World Fisheries Resources

WORLD FISHERIES ESOURCES

Cod wars in the North Atlantic, the endless arguments about the EC fisheries policy, and Japanese domination of the Pacific—arguments over fishing resources are now commonplace. These territorial disputes, however, underline the importance of the fishing industry in the global economy. World Fisheries Resources provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of how this commodity is used. The author examines the various aspects of fishing resources from their biological basis through to marketing and consumption. The subject is set in context by tracing the historical development, from its archaeological origins to the industrial expansion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The work comes up to date to discuss the modern situation and current trends in both the developed and developing worlds and highlights how exploitation of the resource has increased in recent years. The author also looks at the consequences of the special economic characteristics of common property and open entry and the effects they produce. The volume presents a systematic study of world distribution and trends with particular emphasis on the modern challenge of management at the local, national and international levels. The substantial and rapid modern expansion of recreational fishing and fish farming are recognised and analysed, as are the pressures and complications of other sea uses. The text is written in a direct style and supported by a number of illustrations. At a time when global society continues to press hard on the limits of sustainable ocean assets, World Fisheries Resources presents a valuable guide to the issues. James R.Coull is Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Aberdeen.

OCEAN MANAGEMENT AND POLICY SERIES Edited by H.D.Smith

Development and Social Change in the Pacific Islands Edited by A.D.Couper Marine Mineral Resources Fillmore C.F.Earney Advances in the Science and Technology of Ocean Management Edited by Hance D.Smith The Development of Integrated Sea-Use Management Edited by Hance D.Smith and Adalberto Vallega Forthcoming World Ocean Management H.D.Smith and C.S.Lalwani

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

James R.Coull

London and New York

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 James R.Coull All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-415-07578-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Coull, James R. World fisheries resources/James R.Coull. p. cm.—(Ocean management and policy series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-07578-5 1. Fishery resources. I. Title. II. Series. SH327.5.C68 1993 338.3'727–dc20 93–7177 CIP ISBN 0-203-41732-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-72556-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-07578-5 (Print Edition)

To my parents

CONTENTS

Figures Plates Preface Acknowledgements

viii x xi xii

1

INTRODUCTION

1

2

BIOLOGICAL BASIS

6

3

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

30

4

ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS

56

5

SPATIAL ORGANISATION

84

6

TRENDS IN PRODUCTION IN OCEANS, CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES

107

7

RECREATIONAL FISHING

123

8

FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

144

9

AQUACULTURE

180

FISH LANDINGS, FIRST SALES AND PROCESSING

207

MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION OF FISH AND FISH COMMODITIES

228

CONCLUSION

246

Additional bibliography Index

250 252

10 11 12

vii

FIGURES

2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 4.1 4.2

4.3

4.4 4.5 4.6

5.1

5.2

World distribution of zoo-plankton biomass Migration cycle of herring in the North Sea Migration cycle of Pacific big-eye tuna Main fishing methods (i) Curve of sustainable yield with revenues and costs; (ii) the backward bending supply curve in fishing (i) Employment trends in fishing in Norway, Canada, the UK and Denmark; (ii) numbers and structures in fishing employment in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, 1980 (i) Trends in vessel numbers and tonnage in Norway, Denmark, Spain and the UK, 1976–89; (ii) structure of fleets by tonnage classes in Denmark and the UK, 1989 Catches per man for selected countries, 1955–88 Catches per vessel ton for selected countries, 1955–88 (i) Value of catch per fisherman in selected countries, 1988; (ii) value of catch per vessel ton in selected countries, 1988 Models of in-shore and off-shore fishing with market links: (i) local catching for local markets; (ii) local catching for export markets; (iii) catching at a range of distances for national markets (early Industrial Revolution), land transport dominated by rail; (iv) 200-mile limits and road transport (post 1970s) Centralisation of landings on British trawl ports, followed by decentralisation: (i) English demersal landings, 1903–89; (ii) Scottish demersal landings, 1884–1989 viii

11 16 18 52 58

64

71 75 76 78

85

94

FIGURES

5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2

8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 11.1 11.2

11.3 11.4

Fishing port hierarchy in Britain, 1989 Trends in production by oceans, 1938–9 Average annual catch in main ocean regions, 1985–89 Trends in production by continents, 1938–89 Trends in three important fisheries in the modern period: (i) yield of the North Sea herring fishery, 1903–90; (ii) rise and fall of the Peruvian anchovy fishery, 1955–89; (iii) yield of the Arcto-Scandinavian cod fishery, 1974–89 Values of recreational fishing expenditures and of fish landings in the USA, 1955–85 Recreational fishing in the municipalities and provinces of the Netherlands Numbers and percentages of recreational fishermen in the continental regions of the USA, 1985 Boundaries of fishing zones at Lofoten, Norway Recommended total allowable catches, adopted total allowable catches and actual catches for North Sea haddock, 1975–90 The successive extensions to Icelandic fishery limits Cod quotas in Eastern Canada, 1988 Aquaculture production in major world regions, 1986 Salmon production, salmon farms and employment in Norway, 1989 World trends in fish processing, 1938–88 Species composition of fish fillets in Canada, 1958–89 World production and trade in frozen fish, fish products and preparations, cured fish and fish meal, 1958–89 World production and trade in frozen fillets, crustaceans, crustacean and mollusc preparations and molluscs, 1958–89 Leading fish exporting and importing countries by value, 1989 Countries with over 30 kg per capita fish consumption, 1986–88

ix

99 108 110 111

116 130 133 139 147

154 157 162 189 199 216 225 231

231 233 238

PLATES

1. Launching a dug-out canoe for a fishing trip, Liberia 2. Trap-net skiffs and (in foreground) a ‘long-liner’, Bay de Verde, Newfoundland, Canada. Even in advanced countries, there are often many small operators active in the fisheries 3. Powered trawlers, Pulau Ketan, West Malaysia. Catching power has been partly improved in many Third World countries by the introduction of boats with engines and modern equipment; but overfishing and conflict with traditional operators have often ensued 4. Purse-netter, Bodö, Norway. Big vessels such as this have greatly increased catching power, especially in pelagic fisheries. However, there is now a permanent problem of regulating their operations to prevent over-fishing 5. Japanese squid-liners, Auckland, New Zealand. These distant-water vessels are operating at a distance of 6,000 miles from home base: this is profitable for a high-value species like squid 6. Fish carrier of the former USSR unloading at Riga, Latvia. The USSR developed distant-water fleets more than any other country. Freezing at sea has been extensively developed and direct unloading into refrigerated waggons allows the cold chain to be maintained all the way from catching to consumer 7. Industrial trawler at fish meal plant, Fuglafjördur, Faroe Islands. Norway pout, a species of no value for the edible market, are being

landed for processing 8. Smolt production unit, Uig, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. In salmon farming, the early stages must be conducted in fresh water, until ‘smolting’, after which there is a transfer to growing pens in salt water x

PREFACE

There are obvious dangers in attempting to treat any topic at the world scale; yet in our increasingly inter-connected and interdependent modern world, the need for global perspectives can only increase. The objective here is to present a perspective of the main issues relating to fisheries, and to illustrate them with chosen detailed cases, in an endeavour to show how these issues bear on the people involved in fishing and ancillary activities in different parts of the world. However, the amount of information available is widely variable in different countries and on different topics, and the choice of examples is inevitably conditioned by this. At the time that the text was prepared available information and data related to the former USSR, without giving detail on its then constituent republics: the term ‘USSR’ has been retained throughout the text. It is recognised that Taiwan is an important fishing country, but as yet statistics relating to its fisheries are not included in FAO publications. James R.Coull Department of Geography University of Aberdeen

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the preparation of this book, my thanks are due to a considerable number of people. In the first place, I wish to acknowledge Alan Jarvis, Economics Editor for Routledge, and my old friend and editor of this series, Hance Smith, for the opportunity to write about the topic which has commanded my own interest and research for over 20 years. In the collection of relevant material, I have to thank especially John Burne (former librarian at Torry Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen), along with his staff; and also the staff of the Queen Mother Library in the University of Aberdeen. For the drawing of the diagrams my thanks are due to Susan Powell, Alison Sandison and Jennifer Johnston in the Geography Department, University of Aberdeen. For the preparation of photographs my thanks are due to James Livingston in the same Geography Department. The first photograph is from an original provided by Gordon T.Sheves. I wish to thank my niece, Laura A.T.Coull for help in checking the proofs. Grateful acknowledgement is made to a number of organisations and people for the permission to reproduce certain of the figures. These include the following: FAO for Figures 2.1, 2.3 and 7.2; Scottish Office, Agriculture and Fisheries Department for Figure 2.2; Messrs HarperCollins Publishers Ltd for permission to adapt Figure 5.2, which was originally published by George Bell and Sons, now Unwin Hyman of HarperCollins in The Fisheries of Europe by the present author; Johns Hopkins University Press for Figure 4.1(a); Magnus Torell for the data in Figure 4.2(b); Editions Quest-France for Figure 9.1. xii

1 INTRODUCTION

Modern global society has become increasingly aware of the dimensions of the stock of resources available to it, and of the various limits and constraints to their use. This is an obvious and understandable reaction of a still rapidly increasing population on a finite planet in circumstances where there are still many millions undersupplied with food and other essential materials and services. It is also enhanced by our modern situation of instantaneous communication within the ‘world village’, and by the accepted goal and orthodoxy of continued economic growth. However, at the same time there is mounting concern about environmental deterioration and environmental damage, as demands continue to increase not only on the earth’s resources but also on its various circulation systems. While most of the resources required to satisfy the demands of the earth’s expanding population are of course land based, a significant number of them are water based; and it has become increasingly realised that the health of the planet, its plant and animal communities and its human populations depend on keeping in good order the hydrosphere (or water environment) as well as the land and the atmosphere. It has also become increasingly evident that there are important long-term issues involved, which entail that future centuries as well as the immediate future must be considered. For the great part of history fish has been the most important resource that water has yielded for human society. Like other organic resources it is in principle self-sustaining or self-renewing, although its ability to be so in the modern period has been increasingly influenced by the demands human society makes upon it. Fishing has long been a distinctive occupation, and makes a contribution to the food supply of every country. Although in general limited in their importance for the 1

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

food supply and for their contribution to employment, GNP and national trade balances, fisheries have in the modern period become better understood through the studies of a range of academic disciplines. These include marine biology, history, economics, sociology, law, politics and geography. Marine biology must be considered to have been first in the field in systematically clarifying issues relating to fisheries, and has made important advances from the late ninteenth century. Other disciplines have come into the field later, mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. While there is a longstanding measure of historical interest in fishing and fishing communities, much of this has been of a somewhat popular kind until relatively recent times. Factors of marine biology essentially determine both the size of the resource and the speed with which it renews itself. In the study of fish as a resource, considerations of marine biology interact primarily with those of economics, which determine the cost of operating a fishery and whether it can be conducted profitably. The present writer approaches the study of fisheries from his professional viewpoint in the discipline of geography and also from the viewpoint of his family roots in a Scottish fishing community. The interests of geography overlap and interact with those of marine biology and economics as well as with those of a range of other disciplines. With marine biology, geography shares an interest in the environmental factors and effects which influence the character and dimensions of fish stocks and their exploitation. Geography covers issues of location and the spatial pattern of fishing grounds, ports and markets; and it also deals with the costs of operating on different grounds and with the costs of marketing and distribution to consumers in different locations; in such matters it has a broad overlap with economics. It has also a common interest with economics in issues of regional economics, and regions with a prominent fishing interest are not infrequently problem regions in the modern world. In addition the basic revision in the International Law of the Sea since the 1970s has involved an extension and redrawing of national fishing limits on the map, and has produced a situation in which the field of geography interacts with those of politics and law. The distinctive character of fishing communities in many parts of the world has also rendered them an attractive field of study for sociologists and social anthropologists. Even now fishing communities can be largely socially separate from their near neighbours in developed countries, and comparable separation has been widely noted in the Third World (Moerman 1984:52–4). 2

INTRODUCTION

How far fish have been utilised as a resource in various parts of the world has been related to cultural appraisals. It is characteristic that in tribal cultures, fish (like other living things) have been seen as subject to supernatural control, and fishing has been associated with much ritual. In aboriginal North America, fish characteristically had a lord or guardian spirit who protected them or provided good luck in fishing and had to be propitiated (Hultkrantz 1984:865–72). In Hindu mythology fish from the sea and from big rivers with strong currents were ritually pure and given according preference (Sarkar 1984:710). On the other hand when Buddhism and Jainism arose in India they were opposed to destroying animal life in any way, and peoples and groups eating fish were looked down on, while even in Hindu society they were relegated to lower castes (Sarkar 1984:707). At a less formal level there are frequently preferred or prized fish species in different communities and societies, while other species may show a degree of abundance and yet be little used if at all. Organised information relating to fisheries varies widely in amount, type and quality over the globe. At the largest scale the material and data which have been collected since the Second World War under United Nations auspices by FAO have over time become increasingly comprehensive and give in general a good basis for comparison. A main source is the annual Yearbook of Fisheries Statistics, and FAO have also issued many special publications. In addition to giving data at the world and national levels, the yearbooks have data at the level of continents and of ocean divisions, and also allow the tracing of many trends over time. In general the data are more complete for tonnages than for values. They are also in general more complete for developed than for Third World countries, reflecting more sophisticated systems of data compilation. The FAO yearbooks concentrate very much on the production and trade in fish and fish products. For information on such essential matters as numbers of boats and fishermen it is generally necessary to consult other sources: these are generally at the national level and often lack a common basis for comparison, although in the Economic Community now there is an increasing body of internationally comparable data. There are a number of other supranational bodies involved in research, monitoring and data compilation: these include such organisations as the OECD, which regularly reports on the fisheries situation for developed countries; they also include a series of bodies which co-ordinate work in marine biology such as theInternational Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which co-ordinates scientific research and monitoring for the 3

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

north-east Atlantic. At the national level information and data are generally best for developed countries for which fishing is economically important; and the most complete and longest running data are generally for fish landings. Some West European countries which industrialised early, such as Britain and Norway, have coordinated data over periods of a century or more. However, the general decline in importance of fishing in developed economies has also been accompanied by cuts in the expenditure devoted to data compilation along with changes in its content. While a country like Iceland continues to compile very detailed data, the annual fisheries statistics published in countries like Britain and Denmark have been considerably curtailed compared with earlier in the century. Publications now tend to give considerably less areal data on such matters as landings and numbers of boats and fishermen, but give more attention to matters of environmental concern and to marketing. Like all living resources, fish have a biological ceiling on yield. Also the ecological efficiency of fisheries is relatively low in that the fish are characteristically several steps along the food chain from the primary production in the plankton. In addition, fishing is still largely dependent on hunting and trapping techniques operating in little modified natural ecosystems. Yet a sophisticated modern armoury of equipment and techniques is now available for locating and catching fish: while these render fishing actually and potentially much more productive, they have also rendered more obvious the fragility of the resource base and the danger of damaging it by over-fishing. This has rendered resource conservation programmes necessary on a scale never seen before. Arguably this renders the study of fishery resources more important than their limited economic importance would indicate, as few of the world’s resources are now exploited so near to the global limit. As the limit in yield has been increasingly closely approached in recent decades, a situation has developed in which fish have acquired a degree of importance beyond that which would be justified by their importance to fishing communities and fish consumers in different countries, and which has given them a notable measure of importance in national and international politics. There have been far-reaching adjustments in organisation in fisheries, not a few of which have been painful to the fisheries’ interests involved. With a limited resource, rights of access to it along with conservation measures to maintain it have become issues on a rangeof scales from the local to the international. Related to this has been the development of hierarchical systems of decision making, which involve such groups as fishermen and merchants at the basic 4

INTRODUCTION

level but which embrace all levels of administration and government up to the international and the global levels. This has led both to enhanced public awareness and to greater political prominence. While various institutional and legal restrictions are of long standing in small-scale fisheries, especially in inland waters, opensea fishing is an activity which has enjoyed essential freedom of operation until the recent past. Fish on the high seas were recognised as a resource which was common property and subject to unrestricted open entry; and from the economic viewpoint these characteristics have been sources of weakness. One very important consequence is that there has often been a lack or deficiency of restraints and discipline when the resource has come under pressure in modern times: institutional measures to contain or prevent over-fishing have been inadequate. It is only to a restricted degree that this modern problem has itself stimulated the development of husbandry methods of resource production in fish farming, with its general high overhead costs. The main reaction has been embodied in the revised regime of the International Law of the Sea, in which the general extension of national fishing limits to 200 miles has closed off the bulk of the world’s fishing grounds and extended national property rights over most of the fish stocks.

REFERENCES Hultkrantz, A. (1984) ‘Supernatural Beings of Fish and Fishing in Aboriginal North America’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol. II, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 865–85. Moerman, D.E. (1984) ‘Common Property and the Common Good: Ecological Factors among Peasant and Tribal Fishermen’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol.1, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 49–59. Sarkar, S.R. (1984) ‘Significance of Fish in Bengalee Hindu Folk Culture’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol.II, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 705–25.

5

2 BIOLOGICAL BASIS

Fish stocks constitute a group of self-renewing resources, and their distribution and abundance are governed by a series of environmental factors. Although the ecosystems of the sea are inevitably less well known than those of the land, marine biology has been established as a branch of science in its own right since the late nineteenth century, starting with the work of such pioneers as Frank Buckland in the UK and Einar Lea in Norway. It is also the case that the marine environment was the subject of one of the early examples of international cooperation in science with the founding of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 1902 by a group of European nations around the North Sea. Although the seas occupy about 70 per cent of the surface area of the globe, only a small percentage (3 per cent—4 per cent) of the total organic production of the planet used by mankind comes from water bodies. In the oceans the production is remarkably concentrated in the relatively small parts of them that consist of continental shelves and deep upwelling areas. However, the yield from water is important to most human societies, and for some it is vital. The lesser variety of organic species in water than on land is due to the fact that water is a more uniform environmental medium than land. Life began in the sea and consequently the sea has a more complete representation of the major plant and animal families (phyla and genera) than the land. While in the modern period there have been great developments in the science of marine biology, it is clear that in many sectors knowledge and understanding is much less than complete. This is particularly the case for the tropical world, which lacks adequate biological models for stock assessment and even adequate methods for estimating the parameters for the models which are available (Larkin 1982:3). 6

BIOLOGICAL BASIS

PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY Of the big range of factors governing the distribution and abundance of resources in salt and fresh water, of fundamental importance is the rate of primary production, whereby the vegetable (phyto) plankton take in carbon dioxide in the course of the process of photosynthesis: this is the beginning of the marine food chain. Also of great importance is the structure of the food chains as there is a heavy loss in weight between the different trophic levels as primary production is effectively converted into fish. In general terms, the level of primary production in water is considerably inferior to that on land. Primary productivity is usually measured by net rates of fixation of carbon during photosynthesis: information on this is still very partial for most of the oceans but the global average for the seas has been computed at approximately 60 g/ m2 per year, as against 300 g/m2 per year for the land (Tett 1977:18). While the marine environment is thus at a big disadvantage compared with the land in primary productivity, this is partly compensated by more rapid nutrient recycling. Behind these global averages there are wide differences between different parts of the ocean. On land the areas of highest productivity are as a general rule the warmest, although in the hot deserts levels are low because of low levels of moisture. High temperatures also promote high productivity in water, but here the main other factor governing productivity is nutrient availability, and in particular the presence in adequate concentration of the key nutrients of nitrates and phosphates. In most of the tropical oceans, intense heating of the surface layers has a warming effect which makes them less dense and results in them being separated from the cold deep water by a permanent thermocline. The consequence of this is that key nutrients cannot be renewed from below, and nutrient exchanges are limited to an internal circulation in the surface layers. As a result most of the tropical oceans are marine deserts in which the rate of carbon fixation can be as low as 10 mg/m2 per day. This negative effect is at its greatest in the ‘Horse Latitudes’, which correspond to the same latitudes as the hot deserts and are under the atmospheric subtropical high pressure cells where there is little wind which could help to promote some mixing in depth to give some nutrient renewal. Around the equator itself the trade winds are associated with the equatorial and counter-equatorial currents. Here there is sufficient renewal from below, especially at divergences between the currents,to give levels of 7

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

carbon fixation of over 100 mg/m2 per day; and in the equatorial Atlantic and the eastern part of south-east Asia this effect can be further enhanced by strong ocean bottom topography, and levels of carbon fixation can reach mean values of over 250 mg/ m2 per day. This illustrates the fact that the most productive waters are found where there are mechanisms in the warmer oceans which allow renewal of nutrients from below. This effect is at its maximum on the west side of South America and off south-west Africa, where there is an offshore movement of water as part of the main oceanic circulation and this results in a strong upwelling of deep water against the continental blocks and provides a rich supply of key nutrients. Similar though less-pronounced effects are seen elsewhere in the warm oceans and deep upwelling also occurs off north-west Africa, western Australia, the coast of California and western Mexico. Deep upwelling also occurs seasonally in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, as a result of the monsoons influencing the marine circulation (Chaussade and Corlay 1990:236–7). Carbon fixation rates of 15,000 mg/m 2 per day have been observed off south-west Africa in the Benguela Current (FAO 1971:153) and this corresponds to an annual rate of about 500 g per year. Off Peru peak levels of over 10,000 mg/ m2 per day have been recorded (Paulik 1971:165), and annual levels are thought to be of the same order of magnitude as in the Benguela Current. In the temperate and subpolar oceans average primary productivity is generally fairly high as there is a limited temperature gradient between the surface and deeper layers and also a high frequency of winds. As a result renewal of key nutrients from below is generally little impeded for much of the year, although there is a marked seasonal variation in production with a summer maximum. A thermocline develops in summer over considerable areas in temperate latitudes through the seasonal warming, and is a regular characteristic in the waters around the British Isles. In such circumstances the annual peak of production often occurs with an outburst of planktonic activity in spring. The most productive areas in high latitudes, such as the seas around Iceland and Kamchatka, have average annual levels of carbon fixation of over 200 g/m2, and nearly all of both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific have levels of over 100 mg/m 2. Where oceanic circulation is particularly vigorous levels of productivity in the temperate oceans can also be spectacular, and this is probably best exemplified in the zones of mixing of warm and cold currents off Newfoundland in the Atlanticand off Hokkaido in the Pacific; in the 8

BIOLOGICAL BASIS

latter case local levels of 5,000 mg/m2 per day have been observed (FAO 1971:47). The Southern Oceans are much more poorly recorded but primary production is known to be restricted by the extent of ice cover and long winters, despite the vigorous water circulation induced by frequent gales: average production is thought to be between 50 and 100 g/m2 per year. (FAO 1971:163).

FOOD CHAINS While primary production is of basic importance for all life in the sea, it provides little of direct use to mankind as actual resources, except in the case of seaweeds which are considered in chapter 9. The material produced by primary production has to pass along the food chain through at least one, and more usually two or three, trophic levels before it can be harvested as useful fish. During this process the synthesis of amino-acids and protein takes place. Since the general level of ‘efficiency’ of conversion is of the order of 8–15 per cent at each trophic level, it is obvious that only a small fraction of the primary production can be effectively utilised, and even on the best fishing grounds it is seldom as high as 1 per cent. As a very general rule, conversion must reach at the very least the second trophic level, that of the zoo-plankton; the abundant Antarctic krill are at this level, and there have now been attempts to use them. Much more commonly, however, the fish that are directly useful to mankind are at the second and higher trophic levels. Many of the important pelagic species, such as the herring and anchovy, feed directly on the zoo-plankton—the same applies to bivalve molluscs such as the oyster and the scallop— but demersal species, such as the cod and hake in the adult stage of their lives, are higher up the food chain and feed on smaller fish. The lower level of productivity per unit area already noted is much compounded by the length of these marine food chains, and this leads to the sea being a much less efficient medium than the land for producing organic resources. Much of the primary production on land is directly useful as resources in the form of crops and tree products, and even farm livestock are usually only one trophic level away from primary production. The sea has a limited compensating advantage in that part of the food intake of land mammals has to be used in maintaining body temperature, whereas the great majority of fish are cold-blooded.

9

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

AREAL VARIATIONS IN MARINE PRODUCTIVITY In illustrating the global distribution of organic production in the sea it is convenient to show the pattern of plankton biomass (Figure 2.1) (FAO 1981:1.2): this pattern is better known than that of phytoplankton, which varies considerably more in the short term and is less directly related to abundance of fish. It is obvious that the most productive areas are comparatively restricted. Despite the exaggeration caused by the map projection, the high latitude areas of the North Atlantic and North Pacific are of outstanding prominence, containing wide bands in which the average standing crop of plankton is over 200 mg/m3 and where the most productive areas, such as those south of Iceland and east of Sakhalin, have over 500 mg/m3 In the warmer oceans the areas of deep upwelling are striking, with zones of over 200 mg/m3 on the west side of the Americas and of Africa, and the biggest single area with over 500 mg/ m3 on the west side of South America. In the global patterns of production there is also great importance attached to the continental shelves. In these areas of shallow sea the sea bed is within the euphotic zone (i.e. the depth to which light can penetrate). This leads to an accumulation of nutrients through dead organic matter sinking to the sea bed, and bacteria on the sea bottom are important in nutrient recycling. Also, demersal and crustacean species are resident on the shelf bottom, or on the upper levels of the continental slope, and the life cycles of many of the pelagic species are also tied into ecosystems of the shelf. A useful index of the potential of the continental shelf is given by the biomass of bottomdwelling forms. While benthos biomass in the ocean deeps is of the order of 1–2 g/m2 on the shelf off north-west Europe the general level is 50–100 g/m 2 ; and while much of the Sea of Okhotsk has comparable levels, the areas near to the northern and eastern shores have levels of over 200 and even of over 1,000 g/m2. In the Sea of Azov, nutrient enrichment by big inflowing rivers leads to levels of over 700 g/m2, and at the summer peak can attain local levels of over 2,000 g/m2 (Zenkevich 1956:132–7). In the tropical oceans, at water temperatures of above about 23°C, the growth of coral in the shallower seas is frequent, and coral reefs constitute among the most productive of all marine ecosystems. Although the spiny character of these reefs renders it difficult to use fishing gear on them directly, the fish population around them makes them very important in the distribution of resources in the tropics. 10

Figure 2.1 World distribution of zoo-plankton biomass Source: FAO 1981

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

Usually the continental shelf is a relatively narrow band at the edge of the continental land masses, and it is only exceptionally that it extends out beyond the modern 200-mile limits from national coasts, although this does occur for example in the Flemish Cap area east of Newfoundland and in the eastern Bering Sea. Most of the deep upwelling areas are also near shore and within the 200-mile limits. This means that in the modern period most fish stocks have effectively become national property. The extent to which the continental shelves and upwelling areas dominate the fisheries of the world can be illustrated from the estimates made by Tett (Tett 1977:25): out of an estimated total sustainable yield of 120 million tonnes per year, it was calculated that the upwelling areas, which cover less than 0.2 per cent of the world oceans, accounted for 50 million tonnes (41.75 per cent), and that the seas of the continental margins covering 8.3 per cent of the total ocean area accounted for 55 million tonnes (45.8 per cent).

VARIATIONS IN FISH STOCK COMMUNITIES As on land there are a series of ecosystems in the sea, and although the sea has less amplitude of variation in environmental conditions, the different marine communities also show a pattern of variation which is governed mainly by temperature but also to some degree by other factors. While there are limited variations in salinity in the open oceans, the lower levels of salinity in estuaries and lagoons give rise to their own ecological communities; and similar effects on a larger scale are found in some marginal seas, such as the Baltic and Red Seas. In the former case river inflow associated with low evaporation leads to lower levels of salinity than in the open ocean, and in the latter high evaporation and very low inflow from the surrounding deserts lead to higher salinity levels. Also, the ocean deeps constitute barriers between the different continental shelves, which thus have their own distinct assemblages of species. Temperature data relating to some of the most important commercial species are known in some detail. The extreme temperature limits for the cod in the North Atlantic are -2°C in the north (in very cold salt water) and 20°C towards the equator; however, the all-over distribution is asymmetrical, with the major concentrations between +2°C. and +5°C. (Parrish 1956:312–33). In the warmer oceans the major concentrations of the yellowfin tuna are found in temperatures of over 12

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27°C, but it is found to some extent in water temperatures down to 19°C. (Lowe-McConnell 1977:16). The haddock of the North Atlantic has a similar overall distribution to that of the cod without getting quite so close to the polar margins, and its main concentrations are found in temperatures between 4°C and 7°C (Parrish 1956:270). In general fish species thus show a familiar ecological characteristic of having optimum and extreme temperature thresholds. In the assemblage of stocks in the northern North Atlantic, the most fully researched of the oceans, demersal species like the gadoids (mainly cod, haddock, saithe) and flat fish like the plaice are a prominent part of the resource base, but it includes major pelagic species like the herring. It also includes much sought after crustaceans like the lobster and edible crab. By contrast, in the warm temperate Atlantic, the poleward limit of which is defined approximately by the 13°C mean annual isotherm, species like the octopus and cuttlefish become prominent, but the most important species are pelagic—the sardine, anchovy and the bluefin tuna (the tuna species best adapted to lower temperatures) for example. There are also species with a wider temperature tolerance: the demersal hake and the pelagic mackerel, for example, are both found in both cool and warm temperate waters. The poleward limits of the tropical oceans are generally considered to be defined by the 20°C mean annual isotherm, which lies approximately in the latitude of the 30° parallels north and south, but in the southern hemisphere is noticeably skewed poleward on the west sides of the oceans in sympathy with the main current gyrals. Very prominent in the tropical oceans is the greater diversity of species. A particularly rich variety of species is found around Indonesia where about 1,000 species and 241 families are known (Lowe-McConnell 1977:4); and on the Great Barrier Reef which extends along the east coast of Australia, 1,500 fish species have been counted (LoweMcConnell 1977:32), illustrating the great diversity and productivity associated with coral reefs. The great variety of species in tropical waters is scarcely an advantage in resource terms as most fisheries are targeted at single species, or at most at a small variety of species; however, most of the important tropical fisheries are for pelagic species which show a strong shoaling behaviour, and it is often practicable to get substantially unmixed catches. There is a predominance of small pelagic species in the tropics, mainly anchovies and sardines, but also including nearly all the tuna species. In addition, the tropical oceans have their own distinctive assemblage of demersal species, including 13

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the snappers, groupers and croakers which are also the subject of directed fisheries. Among the crustaceans there is now great importance attached to the panaeid shrimp and the spiny lobster.

LIFE CYCLES AND GROWTH RATES The rate at which an organic resource renews itself is a matter of fundamental importance as it dictates the limits to which it can be exploited. Very generally the biological cycles proceed more rapidly with higher temperatures and hence growth rates are usually greatest, and the length of life cycles shorter, in the tropics. Also, in the temperate and polar zones it is usual for spawning to occur only once a year and to be related to the regime of annual temperature, occurring most often in the spring. With the more limited annual temperature fluctuations in the tropics, spawning may occur at particular times but can also be prolonged and can occur several times a year; and the timing of spawning can be related to the phases of the moon. It has been claimed, however, that recruitment to tropical fisheries is essentially comparable with that of fisheries elsewhere, having periodic spawning and being dependent on stock density (Murphy 1982:147). In the study of the life cycles of species outside the tropics, a great deal of use is made of the occurrence of annual growth rings in fish scales and ear bones; the ageing process is considerably more difficult to distinguish in tropical species with the absence of these features. The maturation times for species at the polar margins may be instanced by the Arctic cod, one of the most important of all commercial species, in the North Atlantic: it matures at nine years and has been known to live to an age of 25 years (Rasmussen 1964:136), and observations in the Lofoten Islands have shown that it reaches a weight of 1 kg in four years, 3 kg in seven years and 7 kg in 10 years (Cushing 1966:66). Thereafter more of its diet goes into maintenance than growth, and the fishery is hence more productive overall if it can be caught at that time. While there are species like the halibut which are slower maturing than the Arctic cod, most species, even in high latitudes, are quicker to reach the adult stage. Thus in the herring species of the north-east Atlantic, also stocks of the first order of commercial importance, the AtlantoScandinavian stock matures at five to nine years and the North Sea stock at three or four (Hodgson 1957:151); these are also the ages at which they join the adult shoals and are recruited to the fisheries. 14

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Among the crustaceans, the lobster takes five to eight years to reach spawning maturity and the edible crab four or five years; the former can remain in a fishery for 12 years or more and has been known to survive to an age of 30 years (FAO 1971:208). Fewer studies have in any case been done on tropical species, but there are sufficient data available to highlight the differences from the temperate and polar zones. The Peruvian anchovy, which is probably the biggest single stock in the world and has been subject to an important fishery since the late 1950s, shows a particularly rapid growth and reaches a length of 8 cm in two months and 15 cm in its second year. It is recruited to the fishery in five months and normally lives for two years only (Lowe-McConnell 1977:13). Tuna are also among the most important commercial species and are concentrated in the tropical oceans; they too are known to be fast growing: there are a number of tuna species and of the biggest the yellowfin is quoted as reaching 195 cm and 136 kg while the bigeye reaches 236 cm and 198 kg (Lowe-McConnell 1977:16). Observations conducted by American scientists in the Pacific have given growth rates of 20–42 cm per year for the yellowfin and 6–17 kg per year for the skipjack species (LoweMcConnell 1977:18). Associated with the life cycles of almost all species is a measure of mobility, and different phases of the life cycle may be in different parts of the sea. They also have larval stages during which the larvae drift with the plankton in the surface layers, and the net direction of drift can be an important component of the life cycle. In many cases the movements which occur during the life cycle are at a local scale, and this is especially the case with many coastal stocks, particularly shellfish. The edible crab of northern Europe, for example, has well marked seasonal migrations, moving inshore in the summer and offshore in the winter. In the autumn the crabs moult and they move offshore into deeper water where spawning takes place in December and January. This is followed by an inshore migration in the spring, during which the females carry the eggs on their bodies, and the eggs hatch out in June and July and the larvae enter the inshore plankton (FAO 1971:208). With free-swimming species migrations may extend over much longer distances, and indeed can range right across a whole ocean. In the case of the northern group of the North Sea herring, the behaviour includes regular annual migrations on a circular path in the sea between Norway and Scotland (Figure 2.2) (Steele 1961:3–7). The

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Figure 2.2 Migration cycle of herring in the North Sea Source: Steele 1961

wintering grounds are on the western edge of the Norwegian Deep, and when the northward moving Baltic outflow is reinforced in the spring by snow melt and river inflow to the Baltic itself, the increased circulation along with rising temperatures causes an outburst of plankton and the herring start moving westward feeding on the zooplankton as they go. Spawning takes place off the Shetland Islands and the east coast of Scotland from late June to early September, and 16

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subsequently the herring return to their wintering grounds on a southerly route. A consequence of this migration path is that the herring now alternate between the Norwegian and European Community fishery zones, and this has important consequences for fishery management. Other species migrate over considerably longer distances. In the north-east Atlantic, the Arcto-Norwegian cod has for centuries been the subject of a winter fishery in the Vestfjorden between the Lofoten Islands and the Norwegian mainland where it spawns. These spawning grounds are at the southern end of a migration cycle and the feeding grounds in the Barents Sea off northern Russia are at the other: hence the migration path crosses what is now a boundary between national zones. It is significant that the species has the name of the ‘skrei’ (literally the ‘wanderer’) in Norwegian. Among the longest distance migrations on record are those associated with several of the tuna stocks, especially in the Pacific. These have been mapped in detail for the bigeye species (Figure 2.3) (FAO 1981:2.14). The spawning grounds are in the West Central Pacific astride the equator, and different components of the stock take separate migration paths in their annual cycles. Juveniles and some of the adults spent after spawning move eastwards across the ocean and some get as far as the north-west coast of South America, while adolescents and sexually inactive adults move south-east to main feeding grounds around and to the south of the Polynesian Island groups. At the same time the other sexually inactive adults move on a northern circuit which takes them around Hawaii. Some of the juveniles also disperse from the spawning grounds to north and south of the equator in the western Pacific. Such migrations, which occur with several of the tuna stocks, take the fish through a series of different fishery zones of the Pacific island nations, and cause formidable management problems. The salmon is very important and valuable in both the North Atlantic and the Pacific and is the most important of the anadromous species, which spend their juvenile stages in rivers and their adult stages in the sea but return to the rivers to spawn. Their migrations also traverse thousands of miles of ocean. The North Pacific salmon is the more abundant and its feeding grounds are in the middle of the North Pacific; from there a series of different groups migrate to the rivers of western North America and of the far east of the Soviet Union and northern Japan to spawn, and the young remain in the rivers until the smolt stage. Much of the feeding grounds and of the 17

Figure 2.3 Migration cycle of Pacific big-eye tuna Source: FAO 1981

BIOLOGICAL BASIS

migrant paths are in international waters beyond the 200-mile fishery limits, and this has obvious implications for management. For the Atlantic salmon the known feeding grounds are in Greenland waters and from these the salmon swim to Canadian and north-west European rivers to spawn. Those spawning in north-west European rivers traverse a series of fishery zones with their own independent jurisdictions, which again presents a formidable problem for management. It is also the case that some species are catadromous: they spawn in the sea and return to rivers for their adult phase. The best-known case here is the eel, and the establishment of the migrations and life cycle of the European eel marks a great milestone in the science of fish ecology (Schmidt 1922:197–208). It enters the sea and swims across the Atlantic to its spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea; and remarkably the elvers are able to find their way back across the Atlantic to the European rivers.

RESOURCES IN INLAND WATER For a big part of the world population, the only immediate access to fish resources is to those in inland (usually fresh) water. There are also a number of land-locked countries, such as Hungary, Sudan, Laos and Paraguay, whose only direct supplies are from the fresh waters within their borders. Even in some seaboard countries a large part of the supply comes from fresh water: in the case of Bangladesh it is well over half and the 4.5 million tonnes per year from fresh water in China is about 44 per cent of the national total. The total world supply from fresh water is computed at over 13 million tonnes, which is over 13 per cent of the global sum. In freshwater ecosystems, plankton are of less importance in primary production than in the sea because of the role of aquatic plants; however, plankton are still an essential part of the ecosystem and are particularly important in primary production in lakes. It has been calculated that on the global scale the productivity in fish of fresh waters is more than ten times that of the oceans, and rather more than that of the continental shelves (Lowe-McConnell 1977:53), the average yield of fresh water being about 12 kg/ha per year. This general figure of course conceals wide variations: the highest levels occur in favourable situations in the high temperatures of the tropics, whilst big and deep tropical lakes, such as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, have some of the lowest levels as they function on a small scale like the 19

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ocean basins, the water being permanently stratified with restricted nutrient recycling and de-oxygenated deep waters. Such lakes only yield between 5 and 10 kg/ha per year (Lowe-McConnell 1977:53–4), but in shallow tropical lakes, such as the Tonlé Sap in Cambodia and Lake George in East Africa, the lake floor is within the euphotic zone and levels of production can exceed 1,000 kg/ha per year. Marked variations in yield have also been reported from tropical rivers, ranging from well under 1 tonne annually per kilometre of river length to as high as 44 tonnes for the Niger and 78 tonnes for the Ganges (Marten and Polovina 1982:264). Tropical rivers typically have a strong seasonal regime, with extensive floods during the rainy season. This renders assessment of their productivity more difficult, although it is known to rise dramatically in the flood season when there is much organic material in the water being rapidly recycled. The figure of 70 kg/ha per year which has been suggested for African flood plains appears low, while 800 kg/ha per year has been estimated for the more stable Gombak River in West Malaysia. While a remarkable variety of fish species has been recorded in tropical ecosystems, even in the geologically recent lakes of the African Rift (Lowe-McConnell 1977:45), the great outbursts of life associated with tropical river floods show much less diversity of species, the seasonal flood producing something of a pioneer ecological situation. While tropical species can spawn in all seasons, the cycle of life is strongly geared to the floods, with spawning concentrated at their beginning followed by rapid feeding and growth, and with some species, like the Nile perch, reaching spawning age in a few months (Moss 1988:301). However, the reduction in biomass with the receding floods is great, with high predation within the fish community and large numbers being stranded out of water. Long-distance spawning migrations have also been observed in big tropical rivers; these are characteristically in the upstream direction and in Brazil and Argentina have been found to involve distances of up to 600 miles (Lowe-McConnell 1977:49). Undoubtedly the most important of all tropical and subtropical species is the carp in Asia; it has also been calculated that the cyprinid (carp) and siluroid (catfish) families between them account for 73 per cent of all freshwater fish (Moss 1988:232), and these are heavily concentrated in the warmer waters from the warm temperate to the tropical zones. In temperate waters, levels of productivity in fish of between 100 and 1,000 kg/ha per year have been reported (Lowe-McConnell 1977:53), although the highest levels here can only be reached in the most favourable conditions in the warm temperate zone and in some 20

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cases figures can be inflated by the entering of the rivers for spawning of anadromous salmon and trout. Species diversity is characteristically lower and life cycles longer; the trout, one of the most common temperate species, is found in Eurasia and North America and first spawns at age three or four years (Moss 1988:301). Of other temperate species, eels are one of the most important groups and are found in Europe, Asia and North America.

PRINCIPLES OF CONSERVATION Conservation issues are familiar to modern society because of the continually increasing demands made on the environment and its resources; these issues have increased in fisheries throughout the twentieth century and in the last quarter century have assumed the status of a permanent problem. The basic objective in fisheries is the common one to biological resources generally—that of limiting exploitation, or utilisation, to levels which can be sustained without injuring the stocks—and the accepted biological optimum is to harvest the resource at the level of the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). If fishing effort is deployed beyond this point, catches must decrease despite the additional effort, as the resource is being used at a rate beyond which it replaces itself. Hence it is common practice now to impose ceilings on catches: the usual term employed is the ‘total allowable catch’ (TAC). This is most often set for a year at a time, although various other time periods are possible. As well as limiting catches to this biological ceiling, it has long been realised that it is also desirable to protect the younger members of a stock to allow them to grow to full adult size, and this also gives them the opportunity to renew the stock by spawning. Although individual female fish commonly release tens of thousands of eggs at a spawning, such are the heavy mortality rates at the critical infant stages that one of the dangers of over-exploitation is that of reducing recruitment by reducing the spawning stock and thus rendering recovery additionally difficult. It is general practice in management now to stipulate minimum sizes of fish which can be landed, and this is also often linked to the stipulation of minimum mesh sizes for fishing nets. While the principle of preventing the catching of immature fish is straightforward, the setting of minimum mesh sizes is often more complicated, as a great many catches, especially in the demersal fisheries, are of mixed species, 21

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and the ideal would be to set different mesh sizes for each species: it is therefore obvious that in practice minimum mesh sizes are frequently compromises. It is also general experience that fish stocks show natural fluctuations of considerable amplitude: these appear to be often due to variations in conditions at the time of hatching and in the larval phases. Hence the assessment of any stock demands continuous monitoring, including especially larval surveys and the determination of the age structure of landings by sampling. Against the background of natural fluctuations it can be difficult to gauge the effect of fishing, and this in turn may mean that the setting of TACs can occasion considerable controversy. The study of the population dynamics of exploited fish stocks in practice involves the use of sophisticated mathematical models. However, the essential relationships can be set out in a simple equation, as follows: S1=S2+(G+R)-(M+F) where S1 is the weight of the stock at the start of the year, S2 is the weight of the stock at the end of the year, G is the weight added by growth to S1, R is the weight of new recruits, M is the natural mortality in the stock, and F is the mortality caused by fishing. In essence the stock gains by feeding and by the addition of young adults and this is counterbalanced by deaths through natural mortality and through deaths caused by fishing, and there will be a fluctuating balance between the gains and losses. The principle of management in a fishery can never be to reestablish a natural climax ecology; rather it is to set the level of harvesting such that the term G in the above equation is at a maximum—in effect to remove the older adults, for which feed goes towards maintenance rather than growth, so that a maximum of available food goes to the section of the population which is still growing. There are further problems in practical fishery management arising from the fact that fish caught are not at the top of a series of separate food chains; the ecosystem of the sea is essentially a food web, so that there is interaction between the different food chains. This means not only that different species can be in competition for food, but that some commercially important species can be part of the food supply for others. Thus in the North Atlantic the cod is a top predator and feeds extensively on species that include the herring and the capelin; 22

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and the tuna, also a top predator, feeds on species like the squid and the anchovy. To date fishery management has nearly always treated separate species independently. However, part of recent experience has been the depletion in the Barents Sea of the supremely important cod along with the capelin which is its main food and which is also the subject of a directed fishery. It has also been realised, partly as a result of the depletion to near extinction in the late 1970s of the herring, that in the North Sea there are important interactions between herring and other commercial species including the cod and saithe and that the equilibria between them can be upset by modern catching power. These examples show an increasing need to operate on a basis of multi-species management, which is now a daunting additional challenge.

