocean harvests of seafood will play a much more important role in feeding the world. This means far more fishing pressure on fish stocks that are already fished at or above their sustainability level in many places in the world -- unless strong national and international controls that prevent unsustainable practices are put in place, the sooner the better. Fishermen, of all people, must demand the protection and restoration of ocean ecosystems. The survival of hundreds of millions of people already depends on ocean productivity, and in the future likely there will be more.
Strategy: Demand protection and restoration of depleted ocean fisheries and make protection of ocean ecosystems and food webs the highest international priority.
Strategy: Work to have strong, international and national controls over overfishing. Strengthen laws that protect and implement sustainable fisheries.
Strategy: Make sure fisheries management can respond quickly to curtail overfishing, reduce overcapacity, and maintain fish stocks within sustainable harvest levels even in a rapidly changing ocean environment.
Strategy: Continue to develop fair and equitable international seafood distribution systems, while assuring a sustainable supply of seafood for domestic use.
Existing international trade mechanisms are all about profit, not about sustainability. The ocean’s fisheries are far too important to allow corporate-dominated forums like the WTO to privatize, control or manipulate. As an industry we also need to affirm that the oceans are a public trust, and that Humanity therefore must protect and preserve them to sustainably maximize their public benefit as a source of food.
Some of the most worrisome projections of future climate conditions for the North American west coast are that California and Northwest snowpacks are likely to be, on average, much reduced over the next 50 years. Mountain snowpacks feeds west coast salmon-producing rivers during critical spring juvenile outmigration period, and nourish salmon smolts in rivers and estuaries as they adapt to the sea.
Less snowpack does not translate to less precipitation, however. Climate models cannot yet say with certainty how west coast precipitation will be affected. What global warming means, though, is that given the same rainfall, less rain will “stick” in the mountains to be stored as snow. In other words, winter floods will become more common, followed by very dry summers during which river flows will be greatly reduced. Some rivers that never dried up before would do so if the snowpacks that feed them through the summer were greatly reduced. In other words, by 2050 the hydrology of major river systems in the west coast could likely be substantially changed, and for the worse as far as salmon production is concerned.
The most credible projections of west coast impacts so far have come from a Department of Energy (DOE) study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA, appearing in the January 2004 peer-reviewed scientific journal Climatic Change (pp. 75-113). Based on the DOE’s “Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative (ACPI)” computer model of climate change impacts, DOE predicts that over the next 50 years the average amount of water stored as snow in the western United States will diminish by up to 70 percent in coastal mountains, leading to severe fall and winter flooding followed typically by severe spring and summer drought. This will play havoc with west coast agriculture, fisheries (particularly salmon fisheries), and hydroelectric power.
Worse yet, the ACPI Model is generally considered conservative. If greenhouse gases increase faster than the modest 1 percent per year rate the model assumes (as is likely unless international controls are implemented) the impacts could be even more severe.
The impact is already being felt. Studies show that average snowpacks of today are already nearly 60 percent less than what occurred on average just 50 years ago. Part of the drought that has gripped the western U.S. in recent years is attributable to this widespread reduction in snowpack. Some USGS monitoring stations at lower elevations long used to ascertain snowpack no longer even get snow – they are now well below the snowline.
What this means for the west coast’s salmon resource, however, is not that much different than what has already occurred in west coast rivers due to agricultural dewatering. Many rivers in the west coast are already routinely dewatered in summer months because of massive irrigation diversions, particularly in the California Central Valley and Klamath Basin. Thus the strategies necessary to assure that salmon have a future on the west coast are the same that PCFFA, IFR and other organizations have always used:
Strategy: Restore water to salmon-bearing rivers, restore damaged spawning and rearing habitat and restore volitional fish passage to upper river areas that were once within salmon’s historic range.
Strategy: Work to implement water conservation measures and willing seller demand reduction programs that reduce competition between salmon production and agriculture.
Strategy: Protect and wherever possible improve both water quality and quantity in salmon-bearing rivers, maintaining as nearly as possible “normative conditions” that emulate the historical hydrological curve. Instream minimum flows should be implemented and enforced. Over-appropriated river basins that affect salmon-bearing rivers should be closed to further water appropriation.
Strategy: Forested upland areas, particularly those containing old-growth, or which store water and protect snowpacks, should be recognized and protected as essential watersheds for salmon production and should be protected and restored.
Strategy: Protect and maintain salmonid species’ genetic diversity, particularly traits that allow salmon to adapt to warm water or low flow conditions, and which increase the likelihood of long-term survival under changing environmental conditions.
The other major problem river flows face in the future will be increasing population and thus increased demand on already stretched water resources. Recent federal water conservation planning initiatives such as the Department of Interior’s “Water 2025” programs are a step in the right direction. The United States is the most water-wasteful nation in the world, according to recent U.N. statistics. It is good news that recent water conservation efforts have reduced per capita water consumption in this country substantially, though more needs to be done.
