Is the RSPB failing seabirds?

In recent reports the RSPB claim that climate change is altering the availability of sandeels and causing seabirds such as kittiwakes, Arctic terns and Arctic skuas to fail to breed successfully.

The evidence seems to be much stronger for overfishing to be the cause of these failures, and the RSPB, by avoiding the elephant in the room, may be damaging the long-term recovery plan for seabirds.

In most RSPB reports there is often no mention that overfishing is also a likely cause. It makes you wonder whether there are political motives for this blinkered stance? An analogy would be like blaming climate change instead of industrialised intensive farming since the 1950's for the decline in British birds.

The sandeel fishery has now become by far the biggest single-species fishery in the North Sea, with landings accounting for one-third of all fish landed. The vast majority of this catch is landed and processed in Denmark. Such fundamental changes in the fabric of the marine ecosystem are what ecologists refer to as 'fishing down the food web'.

Since 1977, total yearly North Sea sandeel catches have fluctuated around 600,000-800,000 tonnes, but since 2003 catches have crashed dramatically to between 200,000-300,000 tonnes. The collapse of the fishery was particularly severe in the Norwegian economical zone with a 95% reduction in landings in 2005.

Many scientists and ecologists believe that the recent disastrous breeding seasons for many of Europe's seabird colonies can be directly linked to the industrial fishing of sandeels in the North Sea.

As early as 1997, two respected Danish fisheries scientists - Henrik Gislason and Eskild Kirkegaard - were highly critical of the North Sea sandeel fishery, and they concluded that "it cannot be ruled out that (sandeel) fishing could adversely effect (sic) the breeding success of the birds. It would therefore be precautionary to close areas to fishing until more is known about sandeel stock structure and interactions between sandeels and seabirds".

And a report published by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES) suggests that "the amount of industrial fish species taken by fishermen in the North Sea appears to leave little for seabirds and marine mammals".

The UK has some of the most significant seabird populations in the world, and discovering the exact cause of their decline is essential if we want to implement an effective recovery plan. If the RSPB have got the diagnosis wrong, then we will probably end up with a dead patient.

Treating marine life like trash

The objective of commercial fishermen is to catch fish that can be sold. The higher the price that these fish fetch at market, the more money the fishermen will make. The fishermen has limited time and space in which to maximise their income, so in order to do so their main objective must be to be as selective as possible. However most fisheries are at least partially non-selective and catch fish and other animals that are not targeted. This non-targeted catch is known as bycatch. This bycatch is usually discarded (thrown over the side of the boat either dead or dying).

In the North Sea nearly one million tonnes of marine life is discarded in this way every year, and unbelievably, seventy percent is comprised of commercially important fish species. This equates to nearly one-third of the total fish landed by fishermen, and one-tenth of the estimated total biomass of fish in the North Sea. These fish are discarded because they are either undersized, over quota or not of sufficiently high value to the fisherman.

In EU Community waters the practice of discarding fish is not illegal and it speaks volumes on EU fisheries policy that when in a time of worldwide food and fuel shortages and rapidly declining fish stocks the practice of discarding is not only tolerated, but is in many cases a legally binding requirement.

There is no way of knowing what damage discarding has on the marine ecosystem as amazingly very little scientific research has been carried out to determine its detrimental affects on the marine ecosystem, but it is worth mentioning that no other industry gets close to the practice of discarding in terms of sheer waste and destructiveness.

Norway obviously feels strongly enough about the matter to have banned the discarding of commercial fish in its waters as early as 1990, requiring all boats to land the fish for processing into fishmeal. Measures have also been introduced whereby fisheries can be closed very quickly if an area is found to contain a large number of juvenile fish.

So what are the solutions? Personally I would completely ban the discarding of bycatch but in the meantine perhaps an agreement could be put in place where fishermen are given an amnesty so boats can land their bycatch and a proper scientific audit can be carried out?

Almost half of all discards are caused by the various types of trawling, and it may be time to call and end to this particularly destructive method of fishing. If the Marine Stewardship Council's fishery certification program and seafood eco-label gain widespread acceptance within the EU member countries this may in itself help to end the indiscriminate methods employed by trawling.

Bycatch and discards are an aberration. We are in the 21st century and yet the wholesale slaughter of our marine life still continues in our oceans, with no protected areas from which marine life can recover from this onslaught, and where the fishermen, once their catch is dead, can pick and choose which animals are worth keeping and which can dumped back into the ocean. This cannot be right.

Secret slaughter of Europe's harbour porpoises

The harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) has the misfortune to live in some of the most heavily fished waters on earth. Thousands of these little cetaceans are killed by the fishing industry every year and numbers have declined dramatically. Dolphins grab the headlines, whilst the mass slaughter of porpoises goes almost unnoticed.

Marine mammal bycatch in commercial fishing is a secretive subject. But if you do a bit of digging, what little information that is available is truly horrific. 

The IUCN lists the harbour porpoise as 'Least Concern', but this classification is based on woefully inadequate information. 

Under 'Threats' the IUCN says this about the harbour porpoise -

"Today, the most significant threat in most areas is incidental catches in fishing gear, primarily gill nets. Incidental mortality in fishing gear is likely to occur throughout the range of the species, but substantial incidental takes have been documented (summarized in Donovan and Bjørge 1995) for the Gulf of Maine (1,200-2,900/year), Bay of Fundy (80-400/year), West Greenland (1,400/year), North Sea (4,600/year) Celtic Shelf (1,500/year), and also off central California during the 1980s and 1990s (tens to hundreds per year; Barlow and Hanan 1995). More recent monitoring programs of Danish set-net fisheries in the North Sea revealed an average of 5,591 porpoises taken annually in the period 1987-2001 (Vinther and Larsen 2002). However, most North Sea gillnet fisheries were not monitored for marine mammal bycatch (ICES 2002)"

The last sentence is crucial here "most gillnet fisheries were not monitored for marine mammal bycatch". This makes the IUCN listing almost worthless. As the IUCN itself touches on, gillnet fishing is one of the most destructive forms of commercial fishing and the most likely to incur marine mammal bycatch.