THE POLLUTION PROBLEM Environmental pollution in the latter decades of the twentieth century has become a major matter of global concern, and as a very large part of the wastes which cause pollution are put into water, either into freshwater courses or into the sea, pollution must be of concern for fisheries. An additional problem is that even when waste is deposited as land-fill, undesirable constituents may be leached out of it and appear in the water circulation. The problem is compounded by the great variety of waste materials now produced, especially in the developed countries, and the possibility that adverse effects may be compounded by their interaction in the water medium. Waste put into water commonly includes material in suspension as well as in solution. As well as the sort of organic wastes that have always been recycled in natural ecosystems, waste now embraces a variety of industrial chemicals—including toxic materials like the salts of heavy metals and various synthetic organic compounds like DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—and can also extend to the most difficult of all modern undesirable materials, those of the radioactive category. It has become a permanent necessity to monitor the wastes put into fresh and salt water and to investigate more fully the effects they cause. In the case of the fisheries it is especially important to ascertain the effects on food chains and whether in any way they contaminate fish stocks. Research is of course required to assess the effects of pollutants, and the effects on fish and fisheries in fresh water is fairly accurately known in a good many cases. It is a different 23

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matter in the sea, however, where it is usually much more difficult to recognise and measure effects than in the much smaller freshwater bodies. As a general rule proved results have only been obtained for limited areas at the edge of the sea or for very limited periods; and in the open sea tangible effects of major incidents like large oil spills are essentially temporary. To date it is also the case that the long-term consequences of the large volume and variety of pollutants put into the sea can only be conjectural. In an intensively studied sea with restricted circulation like the Baltic, it is possible to be clear on the effects of the modern increase in the dumping of sewage and the accompanying decline in oxygen content of the water owing to the increased biological oxygen demand of the sewage. The results include a reduction in species diversity and the sinking of de-oxygenated water in the winter into deep basins like that of the Landsort Deep; this leads to biological degradation in anaerobic conditions and the production of poisonous hydrogen sulphide (Macintyre and Holmes 1971:250–1). In what has been claimed to be the world’s most intensively studied sea, the North Sea, it has thus far been difficult to show definite results of pollution on fish stocks against the background of the many variables that affect stocks in the open sea. One of the developments of recent decades that is somewhat ironic is that fish farming has itself to some degree become one of the agencies of pollution. However carefully fish feed is put into water there is always some spillage, and the excess feed itself becomes polluting. As it is essentially organic, it can of course be degraded and recycled by natural agencies, but there have been cases in which decay, as a result either of inadequate circulation or of low oxygen content in the water, can yield poisonous hydrogen sulphide and become a serious threat to the whole ecological community. This is especially the case in freshwater lakes, but can also occur in the sea. It has also been found that with the increase in biomass that is involved in intensive raising, even with species like oysters which are filter feeders on plankton and need no artificial feed, the accumulation of faeces can lead to a measure of inshore eutrophication which can restrict productivity by increasing the incidence of pests and diseases (Mori 1987:140–2). Another maninduced cause of pollution has been the anti-fouling preparations used on fish cages, boats’ hulls and other apparatus in the marine environment like piers and jetties. Compounds of tri-butyl tin were formerly widely employed for this purpose and caused poison to get

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into the food chain, especially through shellfish. This has now generally been banned on fixed installations. In fresh water it is the case that many river systems in the developed world have been overloaded for many decades and a pollution debt has built up; and while in developed countries now environmental pressure groups are of sufficient strength to promote systematic monitoring and the cleaning up of pollution, the degradation of water courses in the USSR and Eastern Europe as a result of the industrialisation of recent decades is now a massive problem. The more recent efforts at industrialisation in the Third World are creating a parallel problem for which adequate measures of monitoring and control have seldom been put in force. When sewage is put into a water course, a general result is that part of the dissolved oxygen is used up as bacteria and micro-organisms break down its organic content. Flowing water is re-oxygenated by contact with the air, but if the sewage load is excessive, or injected at too frequent points, the self-cleansing capacity of the river is lost and at the worst the decay of organic substances in the absence of oxygen can give rise to poisonous hydrogen sulphide. The loss of oxygen is injurious to river fish, and it is common knowledge that some of the British rivers ‘died’ during the Industrial Revolution. This problem can be tackled by treatment of the raw sewage by bubbling air through it before it is released into the rivers, and this is now a common practice enforced by regulation. Treatment is of course required for other pollutants. It is common now for sewage treatment plants to incorporate large settling tanks to remove the solid part of the load, but there are also the pollutants held in solution. Prominent here are dissolved phosphates and nitrates; while these do stimulate the growth of phytoplankton and indeed can lead to an increase of biomass, this can occur to an unhealthy degree. Often a consequence is the multiplication of bluegreen algae which are little eaten by the zoo-plankton and can accumulate as a foul-smelling scum. An excess of phosphates and nitrates in fresh water also leads to the now well-known phenomenon of eutrophication, which from the viewpoint of fishing represents a deterioration of the ecosystem. Lake Erie, the smallest and most heavily polluted of the Great Lakes, has become the type case here. Although the full range of changes that have occurred in Lake Erie is complex, there has been a massive decrease in abundance of desirable species of fish, including the lake trout and the sauger (Edmondson 1975:266). 25

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Symptoms of eutrophication have also been observed in inshore waters, especially in places like estuaries where water circulation is restricted, and large-scale growth of blue-green algae occurs relatively frequently in the vicinity of sewage outfalls. More serious in the sea are the ‘red tides’ which occur in open waters and which have been noted in many parts of the oceans. These involve the effective monoculture of dinoflagellate species in the plankton (Perkins 1977:97–8), and the extent to which their occurrence is fostered by sewage pollution is problematical. It is known, however, that red tides are toxic and have caused fish mortality. In addition to the necessity of monitoring and controlling the inputs of phosphates and nitrates to water courses and water bodies, it is also necessary to do this for a series of other pollutants. A range of toxic substances has been discharged into rivers and they often require costly treatments to remove them from effluent before being discharged into water courses; even so it is not infrequent that episodes of more or less severe mortality occur in freshwater fish populations from the discharge of toxic pollutants. Some industrial processes produce cyanide, which is highly toxic. There are also a number of toxins which become concentrated in passing along the food chain, and which can become dangerous in fish. Among organic compounds, DDT becomes concentrated along the food chain but there is no clear evidence of it as a direct threat to human health (Goldberg and Bertine 1975:285–6); and although PCBs are poisonous, they do not become concentrated along the food chain, and their concentrations in the oceans are still far below levels which would be dangerous (Goldberg and Bertine 1975:286–7). The heavy metals, however, do become concentrated and are toxic: they are also cumulative and are not excreted. Of these, lead now occurs widely in the environment and others (including zinc and mercury) have been reported. The most important in fish is mercury: many of its compounds are soluble; they are used in a number of industries and have been recognised as hazardous to health, especially in Sweden, Japan and the USA. The worst case of mercury poisoning is that which began in Minimata Bay in southwestern Kyushu, Japan, in 1953, and which produced severe nervous disorders. It was due to the waste from a chemical plant being discharged into the bay and the mercury in the waste being ingested by fish and shellfish, which were then consumed by local inhabitants. Although the source of contamination was identified in 1963, with its cumulative effects 111 cases of the disease had been diagnosed by 1970 and of these 41 were 26

BIOLOGICAL BASIS

fatal (Goldberg and Bertine 1975:281). In Lake Erie, fish contain more than twice the legal limit of mercury and fishing has been banned (Edmondson 1975:264). This whole field, however, is one of considerable controversy, and there is much debate as to how great concentrations have to be before they are harmful. As a general rule effective measures against these toxins have only been taken in advanced countries, and this also reflects the popular strength of the environmental lobby. For freshwater bodies another modern cause for concern is acid rain, the main cause of which is sulphur dioxide emitted from thermal power stations and from industrial plants being circulated through the atmosphere and being precipitated in rain. This disperses pollution over distances which run into hundreds of kilometres and means not only that areas remote from the source of pollution are adversely affected but that the pollution crosses international frontiers. The effects are worse in areas in which soils are developed on acid rocks and from the 1960s onwards have been increasingly observed on the Laurentian Shield in Canada, New England in the USA, the Highland area of Britain, and Scandinavia (Moss 1988:58–9). There have been serious complaints in Canada and Scandinavia about pollution stemming from the USA and the UK respectively. As well as causing deterioration on heathlands and forests, it has also reduced fish populations in fresh water and lakes have been reported with no fish life. Of all the materials that are put into the sea by human agency there is now no question that the greatest in quantity is oil. The great demands in the developed world for energy, and especially for a form of energy that can be stored and pumped, have led to levels of consumption running into billions of tonnes per year. A great part of this is transported by sea and some loss by spillage and other causes is inevitable; in addition oil gets into the water environment through sewage, from the atmosphere following incomplete combustion and from accidents. It has been estimated that the total input of oil to the oceans could exceed 10 million tonnes a year (Macintyre and Holmes 1971:242). Although the adverse effects of oil spills on the sea bird population are well known, and acute toxicity on organisms has been shown for the lighter petroleum fractions in concentrations as low as 60 parts per million (Nelson-Smith 1977:57), it is still not possible to recognise adverse effects of oil on the marine ecosystem. It is ironic that the detergents used to disperse oil slicks, such as that from the Torrey Canyon near Land’s End in 1967, have been shown to do much more

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harm to marine organisms than the oil itself, even if they saved the appearance of the tourist beaches.

REFERENCES Chaussade, J. and Corlay, J.-P. (1990) Atlas des Pêches et des Cultures Marines, Quest-France, Rennes. Cushing, D. (1966) The Arctic Cod, Pergamon, Oxford. Edmondson, W.T. (1975) ‘Fresh Water Pollution’, in Murdoch, W.T. (ed.) Environment, Resources, Pollution, and Society (2nd edn), Sinauer Asssociates, Sunderland, Mass., 251–71. FAO (1971) The Fish Resources of the Ocean, compiled by Gulland, J.A., Fishing News Books, West Byfleet, Surrey. ——(1981) Atlas of the Living Resources of the Seas, FAO, Rome. Goldberg, E.D. and Bertine, K.K. (1975) ‘Marine Pollution’, in Murdoch, W.W. (ed.), Environment, Resources, Pollution and Society (2nd edn), Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass., 273–95. Hodgson, W.C. (1957) The Herring and its Fishery, Routledge, London. Larkin, P.A. (1982) ‘Introduction’, in Pauly, D. and Murphy, G.I. (eds) Theory and Management of Tropical Fisheries, CSIRO, Cronulla, Australia, 1–3. Lowe-McConnell, R.H. (1977) Ecology of Fishes in Tropical Waters, Edward Arnold, London. Macintyre, F. and Holmes, R.W. (1971) ‘Ocean Pollution’, in Murdoch, W.W. (ed.) Environment, Resources, Pollution and Society (1st edn), Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass., 230–53. Marten, G.G. and Polovina, J.J. (1982) ‘A Comparative Study of Fish Yields from Various Tropical Ecosystems’, in Pauly, D. and Murphy, G.I. (eds) Theory and Management of Tropical Fisheries, CSIRO, Cronulla, Australia, 255–85. Mori, K. (1987) ‘Managed Coastal Waters for Oyster Culture in Japan’, in Michael, R.G. (ed.) Managed Aquatic Ecosystems, Ecosystems of the World 29, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 125–43. Moss, B. (1988) Ecology of Fresh Waters (2nd edn), Blackwell, Oxford. Murphy, G.I. (1982) ‘Recruitment of Tropical Fishes’, in Pauly, D. and Murphy, G.I. (ed.) Theory and Management of Tropical Fisheries, CSIRO, Cronulla, Australia, 141–8. Nelson-Smith, A. (1977) ‘The Biological Consequences of Oil Spills’, in Lenihan, J. and Fletcher, W.W. (eds) The Marine Environment, Blackie, Glasgow, 46–69. Parrish, B.B. (1956) ‘The Cod, Haddock, and Hake’, in Graham, M. (ed.) Sea Fisheries. Their Investigation in the United Kingdom, Arnold, London, 312– 33. Paulik, G.J. (1971) ‘Anchovies, Birds and Fishermen in the Peru Current’, in Murdoch, W.W. (ed.) Environment, Resources, Pollution and Society (1st edn), Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass., 156–85. Perkins, E.J. (1977) ‘Inorganic Wastes’, in Lenihan, J. and Fletcher, W.W., (eds) The Marine Environment, Blackie, Glasgow, 70–101. 28

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Rasmussen, B. (1964) ‘Marine Research as Applied to Fisheries in Norway and in the Atlantic Area in General’, in Gerhardsen, G.M. (ed) Some Aspects of Fisheries Economics, 111, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, 125–37. Schmidt, J. (1922) ‘The Breeding Place of the Eel’, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. B 211, 179–208. Steele, J. (1961) The Environment of a Herring Fishery, Department ofAgriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, Marine Research No. 6, HMSO, Edinburgh. Tett, P. (1977) ‘Marine Production’, in Lenihan, J. and Fletcher, W.W. (eds) The Marine Environment, Blackie, Glasgow, 1–45. Zenkevich. L. (1956) ‘Biological Appraisal of the Ocean, and the Problem of Transoceanic Acclimatisation’, in Papers Presented at the International Technical Conference on the Conservation of the Living Resources of the Sea, United Nations, New York, 127–44.

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There is evidence that fishing has been important throughout human history in providing part of the food supply for human groups and societies in a big variety of situations. Fish was part of the diet among some of the earliest cultures known in archaeology: it was utilised by peoples at subsistence level in virtually all parts of the world throughout history and prehistory; it was often an important component in the food supply among urbanised peoples, such as those in Egypt and China; and in the modern industrial age it still contributes an essential part of human diets, although its importance varies widely in different communities and in different parts of the world.

PREHISTORIC FISHING While from the very limited remains left by the earliest human groups, who lived in Africa in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene, it is not usually possible to recognise anything which could be termed culture, in the most famous of all the early sites—that of the Olduvai Gorge in modern Tanzania, which has remains going back over a million years— the remains are those of a community living at a lake-side site, and along with human bones have been found their implements and also bones of game animals and of fish (Leakey 1971:225, 258). Carl O.Sauer, one of the greatest figures in the study of prehistory and of subsistence cultures, has suggested that waterside sites (both sea and fresh water) in the tropics constituted the optimum locations for early man, because of the range of food and resources that were available in the combined ecosystems of tropical forest and tropical waters (Sauer 1962:41–7). 30

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It is very probable that through the long aeons of prehistory fish continued to be a main diet item until the emergence of farming, as opposed to hunting and gathering, in the millenia leading up to 10000 BC. Although mobile hunting groups, like the Magdalenians in Europe during the period 15000–8000 BC, have caught the public imagination, it is probable that many early groups were sedentary rather than mobile: to move a whole community, including young children, must always have been difficult and it is very likely that this was avoided if possible. At waterside sites, where fish could be added to other food supplies, the need for mobility would often have been at a minimum (Sauer 1962:305–9). Although the poor survival of organic remains, along with the limited amount of archaeology yet done in the tropics, restricts detailed conclusions in many parts of the world, the importance of fish in prehistoric diets in Europe and North America has been clear for some time. In Europe the ecological context of early fishing has been well summarised by Grahame Clark (Clark 1948:45–85). The importance of the pike in European rivers is well attested; and along especially the northern and western coasts there is abundant evidence in Mesolithic (early post-glacial) times of human groups situated at the coast, and fish remains are regularly found in their occupation sites. The availability of sessile shellfish species like mussels and limpets was especially important to these groups, although they were able also to catch free-swimming species. Species like saithe, which are characteristically abundant inshore, have been recognised in some later excavations through techniques of fine sieving to separate the fine bones for examination (e.g. Mellars 1978:377–8), and the occurrence of bones of species like cod and eel more normally found in deeper water suggests the use of boats. In the Americas the association of fishing with horticulture around 4500 BC at the Peruvian coast, in the context of some of the earliest farming known in the western hemisphere, illustrates the value of fishing where cultivation was restricted in an arid environment but where the fishery resources are particularly rich (Kidder (1966:474–7). The fact that the continuity of prehistoric cultures with pre-Columbus anthropology in North America has long been well known emphasises the historical depth of the native cultures of British Columbia and Alaska, which were among the most fish-dependent anywhere owing to the great stocks of the salmon in the rivers coupled with marine resources. The wealth and sophistication of the culture of the Tlingit of south-eastern Alaska, which was essentially fishing based, has caused them to be recognised as the most outstanding of all the American 31

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Indians (Olson and Hubbard 1984:917). In Europe as well as North America there is evidence that the design of such things as osier fish traps and dug-out canoes made from locally available materials was perfected in prehistory and survived for thousands of years with no essential change until the advent of synthetic materials after the Second World War.

FISHING IN HISTORIC TIMES While grains like wheat, barley and rice in the Old World and maize in the New World became essential food staples after the beginning of farming, there was still a general need for animal food protein, and fish as well as livestock continued to play a role in supplying this. For thousands of years fish were often one of the easiest available and cheapest sources of animal protein. While this was partly provided by sea fish in countries like Norway and Scotland, in much of Europe supplies from rivers and lakes were of considerable importance. In the Far East freshwater fish were of great importance; and most of the requirements of the teeming millions of China were supplied in this way. It is very doubtful if there ever were any subsistence cultures completely dependent on fishing; other diet items would always have been required in the human diet, and very generally through the great part of history fishing has been practised as an adjunct of farming, although the relative importance of fishing must have varied considerably with environmental opportunity in different communities and societies. Various examples, mainly from Europe but also from elsewhere, suggest that economic development had to be relatively advanced before any settlement could free itself completely from crop production and the raising of livestock and devote itself to full-time fishing; however, when the advance to urban civilisation was made it involved some specialisation in occupation, especially in towns, and it is probable that the earliest full-time fishermen were in the towns and cities of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. The first specialist fishermen may well have been operating on the great rivers in these areas by 3000 BC. It is known that all the basic techniques for fishing (namely net, hook, line rod and spear) were in use in Egypt by about 2000 BC (Radcliffe 1921:307) and that there was an organised trade in fish in Egypt and Mesopotamia (Cutting 1955:17–18). In China the carp especially has had a very long standing religious significance, and there 32

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are records that it was being farmed as well as caught in the wild before the end of the second millenium BC (Brown 1983:391–2). It is in the classical world of Mediterranean Europe that there is a better documentary record (Cutting 1955:18–24). Although in the times of a more complete soil and vegetation cover there must have been a greater carrying capacity for livestock and game, the spread of city civilisation and the accompanying rise in population must have caused pressures on available flesh foods, and there is evidence for an expansion of effort in fisheries. Most of the catching was inshore; tuna was the most sought-after species and was taken in coastal traps and nets in the course of its migrations. A variety of other species, including red mullet, sardine and mackerel, were also caught, and shellfish and freshwater species added to the available resources which were utilised. The Romans also practised a degree of management, which included restocking of rivers and farming of oysters. Fish were consumed in both fresh and preserved forms; however, it was difficult to get fresh fish in good condition to market because of transport problems and it was generally a luxury item for the wealthy, while preserved fish were eaten by the poorer classes and by slaves. It is noteworthy that this type of dichotomy in the market was known in Europe until the nineteenth century. The Phoenicians, the great maritime traders of the classical world, were particularly prominent in fishing, and had bases in Spain from which they operated both in the Mediterranean and the open Atlantic. They had an organised trade in preserved fish and the destinations to which this was sent included their cities in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. The Greeks and the Romans also traded fish on an extensive scale, and Rome herself was an especially important market to which supplies of salted fish were brought from all over the Mediterranean basin. The prohibition of consumption of meat in favour of fish on specified days of the Roman calendar was linked to economic necessity, and effectively anticipated the rules of the Church with regard to meatless days and Lent in later centuries. Development was of course slower in Europe outside the Mediterranean. Even so, as early as the seventh century there were settlements on the Friesian coast that appear to have been mainly involved in fishing, and this is linked to the early development of trade in the southern North Sea (Bartz 1964:71). However, early commercial fishing was generally prosecuted in open boats and characteristically associated with smallholdings; and there was generally a seasonal pattern of activity whereby fishing and small farming were integrated, and often complemented and supported each 33

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other. The greatest example of this dual occupation of farmer— fisherman in Europe has been recognised as the Norwegian one (Bartz 1964:71): here from medieval times onward crofter-fishermen cultivated smallholdings for the main part of their food supply, while their money income came from a highly productive cod fishery. This was geared to an export economy at an early date through the Hanseatic League. From the eighteenth century this was supplemented by an important herring fishery, and the pattern of coastal settlements on the long Norwegian littoral continued to expand and intensify until the inter-war period of the twentieth century. In various other parts of Europe, cases are known where specialised fishing began in association with small farming to supply in the first place a local market; and as the economy developed and transport improved, they expanded both their scale of production and their market range. The earliest commercial fisheries were inshore, and they could be sufficiently valuable to be a jealously guarded right. On the Danish Limfjord, for example, the fisheries were very generally church property before the Reformation, after which they were dominated by the landowning nobility, although they were challenged by middle class burghers (Hasslof 1984:226–7). This type of sequence in the control of enterprise in Northern Europe is typical of many sectors of the economy. Earliest recorded deep-water fisheries in Europe are attributed to the Vikings and Normans: in the tenth century the Normans were engaging in seasonal deep-water fisheries from the bases on the south coast of Ireland, and in the following century English fishermen were venturing offshore in fishing for herring. The rise of commercial fisheries, like many other activities, is much bound up with the rise of towns and cities, and from early times coastal towns often had distinct fishing communities as part of their social structures. Medieval trade was characteristically controlled by gilds, and bigger towns and cities could have their own separate fishmongers’ gilds: that of London, for example, was founded as early as 1154 (Cutting 1955:40). As well as acting as points for the exchange of fish itself, towns also played a key role in the distribution of such essentials for commercial fisheries as salt and barrel staves and hoops used in curing, linen and hemp employed in the making of lines and nets, and iron for hooks; and they were often the main places for boat-building. Salt was especially important for commercial fisheries, being essential for preservation during transport and for out of season use. Taxes were

34

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often imposed on salt as a source of revenue, and it could figure prominently in political controversy. In the development of commercial fisheries generally, countries on the western seaboard of Europe played a main part. In deep-sea fishing on a large scale the Basques and the Dutch were outstanding in pioneering, and they were to be followed by various other European peoples. Already in the twelfth century the Basques were exploiting cod and whales in the Bay of Biscay; they subsequently extended their operations throughout the north-east Atlantic as far as Norway, and after the discovery of the Americas by Europeans they also were among the first to exploit the cod and whales in the north-west Atlantic (Sauer 1968:64–8). The Dutch had a series of sea-faring and trading achievements. Included among these was the development of a superior technique and organisation for the herring fisheries, and they were early in developing the large-scale use of long lines in the deep-sea demersal fisheries. The herring and the cod were of outstanding importance in the development of commercial fisheries and are now discussed in greater detail.

THE HERRING FISHERIES The herring fisheries were from Medieval times until the early twentieth century the most important commercial fisheries in Europe, and this also implies that for at least the latter part of that time they were the most important in the world. The importance of the herring is related to its abundance in the North Sea, where it has been estimated to constitute about 35 per cent of the total fish biomass of approximately 8 million tonnes (Saville and Bailey 1979:117); it is also related to its shoaling behaviour, which made it possible to obtain large catches, as well as its value as a food fish. All the lands around the North Sea have played some part in this fishery and both inshore and open-sea operation have been important; over time greater emphasis has been given to the latter as bigger and more reliable catches could be made by seeking out the shoals in the open sea during their variable migrations. In the Medieval period wealth from the autumn herring fisheries in the Sound, at the entrance of the Baltic, was behind the commercial importance of the cities of the Hanseatic League; and hundreds of boats were involved and tens of thousands of barrels cured annually (Cushing 1982:79). At the same period the autumn fishery in East Anglia was also being prosecuted by hundreds of boats and was capable of producing over 35

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1,000 lasts in the season (Saul 1982:36). Considerable as these fisheries were, they were not of the same order of importance as that of the Dutch, who built up their operations from the fourteenth century: theirs was the first real deep-sea fishery, which they operated with their ‘busses’, which have been claimed with some justification to have been the first factory ships. They developed the drift net for catching the herring, and this is still an important technique used in pelagic fisheries. They also carried stores of salt and barrels with them; this allowed them a new freedom of operation as they could seek out the shoals wherever they might be and did not have to await their appearance off their own coast. The Dutch are also credited with perfecting the method of herring curing, which involved removing the gut and packing them in layers in barrels with salt; and they developed a system of governmentcontrolled inspection to guarantee the quality of the product. These methods and organisation were to be the basis for a Dutch dominance of the herring fisheries which endured for well over two centuries. There was a high degree of coordination at the national level, and at the peak the herring fleet comprised about 500 busses (Smith 1984:26) and its production was between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes (Unger 1980:262– 3). The trade developed a notable extent of vertical integration, with big merchants owning the fish from catching right through to final marketing, although they also used their near-monopoly position to manipulate supply to the main Baltic market and maintain prices (Unger 1980:253–79). In the course of time other countries rose to challenge the Dutch, and were given opportunity when the Dutch were depleted by war in the eighteenth century. In the second half of that century the autumn fishery on the west coast of Sweden reached the premier position, during a phase when the migration of the herring brought them close in to this coast and allowed them to be caught in seines as well as drift and other nets; this also allowed the simpler expedient of curing onshore (Utterstrom 1959:3–40). While no comprehensive statistics were kept in this fishery, it has been estimated that its production could have reached 300,000 barrels (Utterstrom 1959:7); this would imply that it exceeded that of the Dutch. The Swedish fishery came to a halt after 1808, apparently due to a change in the migrations of the herring, leaving dearth and destitution in its wake; and by a remarkable coincidence the herring fisheries of Western Norway developed rapidly from the same date. The Norwegian fishery is actually based on the separate Atlanto-Scandinavian herring stock, which started to come into the fjords again for its winter 36

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spawning after a period of absence. There had been a commercial fishery of limited importance here in the previous century, but between 1808 and 1870 it was on a new scale of operation and it was to function as an engine of growth for the regional economy of Western Norway (Östensjö 1963:135–55), in a similar manner to the herring fishery of Western Sweden in the previous century. In Norway it was also possible to cure the herring onshore, and by the 1860s there were over 40,000 fishermen involved in the fishery and there was an annual export of around 600,000 barrels (Östensjö 1963:145, 148). The culmination of the historical development of the North Sea herring fisheries, however, was to come on the opposite side of it, in the UK, and more particularly in Scotland, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main spawning grounds for North Sea herring in their summer migrations are off the Scottish coasts, but here locally based fisheries had only been of minor importance and the main fishing effort had been that of the Dutch, who used the Shetland Islands as a major base. Eventually, with the help of government incentives, a major effort in herring fishing was mounted in Scotland from the start of the nineteenth century and by the early twentieth century this was the leading fishery of the globe (Coull 1986:4–17). The Scottish fishery began as a seasonal inshore fishery linked to curing onshore; but it expanded offshore in the latter part of the nineteenth century to the point that with steam-powered vessels from both Scotland and England fishing was conducted up to 100 miles offshore, although curing continued to be onshore. In effect this meant that the fleet ranged as widely as the Dutch had done in its catching operations, while still enjoying the greater facility of onshore curing. At its peak the total output of the Scottish fishery was between 2 and 3 million barrels, and if the landings at the autumn fishery at East Anglia (which was operated by the same boats) is added the total output could reach over 3 million barrels. The development of the herring fisheries during all their phases was linked to the long-term expansion of a market that was located mainly on the North European Plain, but which also extended into the Mediterranean World and later extended to Plantation colonies in the Caribbean. On the North European Plain especially herring came to have the character of a food staple. The access to this market depended on transport on the major rivers, and in the industrial age this was supplemented by the railway network.

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THE COD FISHERIES According to available evidence, the cod has been of importance as a human food for longer than the herring, its bones having been found at various prehistoric sites, especially in Norway. Also, unlike the herring, it has been of major importance in both the north-west and north-east Atlantic in the centuries since the Age of Discovery. Its value as a food fish stems partly from its abundance: it is a major species on nearly all the fishing grounds of the North Atlantic, and on grounds towards the polar limits it is by far the most important species. Its value also derives from its size, being a top predator and one of the biggest of demersal fish: this means that it gave particularly good yields for the work involved in gutting, splitting and curing it. The cod was an important resource to all the seaboard countries of Western Europe, and they all became involved in the fishery for it to a considerable extent. The archaeological evidence shows that in Scandinavia cod was being caught as early as Mesolithic times (Clark 1952:85). The cod must have been exploited with small boats on a subsistence basis for centuries, but there is evidence of a growing commercial component from Medieval times, if not earlier, in Norway. By the twelfth century, Bergen was a gathering centre of cod for export, although the bulk of the cod were caught further north especially in the wellknown winter fishery at Lofoten. A distinctive product was ‘stockfish’: this was fish which had been split and dried without salting, a method possible because of the low temperatures during curing. By the twelfth century the Basques were fitting out bigger decked craft to fish for cod (Sauer 1968:64); and as their home waters in the Bay of Biscay are about the southern limit of the species, this drew them into more northern seas. They were already splitting and salting the cod to produce ‘bacalao’, the cured cod fish which for centuries was a food staple in the Mediterranean lands and is still important today. While cod could be split and salted aboard boats, it had to be brought to land for proper drying. Salt for such purposes as this was relatively easily available in Southern Europe, being made by the evaporation of salt water at the coast. Moreover, not being a fatty fish like the herring, cod could be satisfactorily cured without barrelling. Other countries and groups followed the Basques in fitting out decked boats for the cod fishery. Ventures as far as Icelandic grounds were made as early as the twelfth century, and by the fifteenth century vessels from bases around the southern North Sea were making regular trips to both Iceland and north Norway (Power and Postan 1933:173–4). 38

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Of signal importance in the next century was the rapid development of the cod fisheries of the north-west Atlantic, where the prolific resources attracted all the sea-powers of Western Europe after Cabot’s discovery. In the early development of the fisheries at Newfoundland much of the activity was with small boats inshore (Innis 1940:11–26, 43–60), employing seines and hand lines and capitalising on the great shoreward feeding migration of the cod in summer as in millions they followed their prey, the capelin. Salting and drying for preservation were easier on the beaches, and one of the main functions of the bigger boats which crossed the Atlantic for the summer season was to bring the crews and their stores and to transport the catch. The earlier ventures to Iceland and north Norway could depend partly on collecting fish caught by local fishermen, but had also involved the type of organisation put into effect at Newfoundland, although it expanded to a new scale there. Fishing on offshore banks was also practised from the start and in this case the fish were wet-salted aboard, and the drying would be completed on the return to Europe. In the offshore fishery hand lines could be employed from the boat itself, but by the late sixteenth century vessels might be equipped with dories for use in the open sea, and this allowed better catches by fishing a wider area. In the seventeenth century long lines also came to be used, which also made for a higher degree of efficiency. By this time too vessels were often making two or three trips a year, each lasting up to four months. Salt was an essential material, and the Iberian countries and France had their own supplies of ‘solar’ salt; but vessels from the ports of south-west England generally called at Portuguese ports for salt before crossing the ocean. A main objective became that of getting the first supplies of the year back to Europe for the Lent market, when prices reached a peak, and this could entail returning with boats half full. Very significant were the changing orientations in the cod trade as it developed: and linked to the changes were changes in political and economic power. The cod were one of several resources exploited during the overseas expansion of European capitalism, and the trade in it was part of a developing trade system, which operated in the Atlantic and extended beyond it into other oceans. In the early phases of the fisheries in the north-west Atlantic they were dominated by the French and Portuguese, and these countries developed an export trade as well as supplying their domestic markets. English sea power, backed by early advances in manufacture, grew in the seventeenth century, and Bristol became a great entrepôt in the north Atlantic cod trade, gathering supplies from Newfoundland, Iceland and Norway 39

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for onward distribution to the Spanish and Mediterranean markets. There was also a trade of considerable volume, especially in the lower quality parts of the production, to the plantation colonies of the Caribbean and of North America. At the same time, however, there was the growth of settlement and of maritime economies in the northwest Atlantic itself, especially in New England, in which the cod was a main component; and for the cod in this area these regions had the obvious advantage of proximity. New England was already a powerful trade competitor before American independence, and following the Napoleonic Wars it waxed under conditions of greater trade freedom, while merchants in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia also continued to supply the market and sun-dried cod from Newfoundland continued through to the twentieth century to be the most highly preferred article. As the population and pressure on local resources increased in Newfoundland, another component was added to the pattern in the growth of a large-scale summer migration to Labrador to engage in the cod fishery there. This grew from the late eighteenth century to a peak in the early twentieth century, to the point that it yielded between one-quarter and one-half of the total Newfoundland production (Black 1960:267–9). In both Newfoundland and Labrador the development of the cod trap in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Black 1960:269), was an innovation which particularly suited situations where the cod migrations concentrated dense shoals close inshore. If the most important developments of the Mercantilist period in the cod trade were in the north-west Atlantic, there were other, if lesser, developments in the north-east part of the ocean. In Norway in particular there was a growing production of klippfish, which were cod split and salted, to add a better product to the traditional stockfish (Cutting 1955:145). There was also a significant rise of the trade in cod and ling from Scotland, especially from the Shetland Islands; and both of these developments were prolonged into the next century. In the nineteenth century there was renewed effort on Icelandic grounds, along with grounds at Faroe, from British and Norwegian bases. It was also in the nineteenth century that the Icelanders and Faroese began seriously to develop their own commercial cod fisheries. As territories under Danish rule, trade had previously been restricted and controlled by Denmark; but with liberalisation movements trade opportunities were widened and local effort built up the fisheries, often using secondhand boats discarded in other countries. In these marginally located communities, despite the handicaps of a rugged terrain and a bleak 40

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climate, the land had previously been the main source of wealth and farming the main activity, and trade contacts were in the hands of outsiders. The modernisation of their economies was essentially linked with the development of commercial fisheries in which they ultimately came to control the trade themselves.

DEVELOPMENT OF FISHERIES IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE The modern age has witnessed far-reaching developments in fisheries, as in so many other fields. This has included a great acceleration in the use of fisheries resources, along with basic changes in the technology of catching and big developments in marketing and commercial organisation. A new degree of intensive exploitation occurred first in the southern North Sea in the nineteenth century, through its being a productive sea adjacent to the world’s first industrial nations; and in the present century the area subject to intensive exploitation has extended outwards to include all the oceans of the northern hemisphere and much of those of the southern. The process of intensification has been particularly rapid since the Second World War, and the increased pressure on resources has resulted in frequent over-fishing; this in turn was a major motivation behind the radical change in the International Law of the Sea, which replaced the former freedom of fishing with exclusive national limits extending out to 200 miles from the coast. The main contribution to the intensification of fishing of advancing technology in the Industrial Revolution was delayed until the 1880s with the beginning of the installation of engine propulsion in fishing craft, along with the beginning of power hauling of fishing gear. The changes since the Second World War have featured the development of an extensive and sophisticated range of equipment, which, as well as improved methods of vessel propulsion and gear hauling, have included greatly advanced means of navigation and fish location. A good deal of the earlier acceleration in the industrial age occurred by more intensive use of existing technology and methods, and there was more offshore fishing and more use of bigger boats. One of the most significant early developments was the expansion of trawling in the eastern Channel and the southern North Sea from the late eighteenth century (Hardy 1959:145–61). Drag nets and dredges had some previous use in this area, and the expansion in their use at this time was initially associated with fishermen from Brixham in Devon coming to fish for the London market. The early trawlers were sailing vessels, 41

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which required a good wind to operate because of the drag of the trawl net, which needed a heavy beam along the head rope to keep it open. It was pulled over the sea bed and caught demersal fish, and the hauling of the trawl at the end of a tow by a man-powered capstan was a very heavy task; however, it did catch fish en masse, unlike lining methods by which fish were caught on individual hooks. As a result it proved more efficient and profitable, and expanded rapidly from the early nineteenth century. In the 1830s the fleet system of operation was introduced from ports on the east coast of England, and this further increased catches; a fleet of trawlers worked offshore as a group and the catches were brought back to port by a fast cutter. It did increase the delay between catching and consumption, however, and caused the quality of the fish to deteriorate, especially in summer. The response to this was for the fleets to carry ice to inhibit spoilage of the fish. Ice could only be provided at first by the traditional method of gathering it in the winter and holding it in insulated stores. This created a bottle-neck which lasted several decades, but it was overcome in the late nineteenth century by making ice by refrigeration. Subsequent to the midnineteenth century, the proportion of fresh fish reaching the British market increased, while the proportion of salt fish consumed declined. Also the average consumption of fish rose, as the expanding railway network brought inland centres within reach of the trawl ports. Another result was that a widening range of species became available on the market: in the early nineteenth century the main species on the market were cod and ling, which were traditionally salted, and the early trawlers actually dumped most of their catches, as consisting of species with no sale value. However, species like haddock, sole, plaice and halibut were to become prime fish. The establishment of auction markets at the trawl ports also helped streamline the delivery of fish to the consumer, and proved the most efficient means of harmonising supply, demand and prices. The area being trawled also expanded northwards, and Hull (from the 1840s) and Grimsby (from the 1850s) became established as the main trawl ports. The northward expansion itself created problems, as this meant working in deeper water, while the effective depth limit for hauling the trawl without mechanical aid was about 50 fathoms. However, other developments were already in train. Steam-powered carriers were used from the 1860s to give more reliable links between the fleets and port markets, and subsequently there were successful experiments in using steam-powered paddle tugs to pull the trawl 42

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itself. The next step was custom-built trawlers: and although these were much more expensive to build and run than sailing trawlers, their vastly improved performance well justified the investment. It was also more profitable to allow the individual vessel to seek the fish on its own, rather than constrain it in a fleet; and with the steam-powered winch to haul the trawl, trawlers could work in greater depths of water. Additional refinements further improved the performance of the trawl: from the 1880s steel warps were substituted for the original ropes, and these allowed trawling down to depths of 200 fathoms and more, which meant that grounds over the entire continental shelf could be exploited. The beam trawl was also largely displaced by the otter trawl from the 1890s, and dispensed with the heavy and clumsy beam facilitated the operation of fishing. By the end of the nineteenth century the range of trawling was extending outward to distant-water grounds at Iceland and the Barents Sea: although it required several days of steaming to reach such grounds, this was more than counterbalanced by greater catches. Britain was very much the pioneer in the development of the new intensive method of trawling, and was helped in doing so by its position as the world’s first industrial nation, with available capital and rising standards of living and purchasing power. The method was also adopted to some extent by the early twentieth century by a number of other European countries, especially Germany which rapidly made the transition from being a big importer of demersal fish to being substantially self-sufficient. From the turn of the century, power-driven vessels were also used in Britain, and to an extent elsewhere, in the most important drift-net fisheries for herring. However, in this fishery the advantages of powered vessels was less decisive than in trawling, although they did have enhanced mobility and could employ steam power for the heavy task of hauling the main rope to which the drift nets were attached. Other countries in Europe did move towards more advanced fishing methods, although in many cases (including important fishing countries like Norway, Denmark and Portugal) the installation of power on board had to await the advent of petrol or paraffin engines in the early twentieth century, and much of the operation remained relatively small scale. The inter-war years saw the advent of the marine diesel engine, which was to become the main means of propulsion in the world’s shipping, including its fishing fleets; as well as being in itself more compact and economic, it required less bunker space and dispensed with the need for the steam boiler. However, it 43

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made little immediate headway in fishing craft, as fisheries were struggling to survive rather than expand in the disorganised trade conditions of the time. In north-west Europe and North America, however, the big majority of fishing craft had engines installed in the inter-war period; and this also occurred in other developed countries like Australia and New Zealand. One significant development of the inter-war period in north-west Europe was the extension in use of the ground seine for the capture of demersal fish, especially in Britain. This method, which involved the employment of a bag type net similar to the trawl but which was worked with less engine power and with ropes rather than steel warps, had been earlier pioneered in Denmark. It did allow boats and men an alternative to the depressed herring fishery at the time. In other parts of the world, including even parts of North America, fisheries were in general slow to adopt the innovations pioneered in Europe. In Atlantic Canada, which had been the most important of all regions for the pre-industrial cod fisheries, this was due to the conservative reaction of thousands of small operators, as well as to lack of capital. There was some investment in ‘draggers’, however, as trawlers were termed in North America, in Canada by the inter-war period, although there were still dory schooners fishing in eastern Canada in the 1950s. New England was moving into trawling from the late nineteenth century, however. Also on the west coast of North America there was a series of developments from the late nineteenth century, in an area without a pre-industrial history of European settlement. The prolific salmon stocks of the north-east Pacific became the basis for a canning industry beginning as early as the 1860s in California, and this expanded rapidly northwards along the coast and reached Alaska in the 1870s (Browning 1980:52); it has been a major fishery ever since. Also from the late nineteenth century important fisheries developed for tuna, halibut and sardine (Browning 1980:12, 44, 55–6, 89); steamboats were being employed in some of the fisheries from the 1880s and motor engines became commonplace from the early twentieth century (Browning 1980:106–7). In the development of fisheries in the modern age special importance attaches to Japan; the yield of the sea had much less competition from the products of livestock farming than in the western world in the economic development of Japan, and in its early industrial growth it had much less competition from rivals in the Pacific than did the countries on the seaboard of the North Atlantic. As early as the eighteenth century Japan had started to expand its fishing 44

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operations to the north, although such ventures were hampered by opposition from Czarist and later Soviet Russia. Japan also began steam trawling before the First World War, and with government encouragement the trawler fleet had reached a total of 150 by 1912; and offshore trawling in the East China and Yellow Seas was also encouraged by regulations reserving inshore grounds for smaller craft. In the inter-war period economic expansion continued in Japan while the western world was in disarray, and rising population and living standards, allied to a cultural tradition which had always made more use of fish than animal foods, resulted in a continued and spectacular expansion of all fisheries, including those operated from the conquered territories of Korea, Manchuria and Formosa (now Taiwan). Trawling continued to be expanded and its range was extended to the point that it reached as far as the Gulf of Tonkin in the south and the Bering Sea in the north, and by 1937 the trawl catch reached 240,000 tonnes. At the same time other distant-water fisheries were developed, including those for the valuable species of tuna and salmon, and for the latter floating factory ships were used in the North Pacific (Borgstrom 1964:24–30, 39–40). Japan had few rivals in the north-west Pacific in its fisheries expansion up to the Second World War, and this, together with the progressive motorisation of the great part of its many smaller boats, saw it become the world leader in fishing by a long margin during the inter-war years. The total catch reached over 3.5 million tonnes in Japan itself in 1938, while total landings (including those in the overseas territories of Imperial Japan) approached 7 million tonnes (Borgstrom 1964:103) against a global figure of about 22 million tonnes. In all by the end of the inter-war period Japan accounted for no less than 30 per cent of world fish landings. After the Second World War the fisheries saw their greatest ever rate of expansion on the world scale. In the 1950s and 1960s the total catch rose steeply, increasing from 20 million tonnes in 1947 to 69.5 million tonnes in 1970; and although growth slackened in the 1970s during a period of far-reaching adjustment in national fishing limits, it was resumed in the 1980s and in 1988 it reached 98 million tonnes. A number of factors contributed to this vigorous increase. In Europe general post-war reconstruction was succeeded by decades of systematic development in expanding economies in which fishing often got government encouragement by such means as investment aids and price guarantee schemes. At the same time technical innovations multiplied, and the average engine size and catching power of the 45

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individual vessel greatly increased. Of great consequence in the use of fisheries resources was the rise of a major sector of the industry devoted to catching fish in the mass for reduction to fish meal to provide for the needs of intensive livestock farming, and now for fish farming also. Fisheries for reduction are directed mainly at pelagic species, but also at demersal species of no value for human consumption, like sand eels and Norway pout in the North Sea. Among the innovations which came in after the Second World War were methods which greatly added to efficiency in the pelagic fisheries. The development of the mid-water trawl, especially in Sweden in the first place, allowed the towing of the trawl at depths intermediate between the surface and the sea bed. This gear was usually operated by two boats, one holding each warp, and with more powerful engines to tow it; and it proved more efficient and sure than the old drift net, which had for centuries been the main pelagic gear in the open sea. Even more important in the pelagic fisheries was the development of the purse seine, hauled by the power block. This method effectively expanded the use of an established technique, which used the encircling principle to surround shoals of fish. On a small scale it was age old, and in the modern period bigger encircling nets had been used in some fisheries from the nineteenth century, notably for herring in the Norwegian fjords and for salmon on the west coast of North America. However, its use had been confined to relatively sheltered waters, and the size of the net was limited when hauling was unmechanised. In the 1950s the purse seining for salmon in the USA and Canada was revolutionised by the power block, which greatly eased the work of hauling the net (Browning 1980:146–8). By the early 1960s in the north-east Atlantic, especially in Norway, bigger and stronger purse seines had been made of the new synthetic fibres; and the power block, which dispensed with much manpower, had been developed to haul it. These advances allowed the gear to be employed in open-sea fisheries, even in areas with weather as unreliable as the North Atlantic. While this gear rendered the catching operation much more efficient, it was to precipitate a crisis in conservation as several of the most important pelagic stocks were over-fished. On top of such advances there was the development of echo-location, which helped find both pelagic and demersal shoals, and of navigation aids, using radio beams, which have allowed the fixing of position at sea to within a few metres. The USSR, which had embarked on a programme of planned fisheries expansion in the inter-war period, greatly expanded its post46

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war efforts on the basis of a policy decision that, with the climatic difficulties of the country for livestock farming, the production of protein foodstuffs could be more rapidly expanded from the sea than from the land. To this end the USSR built by far the world’s biggest fleet of factory trawlers, supported by mother ships, transports, tugs and other auxiliaries. In doing so it utilised a principle that was first developed in Britain and West Germany in the 1950s: the vessel that caught and froze its catch to retain the maximum food value, and which could stay at sea for months if need be; this contrasted with the old distant-water trawlers, which had a maximum endurance of about three weeks when keeping the catch in ice. Moreover the new generation of vessels were stern trawlers, which could operate more efficiently, and with greater safety for the crew, by hauling the trawl by a stern ramp. The expansion of the fishing effort of the USSR was first directed towards the north-east Atlantic and the north-west Pacific, but it expanded to be world-wide, which meant that a great deal of its operations had to incur the extra costs of operation at a range of thousands of miles from base. While economists in the western world always doubted whether the great Soviet scale of operation was really profitable, the USSR advanced to the point that by the 1960s it was the only rival to Japan as a world leader in fishing. Japan also vigorously developed and expanded its fisheries in the post-war period, and its operations were conducted all over the Pacific and extended into the Indian and even the Atlantic Oceans. The distant-water Japanese fisheries were mainly directed towards the more valuable species like tuna, squid, salmon and crab, and the rapid rise in purchasing power that resulted from Japan’s spectacular postwar development was able to sustain them as viable ventures, especially as the government adopted a policy of licensing with which to control development while maintaining a review of fish stocks and of profitability. There have also been big aggregate changes in the last few decades in fisheries in the Third World, which in the main had only been marginally affected by modern changes up to the Second World War. In addition to various plans and schemes for development in a large number of newly independent countries, a range of international agencies, including FAO and the World Bank, have played a part in promoting Third World fisheries. It is well known that it is often easier to introduce technical improvements than to overcome institutional and organisational barriers, and it is still the case that in many Third World lands fishing settlements and families have a disproportionate number 47

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of the poor. Despite this, there has been a great rise in the total catch from Third World countries, although this largely reflects higher totals from increasing numbers of small operators, rather than any dramatic improvement in productivity. The use of nets and ropes of modern rotproof synthetic fibres has become general, and it has also become common for boats to have at least outboard, if not inboard, engines. In a number of countries, especially in south-east Asia, a trawling sector has been developed; and although most of the trawlers are relatively small, they have often caused problems by coming into conflict with traditional gear users and by tieing the fishermen more firmly to merchants and others who often advance the capital. In a restricted number of cases small fishermen have been employed to produce for the international market, especially for quality crustacean species like lobster, crayfish and shrimp. In the cases of Peru and Chile, production has been undertaken on a large scale for low value species for reduction to meal and oil, and this has been made possible by a particularly rich resource base of pelagic stocks, including anchovy, sardine and pilchard. These fisheries have made great use of the purse seine, and this was so successful in Peru in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Peru had the rare distinction for a Third World country of being a world leader in an industry on the basis of its landed fish tonnage, although over-fishing caused it to fall back seriously subsequently. It has generally been part of the development plans of Third World countries to expand their fisheries offshore, both to extend the range of resources utilised and to take pressure off inshore grounds. While success has often been limited, some countries like Thailand (Torell 1985:83–92) and South Korea have advanced to be among the leading fishing nations. South Korea, which graduated earlier to the status of new industrial country (NIC), has expanded into distant-water fisheries in both the North and South Pacific for species such as Alaska pollack, tuna and squid. Especially since the extension of national fishing limits to 200 miles in the 1970s, many Third World countries have entered into joint ventures with established fishing nations to help develop their offshore fisheries; and this has been especially important for the new island nations of the Pacific, which generally have few resources apart from fisheries and tourist beaches. These have had mixed success, although they have made some impact on the tuna fisheries of the Pacific, which were formerly much dominated by Japan and the USA. 48

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The scale of international trade in fish and fish products has also considerably expanded since the Second World War. This has been largely due to the increase in trade between developed countries which, as well as having the catching capacity, have also had advantages in quality control, especially in fresh and frozen demersal and pelagic species. However, a series of Third World nations are among the leading exporters in the big and very valuable trade in frozen and preserved crustaceans and molluscs: they include China, Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Ecuador, India and Indonesia. Despite its own production, which exceeds 12 million tonnes annually, Japan is the leading importer, and with the purchasing power of its market it is an objective in fisheries all over the world to establish and maintain a place on the Japanese market. The advanced industrial countries generally are big importers, and the case of the USA is especially noteworthy. In the period after the Second World War, the fisheries of the USA generally stagnated, while vigorous development was going on elsewhere, often with government support. This was largely denied to American fishermen, who were in any case at a disadvantage through having to operate at American costs, which were for several decades in excess of those of their competitors; and with the high national per capita consumption of meat, demand for other than luxury fish products was relatively low. The overall result was that the USA became dependent on imports for the great part of its fish supplies. Although the differential in production costs between the USA and other developed countries has since narrowed or disappeared, and although it has had one of the world’s biggest exclusive fisheries zones since the extension of national limits in 1977, it still finds it difficult to catch many species at a competitive cost in its own waters; there is still a large distant-water fishery of other nations in the USA zone, although they have to pay for access.