The last two problems are lumped together because they are related. Recent bleak assessments from Australia, for instance, indicate that the largest and most genetically diverse coral reef in the world, the Great Barrier Reef, is probably doomed to destruction from ocean warming already causing die-offs. The study, by Queensland University’s Centre for Marine Studies, said that the destruction of coral on the Great Barrier Reef was now inevitable due to global warming, regardless of what actions are taken now. “Under the worst-case scenario, coral populations will collapse by 2100 and the re-establishment of coral reefs will be highly unlikely over the following 200-500 years,” said the report Implications of Climate Change for Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The report also estimated that destruction of the Reef's coral could end up costing the Australian economy A$8 billion and more than 12,000 jobs by 2020. The Great Barrier Reef supports huge regional fishing and tourism industries. (For the full 23 February Reuters story see: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23923/story.htm).
All around the world, ocean ecosystems are being stressed by a number of factors, to which now is added widespread ocean warming. While some highly migratory species (such as tuna or salmon) may adapt, others that are more dependent on habitat in one location may be on the road to extinction, with global climate change the final straw. As we have seen with recent research linking widespread ecosystem collapse in the Bering Sea to removal of whales from the ecosystem from industrial whaling more than 50 years ago, we now know that the impacts of species loss can cascade throughout the whole food web and disrupt major ecosystems over decades, even permanently.
The strategy here is what it has always been for fishermen: protect your resource! We must continue to be outspoken and aggressive stewards of our oceans and all they contain. Every piece of the ocean ecosystem is important and the loss of any piece could be catastrophic. It is the biological diversity of these species that allows them to adapt to changing conditions.
Strategy: Protect the oceans and their full range of biological diversity as the heritage of all Humankind, as well as the very basis of the fishing industry.
This year there will be much discussion about how to do that, with recommendations from the Pew Oceans Commission report, the soon to be released Oceans Policy Commission report, the perpetual debate about habitat protection and marine protected areas, and various policy decisions centering around oceans and international trade. The fishing industry owes all policy ideas its thoughtful consideration.
The effort to cap worldwide greenhouse gas production at 1990 levels via the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has failed, with a very large part of that failure caused by the United States, which has consistently refused to ratify the Protocol.
Even if Russia were to adopt the Kyoto Protocol now (still a possibility), without the United States the Protocol would still only cover 61 percent of world emissions. It would take U.S. ratification to raise the amounts covered by the treaty to 80 percent – still not enough to prevent future problems. From more recent projections, it also now appears that the 1990 levels specified as reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol are still too high to prevent major global warming, only to modestly slow the rate of temperature increase. Yet even that first step cannot be achieved. In the 10 years since the first international meeting on climate change, greenhouse gases have increased 11 percent, with a projected 50 percent rise by 2020.
At this late date, there is little that can be done to avoid at least some of the projected impacts of global climate change (indeed we are already feeling it), but we can simultaneously both adapt and work toward long-term solutions. The international community is now coming to grips with the fact that many climate change impacts are unavoidable.
For instance, on 6-17 December, 2004 the Tenth Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10) will be held in Buenos Aires. With the failure of the Kyoto Prototcol and the collapse of international efforts to “cap” greenhouse gas emissions, the strategy of this conference will be figure out ways to adapt and to quickly create the infrastructure, particularly the poorest countries with the most at risk, to prepare for the worst.
World fisheries issues should also be discussed at such international forums, since the impact of ocean warming on some of these fisheries could be disastrous. Unfortunately, fisheries issues are never more than barely mentioned. (For more information on COP-10 see the 17 March Interpress Service News Agency article on the Conference at: www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22904 or go to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change website at: http://unfccc.int).
There are also many actions being taken to slow down or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both locally and by nation states. Investments in cleaner and renewable energy technologies (such as solar and wind energy and hydrogen fuel cells) will not only help the U.S. become less dependent on rapidly diminishing fossil fuel sources increasingly controlled by hostile countries, but also help to control greenhouse gases.
Unfortunately U.S. policy is once again going mostly in the wrong direction on energy. The Administration’s proposed National Energy Policy would have us rely even more on polluting fossil fuels, and not less.
Is national energy policy a fisheries issue? You bet it is! PCFFA long ago endorsed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol for the reasons above, and has fought against more energy reliance on coal-fired power plants, which are a major source of mercury pollution in fish as well as acid rain. With the link between fossil fuels and global climate change now also much clearer, the fishing industry as a whole needs to take positions on these issues because they affect ocean fisheries worldwide.
