Fishing Industry's Fuel Efficiency Gets Worse

[Marine Bill]

the real cost of diesel

 

 

Fishing Industry's Fuel Efficiency Gets Worse as Ocean Stocks Get

Thinner - New York Times December 20, 2005

 

By CORNELIA DEAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/earth/20fish.html

 

If the fishing industry were a country, it would rank with the

Netherlands as the world's 18th-largest oil consumer, a team of

fisheries scientists is reporting.

In 2000, the scientists said, fisheries around the world burned about 13

billion gallons of fuel to catch 80 million tons of fish. And although

the fish-per-gallon ratio varies widely from species to species, they

said, it is getting worse over all because boats must venture farther

and farther out to sea in search of dwindling stocks.

"This is the only major industry in the world that is getting more and

more energy-inefficient," said Daniel Pauly, director of the Fisheries

Center of the University of British Columbia and one of the report's

authors. While other researchers have compiled fuel data for particular

species of fish in particular regions, this report is the first to sum

up the global picture, experts said.

As such, the new report "adds to the list of concerns about fishing as a

destructive practice," said Ellen K. Pikitch, director of the Pew

Institute for Ocean Science, who was not involved in the report.

But it also shows how vulnerable fishing is to increases in fuel costs,

said Peter H. Tyedmers, an ecologist at Dalhousie University in Nova

Scotia, who led the work. European experts predict that as much as 30

percent of Europe's fishing fleet may remain at the dock this winter

because of fuel costs, he said, adding that the industry's sensitivity

to fuel costs is alarming given the importance of fish in the world's

diet.

In the report, the scientists said fisheries accounted for about 1.2

percent of global oil consumption, and they use about 12.5 times as much

energy to catch fish as the fish provide to those who eat them. Their

report is in the current issue of Ambio, a journal of the Swedish

Academy of Sciences.

Fattening beef in feedlots and even growing fish in aquaculture pens can

be less energy efficient than fishing, Dr. Pauly said in an interview.

But fishing is "a far-from-trivial player" in global oil consumption,

the researchers wrote.

Dr. Tyedmers said in an interview that cost was not the only issue.

"Yankee whalers did a pretty fine job of depleting many populations of

whales just with sail and human power," he said. "But it's the wide

application of fuel that has allowed fleets to expand and really has

underpinned much of the overfishing of stocks and deterioration of

aquatic ecosystems."

If global fishing efforts are reduced, Dr. Pauly said, stocks may

rebound and fewer boats will probably bring in just as many fish. "You

could catch the same amount for one-third the energy use," Dr. Pauly

said.

Dr. Tyedmers said that researchers at Dalhousie showed that 60 or 70

years ago Nova Scotia fleets used only a quarter of the fuel they use

today. The researchers based their conclusions on data from "a wide

range of published and unpublished sources" on fishing vessels in use,

the gear they typically carry, how much fuel they use and the size and

composition of their catches.

They concentrated on data from 20 major countries that account for 80

percent of the world's fish catch, Dr. Pauly said.

But the scientists said their overall fuel-use estimates were almost

certainly low, because their data omit freshwater fisheries, illegal or

unregulated fisheries and the cost of transporting fish on land.

The researchers also noted that people fishing for species like herring

and menhaden, usually turned into fish oil, use less fuel per ton of

catch than people fishing for high-value species like tuna, swordfish or

even shrimp.

Boats seeking those species often carry so much fuel "they leave the

dock lower in the water than when they return with a hold full of fish,"

Dr.

Tyedmers said.

Dr. Tyedmers said he thought fuel studies might one day be used to

compare the effort required to catch different kinds of fish, whether it

involves lines in the water or lobster traps or other methods. "It has

always been a real challenge to compare," he said.

The new analysis, while striking, is still crude, Dr. Pikitch said.

"It's a great starting point, but a starting point," she said. She

added, "You have to start somewhere."

 

 

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company