DEVELOPMENT OF FISHING GEAR AND FISHING METHODS The world now embraces a great diversity of fishing methods and fishing gear, and methods known from remote prehistory still coexist with the dominant and sophisticated methods developed in the industrial age. Even in the most advanced countries some of the simplest methods are relatively well represented, with small traps 49

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generally still being in use for such species as lobster and crab, while hook and line is very much the predominant method in recreational fishing. It is likely that the spear is the earliest method, but the use of gorges, hooks, traps and nets are all evident from prehistory (Clark 1952:22–90), and were all well established by classical times in Europe. Although early evidence of traps and nets, which are generally made from perishable organic materials, is generally more scarce than for spear points and hooks, it can survive exceptionally in some environments, such as peat bogs; and in the case of nets the indirect evidence of net sinkers and even net floats tends to be more abundant. It is clear that over time a great variety of fishing methods and techniques developed, whereby gear made of locally available materials evolved to exploit a diversity of ecological situations and niches; and the rise and fall of the tide, annual river rises, spawning and feeding migrations, and many other features of the natural environment were in some degree harnessed. Also, in addition to the employment of particular gears, there could be the building of obstructions, including weirs in streams and barriers in coastal shallows and estuaries, which helped direct swimming fish into traps and nets. Traps of materials like basketry or osier, set in streams, may well have been the first methods for catching fish in quantity. The great variety of methods which have developed also range from the widespread practice of poisoning to stun fish (Gunda 1984:181–2) to the use of trained birds such as cormorants to catch fish (Kani 1984:569–83). While over time gear and methods must have developed in the general direction of greater efficiency, for the great part of prehistory and history development can only have been very gradual. In line fishing the advent of barbed hooks from the late Bronze Age (Clark 1952:56–7) represented a very important improvement, as it was then much more difficult for the fish to escape once hooked. While the earliest nets appear to have been made from such materials as nettle fibre and tree bast (Clark 1952:44–5), the later spinning of stronger fibres like linen and hemp after the advent of farming must have provided stronger and more efficient lines and nets. The development of major commercial fisheries was in large measure linked to the development of methods which could be employed on a bigger scale in the open sea. For bottom-living fish, and especially for those species with limited shoaling behaviour, the use of 50

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the long line, which involved the use, and frequently the baiting, of hundreds or even thousands of hooks, was an important advance and was certainly in use by the Dutch from the seventeenth century on the open sea (Figure 3.1). However, its use on a more limited scale inshore is likely to be much older, especially as it is considerably easier to manoeuvre a boat with oars rather than sail for the operation of this method. The most productive fisheries from an early period must in general have been those using nets, which are the best method for catching fish en masse. Over time a great variety of types of net have developed. It may well be that the earliest nets were simply placed in the water at locations fish were known to frequent; and there are certainly indications from at least the Mesolithic period in Europe that they were equipped with head floats and with sinkers along their bottom edge (Clark 1952:44–5). However, nets were also from a remote time equipped with rope fittings which allowed them to be more versatile. They could be lowered to greater depths, and in various situations they could be pulled to advantage for better catches. They could also be fashioned into various shapes to meet different situations: hence bag-shaped nets could often secure better catches, and leaders or barriers of netting could help direct swimming fish into such bag nets. Employing such general principles, nets were developed in many parts of the world for lakes, streams and coastal waters. In the use of nets on a bigger scale in the open sea, the Dutch development of drift netting (Figure 3.1) for North Sea herring, discussed above, played a particularly important role. While this method has in modern times been criticised for being passive as it involves putting nets out in the hope that fish would swim into them, the fact that it was operated from big decked boats and involved setting net trains of as much as a kilometre or more in length certainly made it one of the most effective methods in the day of the sailing ship. The drift net is one of the important methods still in use, especially in the tuna fisheries of the tropical oceans. Mobile gear must have been used from a remote time in certain fisheries. Such expedients as trolling lines behind a moving boat and the use of seine nets off beaches and in rivers and estuaries are certainly long established. The latter method involves attaching ropes to either end of a strip of netting, putting it into the water in an

51

Figure 3.1 Main fishing methods

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

arc, and then closing the net by pulling both ends of it to the shore. The improved methods of the modern age very generally involve the use of mobile gear but rendered much more efficient when deployed from power-driven boats and hauled by power-driven haulers and winches. A great advance was the use of trawl bag nets (Figure 3.1) in the open sea from the early nineteenth century (see above), although such methods had been earlier used on a limited scale in coastal waters around the southern North Sea. The method proved much more productive in demersal fisheries than long-lining, even when in its early stages it was operated by sailing vessels with manual hauling. With the advent of steam-powered trawlers from the 1880s, which as well as being much less dependent on wind and tide could also use the steam winch for the very heavy task of hauling, came the most decisive advance in the history of fishing. The subsequent refinement of the trawl, including the use of the mid-water trawl at intermediate depths to catch pelagic species, means that it is now employed almost everywhere and by vessels of all sizes from small inshore craft to the biggest seagoing fishing ships. The other most efficient modern method is that of the purse seine (Figure 3.1), which employs the encircling principle for catching mainly pelagic species. It is more energy efficient than the trawl and is especially suitable for catching densely shoaling species. The encircling principle is age-old in fisheries, but until after the Second World War its use was largely confined to sheltered inshore waters and it involved considerable manpower to operate a net of any size. The invention of the power block for hauling, coupled with the making of bigger nets from stronger synthetic fibres, allowed it to be used in the open sea with substantial safety, and it has generally become the main method in pelagic fisheries. In addition the efficiency of all types of gear has been enhanced since the Second World War by the general use and refinement of echo-sounding methods of fish location. The employment of improved modern methods of navigation (including satellite navigation) and of position finding at sea have also enhanced the catching power of modern fleets. However, the combined effects of all the modern advances in fishing has been to increase catching power to the point that it is now in permanent danger of destroying its own resource base, and has been the main driving force behind modern programmes of fishery conservation and management. It has also played a main part in political change by forcing to the forefront the question of the entitlement to the use of limited resources. 53

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REFERENCES Bartz, F. (1964) Die Grossen Fischereiräume der Welt, Band I: Atlantisches Europa und Mittelmeer, Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden. Black, W.A. (1960) ‘The Labrador Floater Fishery’, Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 50, 267–95. Borgstrom, G. (1964) Japan’s World Success in Fishing, Fishing News Books, London. Brown, E.E. (1983) World Fish Farming: Cultivation and Economics (2nd edn), AVI, Westport, Conn. Browning, R.J. (1980) Fisheries of the North Pacific, Alaska Northwest, Anchorage. Clark, J.G.D. (1948) ‘The Development of Fishing in Prehistoric Europe’, Antiq. J. 45–85. ——(1952) Prehistoric Europe. The Economic Basis, Methuen, London. Coull, J.R. (1986) ‘The Scottish Herring Fishery 1800–1914: Development and Intensification of a Pattern of Resource Use’, Scott. Geogr. Mag. 102, 4–17. Cushing, D. (1982) Climate and Fisheries, Academic Press, London. Cutting, C.L. (1955) Fish Saving. A History of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times, Leonard Hill, London. Gunda, B. (1984) ‘Fish Poisoning in the Carpathian Area and the Balkan Peninsula’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology. Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol. 1, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 181–222. Hardy, A. (1959) The Open Sea, Vol. II, Collins, London. Hasslof, O. (1984) ‘Customs, Laws and Organisation in Nordic Fishing’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World: Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology, and Folklore, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. Innis, H.A. (1940) The Cod Fisheries. The History of an International Economy, Yale University Press, Newhaven, Conn. Kani, H. (1984) ‘Fishing with Cormorant in Japan’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol. 1, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 569–83. Kidder, A. (1966) ‘South American High Cultures’, in Jennings, J.D. and Norbeck, E. (eds) Prehistoric Man in the New World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 451–86. Leakey, M.D. (1971) Olduvai Gorge, II Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960– 1963, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Mellars, P. (1978) ‘Excavation and Economic Analysis of Mesolithic Shell Middens on the Island of Oronsay (Inner Hebrides)’, in Mellars, P. (ed.) The Early Postglacial Settlement of Northern Europe, Duckworth, London, 371– 96. Olson, W.M. and Hubbard, L.T. (1984) ‘Fishing: the Key to Tlingit Culture’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Vol. II, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 917–38. Östensjö, R. (1963) ‘The Spring Herring Fishery and the Industrial Revolution in Western Norway’, Scand. Econ. Hist. Rev. 11 (1), 135–55. Power, E. and Postan, M.M. (1933) Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, Routledge, London. 54

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Radcliffe, W. (1921) Fishing from Earliest Times, John Murray, London. Sauer, C.O. (1962) ‘Seashore—Primitive Home of Man?’, Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 106, 41–7. —(1968) Northern Mists, California University Press, Berkeley. Saul, A. (1982) ‘The Herring Industry at Great Yarmouth c.1280-c.1400’, Norfolk Archaeol. 38, 33–43. Saville, A. and Bailey, R.S. (1979) ‘The Assessment and Management of the Herring Stocks in the North Sea and to the West of Scotland’, Rapports et proces-verbaux des reunions (I.C.E.S.) 177, 112–42. Smith, H.D. (1984) Shetland Life and Trade 1550–1914, John Donald, Edinburgh. Torell, M. (1985) Fisheries in Thailand, Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg. Unger, P.W. (1980) ‘Dutch Herring, Technology and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, J. Econ. Hist. 40, 253–79. Utterstrom, G. (1959) ‘Migratory Labour and the Herring Fisheries of Western Sweden in the Eighteenth Century’, Scand. Econ. Hist. Rev. 7 (1), 3–40.

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4 ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS

In all resources, it is fundamental that the realisation of them has to be economically viable, and that enterprises dependent on them should ‘pay their way’. In fishing reliable economic assessments may not, however, be a straightforward matter: even now there is often a serious shortage of data for economic analysis, especially in the Third World. It is also the case that the majority of the world’s fishermen are still small operators and that many of them are partly dependent on fishing (and indeed on other activities) for subsistence; and they may keep few if any formal records, and indeed many of them are still illiterate. There has been a recognisable academic discipline of fisheries economics for almost half a century, and the distinctive features of a fishery from the economic point of view are well recognised. Its outstanding characteristics are those of common property and open entry: while all fisheries do not show these characteristics in all circumstances, they have applied in very large degree to sea fisheries, especially on the high seas. It was early recognised that it was not feasible to appropriate the fisheries of the high seas, which had the effect of making them belong to no-one—in effect being common property. Closely linked to this was the fact that no authority controlled entry to them in any exclusive way, by such means as entry fees or resource rents: they were open to all who had the boats and gear to exploit them. This was recognised at least in Europe from the seventeenth century, although of course in more restricted waters on streams, lakes and even inshore on the sea rights of ownership and restrictions on entry have always been known.

56

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THE THEORETICAL OPTIMUM FOR A FISHERY It is obvious that the economic optimum for the conduct of a fishery involves securing the maximum value of catch for the minimum of expense: but while the maximum of economic benefits tends to be routinely proclaimed by politicians and fisheries managers, in practice achievement often falls a long way short of this. An essential complication is that there is necessarily a difference between the economic and the biological optima, as can be seen from Figure 4.1.(a). This shows the essential relationship between biological and economic yield on the one hand and cost of operation on the other. The curve of sustainable yield which rises at a decreasing rate from the origin is the type of curve which is applicable to any living resource: as the fish population is progressively thinned out by fishing operations, the increase in catch tapers off until at the high point on the curve the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) is reached. This represents the biological optimum, and is a balance point at which the fish removed by catching is in accord with the maximum rate at which the stock can breed and grow. Any increase in fishing effort beyond this point will be counterproductive, as the total catch will actually fall. If the simplified assumption is made that fishing operations are conducted in circumstances of constant costs and prices, the basic economic relations of the fishery are easily derived. In effect the curve of yield (e.g. in kilogrammes or tonnes of fish) can then simply be recalibrated to give the value of the catch or revenue (e.g. in dollars): and the value must fall after the point of MSY is passed. The cost of the fishing operation will increase with increasing fishing effort, and this is most easily measured by the numbers of boats (or men) involved: the simplest case is that in which the costs of fishing rise in a linear relation as numbers of boats increase. This carries the implication that fishing effort can rise until the line of cost intersects the curve of revenue, at which point there is zero net revenue as the value of the catch is equal to the cost of obtaining it. The economic optimum must be where the vertical distance from the cost line to the revenue curve is at a maximum; this occurs in advance of the biological optimum, and is at the point E in Figure 4.1(a), where a tangent to the curve would be parallel to the cost line. The rational response for profit maximisation would be to hold the level of fishing effort at this point, but this is rarely achieved. It is here that the industry’s traditional structural weakness of open entry becomes 57

Figure 4.1 (i) Curve of sustainable yield, with revenues and costs; (ii) the backward bending supply curve in fishing Source: Christy and Scott 1965:8

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evident: in the absence of a unitary or governing authority to hold fishing effort at this point, the tendency is for effort to continue building up as more boats join the fishery and profits are reduced or dissipated. It also produces a situation in which average productivity tends towards marginal productivity (Gordon 1954:128–32). A range of other considerations and factors can be added to this basic model to refine analysis and to adjust for different situations. It has been shown, for example, that when the issue of distribution between fishermen is brought in to define a social optimum to provide for a situation with fishermen of different levels of performance and where there would be social costs of redeployment to other jobs, this falls between the biological and economic optima (Copes 1972:160– 2). In North America particularly the principle of ‘optimum yield’ (OY) has also been used, although its precise meaning tends to be somewhat vague and there has been some tendency for it to be employed to rationalise any desired policy (Cunningham et al. 1985:106–7). It arose in the first place in large measure through the pressure of recreational fishing interests, which wished to ensure that there were adequate fish stocks for angling and which feared the inroads made by commercial fishing. It has also been used, following the extension of national limits to 200 miles and the subsequent curtailing of foreign distant-water fishing, to hold catches below the MSY and to allow for stock rebuilding in the interests of long-term conservation. Detailed analysis inevitably involves more sophisticated models. The population dynamics of exploited fish stocks is itself a specialised field, and obviously becomes considerably more complicated when the interaction of biological and economic variables have to be analysed. Since the 1970s the main advance has been in the formulating of bioeconomic models, which can employ the computer to handle big volumes of data. These models are dynamic rather than static, as is the basic Scott Gordon model, and they are not limited only to dealing with situations in equilibrium. They can also provide for such things as species interaction, which occurs in every ecological situation, and can treat the effects of various externalities (Butlin 1975:91–9). The essential interaction of economics with ecology in fisheries has also been brought into focus in a wider context in recent years with the debate on the issue of sustainable growth. In looking forward to sustaining future generations, it has been claimed that while economists recognise that the objectives of individuals and societies are not all economic, they are still preoccupied by economic efficiency, while 59

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there is a case that long-term projections should adjust the configuration of growth in the light of what the resource base can sustain (Pearce and Turner 1990:27–8). Of course, one of the bigger limitations to the simple model given above is the assumption of constant prices and costs. While a range of factors can cause costs to vary, many of these are external to the fishery; there is an important feature of the fishery itself, however, which affects prices. Obviously as the fishery becomes depleted, scarcity of the product will affect the relations of supply and demand, and prices will be driven up; and beyond the position of the MSY the supply curve actually becomes backward bending (Figure 4.1.(b)). The implications of this are that for a given quantity of fish the price at an early stage of the development of the fishery will have become considerably inflated for the same quantity after the MSY is passed (Copes 1970:69–77).

ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF FISHERIES An indication of the economic importance of fishing in a national economy can, of course, be given by the share in GNP. In many cases it is a simple matter to show the percentage value of first sales at the ports in GNP, although this in itself is in principle inadequate as a measure of economic importance, because of the multiplier effect in related activities like processing and transport: this is less precisely known, but in developed countries is generally computed to at least double the value of first sales. As economies have developed, especially in the present century, the contribution of fishing to national economies has very generally declined, and in several erstwhile leading countries, such as the UK and Germany, its importance is now minor. The greatest importance of fishing is characteristically at the regional and local levels, and here information is sparse and tends to derive from occasional special estimates. In developed countries, even where fish is a main part of the animal protein in the food supply, the proportionate value of fish landings in GNP is regularly not more than a low single figure percentage, and is more usually a fraction of 1 per cent. Even for Iceland in 1987 it was 10.3 per cent, and it has been estimated at about 1 per cent for leading fishing countries of the USSR and Norway; in Japan in 1987 it was 0.6 per cent, in Canada 0.3 per cent and in the UK 0.1 per cent. It is significantly higher, however, in the new industrial countries of Eastern 60

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Asia where fish is a main diet item: it has been estimated at 3.4 per cent for South Korea and at 5.5 per cent for the Philippines (Lawson 1984:14). Another important index of the importance of fishing for different nations is the proportion that fish and fish products contribute in trade. The usual indices employed here are those for visible exports, and this does tend to disguise the importance of tourism and other ‘invisibles’ which are often particularly important in the island situations where fishing has tended to dominate the older economies. In the instances of the Maldive and Faroe Islands, fish are of overwhelming importance in exports and constitute over 90 per cent of total exports (Lawson 1984:22), and in Iceland the proportion is now 65.5 per cent. However, in the trade balance of Norway and Denmark now fish contribute only between 6 per cent and 7 per cent of exports; in Canada the proportion is 1.9 per cent and for the European Community (EC) countries as a whole it is 0.5 per cent. The fish trade is systematically treated in Chapter 11. An obvious issue of consequence is the importance of fishing in generating employment, and this is discussed in the following section.

EMPLOYMENT IN FISHING AND ANCILLARY ACTIVITIES The total employment generated by fishing can only be a matter of estimation. Numbers in fishing itself in the Third World are generally at best approximate; and although this sector is better enumerated in developed countries, the multiplier effect of employment in related activities like fish processing, transport and boat-building tends to be only vaguely known. The global total number of artisanal fishermen has been put as high as 50 million (Bardach 1977:16), although this would certainly include many partly employed in other activities: more conservative estimates have cut this figure by half or even more. It is clear that the majority of the world’s fishermen are in the continent of Asia: the number in China has been put at 4.3 million, and Indonesia, India and Bangladesh all have over 1 million (Lawson 1984:25). The multiplier effect in artisanal fisheries can only be limited in view of the predominance of unpaid family labour in the Third World: with small merchants, hawkers, boat-builders etc. the additional employment generated is possibly one-tenth to one-quarter of that in fishing itself. With the more sophisticated infrastructure and 61

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service employment sector in developed countries, ancillary employment tends to be on the same scale as that in fishing itself. It is still the case even in many developed countries that much of the fishing employment consists of small operators: they still dominate numerically in the case of the world’s biggest fishing nation, Japan, for example; and the same is the case for such countries as Canada, Norway and even the USA. On the other hand the total world employment on large company-owned vessels has been put at less than half a million. Even in developed countries statistics on fishing employment can be of limited accuracy. Numbers in main national censuses tend to be underestimates: this can be partly because fishing is still part-time and linked to other occupations, under which people involved in fishing may be recorded. Frequently a more serious cause of census inaccuracy is that fishermen are often self-employed or are share fishermen with some capital stake in the enterprise, and may not be included in data for labour. It is often the case that national fisheries returns, although often not direct counts of persons (they may be based, for example, on the manpower required for the registered fleet), give a better measure of fishing employment. Employment in fishing is only rarely a major issue at the national level; where it is, it is virtually always in small island nations. It was estimated in 1981 that the 22,600 fishermen in the Maldive Islands constituted 40.5 per cent of the economically active population, and the 21,500 fishermen in the Solomon Islands made up 37.7 per cent (Lawson 1984:26). In developed world situations the proportion is substantially less, even when fishing is the essential basis of production in the economy: in Iceland the 6,262 fishermen in 1988 were less than 10 per cent of the economically active population. In the densely populated countries of Asia, the millions of fishermen are only a small proportion of the work-force: in China the proportion is only about 1 per cent, in Indonesia 3.3 per cent, and it is highest in the Philippines at 6 per cent (Lawson 1984:25). Fishing employment can, however, be significant or vital at the regional or (more frequently) the local level in all countries. In Norway in the three northern ‘fylker’ (counties) fishing employs about 14 per cent of the labour force compared with approximately 2 per cent nationally, and in the Shetland Islands it provides about 10 per cent of the employment compared with around 0.5 per cent for Scotland as a whole. Numbers in direct employment in fishing are generally relatively high in developing economies, where operations are still labour intensive and where numbers employed in 62

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specialist fishing-related occupations are comparatively low. A study in Malaysia where fishing was involved in the commercial economy found that over 75 per cent of male employment was in fishing itself, and around 8 per cent of other employment was in dealing in fish (Firth 1966:76). While numbers in direct employment are much lower where fishing is capital-intensive, there is a greater multiplier effect and numbers in related occupations (processing, transport etc.) may well be higher than in fishing itself. A recent estimate in the UK put the employment multiplier for fishing at 1.82, and for fish processing at 3.76 (Gibbs 1990:8). In developed countries the very general long-term tendency has been for employment in fishing, along with other occupations in the primary production sector, to go down. While ancillary employment in related fields, like fish processing and transport, has tended to decline less fast, or even to expand, the total of direct and indirect employment in fishing has in general contracted for several decades. Available figures suggest that the decline in employment has been less for full-time than for parttime fishermen, as fishing (like so many occupations) has become more capital- and less labour-intensive. This trend has been partly obscured in some countries, however, as men who are essentially spare- rather than part-time fishermen may become included in the statistics, as it may become worth their while to acquire small boats and become officially recognised while they earn some supplementary income, especially if their main employment allows them increased leisure hours. In the case of Japan, before the Second World War numbers of fishermen had built up to over 1 million, and in the early post-war period the numbers of the population wholly or partly dependent on fishing approached 3 million (Borgstrom 1964:38). Recent decades have witnessed the usual run-down characteristic of activities in primary production in developed countries. The total number of fishermen was 702,000 in 1950 (Borgstrom 1964:41), and there has been a decline to 392,392 in 1988 (Government of Japan 1991:82). Despite the development of extensive distant-water fisheries, the great majority of the employment has continued to be in family units engaged in inshore fisheries, and 80 per cent of the fishermen were engaged in these fisheries in 1988. Average incomes have been lower than even in the small-scale agriculture that has dominated Japanese farming (Borgstrom 1964:38). However, the development of coastal mariculture on an unrivalled scale in recent decades has improved incomes and led

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to a degree of overlap between small-scale fishing and aquaculture that is unique in the world. Figure 4.2(a) shows employment trends in fishing for four developed countries in which it has been an industry of high importance. The case of Norway is particularly indicative, as it is traditionally the country in mainland Europe for which the industry

Figure 4.2 (i) Employment trends in fishing in Norway, Canada, the UK and Denmark; (ii) numbers and structures in fishing employment in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, 1980 Sources: Fiskeristatistikk (Norway); Fishery Statistics (Canada); Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables (England); Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables; Fiskeriberetning (Denmark); OECD, Review of Fisheries; Torell 1984:93 64

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has been of greatest importance and it has a continuous long run of unusually detailed data on fishermen, even though it was found expedient in the recent past (1982) to redefine the occupation and thus cause a break in the data. In the earlier part of this century numbers of fishermen were well over 100,000 in a country with a total population of around 3 million. While up to the Second World War fishing was the main source of cash income to the big majority of these men, the great part of them were part-time. The statistics are unusually detailed in dividing the part-time men between ‘hove-dyrke’ (main occupation) and ‘biyrke’ (secondary occupation), a distinction which was maintained until 1980, after which the main occupation category was amalgamated with that of ‘eneyrke’ (fulltime). The main occupation men especially were the coastal small-holders for whom fishing was the dominant source of cash income. Subsequent trends have of course been associated with much, but not all, of the fishing operation becoming more capital-intensive, and with the opening up of other employment opportunities within the country, although seldom in convenient locations for fishing settlements. The quarter century after the Second World War was a major time of transition, and total employment declined to about one-quarter by 1971; since then it has been substantially stable, despite the modern resource problems of the industry. Notable in the changing employment structure is the fact that the once dominant main occupation category by 1980 was only about 16 per cent of the total. The full-time category is the one which has remained substantially constant throughout the past half century, and is consistent with the inevitable greater emphasis on the full-time operation of capital-intensive fisheries. The secondary occupation has declined at a lesser rate than that of the main occupation, and in recent years has even shown some tendency to increase, mainly as shorter working hours in other occupations allow men more easily to secure a supplementary source of income. By contrast with Norway, Britain moved earlier and more completely into capital-intensive fisheries with the development of steam trawlers and drifters from the late nineteenth century. There was a steady decline in the labour force from the start of the twentieth century, when Britain was the world’s leading fishing nation. The decline tapered off after the Second World War, and since 1970 has been substantially stable at a level less than 25 per cent of the peak. The proportion of part-time men has long been relatively small, and has altered little for half a century. In Canada, comprehensive statistics for the country as now constituted are 65

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available from 1956, some years following Newfoundland’s entry into the confederation. The downward trend in employment was reversed in the 1970s following the enlargement of the available resource base with the extension of national limits to 200 miles. However, the continuing high level of recorded employment also reflects Canada’s character as the ‘world’s most undeveloped developed country’: fishing can still be the ‘employment of last resort’ in many remote coastal communities, especially in the east, and although having various supports from government, average incomes are still conspicuously low. Comprehensive statistics for full-time and part-time men are not available, although it is clear that a substantial part of the employment is part-time. In Eastern Canada upwards a half of the finfish have been caught by the offshore fleet of big vessels, with little over 10 per cent of the total manpower. Denmark also has its own pattern: it became a major fishing nation after World War II and continued to expand its catches for three decades when the catches of most Western European countries were stabilising or declining. During this phase there was a slow decline in fishing manpower as the efficiency of the fleet increased, but by the mid-1980s numbers of fishermen were in sharp decline as catches fell and the enforced programme of fleet contraction under the Common Fisheries Policy of the EC took effect. In developing countries there has been a tendency for numbers of fishermen to increase with the continuing general population trend. This is due not only to the natural increase in fishing communities, but also to the tendency for other members of the population at the bottom of the social scale (including the landless) to gravitate into an openentry occupation like fishing. Fishing also has less of a multiplier effect, as in peasant situations the ancillary work of processing and marketing tends to be done by unpaid family labour. This inevitably adds to pressure on resources and complicates attempts to modernise fisheries and allow them to generate higher levels of income. Fishing also tends to become a ‘reserve’ occupation from which people will move if better opportunities become available, but which they may resort to if such opportunities fail. In Third World Situations people from fishing settlements now commonly join the more numerous migrants from farming villages who move into towns and cities in a quest for better opportunities for themselves in employment and for their families in education. There is also the danger that the development of a modern capital-intensive fisheries sector in Third World countries carries a 66

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danger to the livelihood of the majority who are traditional fishermen, as modern boats can often catch the available fish with a fraction of the manpower of the traditional sector. This is already an issue in countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Peru and Chile and has occurred to some extent in most countries. Some of the best data for Third World situations are available in south-east Asia, where fisheries are particularly important. Even here employment trends are seldom known with much precision over any great length of time, although in Malaysia the numbers of fishermen appear to have doubled since 1960 (Ooi Jin-Bee 1963:285; Torell 1984:93) and in Indonesia official figures show an increase of as much as 55 per cent between 1979 and 1987 (Rice 1991:160). Although Malaysia has been one of the most successful of Third World countries in achieving development goals and its fisheries in all are among the more productive, it is recognised that fishing has a serious problem of overmanning and poverty. In 1970 one estimate reckoned that on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia one-quarter of the fishermen were in effect surplus (Sabri 1977:64). Figure 4.2(b) shows the recorded numbers of fishermen in four south-east Asian countries in 1980. It is clear that the general structure of the labour force is similar to the traditional one in Norway, with three grades in specialisation of employment; the proportions of fishermen in the total work-forces are also relatively high. While in all cases the fulltime category is the most numerous, the scale of part-time employment is also notable, especially in the island nations of Indonesia and the Philippines. Thailand, which has developed the biggest modern fisheries sector among these four nations, is conspicuous for the low proportion of fishermen in the total national work-force. Very frequently, numbers of fishermen are not evenly distributed around the coasts of a country, and these differences are only partly related to available resources. In the case of Norway, fishing has always been of less importance on the shores of the Oslo Fjord, and there are also substantial variations on the coast fronting the open sea. It is especially in the north that fishing has been very much the traditional basis of the economy, and of the 17 ‘fylker’ (counties) the three northern ones of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark have between them 14,868 fishermen, or 51 per cent of the national total of 29,350 fishermen (1988 figures). In Canada about 40 per cent of all fishermen are in the two Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia,

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although between them these provinces have less than 10 per cent of the national population.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITAL-INTENSIVE METHODS OF PRODUCTION The modern period has seen the acceleration of the development of capital-intensive operation in fishing, as in so many fields, with the advance of technology and the expansion in the scale of production. However, capital-intensive operation has developed to a lesser extent in fishing than in most other industries, including ones in the primary sector such as forestry and mining. There are a number of reasons for this, including the relatively small size of the fishing industry as a whole, the high degree of dispersal of the resource in the sea, the irregularity of supplies and the perishable nature of the product. In virtually all countries there is the persistence of a big proportion of small units of production, along with small units in processing and distribution. The nearest parallel in economic structure is the other and (main) field of food production of farming. Farming in advanced economies like those of the EC and Japan still has many small and parttime producers, and these have been sufficiently numerous in democratic systems to secure various subsidies and concessions; on the other hand capital-intensive production in ‘agribusiness’ is necessarily on a much greater scale than in fishing and has a greater proportional role in production and in satisfying the main food requirements of developed societies; it also includes large-scale organisation in marketing. Even so, farming has on the whole greater problems than fishing in the day of high technology, as farming generally needs a bigger variety of expensive equipment, the different items of which are required for only brief seasons in the year. In general, capital-intensive operation in fishing expanded from the nineteenth century until the 1970s, when the new regime in the International Law of the Sea caused substantial readjustments. The expansion occurred first in industrialising countries, and was at a maximum rate in the period between the Second World War and the early 1970s. The most capital-intensive mode of operation was that of distant-water fleets, which required large and well-equipped vessels. This developed to the greatest scale in Japan, the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe, where there was investment not only in the biggest catching vessels but also in support ships like floating 68

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canneries and freezers, carriers and various other specialised ships. The vigorous promotion of this type of fleet operation in the USSR resulted in it dominating the world’s biggest fishing vessels. Of the vessels of over 100 gross registered tonnage (g.r.t.), by 1972 it had 3,731 vessels (23.7 per cent of the world total) with a total tonnage of almost 5.1 million g.r.t. (53.2 per cent of the global total). Even Japan was a long way behind with a fleet of 2,898 vessels of a total tonnage of 1.2 million g.r.t. (OECD 1972:20–1). It was in the sector of factory vessels and carriers that the dominance of the USSR was even more complete. These are the biggest and costliest vessels involved in fleet operations, and here the USSR had 494 (76.8 per cent) of the overall total of 643, with a tonnage of 2.6 million, or 82.6 per cent of the global total. Until the 1970s the general approach in most countries was to encourage with incentives the development of more capital-intensive fisheries, with the objective of improving productivity and incomes in an industry that was tending to fall behind other economic sectors. Mounting resource problems since then have seen the curtailing of freedom of operation on the high seas for distant-water fleets, together with the general increase in regulations to restrain catching power in other fleet sectors in the interests of conservation. This has caused a general slow-down in the development of capital-intensive operation, and even to some extent has thrown it into reverse, although the drive to develop improved vessels and equipment has continued. A bigger proportion of new construction is in steel: it has become common for boats down to 15 m or even less now to be built in steel rather than wood, and fibreglass construction is also used to a considerable extent in the smaller fleet sectors. In addition the use of hydraulic and electronic gear and equipment has generally become standard in developed countries, and echo-sounders, radio telephone and radio navigation systems have come into general use. On a comparative international basis trends towards more capitalintensive operation can be shown in broad terms by the changing proportions of different size classes in fleets; increasingly too data are available on tonnage classes and can be employed to the same end. Also important are increases in engine size, as greater power has been installed in vessels of all size classes, and this additional power has been related to trawling becoming a dominant fishing method in many situations. The prevalent trend has been for catching power to be invested in fewer but larger boats, as is exemplified in Figure 4.3(a) which shows fleet numbers and tonnages for selected countries for 69

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1976 and 1989. The concentration of catching power in fewer vessels of increased tonnage is general, despite the increase in vessel numbers in the UK, which is substantially due to the registration of increased numbers of small vessels which have been exempted from quota regulations. The trend is particularly forcibly shown for Denmark, where in the 13-year period, average tonnage more than doubled from 20.03 to 42.00 g.r.t. Despite this general trend it is clear from Figure 4.3(b), which shows the detail of fleet structure for Denmark and the UK for 1989, that there are in number still a majority of small units in fleets. This appears likely to continue, given that there are numbers of men who find fishing a profitable secondary occupation. Arrangements for fleet renewal very generally now stipulate that vessel length, tonnage and horsepower must not increase, and while progressively smaller vessels have been brought under quota regulations, the smallest boats (under lengths such as 10 m) are still usually exempt. There are cases in which modern adjustments have been made for more basic restructuring of catching capacity. Germany, as a leading developed country, had until the 1970s concentrated the main part of its catching power in the most modern distant-water freezer trawlers, but in the subsequent enforced contraction, numbers of vessels were cut from 1,294 in 1976 to 591 in 1989 (i.e. by 54.4 per cent), while total tonnage was reduced from 141,250 to 50,613 (64.2 per cent) in the same period (OECD 1991:35). While in Japan the numbers in the bigger section of the fleet of over 100 g.r.t. are little changed, the biggest vessels of over 500 g.r.t. declined from 157 to 63 (i.e. by 60.0 per cent) between 1978 and 1988 (Government of Japan 1980:33; 1991:74). There are indications that substantial reductions have also taken place in the great Soviet fleet, although detailed data are unavailable.

THE DIVISION OF THE PROCEEDS FROM FISHING There are distinctive practices for the allocation of the proceeds from fishing ventures, which have common elements in many situations and countries. The rewards to labour are usually based on a proportion of the catch value rather than on hourly or daily rates. The returns to capital come in the form of the vessel’s share, and it is common also for there to be a separate share for gear. In principle the

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Figure 4.3 (i) Trends in vessel numbers and tonnage in Norway, Denmark, Spain and the UK, 1976–89; (ii) structure of fleets by tonnage classes in Denmark and the UK, 1989 Source: OECD 1991

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vessel and gear shares must cover depreciation and maintenance, and may also have to cover running expenses. Depreciation on fishing gear tends to be a relatively large item, as considerable wear and tear in the course of fishing operations is usual. In small-scale operations, where capital equipment is simple and of relatively low cost, the labour share is often allocated the major part of the returns, while in capital-intensive fisheries from big boats the major share goes to the vessel. In the case of Norway, general fleet costings are regularly published in the annual Lönnsomhetsundersökelser for fiske-fartoyer, and with the range of large- and small-scale fisheries that are prosecuted and the range of gear types used, these general characteristics are well illustrated (Coull 1972:135–42). However, what is not directly clear from the Norwegian example is that in the modern period there is an element of government subsidy in all fisheries, and in addition there is a national minimum income guarantee scheme for fishermen. In practice, the allocation of proceeds is usually more complex than the above discussion indicates, as it is usual for at least some of the fishermen themselves to have a capital stake in their ventures. Boats and gear are often owned in shares between all or part of the crew, with any extra labour requirement being made up from hired hands. The earnings of the latter are limited to their part of the labour share; the earnings of the former are enhanced in proportion to their boat and/or gear share. In Britain, in many of the fisheries a ‘half catch’ system is operated, whereby after the deduction of running expenses (including fuel, provisions, harbour dues etc.) from the gross receipts, the proceeds are divided equally between boat and crew. From the boat’s share boat expenses (including insurance, maintenance and depreciation) have to be covered, and the excess goes to the repayment of loan capital. It is still common that as far as the earnings of skippers and mates are higher than those of other crew members, this still derives essentially from their capital stake in the boat and gear, and not from any higher share for their labour. At one time in Britain, when herring fisheries by driftnet were dominant, the separate value of the gear was such that it was allocated a share as great as that of labour. The greater relative value of boats and gear used in the pursenet operations which now dominate British pelagic fisheries has led to the boat share being adjusted to be greater than that of labour. When the demersal fisheries were dominated by the company-owned trawl sector, that sector had its own system of allocating the proceeds of voyages. The shares to the officers (skippers, mates and engineers) were very considerably greater than those of 72

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deck-hands, although in the latter years of the fishery the deck-hands had successfully pressed for a portion of their earnings to come in the form of a guaranteed wage.

ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY IN FISHING Economic efficiency in fishing can be measured in a variety of ways, although satisfactory data for use on any substantial comparative scale are rare. Obviously the profitability of enterprises is crucial, although because of commercial confidentiality this tends to have to be approached through the generalised costings published by such countries as Norway and Iceland. While it is possible in principle to analyse catch per unit of effort, there is a considerable practical problem in getting a satisfactory method of measurement of fishing effort which can be used in different situations. Quite frequently effort is measured by vessels’ days absence from port: this is necessarily crude, as it makes no direct allowance for the steaming time to fishing grounds, for idle time between fishing operations and for time lost through bad weather. In some capital-intensive fisheries there may be records kept of actual days or hours fishing, and with the improvements in fishing logs now often insisted on as part of conservation programmes (e.g. in the EC), such records are becoming more extensive. However, even such data make no direct reference to different scales of capital investment or of crew size. At the international level, it is possible to make some broad comparisons of efficiency by relating the tonnage or value of their catches to the labour forces and the fleets engaged in the fisheries. Despite the increasing international trade in fish and fishing equipment, with the accompanying increase in international market discipline, the different record-keeping systems even in advanced countries make detailed comparisons difficult. Yield per unit of labour is of course higher in the well-equipped fisheries using modern methods, although return to capital certainly does not always show the same advantages. Meaningful comparisons of fish prices between developed and developing situations are generally difficult to make, and even between the OECD countries the average unit value of fish landed varies by a factor of over ten (OECD 1991:37). At a simple level comparisons of tonnage caught and landed show variations and trends in productivity more easily than figures for value, even when expressed in the international unit of US dollars, because of the major complication of 73

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inflation and the frequent differential in inflation between costs and revenue for operators.

YIELDS TO LABOUR AND CAPITAL At the gross national level, main variations can be shown by comparing total volume and value of catch per fisherman to show the productivity of labour. Even at a crude gross level yields to capital are harder to compare, and in general the only straightforward way available is to compare catches per tonne of the fleet. In any event even these limited criteria are adequate to demonstrate that while there have tended to be overall increases in return to labour they have been disproportionately slow compared with other fields. Catches per vessel tonne have in general fallen, showing that investment in bigger and more sophisticated craft has often been scarcely justified. Tonnage caught per man varies between a fraction of a tonne annually in the least productive fisheries in the Third World to hundreds or even thousands of tonnes annually in pelagic fisheries operated with modern vessels and catching methods. Available data generally allow only gross comparisons at the national level, but even these show significant comparisons and trends. They show that the general level in the Third World is under 5 tonnes per man per year: in Indonesia, for example, at the start of the 1980s it was about 2 tonnes, and in the Philippines about 4 tonnes. However, some countries have been able to show considerable improvements. In Malaysia from a level of about 1 tonne per man per year at the end of the 1940s it rose to around 4.4 tonnes in 1972 and 6.8 tonnes in 1981, although it has since decreased through over-fishing. The greatest achievement in south-east Asia has been in Thailand where, previously having been at typical Third World levels, the catch in the 1980s has been consistently over 20 tonnes per man per year. Levels and trends in production per man from 1955 to 1988 for a number of developed countries are shown in Figure 4.4. Labour productivity is obviously higher than in the Third World with general levels in Europe of above 30 tonnes per man per year, apart from in the Mediterranean countries of Portugal and Italy where the proportion of small operators is still particularly high. However, the striking characteristic is that sustained improvement since the 1960s has been the exception rather than the rule, and has only been achieved in Denmark, which concentrates on low-value species for 74

Figure 4.4 Catches per man for selected countries, 1955–88 (N.A., not available) Sources: ICES, Bulletin Statistique; OECD, Review of Fisheries

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reduction, and in Japan, where it has largely been related to the rundown of the numerous work-force in the small-scale coastal fisheries. In Norway, the modern depletion of all the important stocks has reduced productivity, and in the UK and Germany there has been substantial restructuring with the enforced contraction of the capitalintensive distant-water trawler fisheries. When value of production is related to the fishing labour force, the catch per fisherman is at a peak in developed countries. Figure 4.6(i) shows the values of labour productivity in countries for which

Figure 4.5 Catches per vessel ton for selected countries, 1955–88 (N.A., not available) Sources: ICES, Bulletin Statistique; OECD, Review of Fisheries 76

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figures are available: in 1988 the value in Western Europe was regularly over $20,000 annually; in the leading countries it was over $50,000 and in Iceland as high as $89,636. The poorer efficiency of commercial fisheries in the USA and Canada is shown by the levels being well under $20,000 in both cases, although Japan compares favourably with Western Europe. Adequate data on fleet tonnages are rarer than those for fishermen: in many countries there are considerable numbers of vessels in the fleet for which there are no recorded tonnages, and in some developed as well as Third World countries these represent sufficient catching power to distort the average catch per vessel tonne figures. Figure 4.5 shows the levels and trends in catch per vessel ton for a number of countries for which data are available: it indicates that returns to capital have failed to make any substantial improvement, and indeed they have significantly deteriorated in the cases of Belgium and Germany. The improvement in the UK has been of restricted scale; the improvement in Denmark is more satisfactory, but is in the context of low-value species for reduction. Productivity in value in relation to fleet tonnage is exemplified in Figure 4.6(ii) It is obviously not parallel to labour productivity, mainly because of the differing proportions of small craft in the fleets. The general level for developed countries for 1988 was over $2,000 per vessel ton, and in the case of Japan was as high as $5,931 per vessel ton. This is related essentially to a high level of demand in a high income country, allied to a big proportion of small boats in the fleet, a characteristic it shares with Italy. How realistic the criteria which have been used to measure efficiency in developed world situations are in the Third World may be questioned. Obviously, where labour costs are much lower there is less stimulus to cut them. At the same time with the very general shortage of employment in the Third World there is a stronger argument for retaining bigger labour forces in fisheries. This gives force to the case for the deployment of intermediate technology, which would allow fishermen to use such improvements as small boat engines and nets of rot-proof synthetic fibres, and allow them to improve their productivity and living standards without too much disruptive social upheaval, as tends to occur with the full-scale use of modern methods. This also makes lesser demands on scarce resources of capital. It is widely acknowledged that the small-scale artisanal fisheries, which are mainly those of the Third World, are more efficient in 77

Figure 4.6 (i) Value of catch per fisherman in selected countries, 1988; (ii) value of catch per vessl ton in selected countries, 1988 Source: OECD. Review of Fisheries

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energy use than big vessel fisheries by an order of magnitude, and also give much more employment in relation to invested capital. In the short and medium term there is a strong case for encouraging such fisheries, along with local control of local resources as the most effective and least costly strategy for conservation of resources.