Strategy: Make projecting the impact of global climate change on ocean fisheries, and implementing strategies for fisheries to adapt to those changes, a high priority agenda item of the COP-10 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Strategy: Make assessing the potential impact of global climate change on fisheries a much higher priority of NOAA and other agencies involved with fisheries management. Strategies for adaptation to potential global climate change impacts should become part of national, state and coastal impacts planning.
Strategy: Mechanisms to assure the sustainability of fisheries should include consideration of, and adaptation strategies to offset, potential future adverse impacts on fisheries of global climate change and changes in the ocean environment. Fisheries should be managed so that they are sustainable over a wider variety of ocean conditions, with faster real-time monitoring and more effective mechanisms to “right-size” fisheries to meet long-term goals of sustainability in response to a variety of possible future conditions.
And finally, the most commonsense notion of all:
Strategy: Support efforts -- regionally, nationally and internationally -- to reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and reduce overall atmospheric concentrations. This includes support for technologies that are less dependent on fossil fuels or based on renewable energy resources. It also includes support for reforestation as a natural way to sequester carbon in beneficial ways.
This last strategy does not, however, mean endorsing such crack-brained schemes as sequestering large volumes of carbon dioxide on the ocean seabed (thereby exchanging global warming for poisonously acidic oceans) or other artificial “techo-fixes” that do not get at the fundamental problem of overproduction of these gases to begin with. It does, however, mean working with the many scientists and organizations to gradually wean the world’s economy away from fossil fuels that sometime this century will also be running out.
Again, these are common-sense approaches, many of which governments should be doing anyway as part of good fisheries management as well as good public policy. Implementing any of them would benefit fisheries and help them become more sustainable.
As every fisherman intimately knows, the oceans are in constant flux. Dynamic change is part of the natural systems fishermen protect, use and adapt to every time they go fishing. Climate change, though taking the world in some new and risky directions, is fundamentally all about responding to change. Some things will change for the better and some for the worse, there will be winners and losers. The trick is to anticipate and plan for that change, to maintain flexibility and to respond quickly as necessary.
We remain optimistic that the fishing industry can adapt, over the next decades, to rapidly changing ocean conditions. We are, after all, one of the world’s oldest professions, with more than 10,000 years of history. Most of the measures outlined above (e.g., better monitoring, faster management feedback loops, etc.) should be implemented anyway, and can only help the fleet in the long run to maintain sustainable fisheries.
Nature always presents us with surprises. In response to those surprises, the best attitude is “active optimism” – optimism plus hard work and advocacy to make sure what needs to get done actually gets done. On this issue, there is certainly no time to waste, for our actions over then next ten years will determine the range of our futures.
Here are some recommended resources, most of them governmental sources, for those of you who would like to dig into this issue more thoroughly and participate in these policy decisions. Some are more general, but some represent the cutting edge of both climate change research and the international response to these issues. The last, the only NGO in the group, is working on broad creative solutions that give us hope that runaway greenhouse gas production can slowed, and eventually reversed.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): This UN-sponsored agency has published the most comprehensive and current summary of climate change research and future projections, and sponsors much of the current research through its many member nations. Home page at: http://www.ipcc.ch.
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): Some discussion of potential impacts on fisheries is available. See for instance, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Technical Paper No. 452 (2003), Future Climate Change and Regional Fisheries: A Collaborative Approach (See: http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/Y5028E/Y5028E00.HTM).
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): This is the primary international mechanism for dealing with climate change. UNFCCC’s Home Page is at: http://unfccc.int.
The National Research Council (NRC): A recent NRC report, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises,(2002) was requested by the Bush Administration and confirmed the potential for very abrupt climate changes due to global warming. The Pentagon Report cited below was based on this scenario. The NRC is part of the National Academy of Sciences. The NRC report can be obtained at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10136.html.
U.S. Global Change Research Information Office: This is the official U.S. federal multi-agency organization supervising federal climate change research and planning. Its home page is at: http://www.gcrio.org.
Pentagon Report: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security (October 2003). This is the report commissioned by the Pentagon outlining an “unlikely but plausible” scenario of major world-wide dislocation due to abrupt climate change. See the report at: www.ems.org/climate/pentagon_climate_change.html.
Climate Solutions: A non-partisan, nonprofit organization working on implementation of already available practical solutions to control greenhouse gases in the Northwest and California. http://www.climatesolutions.org.
The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is the west coast’s largest organization of commercial fishing families. Zeke Grader is PCFFA’s Executive Director and Glen Spain is PCFFA’s Northwest Regional Director. PCFFA’s Southwest Regional Office can be reached at: PO Box 29370, San Francisco, CA 94129-0370, or by phone to: (415)561-5080. PCFFA’s Northwest Regional Office can be reached at: PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370, or by phone to: (541)689-2000. PCFFA’s website is at: www.pcffa.org and its mail email address is: fish1ifr@aol.com.