An International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) report that studied two Norwegian gillnet fisheries found that the estimated total number of porpoises caught as bycatch in Norwegian gillnet fisheries in the period 2006-08 to be nearly 21,000 animals (Or approximately 3,500 porpoises per fishery).

The report also says that "according to the criteria advised by ASCOBANS (bycatches should not exceed 1.7% of the best population estimate), a population in excess of 400,000 is required to sustain an annual bycatch of 6,900 porpoises".

And here's where the problem lies. According to the IUCN "in the waters of the European Atlantic, abundance in 2005 was estimated at 385,600 [CV=0.20] (P.S. Hammond pers. comm.), of which about 335,000 [CV=0.21] were estimated in the North Sea and adjacent waters, where abundance was estimated at 341,000 [CV=0.14] in 1994 (Hammond et al. 2002)".

On this basis, the porpoise bycatch in Norwegian gillnet fisheries alone is unsustainable. Add to this all the other European fisheries that have significant porpoise bycatch, and the long-term outlook for the harbour porpoise is dire to say the least.

The IUCN is the benchmark by which environmentalists gauge their response to what is needed to help to protect animals which are threatened and accuracy is essential to implement effective conservation measures. More accurate information on marine mammal bycatch is available from fishermen, but at what cost to the reputation of the commercial fishing industry? It seems that when it comes to marine mammals, and the harbour porpoise especially, the conservation world is turning a blind-eye to the most horrendous slaughter.

Where have all the sandeels gone?

Most people accept that the North Sea has been subjected to the most appalling overfishing. Whitefish stocks, such as cod and haddock, have collapsed and the mackerel and herring fisheries are all but commercially extinct.

Under normal circumstances the removal of whole rafts of large predatory fish would allow room for species such as sandeel, the favoured prey species of these fish, to increase their numbers dramatically, but this is not the case.

And why is this? The sandeel fishery has now become by far the biggest single-species fishery in the North Sea, with landings accounting for one-third of all fish landed. The vast majority of this catch is landed and processed in Denmark. Such fundamental changes in the fabric of the marine ecosystem are what ecologists refer to as 'fishing down the food web'.

Since 1977, total yearly North Sea sandeel catches have fluctuated around 600,000-800,000 tonnes, but since 2003 catches have crashed dramatically to between 200,000-300,000 tonnes. The collapse of the fishery was particularly severe in the Norwegian economical zone with a 95% reduction in landings in 2005.

You will not have eaten a sandeel knowingly (unwittingly perhaps as a fish-oil supplement), so what exactly are sandeels used for? The sandeel is an exceptionally oily fish and is harvested for the rapidly expanding fish-oil and fish-meal industries and used in everything from food for farmed salmon to animal feed and health supplements. At one stage sandeels were even used to fuel Danish power stations. And demand is set to increase.

Recent forecasts by the FAO (UN Food & Agriculture Organisation) indicate that aquaculture and its insatiable appetite for fish-oil, will dominate world fish supplies by 2030, fuelling pressure for a high level of industrial sandeel fishing in the North Sea. It takes, for example, 4kg of wild caught sandeel to produce 1kg of farmed salmon.

This does not bode well for the marine species in the North Sea that depend on sandeels for food. Many scientists and ecologists believe that the recent disastrous breeding seasons for many of Europe's seabird colonies can be directly linked to the industrial fishing of sandeels in the North Sea.

As early as 1997, two respected Danish fisheries scientists - Henrik Gislason and Eskild Kirkegaard - were highly critical of the North Sea sandeel fishery, and they concluded that "it cannot be ruled out that (sandeel) fishing could adversely effect the breeding success of the birds. It would therefore be precautionary to close areas to fishing until more is known about sandeel stock structure and interactions between sandeels and seabirds". And a report published by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES) suggests that "the amount of industrial fish species taken by fishermen in the North Sea appears to leave little for seabirds and marine mammals".

It would not be unreasonable then to suggest that the overfishing of sandeel stocks may represent the single greatest threat to seabirds in the North Sea, especially in the breeding season when seabirds forage close to their colonies.

And it is not only the seabirds that are suffering. Studies into the diet of common dolphins, grey seals and harbour porpoises in Scottish waters have shown that they feed mainly on sandeels in the spring and early summer. The affects on these species if they cannot find sandeels to eat at this time of year can be disastrous. For example, spring is a critical time for dolphins and porpoises in terms of energy requirements. Some of the lowest sea temperatures occur in the North Sea in March, putting a great strain on dolphins and porpoises as they require the thickest blubber layer to limit heat loss at this time. In addition young animals are weaned and become independent foragers in spring, placing them at the mercy of changes in sandeel availability.

Ironically the long-term overfishing of sandeels in the North Sea may also inhibit a return to the former healthy status of predatory fish stocks such as cod and haddock, as these stocks can only recover if there are sufficient prey fish for them to feed upon. This is what ecologists refer to as a 'negative feedback loop', a vicious circle of exploitation that renders an ecosystem incapable of a recovery to anywhere near its former productivity.

It may not yet be too late however, but our attitudes and tolerance to an industry that has got perilously close to destroying the very fabric of the North Sea must change dramatically. No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.