THE PROBLEM Of FLUCTUATIONS Fisheries, like other activities capitalising on living resources, are essentially dependent on natural cycles of production; and it is common knowledge that in addition to showing a periodicity on varying time scales which renders the resource irregularly available, there are often big variations in abundance from one cycle to the next. Inevitably there are economic consequences as the very general preference for economic efficiency is to have a continuous flow of production. Many traditional fisheries are emphatically seasonal and are concentrated in from one to three months in the year; and within this main annual pattern of fluctuation fish landings characteristically fluctuate by hundreds (or even thousands) of per cent from day to day and from week to week. The adjustment of the supply of capital and labour to such fluctuations in demand is essentially an insoluble problem, and the conduct of many fisheries in practice alternates between intense activity and enforced idleness. For the processing sector, the problems of irregular supply can in some measure be countered at some cost by storage, although this presents its own problems. Storage in ice must perforce be of limited duration, and while frozen storage can preserve the raw material more or less indefinitely, it does involve some loss of condition with the formation of ice crystals in the tissues. It is also the case that for oily pelagic fish like herring and mackerel, and for shellfish, liability to spoilage is greater and storage more difficult. The adjustment of capital and labour requirements was actually less of a problem with traditional fisheries. With small boats and simple equipment the consequences of periodic lay-ups are obviously of less importance, and in any case in the off season many fishermen had other work, frequently in subsistence agriculture, and fishing could be part of a regular and balanced round of seasonal activities. It was possible for a special type of fishing peasantry to develop, and the foremost example of this has been recognised as the traditional pattern of the Norwegian coast, where fishing was the main source of cash income and the main

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fishing season in the winter fitted well with the summer work on the land (Bartz 1964:71). When fishing becomes more capital-intensive there is a tendency to remove as far as possible the seasonal peaks of activity by investing in bigger boats and moving to other fishing grounds or fishing for other species in between seasons; and while this provides a partial solution to the problem, short-term variations in catch rates are still the norm. The maximum advantages of mobility can be obtained by the construction of sea-going processing capacity, and while this expedient has been developed to a great extent in Japan, the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe, the costs are in general far above those of processing on land. Processing at sea in recent years has actually tended to contract because of the reduced freedom of fishing for big distant-water vessels under the modern regime of 200-mile national fisheries limits, although the distant-water fleets of the USSR and Eastern European countries can now be rented out as floating processing capacity to a variety of countries, especially for seasonal pelagic fisheries.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENTS Fisheries have long been a resource of sufficient importance to attract the interest of government, and history shows ample examples of nations acting to promote their interests in this resource by such means as giving bounties for fitting out boats. While in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the generally accepted orthodoxy was for the free play of economic forces with the minimum of government intervention, this has since been considerably modified, as can be seen in fisheries. For about three decades after the Second World War an interventionist approach became widely accepted, as it was recognised that fisheries needed special measures to develop and to modernise. As well as grants and loans for capital investment, help could also take the form of direct operating subsidies and subsidies for price support. Countries like Britain and Canada gave substantial grants and loans for the improvement of fleets, Japan adopted a licensing policy for the expansion of its distant-water fleets, and in the formerly centrally planned economies of the USSR and the Eastern European countries there was very large-scale state investment in fisheries coupled with substantial payment incentives for crews. Britain also for a time gave operating and price subsidies, and in Norway a system of price support has continued. In addition, various Third World countries had policies 80

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of developing a modern fishery sector through state enterprises, generally financed with the help of international agencies like the World Bank. The period of general state-encouraged expansion has been succeeded by a period characterised by emphasis on cuts in public expenditure in national policies. The situation in fisheries, however, contrasts with that in agriculture: while decades of state-stimulated increases in productivity in agriculture have led to a situation of chronic surpluses in the developed world, in fisheries they have contributed to serious over-fishing and accompanying resource scarcity. Government efforts have been considerably diverted towards increased management measures in the interests of conservation, and the containing or removal of over-capacity from the industry has become generally accepted in national policies. However, in many developed countries the systems of fisheries administration and management are still in effect subsidies to the industry, although countries such as Canada gain significant revenue by charging for licensed access to fish stocks judged surplus to national requirements. At the same time efforts at fisheries development have continued in particular situations. Countries, such as Canada and Iceland, which have benefited from the new regime of 200-mile limits in international law have devoted considerable resources to modernise as well as to manage their fisheries, and numbers of Third World countries have also stepped up their development efforts: this has been particularly the case in the island nations of the Pacific. Another field of government activity in which fishing has often been involved is that of regional policy. The fact that fishing employment and activity is often concentrated in outlying areas has often meant that state measures directed at mitigating the disadvantages of unfavourable location have also helped fishing. Thus fishing in north Norway, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Atlantic Canada have all benefited from general regional development aid programmes, which have served to improve fleets, processing and infrastructural facilities like transport. Latterly too within the EC extra aid from Community funds has been given which has benefited Ireland, Brittany and North Jutland. At the international level, governments (including, for example, those of Canada and Norway) have often played a role in discouraging or preventing foreign landings at their ports, because of the interference it causes in the market for their own fishermen. There have also been protectionist measures in the imposition of import duties on fish entering national markets: the EC is a main example of this with its 81

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basic policy of having a managed market behind tariff walls. Such protection can extend to processors as well as fishermen, with the tendency to impose selectively higher tariffs on the more fully processed items like consumer packs. There has also been considerable government interest in fish farming, especially in the capital-intensive types of production now being expanded in Japan and the Western world. It has become common policy for governments to play a pump priming role in research and development in such activities as salmon farming, where initial expenses are particularly heavy.

REFERENCES Bardach, J. (1977) ‘Keynote Address’, in Lockwood, B. and Ruddle, K. (eds) Small Scale Fisheries Development: Social Science Contribution, East-West Center, Honolulu, 15–25. Bartz, F. (1964) Die Grossen Fischeiräume der Welt. Band 1, Atlantisches Europa und Mittelmeer, Steiner, Wiesbaden. Borgstrom, G. (1964) Japan’s Success in World Fishing, Fishing News Books, London. Butlin, J. (1975) ‘Optimal Depletion of a Perishable Resource: an Evaluation of Recent Contributions to Fisheries Economies’, in Pearce, D.W. and Rose, A. (eds) The Economics of Natural Resource Depletion, Macmillan, London, 85–117. Christy, F.T. and Scott, A. (1965) The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md. Copes, P. (1970) ‘The Backward-Bending Supply Curve of the Fishing Industry’, Scott.J.Polit. Econ. 17, 69–77. ——(1972) ‘Factor Rents, Sole Ownership, and the Optimum Level of Fisheries Exploitation’, Manchester School 40, 145–63. Coull, J.R. (1972) The Fisheries of Europe. An Economic Geography, G. Bell, London. Cunningham, S., Dunn, M.R. and Whitmarsh, D. (1985) Fisheries Economics: an Introduction, Mansell, London. Firth, R. (1966) Malay Fishermen. Their Peasant Economy (2nd edn), Routledge, London. Gibbs, J.J.L. (1990) United Kingdom Multiplier Values for the Fishing Industry, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Seafish Industry Authority, Seafish Report 3003, Edinburgh. Gordon, H.S. (1954) ‘The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource’, J.Polit. Econ. 62, 124–42. Government of Japan (1980) The Sixth Fishery Census of Japan, 1978, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. ——(1991) The Eighth Fishery Census of Japan, 1988, Statistics and

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Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. Halapua, S. (1982) Fishermen of Tonga. Their Means of Survival, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji. Lawson, R. (1984) The Economics of Fisheries Development, Frances Pinter, London. OECD (1972) Review of Fisheries in O.E.C.D. Member Countries for 1972, OECD, Paris. ——(1991) Review of Fisheries in O.E.C.D. Member Countries for 1989, OECD, Paris. Ooi Jin-Bee (1963) Land, Economy and People in Malaya, Longman, London. Pearce, D.W. and Turner, R.K. (1990) Economics of Natural Resources and Environment, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London. Rice, R.C. (1991) ‘Environmental Degradation, Pollution, and the Exploitation of Indonesia’s Fishery Resources’, in Hardjono, J. (ed.) Indonesia:Resources, Ecology, and Environment, Oxford University Press, Singapore. Sabri, J. (1977) ‘Small-Scale Fisheries Development in Peninsular Malaysia— Problems and Prospects’, in Lockwood, B. and Ruddle, K. (eds) Small Scale Fisheries Development: Social Science Contribution, East-West Center, Honolulu. Torell, M. (1984) Fisheries in Thailand, Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg.

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As with all human activities, the patterns found in fisheries show the consequences of distance. Moreover, the fact that the speed of movement of fishing boats, like sea vessels generally, is much less than that of modern vehicles on land entails that the friction of distance is also considerably greater. Features of spatial organisation can be seen in fisheries at all scales from the local to the global. Naturally the local scale dominated in history, but for over 2,000 years it is known that parts of the trade in fish operated over distances which could extend to hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. In the course of time, in general terms a progressively greater part of the activity in fisheries has extended over long distances; and with the acceleration of economic development over the past century and more, spatial organisation has inevitably continued to increase in scope, and various features of activity such as the production of and trade in tuna, salmon and shrimp can now be seen as global. The simplest level of spatial organisation involves local catching for local consumers. Historically this was the case on many of the coasts of Europe, and could also apply on inland lakes and rivers; and it persists in much of the Third World. The idealised geometric pattern here is shown in Figure 5.1(a), where a series of coastal fishing stations or settlements each fishes in the adjacent water and distributes supplies in its own immediate hinterland. It generally involves the use of small open boats, traditionally powered by oars or paddles, although they might also use sail. There is still use of unpowered boats, especially in poorer Third World countries, although now they typically use small motors, and the distance range is up to a few miles. In the tropics they might well use the alternation of land and sea breezes to go offshore and to return. This type of pattern involving a high frequency of operating bases has been 84

Figure 5.1 Models of in-shore and off-shore fishing with market links: (i) local catching for local markets; (ii) local catching for export markets; (iii) catching at a range of distances for national markets (early Industrial Revolution), land transport dominated by rail; (iv) 200-mile limits and road transport (post 1970s)

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evident on the coasts of countries as widely separated as Britain and Japan. It has also been observed that in West Malaysia there are over 300 fishing villages on 1,200 miles of coast (Ooi Jin-Bee 1976:314, 319). and the number of landing centres involved in fishing in India has been put as high as 1,300 (FAO 1977:34) on a coast which measures about 3,200 miles. In the inter-war years Newfoundland had a total of 1,300 villages (Royal Commission Report on Newfoundland 1933:73) spread along 6,000 miles of an indented coast with offshore islands; and in the north-east of Scotland alone on a length of coast of 130 miles there were historically 65 settlements involved in fishing. In detail the locations of individual fishing settlements is related to the availability of suitable landing beaches or coves, but can also depend on the position of administrative boundaries; and in feudal societies there can be an obvious tendency for separate coastal estates to have at least one as part of the structure of an estate economy. Where there is a high density of population in the hinterland, as generally occurs in areas of arable cultivation, the counterpart of the separate catching zones of the different settlements is separate distribution hinterlands in the immediate vicinity of each settlement. To this day in many Third World situations much of the trade is in the hands of small traders who may handle as little as 10 kg per day (Lawson 1984:115). The traditional way of distributing fish was on foot, often by the women folk of the community; in the Third World use is still made of head loads, and historically in Europe the women might carry loads of 20 kg or more on their backs and cover return distances of over 20 km in a day. With the modern improvement of communications, there is of course more use of wheeled transport; and this includes the Third World, even if the wheeled vehicle may be a cycle or moped. While in most parts of the world the pattern of high-frequency coastal landing points is associated with a relatively densely populated hinterland in which to distribute the fish by sale or barter, this is not always so, and there are situations where settlements have grown up on coasts with good fishing opportunities, but where the land behind the coast has limited potential for farming and supports few people. This is prominently the case on opposite sides of the North Atlantic in Norway and on the eastern seaboard of Canada. In both of these cases an export trade in salt cod was established before the strong centralising tendencies of the modern age, and this type of spatial organisation is shown in diagram form in Figure 5.1(b). By the eighteenth century there was a similar pattern in the Shetland 86

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Islands in Scotland, where cod and ling were caught from a series of bases around the islands and cured for the export trade. A series of small settlements fishing largely for the export trade was also characteristic of the big herring fisheries in Sweden and Norway, and was also characteristic of that of Scotland until its later stages (Chapter 3). While such patterns of settlement present obvious difficulties for the provision of a full modern infrastructure, they are still an advantage for certain fisheries such as the very important lobster fishery of eastern Canada, which is still mainly operated by small boats at widely scattered bases; the great part of the catch is exported from the region to the USA and to interior Canada. In addition, for the internationally important trade in crustaceans, including shrimps and spiny lobster, from Third World countries to the markets in the richer lands, much of the catching is from many scattered settlements.

EXPANSION OF THE AREA EXPLOITED The beginnings of expansion of fishing operations outside local waters no doubt lie in unrecorded history, and appear to date back to at least classical times. On the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, the Medieval beginnings of long-range fisheries for cod are more certainly known, and this was followed in time by the Dutch pioneering of long-range operation in herring fisheries (Chapter 3). Although, in the cod fisheries especially, operation at ranges of 1,000 miles and more was well established before the modern age, it took the technology and organisation of industrialised societies for distant-water fisheries to become truly intensive and world-wide. Developments in ship construction, in techniques of fishing and in food preservation have combined to facilitate operation at greater ranges from base in the modern period. Particularly important was the innovation of engines aboard fishing boats from about 1880, when it was shown that the big increase in costs involved could be more than covered from greater returns. By the end of the nineteenth century this gave a new intensity to distant-water operations conducted from Britain, closely followed by Germany. By 1913 20.2 per cent of Britain’s supplies of fresh demersal fish were coming from Icelandic waters at a range of around 1,000 miles, and landings from the Barents Sea at a range of around 1,500 miles were already significant. Continued expansion of distant-water trawling saw a total of 61.2 per 87

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cent in 1938 come from Arctic grounds, which now included Spitzbergen at a distance of about 2,000 miles, and fishing at West Greenland at over 2,000 miles had begun. These greater distances represented the extreme threshold for wet fish trawlers from Western Europe; while fish could be got to market in an acceptable condition, the fact that it took up to a week to reach the farthest grounds, and the fact that trawlers counted on starting the voyage back to port not more than 19 days after starting fishing, created a situation in which the danger of an unprofitable trip rose significantly at these greater distances. While expansion of the distance range continued after the Second World War, it was accompanied by declining yields on the earlier worked Arctic grounds and an increasing dependence on factory-freezer trawlers, which froze the catch at sea and were not subject to the same time constraints on their trips as the wet fish trawlers. By 1964 the total catch from distant-water Arctic grounds had decreased from 388,000 tonnes in 1938 to 319,000 tonnes in 1964; but the proportion of British demersal landings from these grounds was now 71.2 per cent, and the grounds had extended to Newfoundland and Labrador (Jüngst 1968:45–52). The expansion of trawling from Britain into the remoter but rich grounds of the North Atlantic can be seen as the pioneering of the modern, more intensive form of resource exploitation in fisheries; but almost from the start Britain was not alone, and indeed all the seaboard nations of Western Europe followed in some degree. Also there was some expansion of distant-water halibut fisheries in the North Pacific from bases on the west coast of North America, and in the early twentieth century Japan accelerated its expansion into the north-west Pacific by introducing steam trawling. Japan and a number of other nations also expanded distant-water fishing during the inter-war period, and the area of intensive exploitation in the seas off East Asia was extended by the vigorous expansion by Japan from bases in Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan. The peak period for the extension of distant-water operation on the world plane was the decades of the 1950s and 1960s; and while a large number of nations were involved to a greater or lesser degree, the expansion programmes of the USSR and Japan dwarfed all others. The USSR had virtually no previous experience of fishing at long range, but as a result of high-level decisions embarked on a great planned expansion, on the basis that supplies of food protein could be expanded more quickly from the sea than from the land, in view ofthe 88

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difficulties in intensifying livestock husbandry with the severe winter climate over the great part of the country. In the early post-war period the main effort was directed to the reconstruction of former capacity, which depended on near-shore fisheries and inland waters, but it also included expansion into the Atlantic herring fisheries, and by 1955 there were 400 vessels in these fisheries and they caught 209,000 tonnes (Sulikowski 1978:255). In the 1950s high-level decisions were taken to increase investment greatly and to expand onto the world’s oceans. A vigorous programme of fleet building was undertaken and exploratory voyages to various grounds were quickly followed up by active fishing. The north-east Atlantic was already being exploited from the 1940s, and exploration off Newfoundland in 1954 was followed by fishing in 1956. Reconnaissance off Africa began in 1956, and there was largescale fishing by 1962. On the west side of the Atlantic, fleets were working off New England in 1961, and in the Gulf of Mexico in the following year. Development of the Pacific fisheries occurred slightly later, but they were pursued with parallel vigour. Operations started in the Gulf of Alaska in 1962 and expanded southwards, reaching California in 1967 (Sulikowski 1978:270–1). As a result, the average distance to fishing grounds increased from about 200 miles in 1950 to 1,655 miles in 1961, to 2,600 miles in 1964, and to over 4,000 miles in 1967. Included here was operation at distances of up to 8,000 miles from bases in the South Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans. One of the results of this was that there could be an interval of six months from the catching of the fish until its final consumption. Also, between 1961 and 1966 the catch from waters over 3,500 miles from home ports rose by 60 per cent against an increase of 6 per cent from inshore waters (Sulikowski 1978:175). The rate of the growth in catch in the 1960s was seen as a vindication of the policy of building a high seas fleet. The Seven Year Plan which began in 1958 set a target of 4.64 million tonnes to be reached in 1965; but the total catch in 1965 was 5.77 million tonnes, so that the target was exceeded by almost 25 per cent. Against this the national objective was to increase agricultural output by 70 per cent over the same time period, but the actual increase achieved was less than 15 per cent (Sulikowski 1978:271). Further expansion caused the Soviet catch by the later 1970s to exceed 10 million tonnes annually, and brought it into direct rivalry with Japan as the world’s leading fishing nation. To enable a fleet of ships to operate world-wide it is necessary to build a large number of support vessels: these include 89

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mother ships, floating factories, transports, fuel and water carriers, sea-going tugs, research and other ships. In 1975 the number of vessels of over 100 g.r.t. included 3,450 fishing boats and 857 support ships, and the biggest vessel ever built for fishing purposes, the Vostok. of 43,300 dead weight tonnage (d.w.t.), designed as a base ship for operation in the tropics and which carries 14 fishing boats, has a crew of 594 and can carry 28,000 tonnes of fish and fish products (Sulikowski 1978:159, 169). Despite the planned expansion there have been serious bottle-necks and inefficiencies in the Soviet fishing organisation. Port, maintenance and repair facilities have been inadequate, and development of the cold chains on land to deliver the products to the consumer have not kept pace with catching capacity. In 1970 the refrigeration capacity for fish afloat at 30,520 tonnes was actually well over five times the capacity on land. On the other hand, a fish canning industry had been developed far in advance of that of any other country, and of the capacity of 2,189 million standard cans per year which had been reached in 1970 almost one-half was in floating canneries (Solecki 1979:110). In Japan the post-war loss of the overseas territories virtually halved the national fish catch, and the development programme subsequently undertaken included both intensification of fisheries in nearer waters and an increase in fishing space by a programme of expanding fishing effort at long range, not only throughout the North and South Pacific but also extending into the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. While Japanese fisheries ventures are essentially conducted on the basis of private enterprise, and distant-water operations are the sphere of big companies like the Tayio group, government sponsorship and guidance has been exercised under the Japanese Fisheries Agency (JFA). Japanese distantwater fisheries have made considerable use of mother ships, as well as some use of bases in other countries. Mother factory ships played a big part in the ocean fisheries for tuna, salmon and crab, and a fleet of big factory trawlers was built mainly for demersal fisheries in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific. It also proved feasible to operate factory ships for low-value fish meal to provide feed for fish farming and for stock farming on land; this type of operation has never been seriously considered in Europe or North America. While factory ships have the great advantage of being able to receive newly caught fish in the best of condition on the fishing grounds, the capital and running costs of processing are inevitably much higher at sea than on land. However, in the market and cost structures in Japan, there is much less competition 90

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for fish from the products of livestock farming than in Western Europe, and market opportunity allied to the economies of scale from largescale operation justified the fleet operations in Japan. Despite the achievements of Japan in exploiting the world’s oceans, it has never come to depend on distant-water fisheries on the scale of the USSR. In 1978 63 percent of the catch by value was still obtained within 200 miles of the country’s own coast, with 26 per cent within 200 miles of the coasts of other nations and 11 per cent from waters at greater distances from land (Government of Japan 1980:32). Inevitably both the USSR and Japan have had to face additional logistic problems in operating on a large scale at long range, as vessels may be absent from port for well over a year at a time. As well as giving crews shore leave in foreign ports, it can also involve the flying out of replacement crews for boats on long trips, especially by the Japanese. Various other nations expanded their distant-water fisheries in the period between 1950 and the mid-1970s. In Eastern Europe both Poland and the former East Germany developed fleets to operate in the North Atlantic and beyond, and like the USSR started with virtually no previous experience. Spain had a big programme of expansion and penetrated into the South Atlantic, as well as exploiting other parts of the same ocean. High-value species were the incentive in the USA for the expansion of tuna fishing throughout the eastern Pacific, and of shrimping off the coasts of Latin American countries in the Caribbean. Several Asian countries other than Japan have prominently expanded their distant-water fishing. South Korea’s emergence as one of the new industrial countries has been accompanied by the growth of fishing throughout the Pacific to help improve the food protein content of the diet; and in Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia the yield of large-scale fisheries now dwarfs that of the small-scale fisheries (Torell 1984:81). Thailand in particular developed a separate sector of large-scale fisheries from 1960, and by 1976 had expanded its catch fully nine times in 16 years to a total of 1.64 million tonnes (Torell 1984:86); growth tailed off afterwards because of increasing restrictions caused by other nations in the south-east Asian region extending their fishing limits. In 1980 Thailand had a fleet of 173 vessels of over 30m (Torell 1984:84) and no other nations in the region had any fishing boats of this size class. The tendency in the last two decades has been to intensify fishing for previously under-utilised species in areas already exploited, 91

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rather than to extend the area fished. Of the areas still unused or under-used, the main remaining area is the southern ocean. Here the conditions are particularly stormy, but more important is the great distances from markets, which effectively greatly increase the cost of operation. Big vessels from the former USSR have exploited southern species like notothenids, and have experimented with catching the great quantities of krill which are now under-used with the severe depletion of the Antarctic whales; it is difficult, however, to process krill into a form acceptable on the market. More important have been fisheries on the margins of the southern ocean, especially for squid in locations around the Falkland Islands and New Zealand, for example.

CENTRALISATION OF OPERATION: THE EMERGENCE OF MAIN PORTS Where fishing has been conducted from large boats, there has always been a tendency for this to be focused at fewer, bigger ports. The most important factor here is the availability of a harbour to shelter vessels too big to be regularly pulled up onto a beach; and bigger ports are better equipped for the provision of ships’ stores and equipment, and indeed for access to capital and services generally. In earlier times only a small number of towns were engaged in fitting out the busses for the Dutch North Sea herring fishery, and in Western Europe relatively few ports were involved in the distant-water cod fisheries. In the industrial age the gathering momentum of the forces of centralisation are well known; and they have inevitably influenced the spatial patterns in fisheries along with other activities. The factors which here fostered centralisation of operation at bigger ports included the increasing size of boats together with the improvement of harbours, giving improved shelter and often access at all states of the tide. Harbour works have always been costly and could only be undertaken at a restricted number of selected points; rarely has it been possible to fund them from the levels of port dues that fishing boats could realistically pay and they have often been provided as public works. Specialised maintenance facilities, including slipways and dry docks, also became necessary. The requirements of fishing boats have also multiplied and become more complex. From the 1880s in selected

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locations they included coaling and marine engineering facilities, and later the provision of bunker oil. Trawling necessitated the provision of special gear, and by the 1890s ice had also become a requirement especially for middle- and distant-water operation. The development of a range of further equipment in the last few decades, including hydraulic transmissions and gear and echo-sounding and navigational equipment, have all added to the specialised services that can only be provided at a minority of selected ports. Another specialised function, which was established especially at the main ports of Western Europe, was that of auction markets; and as well as these being set up at relatively few points, the larger ports attracted more merchants and thus had more competition to drive up and maintain prices. Auction markets became established at only a few main ports in North America, but became common in Japan. The manner on which landings tend to become concentrated at main ports is shown schematically in Figure 5.1(c). Landing points in the vicinity of main ports especially become disadvantaged, and generally go out of use. In many places there has been resistance from small operators to the bigger boats operating from main ports; and these big boats have often attracted investment capital and been run by companies with a different pattern of ownership from the small craft, in which it is more common for the fishermen to have at least a share themselves. Such conflicts between big and small operators have in some cases delayed or constrained the deployment of more efficient catching methods, notably in north Norway and Atlantic Canada among developed countries. Such differences between operators using traditional gear and those employing more modern methods are also familiar now in the Third World. Despite this, however, the main thrust of development has inevitably been in favour of the more efficient methods which increase catches and revenue. The concentration of landings at selected ports in the earlier part of the industrial age is probably best instanced in the demersal fisheries in Western Europe, and is especially well shown in Britain, which led the way in the development of trawling in its modern form. While the earliest stages of development cannot be precisely illustrated as the collection of comprehensive statistics did not begin until the process was well under way, the situation becomes clear from 1884 in Scotland and from 1903 in England (Figure 5.2). In Britain Hull and Grimsby rapidly came to the fore as leading trawl ports, and along with the other main trawl ports of Fleetwood, Milford Haven, 93

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Lowestoft, North Shields and Aberdeen very much came to dominate national supplies of demersal fish. In England, already in 1903 over 70 per cent of all demersal landings were made at the six main trawl ports, with the two Humber ports of Hull and Grimsby alone accounting for over 56 per cent. The continued expansion of distantwater trawling in the inter-war period saw the percentage of demersal landings concentrated at the six trawl ports reach the remarkable

Figure 5.2 Centralisation of landings on British trawl ports, followed by decentralisation: (a) English demersal landings, 1903–89; (b) Scottish demersal landings, 1884–1989 Sources: Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables and Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables

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figure of 94 per cent, the two Humber ports alone having 76 per cent. In Scotland the trend can be distinguished virtually from the beginning, as trawl landings were limited before the start of steam trawling from the port of Aberdeen in 1882. Although the situation was somewhat distorted by the First World War, Aberdeen had well over 60 per cent of all demersal landings in Scotland by 1920, and it continued to dominate Scottish landings until the readjustments of the 1970s. In the case of the herring fisheries in Britain unit values of landings were about half those for demersal fish, but they dominated total catches by tonnage; here too a pronounced pattern of centralisation developed in the landings, although these fisheries differ from their demersal counterparts in important respects. Distances from fishing grounds to landing points were in general less, and catching was always in the waters around Britain; also, as a fatty fish more liable to spoil it had to be landed soon after catching. Even so the bulk caught could be better handled at specialised ports, and with the additional spur of the auction system of selling, which became general from the 1880s, main ports emerged which included Lerwick, Wick, Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Stornoway and Castlebay in Scotland and Yarmouth and Lowestoft in England. Similar centralising trends can be seen in the landings in other countries in Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The trawl ports of Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven came to dominate landings in Germany, although with the restricted length of North Sea coast there were much fewer small landing points to be adversely affected. Although not much associated with trawling at this time, a similar pattern of concentration occurred at Esbjerg in Denmark and at Göteborg in Sweden. If concentration at main ports was slower and less complete in Mediterranean Europe, and to a lesser extent in France, the focusing of capital-intensive operation at selected points has also seen the emergence of major ports. Vigo in Spain was to become one of the biggest landing points in Europe as a whole; in France Boulogne, Lorient and Concarneau became major ports; and in Portugal the concentration of trawling operations at Lisbon and Oporto helped make them the leading ports. On the western seaboard of the former USSR, major fishing ports did not emerge until after the Second World War, but then the ice-free port of Murmansk came to the fore as a major fishing port on any world ranking and the main Atlantic base for the great fleet of Soviet distant-water vessels. On the Pacific coast of the USSR the ports of Vladivostok and Nahodka are also of major 95

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status. Similarly in Poland and the former East Germany, the development of substantial distant-water fleets after the Second World War was associated with the development of major ports at Gdynia, Swinoujscie and Rostock. While the fishing industry has in the modern period been influenced, like very many fields of activity, by the forces of centralisation, they have not been in the world view as pervasive as in many things. If a comparison is made with freight shipping, fishing now features much less at major ports. Freight shipping is dominated by great specialised terminals which handle oil, bulk and container cargoes. Fish landings are largely made at other ports of lesser status, as measured in tonnage or value of cargo. This is related to the volume and value of goods handled being much less in fishing, and to individual catches being relatively small, so that practices like containerisation and the use of conveyors are rarely justified; it is also related to the importance of fish being much less in nearly all economies. In recent decades too the use of motor transport has allowed smaller ports to be able to provide at least some of the services which modern vessels require. While centralisation of operation has in some areas and some fisheries made a big impact as already discussed, even in advanced countries considerable parts of the operations are conducted from small dispersed ports and landing points. While, especially in the Third World, there is now a visible tendency for a greater proportion of the landings to concentrate at selected points, the rise of the more flexible medium of road motor transport from the inter-war period has aided the survival of smaller ports and has indeed in not a few cases allowed considerable dispersal. This, added to the enforced contraction of distant-water trawling after the extension of fishing limits around the North Atlantic, has led to the demise of Hull and Grimsby as dominant ports in England, while in Scotland a number of ports have successfully challenged the former dominance of Aberdeen, and Peterhead is now the leading port in demersal landings but without the degree of dominance formerly enjoyed by Aberdeen (Figure 5.2). In North America a surprising proportion of fishing is still conducted from many scattered landing points. In the USA fishing has continued to operate from a large number of bases and many of the landings do not go through auction markets; but prominent big ports have also emerged, including Boston, Gloucester and Portland in New England and San Pedro and Seattle on the west coast. In Canada 96

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operation from many scattered points is still the norm, especially on the Atlantic coast: on this coast it was recognised in 1982 that spread out along a total coast length of 28,000 miles there were a total of over 1,300 settlements for which fishing was important (Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries 1982:7, 12). The situation on the long Norwegian coast is essentially similar. In Iceland and the Faroe Islands the proportion of the landings made by bigger boats is greater, and although the pattern of landings does not show the great dispersal of Norway and Eastern Canada, concentration has been limited. However, in all four of these cases, social and political factors favouring the continuation of processing employment in scattered villages has combined with the very restricted development of auctions to maintain a dispersed pattern of landings. In Japan also a dispersed pattern of operation has survived to a notable degree, although a definite measure of centralisation is apparent. With the continued operation of very big inshore fisheries there were 3,629 recognised fishing ports in 1978, (Government of Japan 1980:104) and in 1983 the number was 3,697 (Government of Japan 1986:92); in the five year period between these years the number of fish markets only decreased marginally from 1,111 to 1,086. In both years the number of recognised large ports which received landings from boats from all over the country was 109. Twenty of them were recognised as of special importance in 1988 (Government of Japan 1991: inside cover). As a general rule the best and most continuous data relating to fishing are for landings; and for many countries there are considerable data for landings at particular ports. It is common for there to be a hierarchy of fishing ports in different countries, although port hierarchies are less strongly developed than in maritime trade; moreover, the marked hierarchical structures which developed during the railway age in the Industrial Revolution have become less marked with the curtailing of distant-water fishing and the development of road transport on land. The situation in fishing port hierarchies is probably clearest in Europe and the former USSR, and has recently been mapped by Chaussade and Corlay (1990:60–98, 118–38). In France, Boulogne, Lorient and Concarneau are still the main ports, although in recent times Boulogne has maintained its leading position by being the main reception point for imports; the three main ports account for about 22 per cent of landings by tonnage and about 21 per cent by value. At Boulogne in 1988 the total tonnage was 75,000 and the value 600 97

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million francs; and beyond the three main ports there were 24 other ports at which the value of landings reached at least 2,000 tonnes, corresponding to 30 million francs in value. In Spain, which lands more fish for human consumption than any other European country, the major ports of Vigo, Eugenia Riveira and La Coruña all land well over 100,000 tonnes per year, but none accounts for more than 10 per cent of the national catch of over 1.3 million tonnes annually, and there are a total of 60 ports on mainland Spain which land at least 3,000 tonnes a year, along with five in the Canary Islands and one at Palma on Majorca. On the Mediterranean coast there is still a remarkably even spread of small ports, none of which land more than 30,000 tonnes. On the other hand in the north-west province of Galicia alone there are a total of 20 significant ports, and they include seven of the biggest 12 in landed tonnage, including the three major ports. There are also three main ports in the Canaries: these stand next in rank to the large ports in Galicia, and their status also reflects the fishing opportunities of the open ocean, although marketing from them is necessarily more costly. In Portugal there has been some evening out of the port hierarchy, and none of the 15 main ports lands more than about 15 per cent of the national total of around 400,000 tonnes; moreover, Aveiro has come to the fore as the leading port, being ahead of Oporto and Lisbon. In the UK in the last two decades there has been a basic readjustment of the port hierarchy. Formerly, in the situation in fisheries as a whole, Britain was dominated by the Humber trawl ports of Hull and Grimsby, but the severe run-down of distant-water trawling has seen these along with the other old trawl ports sink to minor or subordinate positions in the hierarchy, while the great bulk of landings are now made at ports in Scotland (Figure 5.3). Of a total of 41 ports at which the value of landings exceeded £1 million in 1989, 28 were in Scotland. The position of ports in the hierarchy is much affected not only by the total volume of landings but also by the composition of landings as between shell, demersal and pelagic species. Shellfish are now in general two or three times as valuable as demersal fish on the British market, and demersal species five or ten times as valuable as pelagic species. Demersal fish and shellfish both have a degree of importance at nearly all ports, but pelagic landings are now of significance at only a handful of places. Since the rundown of distant-water fishing, landings are now in general made nearer to the catching grounds, while markets are reached by the

98

Figure 5.3 Fishing port hierarchy in Britain, 1989 Sources: Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables and Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables

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more flexible medium of road transport. The leading single port of Peterhead in north-east Scotland now accounts for around 17 per cent of British landings by both tonnage and value. The main modern pelagic ports of Lerwick (Shetland) and Ullapool in the north-west both account for well over 10 per cent of landings by tonnage, but with the low values of the herring and mackerel now, their proportion of the total value of landings is only 3–4 per cent. Apart from Aberdeen with 7–8 per cent by tonnage and value, all other ports in the system have regularly low single figure percentages by both tonnage and value: there has thus been a substantial evening out of the hierarchy. There have also been modern readjustments in other countries in Western Europe. In Sweden, the pre-eminent position of Göteborg is now challenged by Smögen to the north; in Denmark, Esbjerg now has a secondary role to the North Jutland ports of Skagen and Hirtshals; and in Germany, although the old trawl ports of Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven are still first in the list, their landings are only a fraction of the levels which preceded the general extension of national fishing limits. Ireland is an unusual case where what was a minor fishing nation has been able to use its peripheral position in Europe in the last two decades to increase its catch markedly. The main pelagic port of Killybegs in the north-west has become very dominant in landed tonnage; and as it is significant also in demersal and shellfish landings its proportion of the national total in both tonnage and value approaches 20 per cent. Killybegs, however, is now an isolated example of a large port, as the remainder of the landings are relatively evenly spread over 29 other ports distributed around the whole coast. In the USSR planned expansion has helped focus landings at relatively few major ports in this vast country, although there are naturally almost no ports of consequence on the thousands of miles of Arctic shore. There are 39 main ports, most of which land over 100,000 tonnes yearly. The leading ports are on the Atlantic and open Pacific coasts: Murmansk and Vladivostok-Nahodka both land over one million tonnes annually, while Kaliningrad on the Baltic and Petrapavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Pacific both account for over 500,000 tonnes a year. The importance of fishing in the economy of the far east of the USSR is shown by there being 17 main ports on the Pacific coast; there are five in the north-west, five on the Baltic and six on both the Black and Caspian Seas. There is a tendency in the developed world for landings of demersal and pelagic species to concentrate at relatively few ports, although 100

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some shell fisheries, especially those for lobster, can still be more efficiently conducted by small boats dispersed among many lesser landing places. In the Third World there is now a tendency for limited numbers of bigger ports to emerge, as they did at an earlier stage in the developed world; and this is related to the increasing proportion of their fishing effort being conducted with larger boats as they try to modernise their fisheries. While detail of developments in fishing ports is scarce for the Third World, it is at least possible to illustrate the trends which have accompanied the efforts to develop large-scale fisheries. In Thailand 22 main ports have been identified from which modern large-scale fisheries are now conducted substantially separate from the traditional small operators (Torrell 1984:82). The spectacular growth in the anchovy fishery for fish meal in Peru from the late 1950s to the early 1970s saw the overwhelming concentration of the nation’s landed tonnage at 22 ports spread along a coast of over 2,000 km (Coull 1974:325), and at the peak the annual landings at the leading port of Chimbote were about 3 million tonnes per year, making it the world’s foremost port in tonnage of landings. A measure of centralisation of operation is also frequently part of development planning for modernisation in Third World countries, with the construction of ports and accompanying facilities like ice plants, markets, processing plants and slipways at chosen locations. Thus five such complexes have been developed in West Malaysia (Ooi Jin-Bee 1976:321), and four major and 70 smaller harbours are being built in India (FAO 1977:9).

DEVELOPMENTS IN OVERLAND DISTRIBUTION Important changes in the pattern of distribution to market accompany the concentration of landings at main ports. Previous to the midnineteenth century, any sea fish that reached inland destinations for consumption in a fresh state could only do so as a luxury item: transport by special fast coach or alive in tanks of sea water was necessary. The spread of the railway network was to be revolutionary here and it made its early impact in Britain and other parts of Western Europe, much of which was brought within a day’s range of coastal ports. In some cases the opportunities presented by the fish trade were an important part of the stimulus for railway construction. The port of Grimsby in particular was largely a creation of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire 101

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Railway Company. The characteristic pattern which arose is shown diagrammatically in Figure 5. l(c). For distribution, the main ports were connected by rail to wholesale markets established in major inland centres in cities such as Manchester, Paris and Berlin; and these became secondary distribution centres from which retail outlets were reached by both rail and road. In smaller countries in Western Europe, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, the restricted distances fostered a situation whereby all parts of the country could be reached directly by coastal wholesalers. In Spain, inland wholesale markets emerged at cities like Madrid and Zaragoza which were supplied by main ports like Vigo on the Atlantic coast; and in Italy inland wholesale centres grew, although these were supplied from a series of coastal landing points (Coull 1972:211–12). The patterns of distribution which have developed in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and which have mainly grown since the Second World War, also depend mainly on the railway network for transport from the ports to main inland distribution centres, but as these were established under a command economy there were no coastal or inland auctions. Although this dispensed with the market discipline which has been an essential feature elsewhere, it did suit better a pattern of organisation which involved a great deal of freezing at sea, and in which breaking the freezer chain to expose fish for market inspection would have been undesirable on grounds of health as well as convenience.

LATER CHANGES IN THE SPATIAL PATTERNS The patterns which were established in fish catching and delivery to market during the Industrial Revolution have seen further adjustments during the past two or three decades on both land and sea. At sea, the upheavals of the 1970s in the International Law of the Sea were accompanied by the removal of the former international freedom of fishing on most of the fishing grounds of the world, because of their inclusion within the new national 200-mile limits; and on land the accelerating growth of the more flexible medium of road transport increasingly challenged the former dominance of the railway. These changes are shown schematically in Figure 5.1(d). The extensions of limits inevitably resulted in many nations exploiting more intensively the resources within their own 200-mile limits, although relatively few developed countries had much spare 102

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capacity there. Other adjustments were made, including cut-backs in national fishing effort and landings and agreements to fish within the 200-mile zones of countries which had resources beyond their own needs or capacity to use. Another consequence has been a proliferation of international joint ventures, by which nations with spare fishing capacity have entered into arrangements to operate in the zones of other (usually Third World) nations: from the point of view of the developed nation this allows access to extra resources, and from that of the host country it is designed to promote development by the transfer of technology and expertise. This also focuses on the need of developing countries to expand fishing capacity, while the main requirement for most developed countries has been to restrain effort. While in the debates which led to the extensions of national fishing limits much was made of the advantages of having management and decision making under a single national authority, as opposed to an essentially slower-moving multi-national organisation, the improvements envisaged for resource conservation and other purposes have been in general slow to come. Although the response time in decision making has been cut, open entry has often persisted within national fishing limits, and frequently systems of allocation within national fleets have been inadequate. In addition, scientific knowledge on which to base management decisions can be inadequate even in developed countries, and in Third World situations is often at best rudimentary. A problem that is increasing is that of funding the necessary scientific monitoring and research. It is inevitably costly, and with the general tendency to cut public expenditure in recent years, what can be seen as a subsidy to an industry which is often very small in relation to total national economies becomes controversial, and the full range of data desired by the scientists is seldom gathered. Evaluation of the benefits of extended fisheries jurisdiction can also be complicated not only by the inevitable natural fluctuations in fish stocks, but by wider economic and social developments which accompany major political changes, such as decolonisation. The consequences of extended fisheries jurisdiction have of course varied in different ocean regions. It is generally agreed that in the North Atlantic management has been improved in Canada and in Iceland, and that the conservation programmes in these countries have resulted in significant rebuilding of depleted stocks. In the USA the economic improvement which followed the limits extension was brief, and the deterioration which ensued was due both to the limited resources 103

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committed to management and to the reluctance to place any restraint on open entry. There has also been no satisfactory arrangement between the USA and Canada for the management of the ‘straddling’ stocks on their common ocean border. In addition, Canada has been adversely affected by the poor measure of success in working out with NAFO an arrangement for managing the straddling stocks on the outer margin of its Atlantic zone, which is one of the few places in the world where the continental shelf extends out beyond 200 miles. In the north-east Atlantic the situation for demersal fisheries has continued to deteriorate in Norway and in the European Community (EC), and the EC especially has suffered from over-investment in fleets, which management measures have been slow to address. However, the management of most of the main pelagic stocks has improved, although their economic importance is considerably less than that of the demersal. In the north-east Pacific, extended fisheries jurisdiction resulted in a substantial effective transfer of resources from Japan, the USSR and other countries with distant-water fleets to the USA and Canada, although readjustments in patterns of catching and processing have been complicated, and of debatable efficiency. The USA, because of the extent of productive shelf in the Gulf of Alaska, has been the major beneficiary in resources, but was slow to capitalise on them; it was found initially that the costs of capital and labour in the USA were too high, and the market within the country for several of the main species too restricted for the fisheries to be profitable. While US catches of groundfish have subsequently improved and the gap between US and other countries’ costs has been reduced, there has been a continuing problem in the processing sector, and a main outlet is still the factory ships of Japan and the USSR, although the USA now shares the catching with countries which pay for access to its zone. In the southern and eastern parts of the Pacific there have been continuing problems of access to resources, especially for the important and highly migratory tuna species. The USA and Japan, with established tuna fisheries that range widely in the ocean, have been reluctant to concede that for this species other states should have exclusive jurisdiction within their 200-mile limits, and this has brought conflict with the emerging countries of Latin America and with the new island nations of the southern Pacific; and for the latter fish are one of the few resources they have available. In several of the Latin American countries US tuna vessels have been arrested for fishing without licences in their waters, while the USA has embargoed tuna imports 104

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from several of these states (Joseph 1989:224). In the South Pacific the new island states have been faced with a situation in which they have jurisdiction over areas of sea which are huge relative to their land areas, in which most of the fishing is still done by distant-water fleets and for which the resources available to the island nations for surveillance are severely limited (Clark 1989). In recent decades the patterns of distribution which developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the railway was the dominant medium of overland transport have been in varying degrees displaced by the growth of road haulage. While the railway is still the main medium in the former USSR and to a considerable extent in Eastern Europe, in other industrialised countries it has largely been displaced by road. Modern highway systems ensure that the time of delivery by road generally compares favourably with that by freight train, and road has also the additional convenience of door to door delivery. This makes the capacity of rail to move bigger loads of minor importance in the case of the fish trade, although movement of container loads is not unknown. The trend in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s was for the established inland wholesale markets to be increasingly supplied by road rather than rail, although rail transport survived longer over the greater distances. In the UK, for example, the fish from Aberdeen to the London market of Billingsgate were still conveyed by rail after all other trawl ports had turned to road, and when Aberdeen itself distributed its fish within Scotland and to northern England by road.

REFERENCES Chaussade, J. and Corlay, J.-P. (1990) Atlas des Pêches et des Cultures Marines. France, Europe, Monde, Quest-France, Rennes. Clark, L. (1989) ‘Trends and Implications of Extended Coastal StateSovereign Rights for the Management and Development of Fisheries: the West Central and Southwest Pacific’, in Miles, E.L. (ed.) Management of World Fisheries: Implications of Extended Coastal State Jurisdiction, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Coull, J.R. (1972) The Fisheries of Europe. An Economic Geography, G. Bell, London. ——(1974) ‘The Development of the Fishing Industry in Peru’, Geography 59, 322–32. FAO (1977) General Description of Marine Small Scale Fisheries. India RAS/ 74/031, Working Paper No.2 (Rev.l). Government of Japan (1980) Sixth Fishery Census of Japan, 1978, Statistics and

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Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. ——(1986) Seventh Fishery Census of Japan, 1983, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. ——(1991) Fisheries Statistics of Japan 1988, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. Joseph, J. (1989) ‘Current Status of the Tuna Fishery in the Eastern Pacific Ocean with Regard to Management’, in Miles, E.L. (ed.) Management of World Fisheries: Implications of Extended Coastal State Jurisdiction, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Jüngst, P. (1968) Die Grundfischversorgung Grossbritanniens. Häfen, Verarbeitung und Vermarktung, Marburger Geographische Schriften,Heft 35, Selbstverlag des Geographischen Institutes der Universität Marburg, Marburg. Ooi Jin-Bee (1976) Peninsular Malaysia, Longman, London. Royal Commission Report on Newfoundland (1933), HMSO, London. Lawson, R.M. (1984) Economics of Fisheries Development, Frances Pinter, London. Solecki, J.J. (1979) ‘A Review of the USSR Fishing Industry’, Ocean Management 5, 97–123. Sulikowski, T. (1978) Soviet Management of Ocean Affairs: the Case of the Fishing Industry, Ph.D. Thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries (1982) Navigating Troubled Waters. A New Policy for the Atlantic Fisheries (Kirby Report), Canadian Government Publishing Centre, Ottawa. Torell, M. (1984) Fisheries in Thailand, Kulturgeografiska Institutionen, Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg.

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6 TRENDS IN PRODUCTION IN OCEANS, CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES

It was well into the present century before any real attempt was made to estimate world catch, and only since the Second World War has there been an organised and comprehensive data base for it in the collected and published statistics of the FAO, although even these rely on estimates to a significant degree. Kustov has estimated a total figure for the global catch of between 1.5 and 2 million tonnes for 1850, 4 million tonnes for 1900 and 9.5 million tonnes for 1913 (Kustov 1968:7); and such figures must be broadly in accord with the accelerating rate of exploitation from the latter part of last century, with the advances made in fishing methods, the advent of power-driven vessels and the expansion of markets. The FAO’s figure of 22 million tonnes for 1938 is more firmly based; and following the inevitable drop in catch during the Second World War the most vigorous growth phase ever was in the two decades from 1950 to 1970. In this period catching methods advanced at an unprecedented rate and were deployed over rapidly expanding areas; and by 1970 the total catch had reached 70 million tonnes. Thereafter the increase tapered off sharply, mainly owing to the decrease in yield from the more intensively exploited grounds. Following some fluctuations, a more gradual upward trend was resumed in the late 1970s, and in 1989 the total global catch was over 99.5 million tonnes; even so, it is clear that production is approaching a global ceiling, at least by conventional fishing methods. While there is still some scope in some parts of the world for widening the range of species caught and the areas exploited, this is mainly in remoter parts of the oceans, and especially the southern ocean. The extra costs of operating at very long range and in frequently stormy conditions are likely to limit the yield here, even with increasing pressure on stocks elsewhere. 107

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World catch distribution is related to the locations of the richest resources; and while there is a tendency for catches to be landed on the coasts nearest to fishing grounds, they can also be landed at various distances, and these can extend up to thousands of miles in the case of distant-water fisheries. The pattern of fishing activity is also related to the locations of markets, and although it is difficult to set particular distance thresholds, in general it is only the more valuable species which can be exploited at long range. It is noteworthy that over threequarters of the world catch comes from the northern hemisphere, and this reflects more the locations of the main concentrations of population than greater availability of resources. The trends in catch from the main ocean areas recognised by FAO are shown in Figure 6.1. While the full detail of the picture has only become evident from the mid-1960s, it is clear that the Pacific in modern times has become the dominant source of the world’s fish, and now accounts for about half the total supply on its own. The most productive area of the 19 ocean areas recognised by FAO is that of

Figure 6.1 Trends in production by oceans, 1938–89 Source: FAO, Fisheries Yearbook 108

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the north-west Pacific, which itself yields over one-quarter of the global catch; the catch in this ocean area now exceeds 25 million tonnes annually. It has been increasingly exploited by the two main sea-fishing nations of Japan and the USSR; and after spectacular increases in the decades after the Second World War, its yield is tending to stabilise. The expansion in the yield of the south-east Pacific has mainly been achieved through the development of largescale fisheries in Peru and Chile for the production of fish meal. After vying with the north-west Pacific in tonnage of catch in the 1960s, this region had a catastrophic decline in the 1970s with the great decline in the Peruvian anchovy fishery, which had become by far the greatest single fishery in the world. However, there has been renewed growth in the yield from this area since 1980, and with over 13 million tonnes annually it is now again second in tonnage of production to the north-west Pacific and produces a greater variety of species. Earlier in this century, the leading area in production was the northeast Atlantic: this area developed first as it was the area adjacent to the first countries to industrialise, and while the catch still exceeds 10 million tonnes annually there has been an overall decline since the mid-1980s, due to over-fishing. The north-west Atlantic also has been intensively exploited for most of the present century, but has a lesser range of commercial species; production built up to over 3.5 million tonnes in the early 1970s, but subsequently fell below 3 million tonnes because of over-fishing; it has since recovered to over 3 million tonnes. Meanwhile the rise in catch of the north-east Pacific in the 1980s has seen it surpass the north-west Atlantic in its yield, and its catch is now well over 3 million tonnes; and the catch in the East Central Atlantic has risen to be of the same order of magnitude. The regular reporting of statistics from China since the mid-1970s has removed a considerable source of uncertainty and inaccuracy for the catch from the West Central Pacific, and its annual yield is now over 6.5 million tonnes; it is now fourth in order of production of the world’s ocean areas and stands next after the north-west Pacific, the south-east Pacific and the north-east Atlantic. Other than the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, from which the yield of fish is still minor, the other recognised ocean divisions generally each give total catches of between 2 and 3 million tonnes annually, as does the area of the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the one exception is the south-west Pacific, where a limited resource base, allied to long distances from main markets, has so far limited the total yield to under 1 million tonnes. However, the modern problems of pollution are particularly 109

Figure 6.2 Average annual catch in main ocean regions, 1985–9 Source: FAO. Fisheries Yearbook

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severe in the Mediterranean and Black Seas with their restricted water circulation, and the catch trend in this area is now downward. The distribution of average annual catch for the period from 1985 to 1989 in the 19 ocean areas recognised by FAO is shown in Figure 6.2.

TRENDS IN THE CONTINENTS Among the continents of the world, the outstanding feature is the dominant position of Asia (Figure 6.3). Because of the great expansion of Japanese fisheries, Asia had already overtaken Europe as the leading continent in the inter-war period, and by 1938 accounted for over 40 per cent of the global total. It has fully maintained this proportion during the big expansion that has occurred since the Second World War: in 1989 its total catch exceeded 44 million tonnes. While the European catch did grow for three decades after the Second World War, it was at a fairly slow rate, and since the mid-

Figure 6.3 Trends in production by continents, 1938–89 Source: FAO. Fisheries Yearbook 111

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1970s it has actually declined somewhat; the share of the world total went down from about 35 per cent in 1950 to about 16 per cent in 1989. Meanwhile the South American catch has risen on a spectacular scale, although with fluctuations: it has expanded more than 20 times since 1948 and in 1989 it approached 17 million tonnes, which was over 20 per cent of the global total and put it in second place ahead of Europe. Even so, with the very high proportion which went to low-value reduction outlets, it was still far behind Europe in value. Overall expansion in North America has been modest, and like Europe there has been little change over the past 15 years. If growth in Africa has been less spectacular than in Asia and South America, the catch has still increased about five times in the post-war period. The USSR, which ranks among the continents for FAO purposes, has also had a marked growth in its fisheries since the Second World War, having expanded its catch upwards of ten times. Growth in Oceania has been fairly modest, partly because of a still limited population, but also because much of the fish of the region has been caught by distant-water vessels based outside the area. With the increasing restraints placed on distant-water operation, and the vital importance of the fisheries to the economies of many of the new island nations, it is certain that the catch of Oceania will rise in the future.

TRENDS IN THE WORLD’S NATIONS There have been far-reaching changes in recent decades in the relative importance of the fishing nations. Before the First World War, the UK as the world’s first industrial nation reached a catch of 1.3 million tonnes and was far in advance of any other country in landed tonnage. However, subsequent decline of the UK and the vigorous inter-war development in Japan saw it eclipse all other nations by 1938, when it landed upwards of one-third of the global catch of 22 million tonnes by itself. Even so the main concentration of leading fishing nations in the inter-war period continued to be around the North Atlantic, and these included the earlier industrialised countries like the USA, Canada, Germany and Norway. In general terms most of the earlier leading nations have had limited increases in catch since the Second World War, and not a few of them have declined. While in the North Atlantic area Denmark and Iceland have come to the fore as major fishing countries, most of the improvements in performance have been elsewhere. As well as the great 112

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increase in the USSR and latterly in China to catch levels of over 10 million tonnes annually, at which they challenge Japan, there was also the temporary advance to the position of leading nation in landed tonnage of Peru about 1970 when the anchovy fishery for reduction was at its peak. In recent years about one-half of the leading 20 places in the world order, in which the nations catching 1 million tonnes or more annually are listed, have been taken by countries not recognised as developed, although they include several of the new industrial nations. The appearance of populous nations like China, India and Indonesia in this leading group is due in the main to the big aggregate production of numerous small operators; but also included are Peru and Chile, South and North Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Mexico, where the expansion is more due to the grafting of a modern fisheries sector onto the traditional industry. It appears clear that for conventional fisheries the main period of expansion is already past, and that what is now occurring is in the nature of consolidation. It is also evident that programmes of conservation of the resource base still require considerable extension and refinement.

TRENDS IN THE YIELD FROM INLAND WATERS Inland waters are for the great part the fresh waters in lakes and streams, but in this category are also the saltwater basins of inland drainage like the Caspian and Aral Seas; and the yield from inland waters also includes production from brackish coastal lagoons. As a general rule in the modern period there have been relatively few fish stocks in fresh water that awaited discovery and exploitation like many in the oceans. It will be seen none the less that there has been a fivefold expansion in the yield of inland water since the Second World War, and total production is now of the order of 14 million tonnes. The expansion may well in fact have been greater, as until the late 1970s the production for the leading country of China had to be based on estimates rather than official statistics; and when official statistics became available the Chinese production was heavily reduced, but now appears to be at about the level of earlier estimates. The global trend has been partly due to the increased rates of exploitation of known resources, and has been added to by various transplants between catchment systems and continents of particular selected species. To some extent it has also been enhanced in various parts of the world by the construction of artificial new water bodies as reservoirs on a big 113

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variety of scales. In no small measure it has been due to the great expansion of fish farming (Chapter 9), especially since 1970; more than one-third of the production from inland waters now comes from farmed fish. Asia must for centuries have dominated the world yield of fish from inland waters, and this has been accentuated in modern times. In 1938 it was estimated to produce almost 60 per cent of the global total, and in 1989 its share was over 70 per cent. The Chinese production has expanded very rapidly since the late 1970s, mainly owing to improvements in fish farming which now gives over 85 per cent of total national freshwater production. From the later 1980s India has produced well over 1 million tonnes of fish from fresh water, and Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines all get over half a million tonnes yearly from inland water; in the case of the last named this is mainly due to the vigorous development of fish farming in recent years. With the importance of river fisheries in the mainland countries of south-east Asia, most of them have an annual production of freshwater fish of well over 100,000 tonnes annually. In the USSR there has been the development of hatcheries and fish farms on a considerable scale in the modern period: this has led to an increase in the yield from inland waters which had been dominated by the catches from the Caspian Sea. The total yield from inland waters now exceeds 1 million tonnes. The yield from inland water on other continents has been growing at varying rates. It has been greatest in Africa, where in the period since the Second World War production has risen over six times. Development of fish farming to date in Africa is limited, and the main part of the output comes from the fisheries in major rivers and lakes. The leading producers of Tanzania (with over 300,000 tonnes) and Uganda (with over 200,000 tonnes) get the main part of their supply from the great lakes of East Africa, although most of the other prominent producers (i.e. Egypt, Zaire and Nigeria) depend on the major rivers. In both Europe and South America production from inland waters since the Second World War has increased around five times to about 500,000 tonnes. Most of this has been due to the development of fish farming, in the case of Europe from 1970, while North America has seen a vigorous expansion in the USA and Mexico since 1980. With the catches on the Amazon system Brazil has always dominated inland water production in South America, and now catches exceed 200,000 tonnes annually. While the actual rate of increase in Oceania 114

1 Launching a dug-out canoe for a fishing trip, Liberia

2 Trap-net skiffs and (in foreground) a ‘long-liner’, Bay de Verde, Newfoundland, Canada. Even in advanced countries, there are often many small operators active in the fisheries

3 Powered trawlers, Pulau Ketan, West Malaysia. Catching power has been partly improved in many Third World countries by the introduction of boats with engines and modern equipment; but over-fishing and conflict with traditional operators have often ensued

4 Purse-netter, Bodö, Norway. Big vessels such as this have greatly increased catching power, especially in pelagic fisheries. However, there is now a permanent problem of regulating their operations to prevent over-fishing

5 Japanese squid-liners, Auckland, New Zealand. These distant-water vessels are operating at a distance of 6,000 miles from home base: this is profitable for a high-value species like squid

6 Fish carrier of the former USSR unloading at Riga, Latvia. The USSR developed distant-water fleets more than any other country. Freezing at sea has been extensively developed and direct unloading into refrigerated waggons allows the cold chain to be maintained all the way from catching to consumer

7 Industrial trawler at fish meal plant, Fuglafjördur, Faroe Islands. Norway pout, a species of no value for the edible market, are being landed for processing

8 Smolt production unit, Uig, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. In salmon farming, the early stages must be conducted in fresh water, until ‘smolting’, after which there is a transfer to growing pens in salt water

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has been relatively good, the very restricted nature of inland water bodies in most of this continental ensemble has meant that freshwater production is still very minor in total.

TRENDS IN THE YIELD OF PARTICULAR IMPORTANT STOCKS One of the matters of greatest concern in fisheries has become that of resource conservation, as with technically advanced modern catching power there is now a permanent danger of over-exploitation of the resource base; and this occurs to an extent that has few parallels in other industries and fields of production. While there has been continued scientific research and monitoring of stocks in many of the developed nations, scientific understanding has not always been adequate for resource management; and more serious has often been the inadequate speed of decision making and effectiveness of enforcement for conservation purposes. A series of the world’s most important fisheries have been subjected to over-exploitation: these include among others the herring stocks of the North Atlantic, the North Atlantic cod and the Peruvian anchovy. One of the ironies of the situation has been that fishermen, processors and merchants have become so dependent on the stocks which have become depleted that it has become difficult to establish adequate restraints on catching to allow stocks to recover. The situation is also complicated in a market economy by the enhanced value of popular species in situations of scarcity. Studies of modern trends in the North Sea herring, the Peruvian anchovy and the ArctoNorwegian cod follow to show in greater detail the serious nature of this resource depletion, and the efforts which have been made to remedy it.

The North Sea herring The North Sea herring has been one of the most important of all fisheries for several centuries. Its early development was linked to the rise of Holland as a major maritime power, and the developments in Britain in the nineteenth century led to it being the greatest single fishery in the world for several decades prior to the First World War (Chapter 3), when it was the source of an important food staple for much of northern Europe. While its relative and absolute importance has declined, it is still one of the major species in the intensively fished North Sea (Coull 1988:115–29). 115

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Figure 6.4 Trends in three important fisheries in the modern period: (i) yield of the North Sea herring fishery, 1903–90; (ii) rise and fall of the Peruvian anchovy fishery, 1955–89; (iii) yield of the Arcto-Scandinavian cod fishery, 1974–89 Sources: ICES, Report; ICES, Co-operative Report: ICES, Statistical Bulletin; FAO, Fisheries Yearbook

By the early years of the twentieth century the total annual catch had built up to around 700,000 tonnes (Figure 6.4(i)); and although it was not really appreciated at the time, this figure was actually close to the maximum sustainable yield. During the inter-war period the great 116

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dominance of Britain in this fishery declined, and although markets were seriously disorganised the total annual catch varied relatively little from that of the opening years of the century, as other countries took a greater share of it. After the Second World War the traditional cured market declined steeply with advancing living standards, but the great rise in the outlet for fish meal ensured that a market for the total catch was sustained, although it was now supplied mainly by the fishermen of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Mid-water trawling with more powerful boats brought new pressures on the stocks, and this was exacerbated by the new practice of catching immature herring for reduction to meal and oil in the central and eastern North Sea. At the time there was an unresolved controversy on whether there was significant extra pressure on the stocks, although a series of failures of the important autumn herring fishery off East Anglia was experienced. It was noted that whereas there was understandable concern, there was some evidence that increased catches were being offset by enhanced growth rates in the stock; and by the mid-1950s the total catch was regularly exceeding 1 million tonnes, although it dropped by almost half in the early 1960s. From the mid-1960s the greatly enhanced catching capacity of the purse-net hauled by the power block was deployed, especially by the Norwegians who had rapidly built up a fleet of 500 purse-netters and for whom the former main winter fishery directed at the AtlantoScandinavian herring stock had already failed. The result was that there was a great increase in the total North Sea herring catch in 1965, when it reached the level of 1.3 million tonnes. Thereafter it quickly became evident that the stock was in decline and that serious overfishing was taking place. Attempts to contain this by setting total allowable catches (TACs) and establishing closed seasons and closures of selected spawning grounds proved ineffectual. By the later 1970s it became clear that the spawning biomass had been reduced to only about 6 per cent of its natural equilibrium level, and it was finally agreed to close the fishery completely from 1977 until signs of recovering stocks allowed a limited re-opening in 1983. While it has continued as a controlled fishery for a limited number of boats since, management has been less than completely satisfactory and the partial recovery of the spawning stock is due in part to a fortunate series of good brood years which effectively compensated for seriously exceeded quotas in the mid-1980s. Although the spawning biomass has still not fully recovered, a policy decision has been taken that for the future effective preference will be given to the edible outlet: the 117

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proportions of the TAC allocated to Norway and Denmark, the main countries involved in the fishery for meal and oil, will be greater when the spawning biomass is at higher levels. The latest available estimates of biomass suggest that it is still around half of the level of the climax ecology. Despite the experience with the North Sea herring stock, overfishing also provoked a crisis two years later in the Minch herring stocks on the west side of Scotland; and even now the AtlantoScandinavian stock, which in its natural equilibrium state was of comparable dimensions to the North Sea stock but is slower growing and maturing, has only in small part recovered from the over-fishing of the 1960s. It was then the subject of a major directed fishery by both Norway and Iceland for reduction to meal and oil, and the spawning stock was so badly depleted that it is taking several generations to rebuild, even with a long closure, followed now by a severely restricted fishery. Previous to the 1970s it had been thought that pelagic species, which are in general in greater abundance than demersal and shell species, were in limited danger of being over-fished. However, the painful experience with the North Sea herring and other pelagic stocks showed that, in the face of the greatly enhanced catching power of modern methods, for pelagic stocks, the shoaling behaviour of which tends to continue even with depleted numbers, the dangers of over-fishing are especially great.

The Peruvian anchovy Of all the world’s fisheries the experience with the Peruvian anchovy is the most salutary example of the need for effective conservation policies and management (Coull 1974:322–32). The great potential of this fishery had long been known: essentially it is related to the deep upwelling in the Peruvian current which renders key nutrients abundant and the short food chain of the anchovy which feeds directly on plankton. However, previously it had only made an indirect contribution to the global economy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the guano fertiliser that had accumulated in the droppings of myriads of sea birds in a desert environment. The fish itself was too far away from established markets to be a realistic competitor until the great rise in the market for fish meal with the intensification of stock farming in developed countries from the 1950s. 118

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From that time, however, and with the help of investment capital from established fishing nations, the fishery developed in the most spectacular boom ever recorded in any fishery; by 1964 anchovy landings approached 9 million tonnes (Figure 6.4(ii)), and Peru had become the world’s leading fishing nation in landed tonnage. While landings did fluctuate over the next six years, a very high level of landings was sustained. The purse-net was deployed from modern vessels which were equipped with the power block and which increased in number and size to a fleet of over 1,400 boats; also fishing proceeded night and day for the great part of the year. At the height of the boom the main port of Chimbote, which itself landed an annual average of about 3 million tonnes, was unchallenged as the world’s leading port in fish tonnage. It was of course realised that there were limits to the sustainable catch, and the fishery was monitored from 1960 by the national ‘Instituto del Mar’ with the help of scientists from FAO. The first significant fall in landings, which occurred in 1965, was thought to be due to the ‘El Niño’ effect, a periodic incursion of warm water from the north at the end of the year which breaks up the shoals and depresses catches, and this did not cause undue concern. Scientific monitoring showed that the anchovy was a quick maturing species which might spawn at an age of as little as 15 months and had an abnormally stable recruitment rate for a pelagic species. It was thought that 9.5 million tonnes a year was a realistic level for the maximum sustainable yield, although this was exceeded somewhat in the four years between 1967 and 1971. However, from 1965 a mounting series of restrictions was imposed on the fishery, and these included monthly as well as annual catch limits, limitations to the number of landings a vessel could make in the day and in its fishing days per week, ‘vedas’ (closed seasons) and curbs on the building of new boats. Despite these measures, in 1972 landings took a dramatic fall to under 5 million tonnes. The first reaction to this was that it was due to a recurrence of the ‘El Niño’ effect, but it was also found that the spawning stock had been seriously damaged and that the recruitment in 1972 had been reduced to one-seventh of its normal level. The anchovy has thus far never recovered to anything near its former strength, and this appears to be mainly due to its being intensively fished again at any time it makes a partial recovery, while the pilchard has become the main species providing the raw material for a reduced fish meal industry during most of the 1980s.

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The Arcto-Norwegian cod The cod is the most important of the long-exploited demersal species of the North Atlantic; and of the several cod stocks, that of the ArctoNorwegian cod, which alternates between spawning grounds off the Norwegian Lofoten Islands and feeding grounds in the Barents Sea, is the one that has been of commercial importance continuously from Medieval times. For the great part of history any impact made by fishing on the stock was of minor consequence, although fears had been mounting during the twentieth century, as there were additional demands made on the stock by distant-water trawlers from a variety of countries. This stock was one of the first to be systematically studied by marine biologists; Norway was one of the pioneer countries in this field and the cod was its most important single stock. It was realised that the species was slow maturing and did not spawn until an age of about ten years, and by the 1970s it was thought that the stock could give a maximum sustainable yield of upwards of 1 million tonnes. Escalating catch rates for all the North Atlantic cod stocks became a principal cause of concern to all the countries involved in their fisheries from the 1960s, and culminated with the extension of Icelandic fishing limits to 50 miles in 1972; thereafter the rapid march of events saw general limits of 200 miles around the North Atlantic instituted by 1977. This meant that Norway, along with the USSR, had effective control over the AtlantoScandinavian cod. While there was in 1977 some concern about the age structure of the stock, with an inadequate proportion of the spawning age groups, it was thought that cutting back on the distant-water trawl part of the catch would allow stock rebuilding. However, from 1980 to 1982 catches exceeded the official TACs in the absence of adequate restraint, and by 1984 the catch had sunk to 200,000 tonnes (Figure 6.4(iii)). Thereafter signs of improving recruitment allowed the TAC to be raised to over 600,000 tonnes in 1987. However, this was followed by a drastic revision of the estimates of stock size, as improved recruitment and growth were not maintained. This appears to have been in large measure due to the failure of the capelin stock, the main food of this cod species. In its turn the decline of the capelin stock, despite efforts at monitoring and management, was partly related to the capelin having become the main fishery for the Norwegian purse-net fleet, following the reduction of the Atlanto-Scandinavian and North Sea herring stocks. In the late 1980s and early 1990s this resulted in further reductions in TACs and 120

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catches of the Arcto-Norwegian cod, although some recovery has since been observed in both the capelin and cod stocks. However, the growth rate in the cod is so slow that fishing effort will have to be restrained for a period of years if the stock is to be rebuilt. The example of the Arcto-Norwegian cod is one of the clearest instances of the increasing need for strategies of multi-species (as opposed to single species) management. This is reinforced by the continuing importance of the cod as a major resource in the problem marginal region of north Norway. The other major cod stocks of the North Atlantic are those of the Grand Banks and Iceland, and they are also of major commercial importance. While the management of the cod in the north-west Atlantic has been rendered somewhat less problematic by the extension of Canadian limits to 200 miles in 1977, there is still a great issue hinging on the fact that it is in significant degree a straddling stock, with 5–10 per cent of the zonal attachment computed to be beyond the 200mile line (Sullivan 1989:129–31). The NAFO is now responsible for the management of this part of the stock, and within it Canada has found itself at variance with some EC countries, especially Spain and Portugal. However, intensive fishing has continued outside the 200mile limit, and in addition it has become clear that in any case the size of the stock had been over-estimated. In Newfoundland in particular the fishing has been plunged into renewed crisis. While there is no parallel straddling stock problem with the Icelandic cod, and it is at present the healthiest of all the three main stocks, it has nevertheless been under considerable pressure in recent years, and the TACs of the early 1990s are only about one-half of the long-term average catch. The situation here has been exacerbated by increased market demand because of the scarcity of other cod stocks. The three examples given here raise other important issues for resource conservation. In the case of the cod and herring stocks there is probably a better information base available than for any other fish. In addition these species have been exploited by some of the most advanced countries with some of the best resources for monitoring and management. In the case of the Peruvian anchovy, it is the most abundant of all fish stocks, in addition to having one of the fastest growth rates; and a main effort was made to monitor and manage it. It can only be a major matter of concern that success in management of all these stocks has been so limited in the modern period. Part of the problem is that management in these stocks even now is not subject to 121

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unitary control. Norway and the USSR have been unable to agree on minimum mesh sizes for nets in the Arcto-Norwegian cod fishery. As regards the North Sea herring, not only has agreement to be reached in the multi-national EC, but the EC has also collectively to come to an arrangement with Norway, and this has on occasion compromised agreement both on the size of the TAC and on the national shares within it. In the case of the Peruvian anchovy, as well as lesser resources being available for research and monitoring, the fishery is shared in small part with Chile. While lessons have been learnt, a crucial issue has become whether sufficient resources will be committed to monitoring and management. Other than in Japan, nowhere are management systems as refined as around the North Atlantic, yet they have for a series of stocks proved less than adequate. Also, with the restrictions on public expenditure which have become the modern norm in developed countries, it is scarcely realistic to expect much increase in the effort put into management.

REFERENCES Coull, J.R. (1974) ‘The Development of the Fishing Industry in Peru’, Geography 59 (4):322–32. ——(1988) ‘The North Sea Herring Fishery in the Twentieth Century’, Ocean Yearbook 7, 115–29. Kustov, Z.D. (1968) Geografiya Ribnoi Promishlennosti, Izdatelstvo Pishchevaya Promishlennost, Moscow. Sullivan, K.M. (1989) ‘Conflict in the Management of a Northwest Atlantic Transboundary Cod Stock’, Marine Policy 13 (2):118–36.

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7 RECREATIONAL FISHING

Recreational fishing is now an activity of great importance, although the recognition of it is largely confined to the developed world, where it has become one of the most popular of a range of recreational pursuits. While it exists in the poorer countries, in them the distinction between leisure and subsistence fishing is blurred and the emphasis is generally on the latter category. As far as it exists as a recognised activity in the Third World, it tends to be associated with catering for tourists from richer countries, as occurs for example in Jamaica and the Maldive Islands. On the other hand, a prominent characteristic of leisure fishing in developed countries is that all social classes engage in it. Recreational fishing is mainly conducted on fresh water—on rivers and lakes, but also on reservoirs and canals; but in developed countries fronting the sea, sea angling is also significant, and in the USA especially is very important. While the total recreational catch by weight is generally much less than the commercial catch in various countries, the economic importance of leisure fishing is now as important as that of commercial fishing in several developed countries. Exceptionally too sports fishing can take a big share of a sea fishery: in the very valuable salmon fisheries of the west coast of North America it was estimated in 1976 that the sea anglers’ catch of the chinook salmon species was 870,000 fish, or 23 per cent of the total catch (Shaw and Muir 1987:29). Recreational fishing is also sufficiently important for the resource to be maintained or enhanced by restocking of the waters by both private and public agencies. For the more popular species for anglers, in many developed countries restocking programmes have been built up and extended for over a century. Exotic species have been fairly frequently introduced to various waters specially for angling purposes, and in 123

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Australia in particular the balance of some freshwater ecosystems has been altered by the introduction of species preferred by anglers. It is common now for recreational fishing to feature in problems of resource allocation. As well as the obvious issue of allocation between sports and commercial fishing, angling is now in actual or potential conflict with a series of other water users. These include industry, irrigation, public water supply and hydroelectric power generation; they also include other recreational water uses such as pleasure boating and swimming. The recreational and other water users have also to cope with the big modern problem of water-borne pollution, and recreational fishing interests have often played a leading role in campaigning for measures of pollution control. It is clear that a great many people in developed countries engage in recreational fishing, but information relating to it is often limited and inadequate, and international comparisons are especially difficult to make. In addition there is considerable controversy as to the best methods for assessing its economic impact. It is common for recreational fishing to be licensed, quite often on a national basis, but licensing systems are rarely comprehensive and only exceptionally extend into sea angling. In the case of the UK, licences for anglers are issued on a regional basis, and it is possible for one angler to hold several licences in different regions; only now are there moves to develop a national licensing system. However, in a number of countries there is sufficient information to show the main dimensions of activity. In the USA especially there has been a series of systematic national surveys, which allow an analysis of trends as well as distribution and other characteristics. A notable international trend in the developed world is that, while the importance of commercial fishing in fresh water has decreased, that of recreational fishing has rapidly increased. In the former German Federal Republic, for example, between 1962 and 1972 numbers of commercial river fishermen decreased by over 40 per cent and commercial lake fishermen by over 30 per cent: but during the period sports fishermen were increasing by between 2 per cent and 5 per cent per year (Kuhlmann 1980:583). As a consequence, in developed countries recreational fishing now tends to exceed commercial fishing in total catch by weight from fresh water. In Canada in 1975, 63 per cent of the total catch from fresh water in the ‘inland’ group of provinces (i.e. those excluding the Atlantic provinces and British Columbia) was taken by anglers, and in the case of Alberta the anglers’ proportion of the catch was as high as 73 per cent. Alongside the large export sector of the national commercial catch, it was 124

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estimated that 44 per cent of the finfish consumed in the country came from recreational fishing. Within the advanced countries there is a prominent difference in the ease of access to fresh waters for recreational fishing between the ‘old’ countries of Western Europe and the ‘new’ countries of Europe overseas. In the ‘old’ countries only some waters are open to the public; most are generally private, mainly as a result of the long-term feudal legacy. In the ‘new’ countries, on the other hand, freshwater fisheries are overwhelmingly in public ownership; in the USA and Australia they are the responsibility of the individual states, and in Canada of the provinces. In Eastern Europe, fisheries were generally taken into public ownership under the centrally planned economies established after the Second World War; in view of the developments in the countries of Europe overseas, it appears probable that they will continue under public ownership with the transition to market economies. The extent of public and private ownership may be illustrated by examples from North America and Europe. In the continental USA the total area of public fresh waters is 34.2 million ha, with 15.7 million of these in the Great Lakes; and only 3.7 per cent of all fresh waters are privately owned (Hutton et al. 1980:613). Canada’s fresh waters are even more extensive: the total area of fresh water is 754,100 km2, and apart from some private ownership in the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec this is all publicly owned (Tuomi 1980:540–1). In Europe, the only waters in Belgium which are not private are canals and navigable rivers (FAO 1980a:537); and in Sweden most waters are private apart from areas open to the public in the five largest lakes (Wendt 1980:600). The position can be more precisely stated for France: here the public domain includes 4,680 km of canals, 11,800 km of streams, and 31,700 ha of lakes; but in the private domain there are a total of 258,850 km of streams and 210,000 ha of lakes (FAO 1980b:569).

DISTRIBUTION OF ACTIVITY IN RECREATIONAL FISHING A number of factors can be distinguished which influence the scale and distribution of recreational fishing. These include environmental factors such as the distribution of water bodies and of the fish stocks in them; and also included are a variety of economic and societal factors such as living standards and distribution of population. 125

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Basic physical factors have an obvious role. There is in the USA, for example, much less fishing in the dry basin and range physiographical province of the west than in the better watered eastern part of the country, and in Australia the scarcity of permanent streams in the major part of the country greatly restricts opportunity for fishing. In Europe, both Finland with its myriad lakes and streams and the Netherlands with its many canals and waterways have great potential for fishing that has in the modern period been increasingly utilised. In the temperate zone, leisure fishing is prominently concentrated in the warmer part of the year, which is the main time for fish movement and feeding. Summer seasonal peaks of activity are especially marked in the cooler countries like Canada and the Scandinavian lands, although even in these winter does not cause a complete cessation of fishing, as it may be conducted through holes in the ice on frozen lakes and streams. Where developed countries extend into subtropical or tropical latitudes, as occurs in the USA and Australia, fishing on a large scale becomes a year-round activity. In these as well as other cases, however, there are seasonal variations, mainly in accordance with natural life cycles of different species; and for a considerable number of species there are formalised limits to the length of fishing seasons laid down by law or regulation. At the international level of comparison it is clear that the main single factor influencing the level of participation in leisure fishing is standard of living: as disposable income increases and more leisure time becomes available, a greater proportion of the population becomes involved. In 1978 it was estimated that about 60 million of the total of 220.2 million people in the USA took some part in fishing (i.e. 27 per cent) (Hutton et al. 1980:613–14); and in Canada in 1985 the 5.4 million (21.3 percent of the population) who took part were supplemented by another 1.1 million visiting fishermen, mainly from the USA (Department of Fisheries and Oceans 1988:3). In Sweden in 1980 the national anglers’ association had about 100,000 members (Wendt 1980:601); this represented around 12 per cent of the population, but surveys showed that this accounted for only some of the recreational fishermen and the total proportion is likely to have been nearer to those of the USA and Canada. In the Netherlands in 1979 the total number of leisure fishermen was estimated at around 2.1 million, or 15 per cent of the population (Steinmetz 1980:384), and in France in 1975 the total of around 4 million represented about 8 per cent of the population 126

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(FAO 1980b: 578). In Japan the total number of recreational fishermen who fished in fresh water in 1983 was 9,650,000, or about 8 per cent of the population (Government of Japan 1986:39). It is clear from these examples that recreational fishing is a leading form of recreation in advanced countries, with a participation rate that seldom falls below 10 per cent of the population and can be more than double that figure. While scarcity of data renders it more difficult to establish trends in numbers of recreational fishermen, there are clear indications that they have been increasing at a rapid rate. In the Netherlands the numbers of licensed sports fishermen doubled during the 1970s to over 1 million (Steinmetz 1980:384); in Japan the figure rose from 8,330,000 in 1973 (Government of Japan 1980:46) to 9,650,000 in 1983 (Government of Japan 1986:39). The long-term trend is best known in the USA: the total numbers of fishermen enumerated in the National Surveys of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation rose from 20,813,000 in 1955 to 45,345,000 in 1985, which represented a percentage increase of 118 per cent (US Department of the Interior 1988:148). While there have been persistent upward trends in recreational fishing in advanced countries, there are indications that situations of saturation are becoming more common: in both the USA and Canada, which lead the world in the popularity of recreational fishing, participation rates have actually been falling over the past 15 years, even if total numbers involved have continued to increase. While there is a significant and increasing component of shortterm international migration associated with fisheries recreation, the great part of the activity is by national citizens in their own countries. Within countries, the main patterns of distribution in leisure fishing are set more by the distribution of population than any other factor, and of key importance is accessibility to fishing water for large city populations. In Canada, for example, the population heavyweight provinces of Ontario and Quebec had respectively 2.3 million (43 per cent) and 1.2 million (22 per cent) out of the national total of 5.4 million in 1985. However, the greatest participation rates were found in the sparsely populated provinces of the Yukon and Newfoundland (Department of Fisheries and Oceans 1988:3). The regional variations in participation are further illustrated in the case studies of the Netherlands and the USA which conclude this chapter.

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ASSESSMENT OF ECONOMIC IMPACT OF RECREATIONAL FISHING There has been considerable academic effort by a widening spectrum of disciplines devoted to the study of a variety of recreational activities for over a quarter of a century in developed countries, especially in North America. In the case of recreational fishing, the scale of interest and activity in the USA especially has been much in advance of other countries, and any discussion of economic impact must perforce draw largely on American experience and studies. While this must give guidance for studies conducted elsewhere, there are sufficient differences between circumstances between Europe and North America to render comparisons difficult or limited: in addition there are important differences in basic background factors such as the extent of public waters and the distance movements involved in North America, and contacts between scholars involved in the study of recreational fishing in the two continents have been very limited. At the simplest studies have been conducted into numbers of anglers and their trends, and at the practical level this has had an essential input into management and planning in a large number of situations. Pragmatic and useful though this has been, it obviously does little to clarify the factors and forces behind numbers and trends, and there have been various approaches to develop a theoretical basis to give a fuller understanding. It has been observed that angling, like other forms of recreation, can be viewed as a good or a service, and in this respect is like other goods and services produced in the economy. The willingness of the user to pay for it has been identified as a key variable, and because of this it is possible to construct a supply and demand curve whereby the quantity falls off with increasing price. This prime importance of the willingness to pay in the analysis of recreational fishing underlines the basic difference from commercial fishing, where the most important variable is the value of the catch: it has been stated on the other hand that the output of a sports fishery is fishing and not fish (Bell 1978:243). An actual example is the calculation made in Washington State where in 1962 the value of salmon (based on expenditures of anglers) to recreational fishermen worked out at $6.80 per pound compared with $0.31 per pound for the commercial catch (Bell 1978:243). This illustrates the inevitable problems encountered in any comparative economic evaluation of recreational and commercial fishing. 128

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The measurement of demand and the relating of it to other variables have had a leading place in the studies of recreational fishing. Considerable use has been made of gross expenditures incurred as a measure of the value of recreational fisheries, although it has been objected that more methodologically sound would be the estimation of net market benefits, which can take into account the choice between different fishing sites or indeed between fishing and other forms of recreation (Crutchfield 1962:148). Studies have been of two main types: aggregative studies have been directed at measuring broad trends in the level and pattern of activity at the national, regional and subregional levels; and at a more detailed level, case studies have been made of individual sites, facilities or activities. It is the latter category of studies that has gone furthest in estimating the economic benefits of recreational fishing and evaluating the resources used. The methods employed have included questionnaire surveys of anglers to establish their evaluation of benefits, and systems analyses in which household production functions and site evaluations are included (Stabler 1980:356). While such studies do go further in investigating the interactions involved in recreational fishing, it has not proved easy to generalise from them. In the assessment of willingness to pay, much has been done in the USA to assess expenditures actually undertaken at all levels up to those in the National Surveys of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation. The investigation in any detail of variables which can be measured and related to the willingness to pay constitutes a major problem in the development of theory in this field. It becomes necessary to assess ‘quality of the experience’ or ‘degree of satisfaction’, and the adequate conversion of such abstractions into numbers is a big part of the problem that has stood in the way of the development of methods of analysis that command general support. The only sector of recreational fisheries where methods of economic evaluation have commanded some degree of general support has been that in private ownership (Cunningham et al. 1985:287). It has been argued that economic contributions to the study of recreational fisheries have been too theoretical, and that there is no clear agreement as to the value of fisheries resources (Stabler 1980:356). While there is continuing controversy on the more detailed analysis of the economic impact of recreational fishing, at the gross national level in North America there are available some clear indications of its importance. In Canada in 1975, the estimated direct total expenditures 129

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incurred by sports fishermen were C$1.1 billion, compared with a total value of commercial landings in the same year of C$694 million (Tuomi 1980:541). By 1985 the total expenditures in Canada on recreational fishing had risen to C$2.5 billion (Department of Fisheries and Oceans 1988:8), against a value of commercial landings of C$1.04 billion in the same year. In the USA total direct expenditures of sports fishermen rose from $1.91 billion to $28.56 billion between 1955 and 1985, during which period the national price index increased by four times; hence the real value of these expenditures also multiplied almost four times. These expenditures were equivalent to almost six times the value of the national commercial catch in 1955 and over 18 times its value in 1985 (Figure 7.1). Various studies on smaller spatial scales have given greater detail on the economic impact of leisure fishing. In 1975 in Florida, for example, it was estimated that marine recreational fishermen spent over $851 million and supported 118,000 jobs, while the value of the state commercial catch was about $160 million and the total number of jobs, direct and indirect, in commercial fishing was around 36,300 (Nakamura 1980:290). A study at a smaller scale in Scotland of the prestigious river salmon fishings estimated that the total expenditures incurred in 1988 were over £50 million, and that the number of jobs related to the fishings were 3,360 (Mackay Consultants 1989:1, paragraphs 31 and 32).

Figure 7.1 Values of recreational fishing expenditures and of fish landings in the USA, 1955–85 Sources: US Department of the Interior 1988; FAO, Fisheries Yearbook 130

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The assessment of the capacity of different waters to sustain recreational fishing has only seldom been approached. It is relatively infrequent for ecosystems to be put under strain as a direct result of it, although decreasing catch rates have been reported in a variety of recreational fisheries. Also the factor of resource availability does interact with that of congestion on popular waters. At the national level in the Netherlands it has been calculated that on a standard busy day about one-quarter of the length of fishable bank is occupied (van Haasteren and de Groot 1980:469). On the other hand in 1989 it was found that during the main summer season many of the Scottish salmon rivers were fished to capacity, and that the main possibilities for development lay in extending the season, in developing the less popular rivers and in expanding restocking programmes (Mackay Consultants 1989: paragraphs 61 and 62). The level of demand in Scottish salmon angling is eloquently shown in the anglers’ journal Trout and Salmon, where the advertised letting values on the better rivers at peak periods can reach from £10,000 to £50,000 per rod per week, or even more.

RECREATIONAL FISHING IN THE NETHERLANDS With the position of the Netherlands astride the mouth of the great transport artery of the Rhine, and within the ‘Golden Triangle’ of the EC, the country illustrates to an unusual degree the effects of various modern environmental and socioeconomic pressures and trends. In these circumstances, the increase in recreational fishing gives a study of it a particular importance. Although the Netherlands has a large total area of inland waters, with the Ijssel Meer and the enclosed waters in the Rhine estuary under the modern Delta Plan being added to those in other rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs, it has been estimated that as much as two-thirds of the inland waters are unavailable for sports fishing, owing mainly to lack of fishing rights and access, but also to such factors as use by other parties and the unsuitable condition of the shore (van Haasteren and de Groot 1980:469, 475). A main aim of Dutch policy since 1970 has been to put the responsibility for fishing in inland waters (apart from those for eels and in some cases tench) into the hands of organisations of sports fishermen; hence there has been for over two decades an implicit recognition of the great importance of recreational fishing in the modern period. In the ten years to 1979 the number of licensed sports 131

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fishermen doubled to over a million, and when fishermen under 15 years of age are added along with the estimated number of illegal fishermen, the overall total was reckoned to be in excess of 2 million (Steinmetz 1980:384). However, the eel fisheries are still of considerable commercial importance, and the co-ordination of management under joint commissions of sports and professional fishermen has become obligatory. All agreements granting fishing rights by lease or permit must have the approval of the national Chamber for Inland Fisheries, and management plans taking account of both the state of fish stocks and fishing pressures are being developed (Steinmetz 1980:387). The main concentrations of recreational fishermen are in the heavily urbanised areas in the centre west of the country, and elsewhere the numbers vary prominently with opportunity and generally reflect the extent of fishable water. Surveys are conducted of numbers of fishermen on a series of water bodies and these have helped identify problems and have gone some way towards the measurement of fishing capacity of waters. A basic survey by the national Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1978 assessed the supply and demand of fishing facilities in all 11 Dutch provinces. A major objective of the survey was to find whether there were sufficient facilities within individual municipalities, and it was found that 167 out of the total of 900 were under-provided (Figure 7.2(a)). These were mainly the bigger urban concentrations, but also included areas in the east and south with limited surface water; and in the Friesland lake district there was limited fishable shore, despite the high proportion of inland water. Figure 7.2(b) shows that while the greatest concentrations of population and of fishermen are in the provinces of North and South Holland in the west of the country, the numbers of fishermen relative to population are generally higher towards the north-east of the country where the congestion effect is less. There is also a variable relationship in the relative amounts of inland and of fishable water. The province of Drenthe in the northeast is notable for having most of its inland water available for fishing, while Friesland along with the more intensely urbanised and industrialised provinces of South Holland and Zeeland have a low proportion of their inland water available for fishing. However, at the national level it was estimated that accessible waters had a capacity for 434,000 fishermen at any one time, on the basis that the separation between them was a minimum of 25 m on the banks (van Haasteren and de Groot 1980:469), although perception studies

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Figure 7.2 Recreational fishing in the municipalities and provinces of the Netherlands Source: FAO, Allocation of Fisheries Resources, 1980

conducted on the anglers suggested that the minimum acceptable spacing was 15 m (van Alderwegen 1980:456). An enumeration in 1975 of the numbers engaged in sports fishing at weekends showed a general proportion of around 1 per cent of the population (about 140,000) involved throughout the summer period, with a peak of 1.7 per cent (about 238,000) in early June. On popular waters and at peak periods in the Netherlands there is clearly a situation of considerable pressure. However, the situation is less acute than such figures suggest, as a significant amount of the fishing is done from boats and there are as yet no estimates of capacity for this sector (van Haasteren and de Groot 1980:477). In the study of the availability of fishing in different locations, 15 km was taken as the desirable distance threshold to fishable water; and while it is evident that the great part of angling takes place within this distance from anglers’ residences, it is also clear that with the range of mobility in modern society a considerable amount of recreational fishing takes place at a variety of greater distances. One study which 133

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showed the cumulative distances travelled to four water bodies of up to 4 ha found that the proportions of anglers who travelled less than 15 km were 95 per cent, 70 per cent, 50 per cent and 17 per cent. Significantly the first three were effectively town ponds, while the last was in a rural polder. For bigger water bodies there is a tendency for the distance scale of movement to expand. When Lake Grevelingen in the Rhine estuary was finally enclosed as a saltwater lake in 1971 there followed something of a boom in recreational fishing on it, and in 1973 and 1974 numbers of sports fishermen were up to 1,300 per day. Catches for boat fishermen were as high as 80 fish a day, a rate much higher than is usual in freshwater fishing, in which some studies have found that as many as half the anglers catch no fish. Fishermen were recorded coming from distances of up to 360 km, and the participation rate was as high for anglers in the provinces of North Brabant and Limburg at distances of over 60 km as from local provinces. It was found, however, that the stocks of plaice, flounder and whiting being exploited declined from 1975 onwards, and by 1977 numbers of anglers seldom reached 200 per day. Subsequently the lake was artificially restocked, and a second sluice gate incorporating a fish sluice was built, although it is not clear whether stocks can be maintained without regular restocking. In the case of the fisheries on the biggest body of enclosed water in the country, Lake Ijssel, recreational fishing has greatly expanded in the modern period, although the bulk of the catches, which consist mainly of roach, perch and eel, are still taken by commercial fishermen. An index of the upsurge of sports fishing here, however, was the decision, in a basic reorientation of policy, to increase the number of permits from 4,000 in 1975 to 500,000 in 1976 (van Ginkel 1980:461). In 1976 it was estimated that there were 54,200 bank fishermen and 10,200 boat fishermen who visited Lake Ijssel. The former fished mainly-for roach and had an average catch of 17 fish per day, while the latter were mainly interested in perch and took on average 32 fish per day. Such catch rates are again well above the level usual in freshwater angling, and are more comparable with those in sea angling. In the Netherlands marine recreational fishing also has a place. About 7 per cent of all sports fishermen fish in the sea only, and a further 30 per cent spend some time in sea fishing; the latter group tend to participate most in the closed season for inland waters (van Haasteren and de Groot 1980:477).

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RECREATIONAL FISHING IN THE USA There can be no question that the importance of recreational fishing in the USA is greater than in any other country. For the great part of the twentieth century sports fishing has been gaining at the expense of commercial fishing in fresh water in the USA, and in some cases now has effective preference over it in sea fishing also: in 1980 it was calculated that recreational fishing accounted for 30 per cent of marine fish landings, excluding species caught only for reduction (Anderson 1986:89–90). While commercial fishing continued to be more important until the 1960s in the Great Lakes and in major rivers, in these too in recent decades recreational fishing has come to the forefront, while commercial fishing has greatly decreased, in considerable measure because of the collapse of commercial stocks and the adverse effects of pollution. The overwhelming political power of the recreational interests has increasingly resulted in fishery resources being preferentially allocated to them. Although conflict over access to resources was limited until after the Second World War, for a century previous there had been increasing measures in favour of sports fishermen; by the close of the nineteenth century 15 states and territories had allocated all or selected game fishes to angling use, and by the start of the Second World War the total number of states with such provisions had risen to 48 out of the 50. The range of species to which these preferences applied included black bass, pike, catfish, bullhead, walleye, perch, trout and salmon (Stroud et al. 1980:419). Additional force was given to the restrictions in fishing for black bass by the Black Bass Act of 1926, effectively reserving the fishery for the species for anglers by banning it from inter-state commerce. In marine fisheries, the greater abundance of the resource and the traditional pre-eminence of the commercial fishery have caused conflicts, with recreational fishing being slower to emerge. However, the progressive decline in a series of stocks in the Delta Bay area, San Francisco, led to their closure to commercial fishing from as early as 1917 onwards, and in the period since the Second World War there has been a great increase in conflict between commercial and recreational fishermen in the major fishery for salmon on the west coast. In Washington State alone the number of salmon angler trips per year has been in excess of a million since the early 1960s (Crutchfield 1977:24). On the east coast the designation of snook as a game fish in Florida in 1957 marked the beginning of measures in favour of anglers in sea fishing (Stroud et al. 1980:421). There was a steep increase in 135

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participation in sea angling in the first decades after the Second World War: between 1955 and 1975 the numbers of sea anglers rose by 260 per cent to 16.4 million, while their expenditures rose from $500 million to $4.5 billion (Schmied 1980:333–4); however, since then both numbers and expenditures appear to have levelled off. Nevertheless the expanded importance of marine recreational fishing was formally recognised at the national level by the passing of the Fishery Management and Conservation Act of 1976, which ensured equitable treatment for marine sports fishing and incorporated a national policy for its expansion (Schmied 1980:334). By the end of the 1970s the commercial sale of sailfish, snook and tarpon in Florida were illegal (Nakamura 1980:290). In the south-eastern states there are now distinct conflicts between recreational and commercial fishermen in the billfish, snapper and Spanish and king mackerel fisheries, and it has proved a difficult problem to formulate schemes of resource allocation, especially in the light of the restricted data base that is available for the recreational fisheries. Plans are in place to restrict the catching of billfish effectively to the sports fishery by restricting the gear permitted to be used for it to rod and reel assemblages; and in the case of the Spanish and king mackerel fisheries the principle of allocation is to maintain the existing ratio of catches for the recreational and commercial sectors (Joseph 1980:160–1). While in general the conflicts between recreational and commercial fishing in the sea are still restricted, it has been observed that in recent times recreational fishermen in the coastal states from the Canadian border to North Carolina have caught a big proportion of cod, haddock and pollock, of which the stocks have been reduced to a dangerously low level. In this area sports fishermen catch approximately one-half of the summer flounder, and are aided here by the general prohibition of trawling inside 5.5 km. Before the US extension of its limits to 200 miles there were intense conflicts between recreational fishermen and foreign commercial fishermen relating to several species, including mackerel, squid and hake off the north-east coast and marlin and tuna species in the Gulf of Mexico; however, improved conservation regulations have largely eliminated this problem (Nakamura 1980:290; Wilk and Brown 1980:506–8) Improving knowledge of fish biology has made important contributions to fishery management, and systematic monitoring of the fishing in the reservoirs of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from the 1930s was especially significant in amending the earlier regimes of seasonal spring closures in fishing for black bass and for 136

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panfishes. From 1945 all the reservoirs of the TVA were opened to year-round sports fishing after it was shown that this did not lead to a deterioration of stocks. By 1959 the traditional closed season for bass had been discarded in 34 states and for panfishes in 45 states. In addition, pressures from recreational fishermen were largely responsible for the development of the principle of optimum yield (OY) in fisheries management. This was a challenge to the earlier recognised principle of maximum sustainable yield (MSY), for which the criteria were exclusively biological, and focused instead on maximum economic benefits rather than maximum catch (Stroud et al. 1980:426). While the main long-term trend in the USA has been very much towards the allocation of rights of fishing to sports rather than to commercial fishermen, this has been complicated in a significant number of cases by Indian claims under federal treaties from last century. Such treaties had generally recognised the exclusive rights of Indian tribes to fishing in the waters of their own reservations, and off the reservations at all usual accustomed grounds and stations. While such treaty rights in the earlier part of this century had been considerably eroded in practice by industrial and other developments and by regulations imposed by individual states, the epoch-making Boldt judgement in Washington State in 1974 had the effect of restoring Indian fishing rights. In Washington State there was concern especially for steelhead trout, but also for other species such as salmon. The Boldt judgement declared all state game fish laws and regulations on anadromous fish unlawful as applied to Treaty Indians; off-reservation regulations on Indian fishing could only be for the purpose of conservation; Indians could take unrestricted numbers of fish off reservation for ceremonial and personal use, and the remainder of harvestable fish were to be divided equally between Indians and nonIndians. While later judgements of the Washington State and US supreme courts affected other important details of fishery management in the state, the principle of the continuity of Indian fishing rights had been established. The main additional provision was that state jurisdiction extended onto Indian reservations for conservation purposes (Stroud et al. 1980:422–3). Despite the extent in the country as a whole of unconfined natural waters, in 1985 a larger proportion of the freshwater fishermen (58 per cent) did some of their fishing in various man-made impoundments than in any other category of water; and 44.8 per cent of all fishing days were spent on these impoundments. Thirty-eight 137

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per cent of fishermen were recorded as having fished on natural lakes and ponds and 23.7 per cent of fishing days were spent on them; and 45 per cent of anglers fished on rivers and streams and 31.4 per cent of fishing days were spent on them. There were also 331,000 persons (or groups of persons, including angling clubs) who owned or leased land for fishing purposes. A total of 5,258,000 acres was devoted to this end. It is clear that the level of participation in recreational fishing in the USA is related both to population density and to what might be termed regional opportunity. Of the nine recognised regions of the contiguous USA, the numbers participating, until 1985, had always been highest in the East North Central region (Figure 7.3) which includes the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. This region, in addition to having many large city population concentrations, is in the better-watered eastern part of the country, and has the additional opportunities provided by the Great Lakes: in 1985 the total numbers involved in sports fishing were over 8.2 million, and the percentage of the population involved was 24.5 per cent. However, increases both in population and in participation rates in the South Atlantic region, which includes the states of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, saw it overtake the East North Central region in numbers of anglers. Here for climatic reasons the busy season lasts longer, and by 1985 there were 8.7 million sports fishermen in the region and an involvement of 24 per cent. The greatest proportion of participating population has always been in the West North Central region, which includes the states of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. Although this region has a lower density of stream courses and water bodies, the lower population density renders access to fishing water easier, and the 4.7 million who fished in 1985 made up 33.1 per cent of the population. That the factor of congestion causes lower participation rates can be seen in the Middle Atlantic and New England regions; in the former the 4.8 million fishermen in 1985 constituted 15.5 per cent of the population, and in the latter the 1.9 million fishermen constituted 18.1 per cent. While the levels of participation in individual states were broadly in accord with the regions in which they were located, participation rates varied from as low as 11 per cent in a congested state like Pennsylvania to a peak of 34 per cent in Alaska. When the participation rates in freshwater and saltwater fishing are considered, it is clear that freshwater fishing is everywhere more 138

Figure 7.3 Numbers and percentages of recreational fishermen in the continental regions of the USA, 1985 Source: US Department of the Interior 1988

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popular at the regional level (Figure 7.3), although on the Atlantic seaboard proportions engaging in marine fishing approach those operating on fresh water. There is also a significant interest in marine fishing even in regions like West and East North Central, although distances to the sea are a minimum of several hundred miles. Short-term migration for the purpose of recreational fishing is now on a large scale in the USA; and while most of this movement is relatively short distance, a considerable part of it is at the inter-state, and even the international, level. In 1985 91 per cent of fishing was conducted in the home state, but a total of 11 million (or 24 per cent) of fishermen did some fishing outside their home state. While the greatest aggregate volumes of inter-state movement were in the densely populated north-east, there were other prominent flows which included a general movement into coastal states to participate in sea fishing and a remarkable degree of movement into the western mountain states, in many of which a variety of recreational pursuits constitute an especially important sector of the economy. There is a large volume of movement into the Great Lakes states, and in 1985 Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan between them enumerated almost 1.7 million visiting fishermen. Despite the remoteness of Alaska there were in 1985 122,000 visitors, which accounted for 40 per cent of the state total. It was the smaller coastal states in the north-east, however, which showed the highest proportions of visiting anglers; here, in addition to the attraction of sea fishing, state territories are smaller and a larger proportion of movements cross state boundaries. In Delaware the 286,000 visiting anglers accounted for 70 per cent of the overall total; in Rhode Island 163,000 visitors constituted 56 per cent and in Maine 209,000 visitors constituted 47 per cent of the total. In the sparsely populated mountain states the proportions of visitors for freshwater fishing are the highest in the country. In Wyoming the 206,000 visitors were a majority of the enumerated fishermen (58 per cent); and the 159,000 in Montana were 43 per cent of all anglers. There is also a marked north to south movement, mainly in the winter to the states in the ‘sun belt’ for both freshwater and saltwater fishing. Even the dry state of New Mexico had 182,000 visiting anglers (43 per cent of the total), and the 395,000 attracted to Mississippi were 33 per cent of the total. The greatest of all inter-state movements was that to Florida, where the number of visitors was 1.5 million and where they accounted for 23 per cent of the freshwater fishermen and 41 per cent of the saltwater fishermen. 140

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The distance travelled to engage in recreational fishing is also surveyed on the scale of actual mileage. There is the expected distancedecay relationship, with 23 per cent of fishing taking place within 5 miles of the residence and 54 per cent within 50 miles. It is a comment on the mobility within American society, however, that fully 20 per cent took place at distances in excess of 500 miles. Participation in fishing is also related to a number of socioeconomic variables. In 1985 interest in it was predominantly male, with men outnumbering women by over two to one; 37 per cent of all males and 16 per cent of all females had some involvement in fishing. There was also a considerable variation according to racial group; for whites the participation rate was 27 per cent, for blacks 13 per cent and for the grouping of other races the intermediate level of 18 per cent. The distribution by age was bi-modal. with the highest recorded participation rates of 31 per cent in both the 16–17-year-old and 25–44year-old groups; however, with the greater age range in the latter group, it alone accounted for almost one-half of the total fishermen. While participation does decrease in the upper age groups, 3.7 million fishermen (13 per cent of the age group) in 1985 were over 65. Variation with levels of education was limited, although there was less involvement of the groups with poorer formal qualifications and at least 20 per cent of all recognised groups participated; for highschool diploma holders the rate was 25 per cent, for those with an additional 1– 3 years of college it was 28 per cent and for the group with four or more years of college it was 27 per cent. The relationship with income similarly showed an increase up to a certain point, followed by a falling off; 55 per cent of participants had above the median income in 1985, and rates varied from 17 per cent for those with less than $10,000 per year to 31 per cent for the group with between $30,000 and $45,000. The average individual expenditure on recreational fishing in 1985 was $607. The biggest single component of this (47.1 per cent) went in ‘trip-related’ costs, which included food and lodging, transport and items such as live bait. Only 9.9 per cent went on actual fishing equipment, but 35.6 per cent was given to special equipment, which included more costly items like boats and vehicles. Within the total expenditure of $24.1 billion on recreational fishing in 1985 there were marked variations throughout the country. In only six states with small populations did total expenditures fall below $100 million, and in eight states the total exceeded $1,000 million. Of the latter the states of New York and Pennsylvania owed their high expenditures essentially to large population concentrations, while in 141

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Michigan and Ohio proximity to the Great Lakes was added to large numbers of people. On the other hand, Georgia, Florida, Texas and California showed the ‘sun belt’ effect, with fishing on a large scale being possible all year. In the cases of the last three, total expenditures were in excess of $2,000 million; this was related to large resident populations and (in the case of Florida) a particularly high level of seasonal immigration in winter.

REFERENCES van Alderwegen, H.A. (1980) ‘Application of Results of Sport Fishing Attendance in Regional Supply and Demand Analysis’, in FAO (in cooperation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 452–60. Anderson, L.G. (1986) The Economics of Fisheries Management (2nd edn), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md. Bell, F.W. (1978) Food from the Sea: the Economics and Politics of Ocean Fisheries, Westview, Boulder, Colo. Crutchfield, J.A. (1962) ‘Valuation of Fishery Resources’, Land Economics 38, 145–54. ——(1977) ‘The Fishery: Economic Maximisation’, in Ellis, D.V. (ed.) Pacific Salmon. Management for People, University of Victoria, British Columbia. Cunningham, S., Dunn, M.R. and Whitmarsh, D. (1985) Fisheries Economics: an Introduction, Mansell, London. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (1988) Sport Fishing in Canada, 1985, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Ottawa, 12 pp. FAO (1980a) ‘Belgian National Report’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 537–8. ——(1980b) ‘Recreational Fishing in the Rivers of France’, in FAO (in cooperation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 569–82. van Ginkel, C.J. (1980) ‘Sport Fishing on Lake Ijssel’, in FAO (in cooperation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 461–7. Government of Japan (1980) The Sixth Fishery Census of Japan, 1978, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. ——(1986) The Seventh Fishery Census of Japan, 1983, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo. van Haasteren, L.M. and de Groot, A.T. (1980) ‘Summary of the Provincial Analyses of the Demand for and the Supply of Facilities for Sports Fishing’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 468–79. Hutton, R.F., Hooper, P.L. and Stroud, R.H. (1980) ‘United States of America 142

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Country Review’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 613–23. Joseph, E.B. (1980) ‘Conceptual and Practical Difficulties of Allocation in Mixed Commercial/Recreational Fisheries in the Southeastern United States’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 158–63. Kuhlmann, H. (1980) ‘Federal Republic of Germany Country Review’, in FAO, (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 583–5. Mackay Consultants (1989) Economic Importance of Salmon and Netting inScotland. A Report for the Scottish Tourist Board and the Highlands and Islands Development Board, Inverness. Nakamura, E.K. (1980) ‘What is the Best Use of Fish Resources in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 289–92. Schmied, R.L. (1980) ‘Development of Marine Recreational Fisheries in the Southeastern United States: Problems and Some Solutions’, in FAO (in cooperation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 333–45. Shaw, S. and Muir, J.F. (1987) Salmon: Economics and Marketing, Croom Helm, London. Stabler, M.J. (1980) ‘Estimation of Economic Benefits of Fishing: a Review Note’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 356–65. Steinmetz, B. (1980) ‘Management of Fish Stocks in the Netherlands and the Need for Planning’, in FAO, (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society), Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 384–95. Stroud, R.H., Radonski, G.C. and Martin, R.G. (1980) ‘Evolving Efforts atBestuse Allocations of Fishery Resources’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 418–31. Tuomi, A.L.W. (1980) ‘Canada Country Review’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 539–44. US Department of the Interior (1988) 1985 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. Wendt, C. (1980) ‘Sweden Country Review’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 600–1. Wilk, S.J. and Brown, B.E. (1980) ‘A Description of Those Fisheries Which Take Place in the Western North Atlantic between the U.S.-Canadian Border and North Carolina, That Presently Have or Potentially Could Have User Group Allocation Conflicts’, in FAO (in co-operation with the American Fisheries Society) Allocation of Fisheries Resources, FAO, Rome, 502–18.

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Fisheries management has come prominently into focus in the second half of the twentieth century, and must be seen essentially as a response to pressure on resources at the international and indeed at the global level. Of course elements of fisheries management are much older, and indeed the beginnings are lost in history. It can be assumed that the earliest measures of fisheries management occurred at the local level, and are likely in the first place to have been a reaction to pressure on resources in the context of settlements such as subsistence villages, in which systems of allocation of resources and definition of access to them are traditional and have operated from very early into modern times. Research into the preEuropean cultures of California, in which farming was unknown, show that some groups of native Indians depended heavily on fishing; yet they had developed strategies of resource management in which custom, reinforced by ritual rules, often guaranteed the availability of fish in the long term by preventing over-exploitation (McEvoy 1986:2–40). In addition, at a higher level of organisation, various cities, countries and other authorities have imposed measures of management and control in fisheries throughout history, although these have been of limited scope compared with many of the modern systems of management. There have always been two main motivations for management of fisheries, and also of other living resources. There is the obvious need to maintain the resource in the long term by measures directed at biological conservation; and in addition there is the linked requirement of defining entitlement or access to it. Even in the times before the establishment of science in its modern sense, the desirability of basic biological measures such as the prohibition of taking juvenile or under144

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sized fish and of catching fish outside a defined season, when they are often out of condition, was realised. In China there are records from 2,000 years ago of the prohibition of the catching of under-sized fish (Huming Yu 1991:27). In the second category of selective entitlement are various regulations to restrict access or ownership to particular social groups or individuals: this can be linked to superior social status but may also be associated with rights of residence in particular places; instances of the former include the imperial right in China to the important carp species and in Scotland the Crown right to the formerly most important salmon fisheries; in Polynesia the rights to certain species might be restricted to the dominant clans in island communities (Dahl 1988:42), and in Melanesia cases are known where fishing monopolies were guarded by military force (Moerman 1984:52–3). For rights based on residence in particular places, instances are known going back to ancient Mesopotamia, where the population had the rights to the fish in their own river and canal waters (Radcliffe 1921:380), and in Polynesia there were often rights to fish within coral reefs and off islands restricted to the local inhabitants (Ruddle 1988:357). In many cases still in local situations in various parts of the world particular fishing stations or berths are a preferential right or a monopoly of the resident community or of particular individuals within it. At a more elaborate level there have been various instances where the rights to particular fishing stations or banks have been systematically rotated among the local fishermen, in a manner similar to that which often occurred with meadow areas, and sometimes even with arable ground, on land. A problem that can only be of long standing is that of providing for the use of different gear types which are mutually incompatible; this problem has often been resolved by limiting the use of particular gear types to defined water or sea areas. A good example is the zoning of the sea off the Lofoten Islands in Norway, which was codified in the late nineteenth century mainly to minimise the conflicts between net and line fishermen (Figure 8.1). At a more general level there are the obvious conflicts between static and mobile gear types. Instances are known going back for centuries of conflicts between drag nets and fixed gears, and there is a case on record in England as far back as 1377 (Rotuli Parliamentorum, Vol. II, 369); in the modern world this type of situation has often occurred and a reaction produced in many countries has been the prohibition of inshore trawling in favour generally of traditional and often static gears. In Scotland, there has been a new approach to this issue since 1985, when the old general prohibition on 145

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inshore trawling was removed but a number of permanent and seasonal static gear reserves within six miles of the coast were created to cater for the needs of small shell fishermen and to obviate conflict with other types of gear. There have also been management measures in history which have had a distinctly more economic or commercial outlook. There have been in Europe and elsewhere attempts to reserve the right to fish in certain sea areas, especially near the coast for the nationals of the coastal state. In 1631 Denmark claimed a 32-mile limit around its dependency of Iceland, and Scotland also attempted to assert its rights to all the waters within sight of its coast. There have also been various efforts of national promotion of fisheries with the objective of generating additional national wealth. A prime example here is the great Dutch herring fishery, which dominated open-sea fishing in the North Sea for over two centuries. As this fishery developed it incorporated increasing government oversight and regulation to define the fishing season, to guarantee the quality of the product and to gear the volume of production to market demand in the interest of maintaining the price (Unger 1980:243–79). In the Mercantilist period, and continuing into the early nineteenth century, it was also usual for countries in Western Europe to promote the development of fishing fleets with capital grants or bounties. While scholars like Adam Smith have criticised such methods as inefficient in principle, they often incorporated a secondary motive of being an underpinning for naval power, by fostering the development of a pool of trained seamen.

DEVELOPMENTS OF THE MERCANTILIST PERIOD While over the centuries a series of laws and regulations applying to fisheries had formed in Europe, a new approach for trade and opensea fisheries developed in the Mercantilist period. It became realised by the dominant sea powers, which in the seventeenth century were those of Western Europe, that their economic needs were better and more practicably served by the principle and legal doctrine of ‘Mare Librum’ (open sea) rather than ‘Mare Clausum’ (closed sea): this was articulated by the famous Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius. Although never completely accepted in all parts of the world (including Europe itself) the open-sea doctrine dominated maritime affairs, including fisheries, until after the Second World War. The essential premises 146

Figure 8.1 Boundaries of fishing zones at Lofoten, Norway Source: Based on material supplied by the Chief of the Fishery Inspectorate, Svolvaer, and reproduced from Mead 1958:173

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of this legal doctrine relating to fisheries were that it was impossible to expropriate the resource and that it could not be exhausted by promiscuous use (Johnston 1965:165–6). While this was sound in the pre-industrial age, greatly enhanced catching power had by the second half of the twentieth century increased pressures on fish stocks to a point that was to promote a radical global reappraisal. Although freedom of fishing had from the seventeenth century become the norm on the high seas, there continued to be restrictive laws on various European statute books, but a new departure came in the later nineteenth century and this was related to some of the first scientific investigations done on fish in the sea.

DEVELOPMENTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE It was realised that with the available catching power in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the operation of fishing seldom affected the state of the stocks in any measurable way, and this was to lead in Britain to the repeal of much outdated legislation, and gave freedom of operation and scope for expansion. While this was a valid conclusion at the time, it is somewhat ironic that it was made just when the increased rates of exploitation with modern boats and methods were about to make catch rates a significant factor in the population dynamics of fish stocks. It was clear by the end of the nineteenth century that the North Sea especially was being subjected to unprecedented demands by the industrialised countries around it, and a major milestone in biological monitoring and management was the founding of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 1902 by eight of the nations around the North Sea. The ICES was given the task of keeping a co-ordinated record of fish catches and of promoting scientific research into the biology and state of fish stocks. It was also to be the first of a series of parallel councils and organisations instituted at various times in the present century for the purpose of international co-ordination of study, monitoring and management of fisheries in different sea areas. As a result of scientific study, data were accumulated for such basic variables as growth and recruitment rates and in the early twentieth century the main object of management came to be seen as the ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY), the biological optimum, whereby catches would be set at a level at which the fish removed from the stock during the operation were balanced by gains from 148

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recruitment and growth. While it was always realised that the discerning of the point of MSY was difficult in practice, this did mark the recognition of a basic scientific principle which is still a major reference point in fishery management. As well as having recognised currency in the North Atlantic area, it was also the basis of management in the halibut fishery in the North Pacific from the interwar period under the International Fisheries Commission, which was to play an important pioneer role in the study of fish stocks and the development of marine conservation programmes (Jackson and Royce 1986:42–5). In the period immediately after the Second World War an international convention was instituted to cover the fisheries of the north-west Atlantic: this was the International Convention for the North-West Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF), changed later after the extensions of limits to 200 miles to the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO). At the same time there was a convention established to cover the tuna fisheries of the eastern Pacific, the InterAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC). Subsequently a series of regional conventions or commissions have come into being, and they now cover virtually all of the world’s oceans, although in differing degrees of detail; they number 20 in all, not counting the international bodies dealing with whales and other marine mammals. Most of these commissions cover substantial ocean areas, like the West Central Atlantic or the whole South Pacific, although there are separate international bodies for the Mediterranean, Black and Baltic Seas; and in the case of Africa and Europe there are also international commissions for the inland fisheries. While it was early realised that other management measures— especially the discouraging of taking juvenile and under-sized fish— were desirable, for decades any limitation here was set by market demand rather than formal regulation. However, since the Second World War there has been an increasing body of regulations, starting in the early high-pressure areas of the North Atlantic and North Pacific and extending elsewhere, directed at the protection of the young members of fish stocks. For demersal species this has been achieved mainly by setting minimum mesh sizes for nets, to allow the smaller fish to swim through and escape capture. It is frequently supported by the stipulation of minimum sizes allowed to be landed, and the latter principle is useful in being applicable to shellfish as well as demersal species. There has also been a marked tendency to increase minimum mesh sizes progressively as the pressure on fish 149

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stocks has increased. While the principle of setting minimum mesh sizes is sound and indeed essential, there are frequently problems in that most demersal catches are of mixed species, and ideally there would be different mesh sizes for each species: in practice decisions on mesh size reflect a compromise. In addition, minimum mesh regulations are of limited value for pelagic species; their characteristic shoaling behaviour and frequently softer bodies generally render such measures less effective. A range of other measures has been formulated to extend the biological framework of management. These include restrictions or prohibition of fishing on spawning and nursery grounds, and the establishing of closed seasons, when fish may be out of condition. The latter type of measure is generally a main one in pelagic fisheries. Such principles have an obvious place in the strategy of management, but their impact is more difficult to measure than that of minimum mesh sizes, and they are prone to be more contentious. An issue that is contentious in a number of areas is that of how far catches should be used for the low-value outlet of reduction to meal and oil, rather than for human consumption. Around one-third of the global catch now goes for reduction, and the products are used mainly in intensive livestock farming and to an increasing extent in fish farming: in both of these it provides a cheap high-protein feed. While some species, like the Peruvian anchovy, the capelin of north Norway or the sand eels and Norway pout in the North Sea, have virtually no alternative markets, they may be part of the food for more valuable species in the food web, and in some cases more valuable species may constitute a high proportion of the by-catch. This has become a contentious issue in north Norway, where the capelin is the main food of the supremely important cod, and in the North Sea where young haddock, cod and other commercial species have been taken as bycatch along with Norway pout. In Norway this has to be resolved mainly within the country itself, but in the European Community (EC) it has set Denmark, with its big industrial fisheries, against its Community partners. A very important fishery that was fully exploited by the Second World War was that for salmon on the west coast of the USA and Canada. As pressure increased on the stocks here during the period after the Second World War, a series of restrictions was formulated in the interest of conservation, which in some ways anticipated the measures later to be imposed in other fisheries elsewhere (Crutchfield 1977:3–14). While these measures varied in different parts of the 150

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extensive area involved, they did contain restrictions on fishing time, including severe curtailment of the length of the season and prescription of the number of days in the week and even the number of hours in the day allowed for fishing. A series of gear restrictions was also imposed, with net fishing being progressively restricted; and the freedom of boats to move from one area to another was curtailed more and more. The management of this fishery has been singled out as a particularly bad example, in which the preoccupation with imposing restrictions on the catching operation led to excessive economic inefficiency and waste. It continues to present formidable management problems and these are probably the greatest in the world for any fishery. In the scale of its production, it is a major fishery in any reckoning, and its catches have unusually high unit value. In its marine phase, the salmon ranges far beyond the modern 200-mile limits, and in this phase its management requires the cooperation of the major fisheries nations of Japan and the USSR as well as of the USA and Canada. In the commercial fishery there are several different groups of gear users involved, and in Alaska an index of its special importance is the fact that in that state farming of salmon continues to be illegal. There are also native Indian groups in both Canada and the USA who have special aboriginal rights in the fishery, as well as some involvement in the commercial fishery. In addition the Pacific salmon is the subject of one of the most important of all recreational fisheries in a continent in which the economic importance of recreational fisheries dwarfs that of their commercial counterpart. In its freshwater phase, there are also the problems associated with rival demands for water, such as those for hydroelectric power and water supply for industry and in some cases irrigation, as well as for domestic use; and there have been conflicts with major land uses like forestry, the practices of which can affect the run-off and sediment load of rivers. In summary the West Coast salmon fishery is enmeshed in an extreme complexity of issues, and its management inevitably involves many-sided compromises. However, it is sufficiently valuable to attract high levels of expenditure in scientific research and in restocking of rivers, although management measures are also complicated by the irregular timing of salmon runs and the fluctuations in their volume from year to year. It is ironic that in the case of this fishery a theoretical solution which would greatly improve economic efficiency and management would be relatively simple. The salmon could be caught with much less effort by commercial 151

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fishermen if catching were delayed until the salmon were concentrating to enter their spawning rivers, and it would be possible for sports fishermen to operate freely prior to this point without any serious danger of damage to the stocks. It would also be relatively simple to ensure that sufficient salmon escaped capture at the river mouths to ensure that sufficient stocks were maintained for spawning and for river anglers. Unfortunately the vested interests which have become entrenched during the period of over a century that the fishery has been a major activity of settlers from Europe have so far precluded moves towards this theoretical solution. While mesh size regulations and other measures like closed seasons were extended in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the North Atlantic area, they proved inadequate to restrain the rapid build-up of catching power, and it was inevitable that further measures should be taken. It was realised that it was also necessary to set catch limits, and this led to the emergence of the principle of ‘total allowable catch’ (TAC), by which an annual ceiling is set on the catches of each species. This involves systematic monitoring of the age structure as well as the tonnage of commercial catches, along with scientific surveys of larvae and recruitment. It is possible for there to be free competition among vessels within the TAC limit, although the practicalities of management have often led to the subdivision of TACs among nations, fleet sectors or even individual vessels. When TACs were first set in the later 1960s in the North Atlantic area, they were essentially within an international framework under existing national conventions. It was increasingly felt, however, by nations with good fishing grounds off their coasts, that the framework of international conventions was inadequate for control: decision times were too extended and effective sanctions too lax to prevent resource deterioration. With enhanced modern catching power, and with in many cases stocks exploited at a dangerously high level, it can also be essential now for decision making to be accelerated when adverse situations and symptoms emerge. A fishery may be closed at short notice as the quota limit is approached, and other restrictions may be tightened or relaxed in the light of the progress of catches during the season. In Norway and in the UK, for example, the authorities may intervene at short notice, especially in the pelagic fisheries, to close or suspend operations. Such measures are probably best developed in Iceland, where in the event of too high a proportion of small fish appearing in the catches a senior scientist may suspend a fishery at as little as 30 minutes’ notice. 152

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While there can be little question that the restraints set by TACs are now an essential element in the management of many fisheries, experience with setting and enforcing them is not uncomplicated, and in several important fisheries they have been considerably less than a complete success in practice. An example is that of the most important demersal species of the North Sea, the haddock (Figure 8.2), which shows the interaction of scientific advice, administrative decision making and fishing performance. This is one of the most fully investigated of all fish stocks through the work of the ICES, and its management is in the hands of the EC in conjunction with Norway. This entails that it is subject to one of the best developed of management regimes including inter alia continuous computer logging of catches so that up-to-date information is always available. In the first place it can be seen that the advice brought forward by the scientists is not always precise: this can be related to a measure of uncertainty in the available statistical data, but is more often a question of how much allowance is to be made to promote the health of the stock in the medium as opposed to the short term. It is also evident that the resource managers may adjust the figures recommended by the scientists, and in the early stages of the 1970s there was a tendency for them to bow to the pressures from fishing interests to raise the agreed TAC beyond the suggested levels; indeed the increasing difficulty in decision making is shown by the failure to agree on a TAC in 1977 and 1981. While the agreed TACs have subsequently been nearer to those of the scientific advice, since 1982 the scientists have in fact been regularly stating maximum figures only, while it has become clear that despite the attempts to manage the fishery the size of the spawning biomass has been reduced to a dangerously low level; by 1990 the agreed TAC was only about 15 per cent of that of 1985, and 10 per cent of that of 1975. What is clearer in this fishery more than almost any other is that the total catches are well above the actual landings, because of the discarding of undersized species at sea to conform with conservation regulations. Even with the use of nets with legal mesh sizes, it has been estimated that at times up to 40 per cent of the actual catches have been of under-sized fish. This has resulted in pressure for further increases in mesh size, and for the employing of square rather than diamond shaped mesh to allow more small fish to escape capture. The North Sea haddock fishery continues to be in some danger of extinction, and shows the difficulty of formulating and enforcing adequate management measures in the face of modern catching power.

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Figure 8.2 Recommended total allowable catches, adopted total allowable catches and actual catches for North Sea haddock, 1975–90 Source: ICES, Co-operative Annual Report

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EXTENSIONS OF FISHERIES LIMITS The fact that local fishermen around much of the North Atlantic had for generations resented the operation of distant-water vessels off their coasts added to the growing political pressures for more radical and effective measures to restrain them, not only to conserve the resources but to give preferential access to home nationals. This was added to movements in various other areas including Third World nations for a revision of the regime of the International Law of the Sea, to extend national fisheries limits and to curtail the international freedom of fishing. While this to an extent represents the collective force of small operators, it is also related to the desire of many nations, including those of the Third World, to modernise their fisheries and operate on a bigger scale. Wider matters of greater economic moment than fisheries were also to bear on the issue of the width of national offshore zones. There had throughout the period since the Second World War been increasing interest in, and exploitation of, minerals of the shelf—especially oil. Nations in general wished to secure the rights to minerals off their coasts, and an important landmark was the linking of rights to offshore minerals and fisheries in a 1972 resolution of the United Nations, which was passed without a dissentient vote (Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1974:26713 A). In many shelf areas, such as the North Sea, it proved possible to divide the shelf into agreed national zones with relatively little controversy. The coastal state had rights to minerals out to the edge of its offshore shelf, and where the offshore shelf of one nation met that of another, the boundary was set by a median line. The fact that such divisions were usually made in advance of mineral discoveries largely prevented the development of vested interests of the type which were often involved in distant-water fisheries, and which understandably gave rise to claims for historic rights. In turn these have often led to disputes when coastal states have extended their fisheries limits. Although effectively accepted by the major sea powers, and useful to them for strategic as well as other purposes, the principle of the three-mile limit to the territorial sea was never formally codified in international law. As far back as 1930 an international Codification Conference found that only 18 out of 36 countries favoured a threemile limit, although the 18 included all the major economic and naval powers, including the USA, the UK, Germany, Japan and others (Oda 1989:14). The Scandinavian countries had for centuries claimed a 155

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four-mile limit, and in 1951 this was approved by the International Court of Justice in the Hague after the British-Norwegian fisheries dispute; moreover, the Norwegian claim to define the limit with regard to point-to-point base-lines rather than the low-tide mark was also approved. Previous to this pre-Revolutionary Russia’s claim to a 12-mile limit to the territorial sea, first advanced in 1909, was inherited and claimed by the USSR at the 1930 Codification Conference. After the Second World War there was a growing tendency for nations to claim the rights to resources off their shores, and these claims might or might not be accompanied by claims to the extension of the territorial sea. Nearly all seaboard countries in Latin America claimed extended jurisdiction over fisheries in the years between 1945 and 1956: and while three of these claimed fishing rights to 12 miles, six of them claimed rights out to 200 miles. In the 1950s four African countries claimed extended limits of up to 12 miles, and of the nine claims made at this time in Asia the first archipelago-based claims by the Philippines and Indonesia were included, and also the claim by India to a 100-mile conservation zone extending out from the territorial sea (Oda 1989:16–17). In Eastern Europe also four nations advanced extended claims of up to 12 miles. While such formal claims were slower to appear among the most highly developed countries, Australia claimed the right to control pearl fishing in the epicontinental sea in 1953, while in 1952 Canada claimed a 12-mile fishing zone for Newfoundland. In addition, in 1945 the USA claimed the right to establish conservation zones beyond three miles (Hey 1989:6), and the Truman declaration of the same year, which asserted the rights of the USA to minerals under the shelf, was a strong move in this general direction, if not formally stated as a claim to extended jurisdiction. In the longer term arguably the most important developments, even in the early post-war period, were the claims made by the small and now completely independent nation of Iceland (Coull 1974:359–68), which had finally emerged from the colonial control of Denmark and which had strong feelings about the manner in which its interests in its main available resource, the fish off its coasts, had been subordinated to Danish interests. Denmark had a vested interest in maintaining good relations with the UK, which was the main market for its dairy produce, and had at the start of the twentieth century agreed that British vessels could fish up to a threemile limit around Iceland; this agreement was subsequently referred 156

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to by the Icelanders as ‘the notorious ‘bacon and butter agreement” (Government of Iceland 1973:9). In pressing its claims to extended jurisdiction Iceland was able to capitalise on its strategic position in the North Atlantic in the circumstances of the ‘Cold War’; and as a member of NATO with the important American base at Keflavik on its territory, it was able to exert significant political leverage in the international forum. Iceland claimed a fishing zone extending over the continental shelf as early as 1948, and in 1952 made its first move to realise its ambitions by advancing its claim to a four-mile limit measured from point-to-point base-lines (Figure 8.3). This was a challenge especially to the UK, which had become mainly dependent

Figure 8.3 The successive extensions to Icelandic fishery limits Source: Government of Iceland 1973

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for demersal fish on distant-water grounds, of which Iceland was the most important. Several other countries, particularly West Germany, were also adversely affected, but opposition was strongest in Britain, which also had additional strength as a continuing naval power. Although Icelandic fish exports to Britain for a time were embargoed at the ports, Iceland like Norway was able to sustain its case in the international forum and the limits extension was conceded by Britain. This was followed by Iceland’s claim to a 12-mile limit in 1958, which it justified by the wish to control the main spawning grounds of the cod, by far the most important species on the Iceland grounds. This was met by stronger resistance from Britain, with naval vessels accompanying the trawlers as escorts; and this episode became known as the ‘First Cod War’. However, after three years the Icelandic claim was again conceded, and it was agreed that in the event of any future dispute it would be referred to the International Court at the Hague. Following this there was increasing evidence of the deterioration of the cod stock, although there were considerable differences of opinion (including among the scientists themselves) as to how serious the deterioration was. Ultimately, after a change of government in 1972, Iceland advanced its claim to a 50-mile limit which in effect claimed exclusive rights to all but about 6 per cent of the area of the shelf. This brought the argument to a crucial stage: the earlier extensions had inconvenienced the distant-water fleets but still gave them access to adequate resources to continue in business, but the 50-mile limit set a new precedent, which if successful was certain to be followed elsewhere, and meant that distant-water fishing in the North Atlantic would be so constrained as to lose its essential basis. Iceland now claimed that the issue was essentially a political rather than a legal one, and refused to agree to it being referred to the International Court; the situation became one in which Iceland claimed it was defending its essential national interests, while Britain took a stand on its legal rights. British trawlers were again provided with naval escorts on Icelandic grounds; Icelandic gun-boats on several occasions cut trawl warps; there were incidents in which there were accusations of ramming made by both sides; and on one occasion the Icelanders shelled a British vessel. Iceland had taken greater care than Britain in publicising its case, and was able to get the great weight of international sympathy on its side. Its claim was again eventually conceded by Britain, and after a short six-month phasing-out arrangement, Iceland had effective control of its continental shelf; and this became a trigger mechanism in the 158

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acceptance of general limits extensions in the North Atlantic area, and indeed beyond. With the linked issue of mineral rights, the rights of coastal states to the economic resources in or under their offshore waters became internationally accepted with limited reservations. The principles in international law governing the management of extended fisheries zones, and of migrant and straddling stocks, were codified under the international convention of 1982. The standardising of the width of exclusive fisheries zones at 200 miles, though arbitrary in its precision, does mean that by far the majority of productive marine waters are now within national fisheries limits, and the resources are effectively national property. These include both the major shelf areas, like that off north-west Europe, and the areas of deep upwelling, such as that off the west coast of South America. There are, however, areas of high productivity where the shelf extends beyond 200 miles, as in the Sea of Okhotsk and to the east of Newfoundland, which are still under an international regime and which are now generally more poorly managed. There is also a continuing problem of straddling and of migrant stocks, which generally demand agreement between at least two nations for effective management: highly migrant stocks, of which the tuna is the prime example, have proved a particularly difficult problem on which to reach agreement even on the principles of management, let alone systems of monitoring and allocation. While limits extensions have done much to change the spatial pattern of jurisdiction and management in the world’s fisheries, the fact that a limited resource base has been faced with great increases in catching capacity and accompanying enhanced dangers of overexploitation has led to the necessity for considerably extended systems of management within the 200-mile limits, and to some extent beyond them. As a necessary counterpart to this, the freedom of operation of fishing vessels has been considerably curtailed. In general there has been the establishment of preferential or monopoly rights for fishing craft of the home state within national fishing zones. Access of foreign vessels to these zones is now in principle licensed or controlled, and often entitlement to exploit only fish judged surplus to national requirements is given; fees are often charged. However, such schemes are often modified in the case of states with adjacent fisheries zones to give a measure of reciprocal access to allow the fishing of straddling or migrant stocks. In several cases in the north-east Atlantic there is sufficient scientific data for such stocks to allow the calculation of ‘percentage 159

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zonal attachments’ in neighbouring zones, and to divide fishing entitlement accordingly. Another type of joint arrangement is the Torres Strait Agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea, which jointly regulates the resources of these countries but which also includes separate zones of fisheries jurisdiction, separated by a simplified median line; this has avoided the fragmentation of the area into pockets because of the position of various islands (Hey 1989:147). Arrangements within national zones vary. Management in general is simplest in the cases of states like New Zealand or Australia, where the fisheries zone is isolated and requires few or no median lines to separate the zone from those of other states. Countries like the USA, Canada, Norway, Iceland, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines also enjoy the rights to very extensive national zones, although it is necessary for them to work out arrangements with neighbouring nations for migrant and straddling stocks. In the case of nations with federal constitutions, there is also the issue of the balance of authority between the federal and state or provincial governments. In the USA, regional councils have been set up to cover different sectors of the fisheries zone, and on these councils there is representation of individual state interests along with those of the fishing industry and of other groups such as recreational fishermen. In Canada, authority over fisheries is essentially federal, and in Atlantic Canada the boundaries of the fisheries regions do not coincide with those of the provinces but over-ride them. In Canada, fish processing under the constitution is theoretically a provincial responsibility, but in practice now federal and provincial legislation here are precisely in parallel, and the modern system of management and quality control is federally funded and administered. Japan, the world’s leading fishing nation, is distinguished by having a two-tier system of fisheries management, in which inshore fishing is the responsibility of local government (the prefectures) while longer-range fishing comes under the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing of national government (Herrington 1972:421–5). Among the most complex management arrangements are those of the multi-national EC, where the principle of a sea common to all nations has been maintained and which is mainly administered by a system of annual national quotas for important species; this management system also involves several joint arrangements with non-EC countries for straddling stocks which constitute the great part of the resource base. Probably the most challenging and difficult international situation for effective 160

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management is that of the South Pacific, where 14 emergent island nations with a total population of 5 million have fisheries zones which together extend to over 6 million square miles (L.Clark 1989:202), and these zones are huge in comparison with their land areas. Commercial fisheries in the region are dominated by tuna species, in which the world’s leading nations in economic development, the USA and Japan, have major interests; and neither of them have officially recognised the right of nations to control within their own fisheries limits the management of highly migratory species like the tuna. On their part, the island nations have the great problem of exercising adequate surveillance over immense sea areas with very limited capability for the purpose. The situation has been in danger of getting out of control, but the island nations have acted collectively along with Australia and New Zealand in the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) to formulate a co-ordinated fisheries policy since 1979 (Mizukami 1991:111–21). A single register of vessels for which access is allowed has been instituted, and this aids in the imposition of fees and other measures; the island nations of course control the harbours of the region. Since 1989 they have also got the distant-water fishing nations to join in a ban of long drift nets which threatened to reduce the stocks of tuna, other pelagic fish and various sea mammals. There is an element of self-policing in this organisation, as it is in the interest of licensed vessels themselves to report interlopers; and this is no doubt the most realistic way for the nations concerned, with their limited resources, to approach the problem. Most of the tuna are still taken by distant-water vessels, but it is the general aim in the long term for the island nations to make help in developing their own fisheries a condition of access, and it is already the case that the share of Third World nations in the global tuna catch is rising. The size of some modern national fisheries zones makes their subdivision necessary for practical management. Canada has in substantial measure retained the sea area divisions originally defined by the ICNAF in the 1950s, and sets separate quotas for these areas, either singly or in groups (e.g. Figure 8.4). Similarly the multi-national EC employs the sea areas originally defined by the ICES in subdividing its quotas to several species between its member nations. In the Third World, and especially in southern Asia, there have been many moves to reserve the inshore waters for small operators, although the management resources to make these properly effective are seldom available. In a number of these countries there are also

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Figure 8.4 Cod quotas in Eastern Canada, 1988 Source: Based on material supplied by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Halifax, Nova Scotia

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additional problems with fishermen from different tribes or cultural groups. In Malaysia and Indonesia, to manage the resource and minimise friction between fleet sectors the area within the national fisheries limits are now officially divided into four zones according to distance offshore. In Malaysia the area up to 5 miles offshore is reserved for artisanal owner-operators; between 5 and 12 miles is reserved for trawl and purse-seine boats of under 40 tonnes; from 12 to 30 miles is reserved for trawl and purse-seine boats of over 40 tonnes wholly owned and operated by Malaysian fishermen; while the area beyond 30 miles is for boats of over 70 tonnes, and these may be Malaysian or have a foreign participation in them (Yahaya 1988:91). In Indonesia, the zoning offshore is into successive bands—out to 3 miles, 3–7 miles, 7–12 miles and beyond 12 miles—and access to them is defined according to a combination of criteria combining boat tonnage, engine size and fishing gear employed. However, the total area involved is extremely great, and it is known that enforcement is very imperfect; and the most meaningful management measure has been recognised as the general prohibition of trawling, which has served both to reduce pressure on resources and to improve the position for the many artisanal fishermen (Rice 1991:165–6). It has generally been the stated policy of different countries in fisheries management to make the maximum use of resources which ecological ceilings allow, and at the same time to have an economically efficient fishing industry which provides the maximum of economic benefits. In fact there is a necessary measure of contradiction between these objectives (Chapter 4), and in any case management systems also reflect political realities and can have definite social goals which seldom coincide exactly with economic desiderata. In the quarter century immediately after the Second World War, the concern of governments generally was to promote expansion and efficiency in fisheries rather than to manage them for the purpose of conservation, and in many countries various incentives were given in subsidies and investment aids to these ends. However, as fisheries developed and pressure on resources mounted, various means were adopted for limiting fishing effort, especially after the extension of international limits in the 1970s. These measures have in general become more extensive and refined in time. They have included licensing of vessels, and sometimes of individual fishermen, and the establishment of closed seasons and closed areas; an essential part has very frequently been limitations on the catches of individual vessels

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LICENSING The limiting of entry to fisheries by licensing has become a common expedient in recent decades as part of a programme to match catching capacity to the available resource base. In many countries fishing vessels have been registered over a considerably longer period, and in the UK registration for commercial fishing vessels was instituted as early as the 1860s. However, registration has not in itself been employed as a means of controlling entry, and some of the earliest licensing schemes amount in effect to registration. In the salmon fisheries of the west coast of Canada, for example, a system of licensing was built up from 1889 (Marchak et al. 1987:23), but there were no real restrictions on entry before the 1960s. Japan, in its promotion of distant-water and other fisheries in the early post-war period, developed schemes of licensed entry to help match catching power to the resource base and maintain profitability. Since the 1960s Canada also increasingly employed licensing as a means of controlling fishing effort in its lobster and other fisheries. Licensing has been extended and refined in these countries and has been adopted in a wide variety of other situations as a measure necessary both for conservation and for economic viability. In this way, in the modern period the traditional ‘open entry’ in fisheries, which Scott Gordon singled out as one of its major structural weaknesses in his seminal paper in 1954 (Gordon 1954:124–42), has in fact been substantially amended, at least in most developed countries. The approach to licensing has varied significantly, however. In Japan it was recognised at an early stage that a licence itself could have economic value, and in some fisheries, such as those for tuna, the price of a licence could become a substantial item of expenditure in addition to the cost of a vessel itself. In Iceland a programme of licensing was brought in from the later 1970s, and licences for bigger boats in the 1980s gained a considerable market value; however, the decision taken in 1990 to give the individual vessel a fixed proportion of the TAC, and to base this on three years’ historic performance has effectively limited the market value of licences. However, boats’ quotas may be leased or bought, and it was estimated that by 1991 the average market value of quota allocations had risen to IKr200 per kilo (Symes 1991:10). In Canada, licensing has been regarded essentially as a measure of management and control, and any value attached to the licence is unofficial and not recognised by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Canadian 164

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situation has been conditioned by the collective political pressure of the large number of small operators, who have effectively been favoured in the schemes of resource allocation. The situation in Norway is in important respects parallel to that in Canada, with the preferential allocation of a large part of the resources to small operators. However, the Norwegian approach has been to use licensing to limit the development of big vessels and to link them to regional policy, which has generally favoured the more isolated communities, especially of the far north. While in Norway all commercial fishing vessels are registered, licensing is obligatory only for vessels of over 50 ft in length, which amounts to little more than 5 per cent of the total number of registered fishing boats. However, as in Canada, there are several categories of licenses for the bigger vessels, which limits the fisheries in which they may engage. In addition, though not formally licensed, the modern management system does set various restrictions on the operation of the smaller sectors of the fleet. In the EC the moves towards licensing of vessels has been promoted by directives at the Community level to adjust catching capacity to the resource base, which here necessarily implies considerable fleet reductions. The EC has stipulated targets in total tonnage and horsepower for individual country fleets: this together with the national quota limits on catches has made licensing of vessels essential to control capacity. In south-east Asia there has been a considerable increase in pressure on resources in a densely populated Third World situation in the modern period, and programmes of licensing have been introduced, especially in Malaysia. While licensing does not extend to the entire Malaysian fleet, of the 26,691 vessels licensed in 1983 96 per cent were small boats of less than 40 tonnes gross registered tonnage (g.r.t); and while national plans are for the expansion of the offshore fleet, its size is limited to a total of 646 licensed craft (Mohamed 1991:3, 11). In many systems the smallest boats in the fleet are not subjected to licensing requirements, as they tend to make a minor contribution to the total catch, and they may also be subject to less rigorous controls than bigger vessels as the administrative cost of dealing with large numbers of smaller operators is disproportionately heavy. At the same time, however, there has been a tendency to lower the minimum size of vessel requiring a licence, in view of the tendency to build craft of the maximum size which can operate without one— 165

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with modern equipment this can still significantly raise catching capacity. The tendency has been to set limits to length rather than tonnage, and this allows boats to be built with greater beam and draught. In the UK the lower limit for licensing was originally put at 40 ft; this was subsequently reduced to 35 ft, and later, in accordance with an EC directive, to 10 m registered length. It was finally set at 10 m between perpendiculars, in response to a further EC directive. In Iceland licensing and catch limit arrangements are in force down to a minimum length of 6 m; it was the practice in the earlier 1980s to limit small line boats of under 10 g.r.t. only by days at sea, and it was found that their share of the total catch rose more than three times. A concomitant of these licensing systems has generally been a strong measure of control on fleet replacement; where new construction is allowed it usually involves the transfer of a licence from an existing vessel which itself must be withdrawn from the fishery. In the earlier stages of such arrangements fishing capacity often continued to increase with the transfer of licences from smaller old boats to larger new boats. The tendency now, however, is to stipulate that the new vessel have at most an equal capacity to the old, and it may also be insisted that it be less. One of the incidental consequences of limiting the numbers of licences and allowing them to acquire market value is that they tend to gravitate from poorer to richer regions. It has been noted in Scotland, for example, that there has been a tendency for them to build up in the north-east, which has long been the dominant fishing region and which has the greatest reserves of available capital. Limits to fleet replacement are not always enough to match catching capacity to the resource base, and have also been linked in several cases with decommissioning schemes to remove excess capacity from the industry. In Norway the purse-net pelagic fleet grew unduly after spectacular success in the later 1960s and early 1970s, and the government has helped reduce its size by giving decommissioning finance. In Canada, ‘buy back’ schemes have been employed to ‘downsize’ several fleet sectors, including the salmon vessels on the west coast and the purse-net pelagic and lobster fleets in the east. The EC, too, aids individual national governments to finance decommissioning schemes: this is ironically related to the fact that it inherited a situation in which great progress in the period since the Second World War had built some of the most efficient fleets and

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market structures in the world, but catching capacity had grown well beyond the available resource base. Reducing employment opportunities by fleet reduction in many cases generates its own problems, as it is still the case that many fishing settlements are in relatively isolated locations in which other employment is scarce or absent. In the cases of Canada and Norway there has been the recognition of different degrees of dependence on fishing employment between different groups of fishermen, with the formulation of schemes to distinguish between those in full-time employment or mainly dependent on fishing, on the one hand, and those in part-time employment or for whom fishing is a secondary source of livelihood on the other. In Canada there are two different categories of personal licence for fishermen, while in Norway the ‘Fiskeridirektorat’ maintains two separate lists of fishermen. Malaysia is also adopting a policy of licensing individual fishermen as part of its programme of adjusting the catching power in the industry (Mohamed 1991:6). Administration of national quotas is now a matter of major importance in management programmes, and generally involves online computer systems to maintain up-to-date statistics. The general tendency has been to give individual vessel quotas to the biggest vessels, but to limit smaller craft in other ways.

MANAGEMENT OF QUOTAS National quotas may be managed by allowing free competition within the overall total, and this tended to occur when TACs were first adopted. While this may still be the case, it tends to hold for the less important species, such as the sprats and Norway pout in the EC, which go overwhelmingly for reduction. For other species a closer method of control is generally deemed necessary; and this also has the advantage of ‘spinning out’ the quota, if necessary, over the season or year, and helping to gear levels of landings to processing capacity. While in general there are no complications in the management of national quotas once these have been agreed, in the case of the multinational EC an important legal issue has arisen. The essential basis of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is that of national quotas, which is itself an exception to the general EC basic policy of free international 167

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competition with unobstructed movement of labour and capital. However, there have been attempts to register in one member country vessels based in another, and for these boats to take up part of the quota allocation of the second country. The practice has become known as ‘quota hopping’, and the greatest problem has been that of Spanish vessels being registered in Britain and fishing against British quota allocations. Britain has been attempting to block this practice by stipulating that vessels allowed a part of British quotas be at least 75 per cent owned in Britain. While a final judgement is still awaited, thus far the case has gone against Britain, and it could have implications within the EC which go far beyond the fishing industry (Churchill 1990:209– 47). Where catch limits are set for individual vessels, the general tendency has been to base individual boat allocations on a combination of vessel size and historic catch performance. Vessel size may be measured by length, tonnage, hold capacity or by more sophisticated indices, combining two or more criteria; and for historic performance the time period specified is obviously flexible. Vessel allocations may be set for a whole season or year, but they may be administered in a more flexible manner by such means as stipulating weekly or fortnightly limits or setting maxima for fishing trips; and crew size has also been employed as a criterion. In Norway the bigger vessels have generally had seasonal or yearly allocations determined by boat size or hold capacity. In the demersal fisheries, which are dominated by cod, there is in the first place a division of the TAC between the bigger vessels (trawlers and big longliners) and the smaller traditional boats; for the latter the catch limit for individual boats has been effectively set at a level that they can very seldom reach in any case, and trawler owners have objected that the smaller boats are in effect unregulated and that the weight of restrictions bears unfairly on the trawlers. This has led to claims for operating subsidies for the trawlers, and the government has found itself in a situation in which it has continued to give additional help and underwriting to an industry that has struggled against an inadequate resource base, for which conservation measures have proved inadequate. Demersal allocations for the ‘cod trawlers’ have been made by dividing the fleet into four groups, dependent mainly on tonnage but also on the type of enterprise, which include fresh-fish trawlers, freezer and factory-freezer trawlers and salt-fish trawlers. The practice of favouring the first of these categories has been linked 168

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to the additional employment in freezing plants on shore which is linked to them. In the pelagic fisheries it has been usual for the larger boats to base allocations on a formula which gives each vessel a basic amount, together with an additional allocation related to hold capacity. However, in the spring spawning herring fishery, which has experienced a partial revival in recent years after being seriously depleted, the smaller fleet sector (i.e. boats of up to 26 m in length) has been allocated about one-half of the overall total, and for this purpose has been divided into 21 size classes with allocations given in proportion to vessel length. In Canada the strategy has been to give the larger vessels (mainly those of over 100 ft, but including also the limited number of boats between 65 and 100 ft) in demersal and pelagic fish ‘enterprise allocations’, which are individual vessel quotas. The smaller craft are given collective group quotas, and such measures are usually supplemented by such means as weekly quotas or trip limits. It has also become part of the management pattern to put more restrictions on mobility, especially on the inshore fleet, and to oblige the big trawlers to fish more in the more difficult and storm-prone waters of the north off Labrador and eastern Newfoundland. The lobster fisheries are particularly important in eastern Canada, but here the conservation strategy has been to set upper limits to permitted landing size, together with limits to the number of traps each boat can use; these have been linked to a programme of licensing which was used between 1978 and 1981 to remove excess capacity from the fishery, and this has proved very effective. The principle that licensing is necessary in the matching of catching capacity to the resource base has found little favour in the USA. While this is related to the tradition of free enterprise, which has in fisheries been associated with open entry, it is compounded by the fact that in the modern period the catching capacity in the USA has lagged seriously behind that of nations with lower operating costs, while the country itself has become substantially dependent on imported fish, and much of the fleet is still old and small. This would render any licensing programme expensive as well as unpopular; however, there have been conservation problems in such fisheries as the cod and haddock of the north-east, and these have been seen as linked to an inadequate framework of resource management.

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ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND NONGOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS IN FISHERY MANAGEMENT While the main decisions relating to fisheries have to be made at the national or even supranational level, for a variety of reasons there is generally involvement of other levels of government, and this in general is most evident when the government has a federal constitution. Here the USA is the prime example, but it also applies in a range of other countries including Canada and Australia. In the USA the existence of state rights and inter-state boundaries can be a big complication in management, as has been shown in the important oyster fisheries of Chesapeake Bay: this estuary is cut by the boundary between Maryland and Virginia, and this has rendered the formulation of a co-ordinated management regime especially difficult (Alford 1973:44–54). Obviously regional and local levels of government within countries can also be involved in management, along with other organised bodies; and indeed it is appropriate that this should be so in any democratic situation. The participation of these is most advanced in the developed world, although traditional local arrangements may still play a significant role in regulating resource use in the Third World. Obviously there is the practical need for central government to delegate authority to such administrators as fishery officers around the coast; and it is necessary that organisations of fishermen, merchants and processors should have a voice in the industry on which their livelihood depends. There is therefore a hierarchy in systems of decision making and management, and the balance between the role of central government, of regional and local government and of other organisations and pressure groups varies. There has been a tendency in the modern period for fishermen’s organisations to come more prominently to the fore, especially in local management. In Norway, fishermens’ organisations have had a prominent and important role for over 60 years. The participation of fishermens’ organisations has also been officially encouraged in both the EC and Atlantic Canada. While this is partly a reaction of concerned fishermen to threats to the resource base, it is also related to the general recognition that management can be more effective, and indeed cheaper, if those essentially dependent on the industry have a part in formulating workable solutions to problems. Systematic devolution of management to local government is probably best developed in 170

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Japan, where inshore fisheries are the responsibility of the prefectures and where local fishermen’s cooperatives also play a large part in detailed administration. Japan is unique, however, in having a system of precisely defined legal rights to inshore fisheries. At the same time territorial-use rights do exist in many lake and inshore fisheries in different parts of the world, although they are more often parts of systems of customary rights, often without formal legal underwriting (Hannesson and Kurien 1988:8–10). However, local management has developed to an extent in most countries, and examples have been reported from Turkey, for example, in which in some cases viable systems of management effective in limiting entry and in conserving resources have been evolved in the recent past: these systems involve a combination of formal and informal arrangements (Berkes 1986:215–19). There are many examples of restricted participation in the Third World also, and they have been reported, for example, from fishing villages in West Africa, Sri Lanka, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (Lawson 1984:80–2). In democratic systems organised fishermen can exert considerable political pressure, especially in situations like those of north Norway and Atlantic Canada where fishing still plays a key role in regional economies. The danger of such situations is that they can secure protection for outdated or inefficient practices. In regions such as these there is effective protection for traditional small operators, and the great difficulty in introducing alternative employment in remote and scattered communities complicates a difficult situation (see the next section). In the Norwegian case, the government under an agreement with the fishermen’s organisations in 1964 put itself in the unusual position of being guarantor of fishermen’s right to an income on a par with those of ‘similar occupations’ (Hannesson and Kurien 1988:17). In the formulating of solutions to the complex management problems of the salmon fisheries of western North America, ‘comanagement’ has come prominently to the fore. Here there are very large recreational as well as commercial fishing interests for a highvalue species in both the USA and Canada; and as well as the problems of an international boundary with a highly migratory species with five main separate stocks, there are also the treaty obligations to a series of Indian tribes, many of them living in locations with very limited employment opportunities other than fishing. While the details of management arrangements vary considerably through the extensive 171

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area involved, a common denominator is the involvement of fishermen and of native Indian groups in the decision-making process, and most of the decision making is now delegated to the local level rather than being made by the state or province (Pinkerton 1989:3–33). In Britain, an important part of modern fishery management is in the hands of ‘producers’ organisations’ (POs), which are associations of fishermen, or more precisely of vessel owners. Since 1984 a system has been adopted of dividing up national quotas, in the main into ‘sector quotas’ for each PO, the size of each sector quota being determined by a combination of historic performance and vessel size. In this way the major part of national quotas is now administered by the fishing interests themselves, although boats retain the right if they prefer to get quota allocations direct from government agencies, and indeed most of the smaller boats do this. As well as reducing costs to government, this gives an important extra mechanism to discourage violations of quota regulations.

MOVES TO ENHANCE ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY It has long been the practice of economists to criticise the fishing industry as having an inefficient structure, and they have seen the characteristics of the common property nature of the resource and the open entry to the industry as roots of this inefficiency. Open-entry situations are now unusual in the developed world, and attempts are being made to contain them in various Third World nations. However, the resource is still generally in a state of common property, even if the property rights are now mainly restricted to the national rather than the international level. The economic case has frequently been made for extending the role of market mechanisms operating in the industry by removing the common property character of the resource and restricting entitlement to fish to those prepared to pay for it. While this happens relatively frequently in recreational fisheries, it is still rare in the commercial industry, and indeed the principle is generally highly unpopular with fishermen who see moves in this direction not only as an unwarranted interference with traditional freedoms but also as an extra cost to be imposed on an industry already fraught with problems. The imposition of special taxes to help direct development is even more unpopular. The approach favoured by economists is to accept the catch limit of the TAC based on scientific assessment but to auction it wholly or in part to fishing interests. For this purpose it has usually been 172

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suggested that the TAC should be divided into ‘individual fish quotas’ (IFQs), sometimes termed ‘individual transferable quotas’ (ITQs); and economic efficiency would be promoted by competition within the fleet, with only the more successful boats able to bid effectively in the auction. It is implied that a regulatory body would still be required to determine the TACs and also expense would have to be incurred in policing to discourage illegal operation, which is frequently still a costly matter, even with modern technology which involves the use of patrol vessels and aerial surveillance, as well as radar. Programmes of scientific research and monitoring, and of fisheries administration and surveillance, are inevitably costly, and in the main have been funded by governments without there being an extra charge on the industry. With the general moves to cut or contain public expenditure in the last decade, such expenditures are not unquestioned; it is rare for scientists to have all the data they wish to formulate the necessary advice for conservation programmes. Management obviously necessitates an adequate and consistent data base; in fisheries this is often as necessary in Third World situations as anywhere, and yet it is in just these situations that the deficiencies are most serious. Levels of surveillance at sea not infrequently provide inadequate deterrence to violations of regulations. Precise published data in this field are scarce, but in 1990 it was estimated that Canada spent about $100 million on surveillance alone, about two-thirds of it on the Atlantic coast (Trudeau 1991). It is known that in the UK the annual cost of surveillance also runs into tens of millions of pounds, although the aerial surveillance part of the work was privatised as an economy measure. Systems of fishery administration and management have in general grown in a pragmatic way, and there is now a general tendency to question their costs and efficiency. It has been observed in Norway that decisions made from the inter-war period onwards have resulted in a situation in which market forces now act behind a screen of regulations which largely tries to deny them (Örebech 1984:253–5). In the formulation of the revised fishing policy in Canada following the 1977 extension of fishery limits, it was publicly stated that in the short term such factors as dependence on the resource and proximity to it could supersede considerations of economic efficiency in the formulation of fishing plans and the allocation of quotas (Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries 1982:35). In both Norway and Canada there has been particularly strong feeling against company involvement in the catching sector and official measures to maintain the ownership of 173

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boats in the hands of working fishermen; and this has inevitably helped sustain the large numbers of small operators, and discouraged economies of scale. In several countries there have been moves to increase the role of market forces in the methods of resource allocation. The vessel licensing systems used in the UK and Iceland, for example, have recognised from the start that licences could have commercial value, and it is not uncommon for the value of a vessel licence to be a considerable fraction of that of the vessel itself. Also, in both of these countries vessel fish quotas may be transferred with the vessel, and recent developments have increased the freedom with which this can be done. In the UK the principle of ‘aggregation’ is now accepted, which allows the licences and quota entitlements of two vessels to be substituted for one bigger one, encouraging economies of scale. It has also been allowed for a producers’ organisation to buy a licensed vessel and to have its licence cancelled and its quota entitlement divided up between other members of the producers’ organisation. The best modern example of bringing more market discipline into fisheries management is in New Zealand, where as part of modern adjustments there has been a radical reappraisal of government inputs to fisheries as well as agriculture. New Zealand, as a result of limits extensions, has now one of the biggest fisheries zones in the world, and fisheries development has become an important national issue. Previous to limits extension, the New Zealand industry was very largely an inshore fishery of small operators, catering largely to a home market limited both by the small national population of somewhat over 3 million and by the fact that the country is the world’s cheapest producer of the products of pastoral farming. Modernisation of the industry effectively began with the setting up of joint ventures with American and Japanese companies to exploit the offshore fisheries for a limited number of species including tuna, and to produce mainly for export. Originally these were administered by a scheme of enterprise allocations based on levels of output and of processing and catching investment; from 1986 it was decided to institute a system of ITQs which would allow catching (but not property) rights in fish to be bought and sold (Crothers 1988:10–12); and this system has now been extended to cover about 30 species. Quota rentals are paid on quota held rather than fish catch, no foreign ownership is allowed and the maximum single holding of quota is 20 per cent of the TAC; and a national fish 174

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quota exchange has been established which is computerised. Landing takes place at designated ports, and buying is restricted to licensed merchants. In all a continuous adjustment process has been established which can respond to economic as well as biological variables. The ITQ system is also being extended to the traditional inshore fisheries in which it is necessary to rebuild depleted fish stocks and to remove excess capacity from the industry. The government provided NZ$45 million to finance a ‘buy back’ scheme, and initially set a nominal value on ITQs ($3 per tonne for most ground fish), with a view to allowing this to rise subsequently in line with market forces. Early evaluations of the ITQ scheme for the offshore fishery have on balance found it beneficial and effective, although there have been initial problems (Clark and Major 1988:325–49). Also, to date the great part of the catch has come from foreign vessels under charter, and the contribution of the home fleet in 1989 was still less than onethird of the total catch (OECD 1991:263). A considerable complication has been the inadequate biological knowledge of the state of the stocks, which is still in most cases rudimentary. A consequence of this was the virtual collapse of the valuable orange roughy fishery at an early stage. A similar system, introduced for the bluefin tuna fishery in Australia from 1984, has also been adjudged successful (Geen and Nayar 1988:365–87). The management of the offshore fisheries, which involve relatively few large vessels, is relatively simple, however. Whether the New Zealand system will prove equally effective in the characteristically multi-species fisheries, in which the more numerous inshore fleet is involved, is scarcely likely in view of the special arrangements often secured by small operators elsewhere. However, a modified ITQ system has been set up for the important rock lobster fishery, which has a licensed entry and which gives preference to full-time fishermen and to owner-operated boats; this scheme was in the first place proposed by the New Zealand Fishermen’s Federation (Hannesson and Kurien 1988:14). The economic logic of introducing this to the inshore sector would be that small operators would be supplanted as economies of scale were achieved under the play of market forces. There will certainly be a greater challenge in putting an effective ITQ system into effect for the inshore fisheries.

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THE QUESTION OF THE ADEQUACY OF MANAGEMENT While management measures and systems have developed and proliferated in the last quarter century, in the broad view the situation of global fisheries resources continues to give cause for serious concern. Situations of over-fishing have often persisted and multiplied. As well as areas subjected for longer to intensive exploitation, like the northeast Atlantic, over-fishing is now fairly frequent in inshore fisheries in the Third World, especially in the densely populated countries of south and east Asia. The best developed and most effective management systems are in the developed world, in countries which have committed the greatest resources to them. Even in these, however, it has proved a difficult problem to restrain the enhanced catching power of modern boats, and a common note in management systems has been a tightening of restrictions for over a decade. Fisheries are a vital industry in Iceland, and it was able to adopt a conservation programme to rebuild stocks after the catching power of distant-water fleets had been removed following its extension of limits, whilst it was at the same time building up and modernising its own catching power; a similar programme was carried out in Atlantic Canada. These countries have two of the best systems of monitoring and management in existence, but within a very few years they were having to impose additional controls on catching and to set stringent limits on fleet replacement and modernisation, as signs of deterioration appeared in some main stocks including the supremely important cod. Despite the great extent of the fishing zone it now administers, extending to a total of over 2 million km 2, Norway has also developed one of the most extensive systems of fishery management, but even since limits extensions it has had the persistent problem of its main stocks being in a depleted state, and only now is there some sign of revival in stocks like the Arcto-Norwegian cod and the capelin. Fishing is even more important to the economy of the Faroe Islands than to Iceland; the Faroes have a community of over 40,000, and though internally autonomous they are linked to Denmark and are outside the EC. They have a poorer resource base within their own zone, but their administration of their fisheries has allowed frequent exceeding of TACs, and this coupled with excessive expenditure in a community now with high living standards produced a crisis in 1990 which involved the imposition of swingeing cut-backs by the Islands’ 176

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Lagting. Faced with large-scale readjustments with the enforced curtailment of distant-water fishing following the general global advance to 200-mile limits, Japan has intensified production from within its own limit. As part of this programme it has embarked on a project, still unique in the world in its scale, of building artificial reefs on its continental shelf to be refuges for fish being intensively exploited. For a decade after 1976, government subsidies in this programme averaged over US$100 million per year (Nakamura 1985:271); while this must do something to help sustain stocks, it is difficult to estimate its benefits scientifically. In much of the Third World, continued increase in population along with efforts to modernise the fisheries has often resulted in over-fishing in inshore waters, and the situation is particularly bad in south-east Asia. Malaysia is one of the best equipped of Third World countries for management, yet the problems are formidable, and include the difference between the Malays, who are mainly traditional small operators, and the Chinese, who dominate the larger scale commercial fisheries. It has been recognised that there is severe friction in the fisheries, and that enforcement of regulations has been weak and ineffective; and in addition to failure to respect the different fishing zones there is a considerable problem with illegal unlicensed boats (Yahaya 1988:93).

REFERENCES Alford, J.J. (1973) ‘The Role of Management in Chesapeake Oyster Production’, Geogr. Rev. 63, 44–54. Berkes, F. (1986) ‘Local-level Management and the Commons Problem: A Comparative Study of Turkish Coastal Fisheries’, Mar. Policy 10 (3): 215– 29. Churchill, R.R. (1990) ‘Quota Hopping: the Common Fisheries Policy Wrongfooted?’, Common Mark. Law Rev. 27 (2):209–47. Clark, I.N. and Major, P.J. (1988) ‘Development and Implementation of New Zealand’s ITQ System’, Mar. Resour. Econ. 5 (1):325–49. Clark, L. (1989) ‘Trends and Implications of Extended Coastal State Rights for the Management and Development of Fisheries: the West-Central and Southwest Pacific’, in Miles, E.L. (ed.) Management of World Fisheries: Implications of Extended Coastal State Jurisdiction, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Coull, J.R. (1974) ‘The Background to the Icelandic Fishing Dispute’, Aberdeen Univ. Rev. 45, 359–68. Crothers, S. (1988) ‘Individual Transferable Quotas: The New Zealand Experience’. Fisheries 13 (1):10–12. 177

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Crutchfield, J.A. (1977) ‘The Fishery: Economic Maximisation’, in Ellis, D.V. (ed.) Pacific Salmon. Management for People, University of Victoria British Columbia, 1–33. Dahl, C. (1988) ‘Traditional Marine Tenure. A Basis for Artisanal Fisheries Management’, Mar. Policy 12 (1):40–8. Geen, G. and Nayar, M. (1988) ‘ITQs in the Southern Bluefin Tuna Fishery’, Mar. Resour. Econ., 5 (4):365–87. Gordon, H.S. (1954) ‘The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: the Fishery’, J. Polit. Econ. 62, 124–42. Government of Iceland (1973) Iceland’s 50 Miles and the Reasons Why, Government of Iceland, Reykjavik. Hannesson, R. and Kurien, J. (1988) Studies in the Role of Fishermen’s Organisations in Fishery Management, FAO Technical Paper 300. Herrington, W.C. (1972) ‘Operation of the Japanese Fishery Management System’, in Tussing, A.R., Morehouse, T.A. and Babb, J.D. Jr (eds) Alaska Fisheries Policy, Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 419–43. Hey, E. (1989) The Regime for the Exploitation of Transboundary Marine Fisheries Resources, Martinus Nijhoff. Dordrecht. Huming Yu (1991) ‘Fishery Management in PR China’, Mar. Policy 15 (1): 23– 32. Jackson, R.I. and Royce, W.F. (1986) Ocean Forum. An Interpretative History of the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission, Fishing News Books, Farnham. Johnston, D.M. (1965) The International Law of Fisheries, Yale University Press, Newhaven, Conn. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 20 (1974), 26173 A. Lawson, R.M. (1984) Economics of Fisheries Development, Frances Pinter, London. Marchak, P., Guppy, N. and McMullan, J. (eds) (1987) Uncommon Property. The Fishing and Fish Processing Industries in British Columbia, Methuen, Toronto. McEvoy, A.F. (1986) The Fisherman’s Problem. Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries 1850–1980, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Mead, W. (1958) An Economic Geography of the Scandinavian States and Finland, University of London Press, London. Mizukami, C. (1991) ‘Fisheries Problems in the South Pacific Region’, Mar. Policy 15 (2):111–21. Moerman, D.E. (1984) ‘Common Property and the Common Good: Ecological Factors among Peasant and Tribal Fishermen’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 49–59. Mohamed, M.I.H. (1991) ‘National Management of Malaysian Fisheries’, Mar. Policy 15 (1):2–14. Nakamura, M. (1985) ‘Evolution of Artificial Reef Concepts in Japan’, Bull. Mar. Sci. 37 (1):271–8. Oda, S. (1989) International Control of Sea Resources, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht.

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OECD (1991) Review of Fisheries in O.E.C.D. Member Countries, OECD, Paris. Örebech, P. (1984) Norsk Fiskerirett, Martinjuss, Oslo. Pinkerton, E. (ed.) (1989) Co-operative Management of Local Fisheries, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver. Radcliffe, W. (1921) Fishing from the Earliest Times, John Murray, London. Rice, R.C. (1991) ‘Environmental Degradation, Pollution, and the Exploitation of Indonesia’s Fishery Resources’, in Hardjono, J. (ed.) Indonesia: Resources, Ecology, and Environment, Oxford University Press, Singapore. Rothschild, B.J. (ed.) (1983) Global Fisheries. Perspectives for the 1980s, Springer, New York. Rotuli Parliamentorum (Record Commission), Vol. II, 369. Quoted in Hardy, Sir A. (1959) The Open Sea II Fish and Fisheries, Collins, London. Ruddle, K. (1988) ‘Social Principles Underlying Traditional Inshore Fishery Management Systems in the Pacific Basin’, Mar. Resour. Econ. 5 (4): 351– 63. Symes, D. (1991) Norfish: Iceland. A Special Case, Seafish Report No. 399, Sea Fish Industry Authority, Edinburgh. Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries (1982) Navigating Troubled Waters. A New Policy for the Atlantic Fisheries (Kirby, J.L., Chairman), Ministry of Supply and Services, Ottawa. Trudeau, H. (1991) Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Ottawa, personal communication. Unger, P.W. (1980) ‘Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, J. Econ. Hist. 34, 243–9. Yahaya, J. (1988) ‘Fishery Management and Regulation in Peninsular Malaysia: Issues and Constraints’, Mar. Resour. Econ. 5 (2):83–98.

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In the utilisation of living resources there has been a long-term trend of a transition from gathering or hunting to cultivation or husbandry. The essential basis of support for the large majority of the human species for thousands of years has been farming rather than hunting or gathering, and hunting and gathering as cultures have in general survived into the modern period in areas unsuited by climate or relief to farming; these cultural forms have also survived in some isolated locations, as in Australia before European settlement. The main source of food, and of some necessary materials for most human societies, has been the raising of crops, whether from seeds or from cuttings: and this has been supplemented in most cases by livestock husbandry, as a source both of food protein and of necessary materials like wool and hides. Domesticated livestock also played essential roles in pre-industrial societies in both transport and traction. While systems of farming, including both domesticated crops and livestock, are known to have evolved over more than 10,000 years, fish farming was slower to appear, and conventional fishing, which is still culturally at the stage of hunting and gathering, continues to provide the major part of the world’s fish supplies. However, fish farming in fresh water is known to have been practised for over 3,000 years in the case of China, and was known in some degree in classical times in the Mediterranean world, where it extended to some farming of the edge of the sea for the oyster species, as it also did in the Far East. In much of Europe there was an expansion in fish farming from the Medieval period, and relatively sophisticated pond management had developed by the fifteenth century (Matena and Berka 1987:4–5). More broadly, aquaculture, which includes the husbandry of aquatic plants as well as fish, has been an expanding activity in recent decades 180

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in both developed and developing countries. In the poorer countries, especially those of south and east Asia, aquaculture has been seen as one of the most feasible means of improving diets by providing an adequate source of food protein. Moreover, general levels of income have been rising sufficiently fast in the Asian-Pacific region to create a strong demand and to suggest that the increasing commercial market in farmed fish is likely to absorb increases in production for the foreseeable future without significant reductions in real price. In developed countries recent decades have witnessed a marked development of a more sophisticated and intensive fish farming, where technical advance allied to strong market demand has encouraged investment, innovation and expansion. Even the most productive conventional fisheries have a poor yield per unit area compared with land-based farming, and especially compared with cropping, in which the vegetable product is used directly and does not have to pass through another trophic level in the food chain, as it does with livestock farming. Fish farming on the other hand generally compares favourably with livestock farming in productivity per unit area, and can even compare very well with staple grain crops like wheat and rice; in eel farming in Japan regular yields of well over 20 tonnes/ha per year have been reported (Doumenge 1986:465), and yields of from 5 to 10 tonnes/ha per year and over have been reported for several other species including carp, tilapia and panaeid shrimp. One factor that renders fish farming more efficient than most livestock farming is that fish, being cold blooded, can put into growth that part of the feed which in farm livestock is used to maintain body temperature. As a rule aquaculture actually gives a higher yield of protein in relation to metabolisable energy than farm livestock: it has been found, for example, that trout give 30–40 g protein/Mcal compared with comparable figures of 2 for cattle, 6 for pigs and 15 for chickens. This has implications not only in the efficiency in the conversion of feed, but also for other energy use in fuel and machinery (Bardach 1978:425). However, fish farming cannot thus far compare with the rearing of broiler chickens, which has become the most intensive means of production of protein food in developed countries in the last three decades. With a stocking density of 23 kg/m2 and the ability to produce over five ‘crops’ annually, it is possible for production in broiler chickens to be well over 1,000 tonnes/ha per year (Shepherd 1988:342). Although aquaculture enjoys substantial advantages in terms of biological productivity, there are also disadvantages. In gross energy 181

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requirement (GER) it is costly, and in the case of intensive systems, very costly. Here the simpler subsistence systems compare favourably with even inshore fishing, and the most intensive systems compare unfavourably even with deep-sea fishing. The GER in gigajoules per tonne of whole fish produced ranges from 0.13 for mixed carp/tilapia in Thailand polyculture to 309 for intensive Japanese carp culture; and the GER of protein ranges from 5 for fertilised African tilapia ponds to 891 for intensively farmed catfish in the USA. By comparison available figures for capture fisheries varied between 3 and 30 GJ/tonne of whole fish, and 26–309 GJ/ tonne of protein (Cunningham et al. 1985:350–1). In labour requirements there is also a wide variation, and the general tendency is for the simpler systems to be more labour-intensive. Extensive systems involve over 90 man-days/tonne of production—in the case of African tilapia ponds this rises as high as 170—and labour costs are low. Intensive systems require less than 30 man-days/tonne of production and in catfish ponds in the USA have been found to be as low as 3 man-days/tonne (Cunningham et al. 1985:317). While it is known that the proportion of the yield of oceans and fresh water that comes from aquaculture has been rising in recent decades, there are no regular comprehensive statistics for production at the global level; nevertheless there are broadly based estimates that show the position with substantial clarity. Of the production that comes from water (including both salt and fresh), recent estimates put the proportion of production from aquaculture at about 15 per cent of world production by weight; its proportionate value is certainly higher and may be at least double. While it produces minor proportions of world finfish and crustaceans it is estimated to produce about 75 per cent of the seaweeds used by mankind, and almost 80 per cent of the molluscs which come from water (OECD 1989:7). Also, although there was a strong and sustained increase in the production of conventional fisheries in the decades immediately after the Second World War, this increase tapered off after about 1970, while that of aquaculture has continued to expand at a considerably greater rate. This has led to some projections that put aquaculture production in the early part of the next century at as much as half the production of conventional fisheries by weight. Inevitably, aquaculture has to compete with other water uses, and now in addition to the demands in salt water of such sectors as shipping, conventional fishing and offshore oil and gas, the demands of recreation have now become of prime importance in advanced countries. The demands of recreation have also been added to the many demand 182

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sectors for fresh water which can be in conflict with the demands of fish farming. Because of this competition there can be major problems of access to water for fish farming, and in developed countries access to the sea-shore (and to the lakeside and stream bank) can be a big issue; as well as giving planning problems this also has the general effect of driving up the cost of fish farm sites. In an extreme case of a country like Israel with great pressures on resources of both water and land, permits for fish farms are given only when there are no competing claims on land and water from other uses. Although in Israel mainly brackish water is used and the area of fish ponds has actually decreased since the 1970s, production has generally been sustained through intensification (Pruginin and Hepher 1982:109–13). The Israeli experience is that a minimum of 5,000 m 3 of water per tonne of production is required (Shepherd 1988:343). Although in Third World countries access and planning restrictions tend to be less restrictive, in a country like Malaysia coastal land is generally unavailable for fish ponds, as farming and fishing are subject to other traditional rights (Peterson 1982:23).

ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF AQUACULTURE For the great part of its history, aquaculture involved production from freshwater ponds and streams and to a limited extent from coastal situations like tidal lagoons. The modern period has seen great advances in production from fresh water, along with a largescale development of mariculture; and an increasing proportion of production now comes from salt water. It is still a very narrow zone at the edge of the sea that is used, however; mariculture in some circumstances may extend into the sea to depths of 20 fathoms, although this does depend on a number of factors such as the availability of shelter and of suitable anchorages for cages and equipment. The possibility of mariculture covering wide areas of the sea, as cultivated areas cover great land tracts, must still be considered very remote. Compared with the global zonation of production in conventional fisheries, fish farming and other sectors of aquaculture show better the enhanced levels of production which are associated with higher temperatures: the bulk of production is in tropical and warm temperate locations and the species involved include carp and tilapia in fresh water and milkfish in salt water. There are some limitations to 183

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production in the warmest conditions, however, which arise from the lower levels of oxygen dissolved in water; this applies especially to streams in tropical lowlands. Global production is dominated by east and south Asia for reasons of cultural tradition, which are now allied to prominent development programmes, and this region is also far in the lead in the production of cultured seaweeds. While there is an upward trend in production in other parts of the tropics and subtropics, Africa and the Americas are of very minor significance compared with Asia. A striking fact is that production in aquaculture is not dominated by developed countries, and in 1989 it was estimated that only about 25 per cent of total world production came from OECD nations (OECD 1989:7). However, there is now also significant production from the species of cool temperate ecosystems, of which the main example is the Atlantic salmon in which production is dominated by Norway. The ecological adaptations involved in fish farming represent the cumulative experience of many centuries. The simplest techniques of fish farming involve collecting spawn produced in the wild and removing it to rearing ponds to allow it to grow in conditions which give it protection from competitors and predators: this is on record in China before 1100 BC from the early days of the Chou dynasty (Brown 1983:392). Carp was the main species cultured in ancient China, and it was also farmed in classical and Medieval Europe. The system of rearing was evidently developed and refined, as the Fish Culture Classic of 460 BC attributed to Fan Li gives details of different nursery and rearing ponds and principles of stocking. Carp were also being grown in paddy-fields from the third century BC. The imperial prohibition of eating the common carp at the time of the T’ang dynasty (618–917 AD) is thought to have prompted an innovation of ecological importance with the beginning of ‘polyculture’, in which different carp species with separate diet requirements (black, grass and bighead carp) were reared together in a common pond. Methods of transporting fish alive were also developed, and by the European Medieval period there was also the collection of fish fry, along with experiments with feeding and hybridisation. During the Ming dynasty (1386–1644 AD) methods of pond fertilisation were developed (Brown 1983:393). It is no exaggeration to say that in China over a period of centuries the main traditional techniques of fish farming were worked out and advanced to a stage unparalleled in the world; and several of the basic principles evolved are still of basic relevance in modern practice. Carp were also domesticated in Europe by the Medieval period, and by the early 184

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seventeenth century Bohemia had become a main area for their husbandry. An official census of ponds in 1786 enumerated 20,796 ponds extending to a total of 76,816 ha on Bohemian territory, although they were subsequently much reduced with the intensification of farming and the conversion of many ponds to water meadows (Andreska 1984:86). One of the limitations of traditional practice in fish farming was that it depended essentially on the gathering of seed in the wild at the time of spawning, and in the natural life cycles there could be a series of species spawning at or near the same time on the monsoon floods; in addition the amount of seed could vary widely with the conditions of each individual year. There was a tendency for spawn of undesired species to come into the samples collected, and these species had to be removed at a later stage when they could be identified. Some very important cultured species like the milkfish still depend primarily on the gathering of seed in the wild, although the general main thrust of development is to bring all phases of rearing, including spawning and hatching, under control. Traditional fish farming depended generally on species which were plankton feeders, or which fed on natural organic detritus: hence the great importance of carp in fresh water and of filter-feeding shellfish like oysters in salt water. A main principle of traditional practice is the maintenance of cleanliness; however, additional means of pest and disease control were also developed, including such practices as the draining and cultivation of ponds during the off season and the sterilising of them with lime, tea leaves and other natural pesticides to remove unwanted organisms. As in so many fields of production procedures have intensified markedly in the modern period; and while this has lifted productivity to unprecedented heights, it has rendered intensive fish farming a much more costly operation, requiring considerable infrastructure and attendant services as well as frequent extra expenditures on feed. Basic in improved practice is the guaranteeing of available seed and young stock, and the replication of the conditions for reproduction have often proved a formidable problem (Doumenge 1986:452). It has proved possible to breed many species in hatcheries, and to increase greatly the survival rates at the crucial infant stages compared with those which occur in the wild. It is also generally possible to enhance growth rates, and even to shorten natural life cycles; and now such practices as hormonal-controlled spawning and genetic manipulation can serve to stabilise and enhance productivity and to allow the production of standardised 185

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products. With the development of domesticated strains of fish species, as with domesticated farm livestock, new strains can acquire characteristics which would be disadvantageous in the wild, and there is now concern that domesticated stock could escape and interbreed with wild strains to the detriment of the latter. The lead times to develop workable procedures for new species generally have been of the order of 20–30 years (Doumenge 1986:471), and hence involve the commitment of great resources over time scales that have often caused governments to take a promotional interest. With such expenditures involved, research and development has naturally been heavily concentrated on the most valuable species; and this in itself has often resulted in further problems as subsequent rapid expansion, stimulated by high prices and profits, has been prone to create disorganised, or even chaotic, market conditions. In cases like the Atlantic salmon, almost too much initial success was experienced, as the fall in real prices to the producers which followed has itself created substantial problems. In the case of the farming of carp, mullet and tilapia in Israel, and of catfish in the USA, it has also now proved possible to intensify the farming of fish outside the top price brackets (Shepherd 1988:334). There have also been notable inter-regional and inter-continental global transfers, so that species native to particular regions can also be reared in other areas with similar environmental characteristics. The pooling of living resources which occurred over a long historical period in farming systems on land is now occurring in water. Thus in the modern period rainbow trout have been transferred from North America to Europe, Pacific salmon from the USA to Chile and New Zealand and the Japanese oyster to the USA and to Europe; and probably the most important of all modern transfers has been that of the tilapia from Africa to south and east Asia, where production has rapidly developed to be of a major scale. When the farming of a species has become regular practice, internal elements of organisation in farming structure can evolve, such as the units which attend to the freshwater phase of producing smolts in salmon farming and which sell these to the on-growing farms which operate in salt water; and in east Asia the elvers for Japanese eel farms are now regularly imported from Taiwan (Doumenge 1986:478). While it is generally advantageous for fish farming to take place at the warmest part of the natural range of a species, the hatchery or seed stage may best be located at the coolest part of the range, to minimise the risk from predators and disease. In the manner that this has produced a zonation 186

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in the production of seed potatoes in Europe, the main seed areas for oysters in Japan are in the north-east of the Island of Honshu, and there are systematic transfers to the leading growing area on the Inland Sea in the south-west part of the same island (Kawakami 1966:197). Intensified fish farming has also brought in its train problems of a new type and severity. The greatest problem is the enhanced danger of disease and parasites when large numbers of fish are confined in enclosures of limited size. Even in the temperate zone the disease danger is greatly increased, and diseases can spread rapidly through a whole fish farm stock; it has been observed that the growing of salmon in salt water close to the shore now exposes millions of them to the reservoirs of infection contained in the inshore faunal community, and that stock farming on land has much less exposure to wild reservoirs of infection (OECD 1989:14). With the greater range of diseases and accelerated biological processes associated with warmer ecosystems, the dangers in these are formidable. The dangers of disease are enhanced and complicated by the modern pollution problem; and somewhat ironically fish farming is one of the sources of organic pollution with its use of fish feed or even the eutrophying effects of the increased input of faeces to the water; it can be the source of other types of water-borne pollution when fungicides and pesticides are needed. The USSR has developed fish farming to a considerable extent along with its programmes of fishery development, but one of the factors which has limited production has been the failure to address the pollution problem adequately, and this is also the situation in Eastern Europe.

MAIN FEATURES OF THE PATTERN OF WORLD PRODUCTION The dominance of the Far East (Asia along with Oceania) in the global pattern of production is shown by the 1986 estimate of this region producing 83.3 per cent of the total by weight. At the same date Europe was estimated to account for 8.5 per cent of production and North America for 4.4 per cent, with minor contributions from other world regions (Chaussade and Corlay 1990:28). China is the world giant in aquaculture production, as in population, and by 1989 about one-half of 11.5 million tonnes from fresh and salt water came from aquaculture; 73 per cent of the aquaculture yield itself came from fresh water 187

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(Huming Yu 1991:23). Japan must be seen as the most technically advanced country with the highest productivity in aquaculture, and it now raises over 1.5 million tonnes yearly from fresh and salt water; over 1.3 million tonnes of this comes from mariculture (Government of Japan 1991:2–5). The distribution of production by major world regions for 1986 is shown in Figure 9.1. Production is still very much dominated in volume by finfish, and carp species alone are reckoned to account for about 3 million tonnes annually (Chaussade and Corlay 1990:29). Five other finfish species account for well over 100,000 tonnes each yearly: as well as the tropical tilapia and milkfish species, they include the temperate rainbow trout and the freshwater catfish, whose distribution extends from the tropics into the warm temperate zone. Despite the very rapid development of the Atlantic salmon in the temperate zone, its total production of around 60,000 tonnes in 1986 put it well down the world list. Since much of the Asiatic production is in the context of subsistence, however, the leading species in value of production are salmon, eels, trout, catfish and yellowtail (OECD 1989:8). A very large proportion of edible molluscs now come from farmed sources, and aggregate farm production of both the Pacific oyster and the common mussel both exceed 500,000 tonnes per year, while production of the American oyster is over 100,000 tonnes and of the Mediterranean mussel over 60,000 tonnes. Although species of crustaceans, including lobster, prawn, crayfish and shrimp, have some of the highest unit values in sea food, farming of species other than of certain shrimp species has to date made limited headway. As well as presenting technical problems in domesticating the whole life cycle, one of the factors that renders the farming of temperate lobster species more difficult is the extra costs incurred in the long time it takes the lobster to reach marketable size. The main field of production which has developed since the mid1960s is the rearing of warm water species of shrimps, beginning with the panaeid shrimp in Japan; some species of shrimp can reach marketable size within five months of the larval stage, and can be reared in high densities, although they are limited to water temperatures above 26°C. It has also proved profitable to raise shrimps in the USA as well as in Central America and Tahiti (Doumenge 1986:454–5). Total global farm production of shrimp is now of the order of 150,000 tonnes per year, the bulk of it from Asia (Chaussade and Corlay 1990:28–9).

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Figure 9.1 Aquaculture production in major world regions, 1986 Source: Chaussade and Corley 1990

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In Eastern Europe, fish farming has been dominated by the development of state farms in which fish are often raised in extensive or semi-extensive systems in which it is a general principle to operate as far as possible within closed systems which minimise the amount of feed required. Carp is the main species reared, often in combination with livestock such as pigs or poultry, in systems similar to those long practised in China. These systems are relatively simple, and it has been possible to raise productivity significantly, although the more intensive types of fish farming, which require more sophisticated methods and markets of greater purchasing power, are so far little developed. Japan has for decades played a leading role in the development of more intensive and technically sophisticated methods and systems in fish farming. Here the necessary infrastructure and scientific and technical expertise has been linked to both a high level of purchasing power and to one of the highest levels of per capita fish consumption. For the farming of species which require more sophisticated methods, North America and Europe have also played prominent parts and regular farming is now practised with species like rainbow trout, Atlantic and Pacific salmon, and American catfish and shrimps. In the production of seaweeds the domination of Asia is overwhelming, and in 1983 an FAO estimate put Asiatic production of 2.39 million tonnes at over 99.9 per cent of that of the world (OECD 1989:8); and this is in addition to considerable amounts gathered in the wild. Seaweeds were traditionally used to a lesser extent as a diet item on the coasts of Europe, where they were also often employed as fertiliser for the land and as stock feed. In addition to providing an important diet item rich in minerals and vitamins (Miura 1980:57–8), which are their main function in Asia, seaweeds also have considerable potential, as yet only partly realised, as a raw material for many modern industries. In Europe and North America they have in the past been a source of soda and iodine, and now are an important source of vegetable gelatin and of alginates: these are used for such purposes as antidessicants and stabilisers in processed foods (Miura 1980:65). With the growth rates which can be achieved in the warm ecosystems of the tropics, there is certainly further potential here for many seaboard Third World countries, where ecological advantages can be added to those of lower labour costs.

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SYSTEMS OF PRODUCTION IN EAST AND SOUTH ASIA The systems of aquaculture in east and south Asia are the most important in the world both in their volume of production and in their importance in the food supplies of the societies involved. While the bulk of this is from fish ponds of limited size for local use, there have been considerable efforts to expand and intensify production by improving on traditional practice; and there has also been the development of larger scales of business, especially in Japan, but also in countries like Thailand and the Philippines. There are extensive suitable wastelands which could still potentially be reclaimed for fish ponds: these have been estimated to extend to tens of millions of hectares. The culture of carp is still very much the main activity in mainland Asia, and it is also practised to a large extent in the more limited water catchments of the various islands; it is the main species raised, for example, in the very densely populated island of Java (Matena and Berka 1987:14). As in the production of rice, traditional systems vary in intensity throughout the region: the most productive practice is that of south China, which involves the use of pond fertilisers along with series of growing ponds for fish at different stages in their life cycle. These systems can also be integrated into remarkably balanced ecologies which involve the recycling of nutrients and humus in both soil and water; integral to this system is the use of pig manure to fertilise fish ponds, while the organic debris which gathers on the floors of fish ponds is periodically cleared out and put on the land as fertiliser. This has made the fish pond the ‘central pillar’ of a constructed ecosystem in which the golden rule is to rear 15 pigs for every hectare of fish pond; and similar systems are in operation in much of south-east Asia. In these systems polyculture may incorporate as many as five carp species, in varying proportions according to food supply, and a main method of controlling predators is to include about 7 per cent of Wuchan bream in the stocking of ponds. By introducing separate broods into ponds three times a year it is possible to harvest fish continuously from late May to early November. The carp will reliably reach a weight of between 1 and 2 kg within a year. The great development of recent decades is the building of hatcheries on a vast scale, and the introduction of hormonal injection to control spawning: this has been important in the maintaining of regular stocking levels and has often increased yields 191

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by as much as a factor of ten (Doumenge 1986:532–5). China has been estimated to have an aggregate of 4 million ha of fish ponds, although the average size is less than 0.5 ha (Matena and Berka 1987:16). It has been claimed that the most active area in aquaculture in the whole modern world is the delta of the Zhujiang (or Pearl) River in the Kwangtung province, in which up to one-third of the total area is used for labour-intensive aquaculture. Here three men are employed for every hectare of pond, productivity exceeds 10 tonnes/ha per year and the total annual production is about 300,000 tonnes (Doumenge 1986:536). Important as aquaculture is, it is only part of a remarkable developed ecosystem which presents possibly the world’s greatest example of sustainable development: external inputs to the system are still minimal and it depends essentially on tightly managed recycling of materials and energy; it has also minimal dangers from pollution and disease. In addition to fish, the system produces high yields of sugar cane, mulberry and silkworm as well as of over 40 types of vegetable crop; and in the most densely populated part of the delta the population density is 17 persons/ha, or over 4,350 people per square mile (Ruddle and Zhong 1988:152–63). In the other population giant of Asia, India, carp culture is also of consequence; and although polyculture systems have been practised for some time, production is still based mainly on the collecting of seed in the wild; there is a considerable organised trade and transport from the main collecting state of Bihar. In India production seldom reaches above 500–600 kg/ha per year, and total national fish farm production has been estimated at between 350,000 and 600,000 tonnes a year. However, the introduction of Chinese species and Chinese methods has shown that levels of productivity on a par with those of the best in China can be attained (Doumenge 1986:536). There are various other ways in which fish ponds can be integrated into wider production systems: it is known, for example, for an enclosure to be a fish pond in one season and a paddy-field in another; and in Bangladesh fish ponds at the coast are used in the dry season for the evaporation of salt (Peterson 1982:24). The tilapia is a recent introduction to fish farming in tropical Asia: it has reached a substantial level of importance throughout most of this region and in Taiwan is now the leading single species (Doumenge 1986:567). It feeds largely on wastes, is adaptable to a wide range of conditions, including brackish water and water with a low oxygen content (Matena and Berka 1987:21–2) and has high growth rates. However, it does tend to dissipate energy in frequent 192

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spawning, although it has been found possible to control this by rearing it in running water; it is also prone to be a cannibal on its own young, which entails that fish at the juvenile stages be in separate enclosures. In salt water in tropical Asia, by far the most important species has been the milkfish, although it is now being strongly challenged by the panaeid shrimp. The milkfish is a herbivore and detritivore and has long been reared by collecting the natural spawn in season and transferring it to coastal lagoons. It is now much farmed in the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan in brackish coastal fish ponds, and there has been considerable intensification of part of the production, especially in Taiwan. There is an ongoing process of reclamation of coastal swamps to turn them into fish ponds. Studies in the Philippines have shown that yields vary from as low as 50 kg/ ha for ponds in which no fertilisers are used and there is no water management to over 2,000 kg/ha in modern intensive systems with intensive management in which weight increases of 2 per cent per day can be achieved, and from which there may be as many as four harvests per year; the biggest farms extend to over 500 ha (Yengoyan 1977:135), although the mean size is only 16 ha (Librero 1977:98). In the new industrial countries of Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, there is also now the development of intensive mariculture of warm-water species like bass and grouper (Shepherd 1988:334).

AQUACULTURE IN JAPAN Japan is outstanding for its great technical progress and scale of innovation in aquaculture, and its pattern of production is now more diversified than in any other country. Compared with the developed countries of the Western world, there is much less competition for coastal sites and use of coastal water by rival uses. Development has for decades been promoted by government, and after the general extension of world fishing limits to 200 miles in the 1970s the government embarked on a new phase of encouraging fish farming as part of a programme to make good what had been lost in production from distant-water fishing. While the production of species like carp, trout and eel from fresh water is significant, the great bulk of Japanese production now comes from mariculture; and the scale to which this has grown makes it a major source of income and employment in many 193

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coastal settlements, while it has provided a welcome addition to the economic base of many villages engaged in inshore fishing. Oysters were among the first species to be developed in intensified culture methods, which involved the borrowing from Europe in the 1920s of the technique of suspended cultivation (Kawakami 1966:195– 7). These methods entail attaching the oysters to ropes hanging in the water from supports and later also from rafts, and this allows the full depth of the water column to be used and increases growth rates by at least a factor of two. There is also a specialised activity on a large scale for the production of pearl oysters. From the later 1960s the farming of scallops has also proved possible using the suspension method (Kawakami 1973:207), and the rearing of abalone is now being developed (Doumenge 1986:457). The total area under farmed bivalve molluscs is now about 200,000 ha with around 13,000 producing units (Doumenge 1986:572–3). The farming of seaweeds, especially the laver and waikame species, is a very-large-scale activity in Japan, the seaweeds being placed in open mesh nets and anchored with ropes; the total area involved in production extends to about 300,000 ha, and there are around 35,000 producing units (Doumenge 1986:572). The raising of seaweeds and marine molluscs between them now gives employment to approximately 150,000 people (Doumenge 1986:573). In the present century, methods of producing spores in controlled conditions have been developed, and these varieties of seaweed can be harvested within two or three months’ growth from seed. In addition it has proved possible to develop mechanised techniques for harvesting and drying them. Laver has become the most valuable single product of Japanese mariculture (Kawakami 1966:203–7; 1972:16). Japan has been involved since the 1960s in the ranching of Pacific chinook and chum salmon, by the releasing into the ocean of smolts reared in hatcheries, and here even a limited recapture rate of salmon returning to their spawning rivers is profitable. The ranching of the bluefin, one of the most valuable of the tuna species, is being developed by rearing juveniles for release into the sea (Taniguchi 1988:110–25); and stock improvement of the important ‘hirame’ flounder has been taking place since the later 1970s when spawning of the species in captivity was achieved (Taniguchi 1988:150). There is also an expansion in the mariculture of sea fish in cages. The most important species is the yellowtail, which is reared from seed collected in the wild; the farming of Pacific salmon, which are reared from hatchery through

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to market stage, is expanding; and the farming of sea bream is in its early stages. The diversity of production in Japan has become associated with patterns of zoning and of regional specialisation within the country (Kawakami 1972:15–22); and there are also patterns of zoning at the local level whereby the species cultured varies with such factors as water depth and degree of exposure. In general terms the best location for mariculture is the Inland Sea, which has the largest area of sheltered water but has adequate water movement and tidal exchange, and is also at the warmer end of the country. However, mariculture is practised round most of the coasts, and has extended out from sheltered bays to more exposed locations in many cases. The Pacific coast is more productive than the Japan Sea coast, as it has generally better water circulation and fewer problems of pollution; and there are also higher levels of production in the warmer conditions along the south coast of Honshu and on the coasts of Kyushu and Shikoku. Raising of laver is predominantly in the south of the country and farming of yellowtail is also largely confined to the south; in the case of the subtropical royal shrimp farming is on a restricted scale in the extreme south-west. However, the northern parts of the country also have their advantages for some cultures: Hokkaido is the main location of the rearing of smolts in salmon ranching, and Hokkaido and north-east Honshu are the main areas for the farming of scallops. In oyster cultivation the emphasis has changed in modern times from the initial seabed sites of less than 3 m depth, to the suspended cultivation methods of fixed beds (in water of up to 4 m depth) and then to floating rafts, which can be anchored in over 4 m depth and can also tolerate open-sea exposure (Kawakami 1966:198–202). In the case of laver the best growth rates are obtained in shallow bay-head locations with an inflow of fresh water; and here too the earlier techniques of fixed cultivation have been supplemented by floating methods in which the laver is grown in anchored nets, although in this case the yields from floating cultivation are only about 40 per cent of the yields obtained in the most protected and nutritive bay-head waters (Kawakami 1966:206). Wakame is cultivated at depths of 1–2 m and is less susceptible to damage from rough seas than laver; it is cultivated both further out to sea and at greater depths, including in some cases below floating laver. Aquaculture in Japan has advanced to the point where its structures and specialisations are related to being in a very advanced country with 195

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high purchasing power and high labour costs. It has also been recognised that the link-up between organised research and development that has been achieved in Japan, and which effectively unites investment with planning and marketing, surpasses that of any other country (Doumenge 1986:568–9). The trend has been towards quality production and to the production of lines for which more sophisticated techniques and infrastructure are required. Overproduction of laver in the early 1970s led to a marketing problem, and subsequently to a quota system for producers (Doumenge 1986:474); Korea and China now compete in the Japanese market for edible seaweeds, and production of waikame has in large part passed to Korea. In eel production, the elvers for Japanese eel farms are now mainly raised in Taiwan (Doumenge 1986:478). Saturation of the yellowtail market has been met with renewed measures of diversification, with the development of the rearing of sea bream. It is notable that international competition is intensifying in other sectors of the Japanese market for aquaculture products. Already there is a large-scale import of farmed shrimps, and there are also increasing imports of farmed salmon (Doumenge 1986:479).

SPECIALISED DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE JAPAN, ESPECIALLY IN THE WESTERN WORLD While the rise in interest and activity in aquaculture has been to an extent world-wide, production levels elsewhere are still dwarfed by those in Asia. There have been notable advances in developed countries of the Western world, in which the availability of capital and scientific skills allied to affluent markets has allowed several specialised lines of production to rise in recent decades. There has also been some development of some lines of production in the new industrial countries like Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, in which the same factors have also allowed the development of high-intensity types of production; and in the case of the panaeid shrimp developing countries like Ecuador and the Philippines have become significant producers for markets in the advanced countries. In Europe and North America, most of the first modern developments in fish farming were associated with the increase in leisure fisheries pursued by high-income groups, and were directed at the improvement of stocks in rivers and lakes for anglers. However, especially in France there was also development of the farming of 196

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oysters and mussels on a very considerable scale for the edible market from the nineteenth century; and this surmounted various problems since and has continued into the present time; it is now a very competitive and efficient industry (Doumenge 1986:542). While there was restocking in other Western countries, especially of trout and salmon species, this was on a restricted scale until rainbow trout were introduced from North America to Europe in the late nineteenth century. It was realised that their ability to stand much higher stocking densities allowed them to be reared for the commercial edible market; and in the inter-war period of the twentieth century this became the first species to be intensively farmed for this purpose (Doumenge 1986:450). After the Second World War the main success in developing the farming of rainbow trout was in Denmark, especially in Jutland; here the first farms were small units on small stream catchments, and suitable sites were largely occupied by the early 1970s; subsequent expansion has mainly been in bigger units in salt water. There was also the development of the farming of rainbow trout in ‘raceways’, mainly in mountain valleys in France and Italy, where healthier conditions and better growth rates could be obtained (Doumenge 1986:544–6). As a result of such developments in these and other countries, the supply of trout to West European markets became dominated by farmed fish, and even the expanded markets became relatively quickly saturated. There has also been a development of trout farming for the edible market in North America, especially in the state of Idaho, but market constraints for edible fish are greater and most fish farming is still dominated by production for restocking for recreation (Doumenge 1986:557–9). However, there has been considerable development, especially in the southern states, of the farming of freshwater catfish and of shrimp for the edible market. In the developed countries of the temperate world, the most striking achievement of the last two decades has been the development of salmon farming on a major commercial scale. The first successes in salmon farming were with the chum and coho Pacific species in Japan and the USA in the 1950s and 1960s, although developments in the USA were dominated by restocking for angling. When the farming of Atlantic salmon was mastered in Norway in the late 1960s, it became clear that greater stocking densities were possible than with the chum and coho species. Also the production for the market of capture fisheries of Atlantic salmon was much less than of Pacific salmon, and in a few years farm production became the dominant source of supply 197

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to the market, whereas Pacific salmon farm production still only provides a small fraction of the market supply. It has been a great, if costly, achievement to develop farming systems which can shorten, and contain at the local level, a life cycle which in the wild involves not only the alternation between fresh and salt water but also migrations across thousands of miles of ocean (Coull 1988:10–11). The rearing of Atlantic salmon has subsequently spread to Scotland, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Eastern Canada and the north-east USA. In this industry remoteness of location has been a limited disadvantage and is more than counterbalanced by the environmental advantage of pollution-free fresh and salt water. In Norway, the size of river catchments, the great extent of sheltered coastal water and the freedom from extreme winter cold, allied to the early start made in the industry, have combined to maintain a very dominant position in production of Atlantic salmon. Once farming procedures were established, good profitability for a product with an expanding place in the luxury food market promoted very rapid expansion, and for several years the main constraint on the growth rate was the shortage in the supply of smolts for ongrowing in sea cages. There was also the generation of substantial additional employment in ancillary activities, including the manufacture of specialised equipment and of feed, and in transport and other necessary services. The employment generated in salmon farming has been particularly welcome in many remote rural areas where older traditional occupations have been contracting, especially as these areas can compete less effectively in the farming of the lower priced rainbow trout, which was developed earlier in these and other areas. In Norway conventional fisheries have been a major problem for a long time now in their inability to generate sufficient income without government subsidy; at the same time it has been accepted national policy to maintain the dispersed population with acceptable modern standards of living and services, and in remote north Norway in particular there have been great problems despite generous government expenditure. Between 1961 and 1987 NKr1,583.3 million was paid from the national regional development fund in assistance to aquaculture (Björndal 1990:10). The policy adopted in salmon farming has been to foster local enterprise and to spread salmon farming as widely as possible. To this end a system of licensing was adopted whereby all sites for the rearing of both smolts and salmon are subject to government approval. Figure 9.2 shows the distribution of salmon farms in 1989, together with their production 198

Figure 9.2 Salmon production, salmon farms and employment in Norway 1989 Source: Fiskeoppdrett 1989, issued by Norwegian Central Statistical Bureau

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by volume and value and employment on them for the different Norwegian ‘fylker’ (counties). The spread of activity along the indented fjord west coast and with the protection of the offshore islands is clear; but although it has brought needed additional employment to many scattered communities, its importance in the two most remote fylker of Troms and Finnmark is still restricted because of colder conditions and extra transport costs. Horizontal and vertical integration in the industry in Norway has been discouraged by restrictions on the size of individual farms, defined by cage capacity, and also by preventing multiple ownership of farms. By 1988 the total employment, direct and indirect, in the industry exceeded 10,000 (Björndal 1990:11). On the other hand the government went to great lengths to establish a planning framework, to institute environmental standards, to control pollution, to stimulate research and to develop adequate veterinary services for the essential function of the control of disease. The size limits for individual farms of 1 million smolts capacity for the freshwater phase and 12,000 m3 aggregate pen size for that in salt water (Björndal 1990:12) are in fact related mainly to the dangers of pollution and disease. However, the restrictions imposed by government on ownership and scale of enterprise have had the effect of diverting some investment to countries where such restrictions do not apply, and have been responsible for diverting Norwegian investment overseas to Scotland, Ireland and Iceland and to the farming of Pacific salmon in British Columbia, where in 1987 about one-half of all investments were by Norwegian firms (Björndal 1990:20). Salmon farming in Norway very rapidly outgrew the limited home market: in the early 1980s the average annual growth rate in production approached 50 per cent (Björndal 1988:122) and total output reached 145,990 tonnes in 1990, when its value was NKr4.7 billion, or well over US$ 200 million. With an interval of about four years from seed to market size, there are obvious difficulties in adjusting production levels to market demand. The industry is very much export oriented with large sales in the EC (mainly France, Denmark and Germany), in the USA and in Japan. Markets in Europe can be reached by refrigerated truck, but the other main markets involve air freight (Dale et al. 1987:231–2). The farming of Atlantic salmon has developed by supplying the highest value sectors of the salmon market, which are those of fresh, frozen and smoked salmon; although by 1985 the farmed share of total world salmon production was only about 3 per cent, it had already had a major impact at the 200

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upper end of the market (Shaw and Muir 1987:32). It has made little impact on the main canned sector, which is still dominated by Pacific salmon caught in the wild. Even so, the rapid rise in the production of farmed salmon has brought down its real price, and salmon is now regularly less expensive on the market than species like sole, and can even be cheaper than cod and haddock. Inevitably there has been the cutting of profit margins and substantial marketing difficulties. One of the causes of this was the raising of the external tariff by the EC to give protection to its own salmon producers, who claimed that their businesses were being prejudiced by Norwegian market dumping. Although a government-sponsored freezing programme gave some relief to Norwegian salmon farmers, this eventually only postponed and aggravated the problem. The result was bankruptcies not only for many salmon farmers but also to ancillary enterprises, including the backing financial institutions. The eventual result has been that the framework of controls on the scale of enterprise has largely been abandoned, and in turn this can only re-emphasise the regional problems which are a prominent feature of the situation in the country. However, after the strains of rapid growth there are now signs that the industry is acquiring a measure of equilibrium. Salmon farming in Scotland started after that in Norway, and it became the most important competitor: by 1991 production reached 39,000 tonnes valued at £150 million, and total employment was over 6,000. Although farm sites have also been licensed in Scotland, discouragement to horizontal and vertical integration has been minimal, and Marine Harvest, a subsidiary of Unilever, has become the biggest salmon farming enterprise in the world. However, in Scotland farm sites have been allowed to acquire market value, unlike in Norway, and it has been a matter of considerable controversy that the Crown Estate Commissioners, the government body which functions as the landlord for the leasing of sites for marine cages, is also the planning authority. Environmental and other pressure groups have consistently claimed that these two functions are incompatible. The latest indications are that the longterm prospects for profitability have become less favourable, and the fact that the Marine Harvest firm has now decided to withdraw from salmon farming suggests that an important threshold has been reached and that the keynote for the future will be consolidation rather than expansion; this will apply in Norway, Scotland and elsewhere.

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THE FUTURE OF AQUACULTURE The rapid developments which have occurred in fish farming and aquaculture in the recent past, along with the increase in the international market for their products, have prompted much speculation on how far expansion will ultimately go, and have even raised the question of whether it is a matter of time before the requirements of society are met mainly from husbandry rather than by the capture techniques of conventional fisheries. It can only be conceded that a range of species, which only a generation ago would not seriously have been considered as subjects for farm production, are now routinely produced by farming methods. In Finland, a developed country with limited access to the open sea, the production of fish farming now exceeds that of conventional fishing despite the handicap of a severe winter climate; and in Israel it has been estimated that pond fish account for a full half of national fish production and supply 30 per cent of total consumption (Sarig 1988:327). It has also been seriously suggested that the continuing ‘blue revolution’ of fish farming could ultimately involve bigger changes than the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s (Doumenge 1986:580). Nevertheless any forecast which would see husbandry as the main source of world production from water must still be treated with great caution: in the Western world it is still relatively few species that warrant the greatly increased production costs of farming methods. However, it has been recognised that the main possibilities for satisfying future increases in market demand will lie mainly in natural systems which make minimal use of the costly expedient of bought feed: these are in both salt and fresh water, and there is still great potential especially in the raising of shellfish and in sea ranching (OECD 1989:22). There are obviously great possibilities for expansion in the tropical zones of Africa and South America, although it was recognised as recently as 1987 that in both of these continents development and assistance were required at all levels to promote fish farming (Nash 1987:23). In any case, with cultural differences from Asia and also much less dense populations, it is clear that for the foreseeable future Asia will continue to dominate world production. Within Asia itself there is still great additional potential, above all in India, where brackish coastal waters in lagoons especially are as yet little utilised: in the early 1980s only about 3 per cent of the potential area of brackish waters was actually being utilised (IIMA 1985:67). There are 202

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also various organisational problems in the Third World for the realisation of potential: the water in the ponds in which fish are reared may have varied other uses, and leases of ponds for farming may be so short term (e.g. one season or year) as to discourage improvement and development. Outside Asia production is increasing, especially in Africa, and there is certainly the potential for improving the standard and balance of diets. For tropical islands, including those that are as small as coral lagoons, there is now considerable scope for commercial expansion in fish farming in association with the modern tourist trade. For the developed world, the essential issue is the share of the more expensive types of fish in the protein sector of the food market. In the Western world generally fish still in the main provides a variety item in diets, as opposed to a food staple. Here the regularity of supply, and the greater ease of providing standard and quality products, obviously favour fish farming over capture fisheries and justify the inevitable greater production costs. It has been projected that the output of intensive fish farming could increase from the estimated figure of 700,000 tonnes annually in the mid-1980s to over 3 million tonnes by the year 2000 (Shepherd 1988:364). To date, however, in Europe generally the preference is still in the main for meat items in the diet, and the meat sector has been considerably expanded in the period since the Second World War by the availability of cheap poultry reared by intensive methods; on the other hand the modern rise in demand for health foods has led to an increase in demand for quality fish. In North America, Australia and New Zealand the relative price of meat products is often less than in other advanced countries, and this puts fish at an added disadvantage in the very competitive food market; and the per capita consumption of fish is usually only a fraction of that of meat. To date the expansion of fish farming has only marginally affected the market for other protein foods. While more recent diet fashions, including especially the increased emphasis on unsaturated fats, has improved the competitive position of fish, this has been offset by the increasing proportions of populations preferring vegetarian diets. It is clear that there will be continued expansion in the production of a number of species already farmed for the edible market, although there may well be locational shifts in their production analogous with those that have occurred in a variety of other crops and industries; and in particular the lower labour costs of developing countries is certain to cause some shift in production into them, although the capital 203

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investment may well come from outside. What is already occurring in Ecuador may be instructive. Here lower site and labour costs have attracted investment from North America and Europe for the farming of panaeid shrimps, especially in the estuary of the Rio Guayas. In 1985 development was distinctly hurried and disorganised; in addition to a lack of adequate infrastructure, 70 per cent of the enclosures in use had no planning authorisation, and many did not work properly (Doumenge 1986:576–7). There is the obvious danger in such situations of the ‘boom and bust’ type of speculative development which can scarcely be in the long-term interest of the communities and areas concerned. There is also the issue of how much wider the range of farmed species will become. Several of the most highly priced species are still the product of capture fisheries, and are likely to attract increased research effort to rear them in fish farms. At present, the rearing of turbot and halibut, two of the most valuable flatfish, has been mastered, and development is likely to follow; but although sole is also a high-value fish, technical problems in its domestication have not yet been overcome. In the case of turbot, the most likely locations of production at the warmer end of its natural range would be in Iberia, although the juveniles would be better raised in Scotland or Norway to minimise disease risks. However, in Norway there are plans to engage in the rearing of these species to market size by utilising the waste water from power stations. Also in Norway considerable effort has been put into the rearing of cod, the most important of all demersal species, although the time to reach marketable size, let alone sexual maturity, is such that supplies are more likely to be enhanced by a marine ranching system than one of farming through to marketable size. In the Mediterranean world as well as in the Far East there appear to be good prospects for the farming of mullet, a species which has a wide range of tolerance in both salinity and temperature and which can feed on plankton or waste organic matter. In south-east Asia there are also ventures in the rearing of high-value species, like snapper and grouper, in sea cages (Mistakidis 1978:33–5). The future will continue to see the interplay of technical advance and of market forces, and these are increasingly likely to span both the developed and developing worlds. The global and regional patterns of production of the twenty-first century will be determined by this complex interaction.

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REFERENCES Andreska, J. (1984) ‘Development of Fish Pond Culture in Bohemia’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 77–89. Bardach, J.E. (1978) ‘The Growing Science of Aquaculture’, in Gerking, S.D. (ed.) Ecology of Freshwater Fish Production, Blackwell, Oxford, 424–40. Björndal, T. (1988) ‘The Norwegian Aquaculture Industry: Industrial Structure and Cost of Production’, Mar. Policy 12 (2):122–42. ——(1990) The Economics of Salmon Aquaculture, Blackwell, Oxford. Brown, E.E. (1983) World Fish Farming: Cultivation and Economics (2nd edn), AVI Publishing, Westport, Conn. Chaussade, J. and Corlay, J.-P. (1990) Atlas des Pêches et des Cultures Marines. France, Europe, Monde. Ouest-France, Rennes. Coull, J.R. (1988) ‘Fish Farming in the Highlands and Islands: Boom Industry of the 1980s’, Scott. Geogr. Mag. 104 (1), 4–13. Cunningham, S., Dunn, M.R., and Whitmarsh, D. (1985) Fisheries Economics: an Introduction, Mansell, London. Dale, E., Owens, J. and Stenseth, A. (1987) ‘Tilling the Sea: Prospects for Norwegian Aquaculture’, Mar. Policy 11 (3), 229–39. Doumenge, F. (1986) ‘La révolution aquacôle’, Ann. Géogr. 530, 445–82, 527– 86. Government of Japan (1990) Fishery Statistics of Japan 1988, Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Tokyo. Huming Yu (1991) ‘Marine Fishery Management in PR China’, Mar. Policy 15 (1), 23–32. IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) (1985) Inland Fish Marketing in India, Vol.1, Overview: Summary and Conclusions, Concept, New Delhi. Kawakami, M. (1966) ‘Aquiculture in Miyagi Prefecture’, Science Reports of the Tohoku University, 7th Series (Geography) 16 (15), 195–209. ——(1972) ‘Aquicultural Regions of Japan’, Science Reports of the TohokuUniversity, 7th Series (Geography) 22 (1), 15–22. ——(1973) ‘Regional Characters of Scallop Aquiculture in Tohoku District’, Science Reports of the Tohoku University, 7th Series (Geography) 23 (2), 203–17. Librero, A.R. (1977) ‘Cultural and Management Practices in Bangus (Milkfish) Ponds in the Philippines’, in Lockwood, B. and Ruddle, K. (eds) Small Scale Fisheries Development, East-West Center, Honolulu. Matena, J. and Berka, R. (1987) ‘Fresh-water Fish-pond Management in the World’, in Michael, R.G. (ed.) Managed Aquatic Ecosystems, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 3–27. Mistakidis, M.N. (1978) ‘Marine Fish Culture in the Third World’, Fish Farming International 5 (1), 30–5. Miura, A. (1980) ‘Seaweed Cultivation: Present Practices and Potentials’, in Borgese, E.M. and Ginsburg, N. (eds) Ocean Yearbook 2, 57–68. Nash. C. (1987) ‘Aquaculture Attracts Increasing Share of Development Aid’, Fish Farming International 14 (6), 22–4. 205

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OECD (1989) Aquaculture. Developing a New Industry, OECD, Paris. Peterson, S. (1982) ‘Allocation of Aquacultural Resources’, in Smith, L.J. and Peterson, S. (eds) (1982) Aquaculture in Less Developed Countries, Westview, Boulder, Colo., 21–30. Pruginin, Y. and Hepher, B. (1982) ‘Fish Culture in Israel as a Cash Crop’, in Smith, L.J. and Peterson, S. (eds) Aquaculture in Less Developed Countries, Westview, Boulder, Colo., 109–20. Ruddle, K. and Zhong, G. (1988) Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture in South China. The Dike-Pond System of the Zhujiang Delta, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sarig, S. (1988) ‘The Development of Polyculture in Israel: a Model of Intensification’, in Shepherd, C.J. and Bromage, N.P. (eds) Intensive Fish Farming, BSP Professional Books, London, 302–32. Shaw, S. and Muir, J.F. (1987) Salmon: Economics and Marketing, Croom Helm, London. Shepherd, J. (1988) ‘Commercial Development and Future Prospects’, in Shepherd, J.S. and Bromage, N.P. (eds) Intensive Fish Farming, BSP Professional Books, London, 333–64. Taniguchi, K. (1988) ‘Progress of Bluefin Tuna Marine Ranching Program’, in USA/Japan Natural Resources. Panel on Aquaculture, Proceedings of Symposium on Aquaculture, Ise, Mie, Japan. Yengoyan, A.A. (1977) ‘Household Structure, Capital Intensity, and Economic Viability: Social Profiles of Aquaculture Production in Capiz Province, Philippines’, in Lockwood, B. and Ruddle, K. (eds) Small Scale Fisheries Development, East-West Center, Honolulu, 131–42

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The organisational structures by which fish reach the market and the consumer involve landing and first sales, and quite often processing also. The arrangements for these vary in different situations and are generally better developed and streamlined in advanced countries, although this is not invariable. Landing at its simplest involves manual unloading from boats pulled up on the beach or floating near the shore; and in the Third World it can often involve individuals wading into the sea. Obviously even small piers are a considerable aid to easier unloading, and in the developed world these are very generally used, even for small boats. Generally unloading from larger boats is done with mechanical aids: as well as vessels’ own derricks, land-based powered cranes and winches may be employed. More sophisticated systems employing conveyors have been developed, and these can be refined to incorporate automatic size grading; but this is mainly justified only for the bulk handling of large catches or consignments of pelagic species like herring and mackerel. Containers may also be employed, although these are rarely justified on fishing boats themselves. In many traditional situations a significant part of the production does not enter into commerce, but goes to feed the families, relatives and business contacts of fishermen. As much as 20 per cent of production in India has been reported as going directly to domestic consumption (Indian Institute of Management 1985:92), and from 11 per cent to 15 per cent in Tonga; in Tonga a high percentage of this subsistence element in the catch was regularly exchanged under reciprocal social arrangements; as well as giving shares to relatives and friends, this could still function as a barter arrangement for acquiring such essentials as fishing gear (Halapua 1982:63–4). 207

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The organisation of marketing and processing in many traditional situations, and still very often in the Third World, is by small numbers of merchants. With dispersed patterns of operation there may often be a single merchant at each landing point, and such monopoly situations are obviously disadvantageous to fishermen. This type of organisation was formerly very widespread, and there are considerable elements of it still even in the developed world where fishing by small operators from dispersed centres has survived. It is also possible for the one merchant to be the only available source of necessary materials like fishing gear and food supplies; and fishermens’ dealings with such merchants can be largely verbal or book transactions in which all prices are controlled by the merchant. This has involved fishermen becoming involved in truck systems, which can often mean perpetual debt. Such was the norm at one time in Norway, and in the Shetland Islands in Scotland; and in Newfoundland it produced a system which caused the great humanitarian doctor, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, to say that it was ‘subtle because it impoverishes and enslaves the victims, and makes them love their chains’. Similar systems are still frequent in the Third World; and although it is generally official policy to move towards more open market systems, there are formidable difficulties in doing so. The control of marketing by all-powerful monopoly traders is acknowledged to be one of the most important factors in keeping many Third World fishermen in poverty; and while education levels and access to facilities like banks remain restricted, the development of systems in which competition would drive down profit margins of traders can only be slow. Some attempts have been made in the Third World to improve marketing by the setting up of para-statal organisations for the purpose, as in Ghana and Sri Lanka, although these in general have had a restricted impact on traditional systems (Lawson 1984:121). Attempts have also been made to take advantage of scale economies in marketing by the setting up of co-operatives, although apart from in Japan and South Korea success has been sparing (Lawson 1984:140–1). However, there can be some competition in the market, especially in urban situations; and in most of urban south-east Asia there are public auctions at which retailers buy from wholesalers. A sample survey in India showed that the prices to fishermen varied widely, from as low as Rsl/kg to as much as Rsl7/ kg; also the average prices were considerably higher for pond fishermen than for fishermen on rivers, lakes and reservoirs. While bargaining was the main method by which both retailers and vendors of fish acquired supplies, about one-third of their transactions were in auctions, although a majority in 208

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each trader category was illiterate. At the same time, however, there could be up to four links in the market chain, even over short distances (Indian Institute of Management 1985:41–2, 83). It is also common for there to be serious losses during processing, storage and distribution, and losses of up to 50 per cent have been reported; on the world scale it has been estimated that a total of as much as 5 million tonnes annually may be lost in this way, 60 per cent of it by insect infestation (Lawson 1984:142–3). While truck systems have very generally been superseded in advanced countries, fishermen may still have little or no choice of outlet in disposing of their catches. Eastern Canada and Norway still very generally operate through systems that have no auctions. Canadian fishermen may bargain collectively with the local merchant or processing plant, but operate with agreed or fixed prices. In Norway marketing since the inter-war period has been controlled by fishermen’s sales organisations, operating on a basis which sets fixed prices before the start of the season in line with expected market prospects. Similar systems have been in force in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, although an increasing number of Icelandic catches now go through auction markets. It is very general experience that in these systems prices to fishermen are considerably lower than in auction systems, and hence in principle they need a bigger turnover to reach comparable profit levels; and this is rarely achieved. Even in developed countries there are great practical difficulties in organising auctions for widely scattered small operators at a long distance from the final market. One of the factors that has made it more feasible to develop auctions in Iceland is that a relatively small part of the production comes from small operators. While the greater efficiency of the auction system has made it dominant for a century in Western Europe, in recent decades there have been important adjustments. It still dominates the supply to primary processors, which are those which gut, fillet and pack for traditional wet fish outlets: in the UK in the mid-1980s 98 per cent of the supplies of this sector came from auction markets. However, at the same time the secondary processing sector (quick freezing, smoking etc.) had become dependent on imports for half its supplies, while the high-value sector of shellfish processing got 70 per cent of its supplies on contract arrangements (Banks 1988:25). In the Third World, sales and distribution are generally considerably less developed. In India, the city of Calcutta has as many as six wholesale fish markets and 62 retail markets; the corresponding 209

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numbers in Madras are four and 25, and at the inland city of Delhi (in which consumption levels are considerably lower) the numbers are one and 45 (Indian Institute of Management 1985:97–8). A factor that has been important, especially in the developed countries around the North Atlantic, in influencing the patterns of landings at the international level has been the restrictions placed on foreign fishermen from landing in countries like Denmark and Norway to prevent disturbing the market for their own producers. While such restrictions have been reduced within the European Community (EC), they can still affect the pattern elsewhere. It is also still common for there to be restrictions on such matters as foreign investment in fishing fleets. The fact that modern land transport is much faster than sea transport produces situations where overland links, especially now by road, become a part of the marketing system. In Britain fish may be consigned overland from smaller harbours for first sales at ports such as Aberdeen, Hull and Peterhead; and in eastern Canada it is known for fish to be trucked for hundreds of miles from landing points to keep distant processing plants supplied with raw material. The pattern may also be influenced by vagaries and irregularities in the supply at particular ports, which causes merchants and processors to look to a variety of other ports for additional supplies at different times. While there has been a general tendency in Europe to decentralise landings from the formerly dominant trawl ports, there is greater inertia in the location of the main bases of merchants and processors, and in Britain ports like Hull, Grimsby and Aberdeen still tend to dominate these parts of the trade, although they have become mainly central points for the gathering of raw material from different sources. The Humberside ports still have 42 per cent of the British labour force engaged in processing (Banks 1988:5). One of the prominent trends of the past two decades has been an increasing proportion of the supply to processors coming from imports: in the secondary processing sector in the UK this is now the main source of supply for demersal species (Banks 1988:14). The effects of the growing commercial sector in Third World countries shows that distance constraints can become more relaxed, and patterns akin to those of the developed countries can emerge: India has become a main exporter of prawns, produced both from capture fisheries and from farming; and 41 per cent of the production of them that come from estuaries, and all of the production from swamps, are

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despatched over 100 miles for processing for export (Indian Institute of Management 1985:22). While market forces essentially determine the levels of prices, in the developed world it has been common to develop sales systems which help market stability. In countries like Canada and Norway there are systems of fixed or minimum prices which in effect include a measure of subsidy to the industry. The EC operates a system of minimum prices, the essential feature of which is the setting of withdrawal prices at which fish are removed from sale. It was especially in Western Europe that the system of wholesale fish auctions developed from the later nineteenth century; this involved the public display of complete or sample catches before sale, and produced a situation where prices were related to quality and market demand in the short term; it also rendered more simple public control of hygiene. This is still generally an essential part of auction systems, although it can be refined by more formal grading for size and quality, as now occurs for example in the EC; it may also be necessary to organise mechanisms by which fish frozen at sea bypass the auction to avoid the breaking of the freezer chain. In any event in the competitive markets of the developed world quality control has gained an enhanced importance in fish as in so many other things. As well as the EC, countries like Iceland, Norway, Canada and Japan have made great efforts to develop systems of guaranteeing quality. A very frequent consequence of concentration of landings at big auction markets has been a great increase in traffic around the markets after the auction sales, as there is often much shuttling between the markets and the premises of fish merchants and processors in the harbour vicinity; and this has often been aggravated by the continued survival of relatively large numbers of small businesses in fish marketing and processing, even in the developed world. A recent survey in the UK showed that almost three-quarters of fish processing companies had fewer than ten employees, and that 54 per cent of all employment was in companies with fewer than 100 employees (Banks 1988:2). In several European countries the problem of excessive traffic in the vicinity of fish markets has been minimised by the construction of fish merchants’ premises as part of the auction hall, but on its inner side away from the unloading quay. This allows fish, once bought, to be transferred directly to the merchants’ premises and reduces traffic congestion around the market.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROCESSING While it can be taken as certain that until the second half of the twentieth century most fish have always been consumed in a fresh state, there are indications from prehistory that some have been preserved, or cured, for other than immediate use. The origins of the traditional means of curing are lost in history, but drying and salting are known to have been very widely practised; and these methods have been supplemented to varying degrees by smoking and preservation with spices. These traditional techniques have also been used in various combinations, and among African tribes the most general practice was drying in the sun over smoky fires (Cutting 1955:16). It must have been realised at an early date that gutting of fish prior to curing cut down spoilage and produced a better quality cure. As well as allowing fish to be stored for out of season use, curing has also been very important in permitting fish to enter into trade. In the North Atlantic area, salting has been especially extensively used, and as well as dry salting, which has been the main method for demersal species, there has also been extensive wet salting in barrels for the more easily spoiled fatty pelagic species like herring. The long established traditional methods of processing are still widely practised, and have persisted to a significant extent even in the developed world. They are now most widely employed in the Third World where more sophisticated methods of processing are often technologically and economically unfeasible. With fish as well as some other foods, fermented products are also traditional in many tropical countries, as with them the process of spoilage, which is particularly rapid at high temperatures, is effectively harnessed and controlled. In the modern period other means of processing have become available which in general preserve food value better and present products for sale in more attractive ways. Fish canning from the late nineteenth century became important for species like salmon, sardines and tuna in western North America, and herring, sardines, sprats and anchovy in Europe; it has also been extensively employed by the Japanese and the USSR, and the latter especially has developed largescale floating capacity in canning. From the later part of the last century there was also a considerable expansion of certain specialised smoked fish products, as improved means of transport allowed a wider market to be reached by fish cured by methods which only preserved them in the short term. ‘Cold smoked’ herring (as kippers and bloaters), smoked mackerel, haddock and salmon all became important market sectors in 212

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industrialised countries, and smoked salmon has ranked as a luxury item. However, there are also traditional ‘hot smoked’ products like the ‘buckling’, also made from herring and popular in Northern Europe; and smoked eels are another delicacy esteemed in the Netherlands and Germany. In the period since the Second World War, the most notable development has been the expansion of freezing: this method maintains the food value best, although it is relatively costly and requires more elaborate infrastructure. It is especially important for the large modern long-distance trade in molluscs and crustaceans, as these species are particularly prone to spoilage. However, the two biggest sectors in tonnage of production are finfish. They include tuna, which are often frozen whole and are associated mainly with distant-water fisheries; the total production is around 1 million tonnes yearly with Japan being the main market. The other major sector is fillets, of a variety of species but dominated by gadoids, which are very popular in the markets of developed countries in the Western world. There are in total now between 1.5 and 2 million tonnes of fillets frozen annually. The removal of bones by filleting has become a very important practice for the markets of the affluent society, especially in the Western world; and various refinements may be incorporated in the processing, such as the preparation of fish portions and fish sticks, which are especially popular in the USA. These methods are now often linked to freezing, which has continued to expand and is linked to the availability of such retail outlets as freezer cabinets in supermarkets. To employ freezing to the optimum extent involves refrigeration immediately after catching and the maintenance of freezer chains all the way through to the consumer. The sophisticated level of organisation and technology required is best seen in developed countries, although it is also deployed on a large scale by the distant-water fleets of the USSR, which include special freezer carriers as well as factory-freezer ships. Despite the enhanced flexibility in location, freezing at sea is inevitably more costly than on land, and in the Western world most frozen fish are processed on land and caught fairly near to the shore in countries like Canada, Norway and Iceland. The biggest processing sector now in tonnage handled is certainly that of reduction to meal and oil. This sector started before the end of the nineteenth century, largely as a by-product industry for fish offal or surplus fish in the catches; but since the Second World War the development of intensified systems of livestock farming which require big supplies of cheap protein feed has led to the development of some 213

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very-large-scale directed fisheries for species specifically for reduction. As well as putting new pressures on the resource base, this has caused some conflict between fishermen catching for human consumption and those supplying the fish meal market. This has been notably the case in the North Sea, where Denmark and Norway have built up modern industries dominated by reduction while other nations fronting the North Sea continue to be more oriented to the market for human consumption. It could also in the future become a problem in some countries in the Third World, where there are large commercial fisheries of pelagic species for reduction which could contribute to improved diets for millions of people (FAO 1983:1). Fish and fish products (including offal) can also be diverted to other low-value outlets. It may be used as a land fertiliser, especially as a surplus outlet. There is a considerable market for pet food in developed countries: this outlet generally tends to be intermediate between the lowest value uses for human food and that for reduction to meal and oil, and often involves canning. In countries like Finland and Canada, low-value fish and fish offal is also used on a considerable scale in fur farming of species like mink and fox: cheap feed is one of the most important factors in making fur farming viable. Processing has of course continued to develop, and in advanced countries there has been a prominent move towards specialised ‘readyto-cook’ products like fish cutlets and fish steaks, as well as fish fillets, which reach the consumer in airtight packs via supermarket freezer cabinets. There has also been significant diversification in the products now marketed in the developed world, including various pâtés, fish fingers and fish sticks and other specialised and pre-cooked convenience foods; the range marketed in Japan is especially extensive. It is noteworthy that one of the recent trends in Japan is the increasing proportion of fish used for specialised cures. Modern developments have included the capacity to produce ‘surimi’ imitations of luxury products like roe, crab meat and scallops from cheaper species like mackerel, sardines and pollack (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics 1988:271–2). An important market sector in developed countries has also become catering packs for restaurants, hotels and canteens. Even in the developed world fish processing makes restricted use of the economies of scale and a variety of organisational difficulties tends to restrict the size of fish plants. Even the largest fish plants generally number their labour force in hundreds rather than thousands, and many plants employ numbers of the order of a dozen 214

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or twenty. A study comparing Nova Scotia and north Norway, two regions in which fishing is unusually important, found that the median size of the labour force for large plants in the former was 120 and in the latter was 80. However, co-ordination of marketing among the Norwegian plants was considerably more advanced than in Nova Scotia, partly because of greater remoteness from their main markets. Encouraging for the continuity of employment in many scattered communities was the finding in both cases that small plants were at least as efficient and profitable as large ones (Apostle and Jentoft 1991:101, 107). Since the late nineteenth century, advances in fish processing have been partly dependent on systematic scientific research, promoted both by government research institutes and private firms. To this are due such advances as improved kilns for smoking, the development of filleting machines now widely used in demersal fisheries and better yields of fish meal from raw material. Some of the most important advances have been made in techniques of freezing: for fish it is particularly important that freezing should be rapid to avoid the build up of ice crystals which could disrupt the tissues, and this has entailed the development of the blast freezing process. It has been found that the temperature needs to be reduced to 23°F (-5°C) within two hours, and that long-term storage should be at a temperature of -20°F (28.9°C) (Burgess et al. 1965:146–7). At one time it was expected that diets in the Third World could be improved by the development of special fish protein concentrates; but in addition to the difficulty of market promotion of an unfamiliar diet item, this proved too costly for the purchasing power of Third World countries. Greater hopes are now held out for the development of cheap fish minces which will be sufficiently stable to avoid being subject to too rapid spoiling (FAO 1983:2).

GLOBAL TRENDS IN PROCESSING The records compiled by FAO allow the world trends in processing to be followed since 1938, with the inevitable gap of the Second World War (Figure 10.1). Although no separate figure is available for the output of frozen fish in 1938. with that one exception there are published data for the output of fresh, frozen, cured, canned and reduction sectors, along with a ‘miscellaneous’ category, since 1938. It is clear that at the outbreak of the Second World War fresh fish still 215

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accounted for a half of the total production, and that the major other sector was curing, which constituted over one-quarter; the canning and reduction categories were also important; and although the frozen sector was already significant, especially in the USA, it accounted for less than 5 per cent of the total and was not separately distinguished from fresh fish.

Figure 10.1 World trends in fish processing, 1938–88 Source: FAO World Fisheries Yearbook

While the period since the Second World War has witnessed an expansion of all processing sectors, they have grown at different and sometimes irregular rates (Figure 10.1); and the global trends can disguise separate trends in the developed and Third worlds. The greatest and most consistent expansion has been in the frozen sector: between 1948 and 1988 the growth here was from 1.0 to 22.8 million tonnes, and this reflects essentially the sustained rise in consumer outlets in developed countries, where fish has been increasingly appreciated as a variety item in diets. In more recent decades the rise in the market for health foods and the reaction against saturated fats have also helped this sector to expand. While there is fish freezing in a good many 216

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developing countries now, it tends to be mainly for the export to developed countries of high-value items like shellfish, for which the lower labour costs associated with catching and processing in poorer countries is a familiar advantage. There are plans in some countries for the long-term development of freezer chains for distribution, although for the foreseeable future it is likely that limitations of purchasing power will make this a restricted sector.

REDUCTION TO MEAL AND OIL The other major sector which has prominently expanded is that of reduction to meal and oil, although the level of output here has stabilised in the last two decades after spectacular growth in the early post-war period which saw production rise from 7.7 million tonnes in 1948 to 36.0 million tonnes in 1970, a rise of 467 per cent; at that point the reduction outlet took over one-third of the global catch, although more recently it has fluctuated between 25 per cent and 30 per cent. The markets for these low-value products are very generally in advanced countries, where the main outlets are as high protein feed in livestock and in fish farming. While Third World countries have very limited markets for these products, they do play an important role in production, and the steep growth in the 1960s was associated above all with the development of the great anchovy fishery in Peru, which at one point supplied over half of the fish meal entering into international trade (Figure 6.4(b)). South-west Africa (now Namibia) and Chile have also become major producers, although developed countries like Norway and Japan are also big producers. The recent pattern of production is still dominated by the South American continent, which accounts for about 40 per cent of the world total; with the inclusion of species like the pilchard in those exploited, Peru and Chile both produce over a million tonnes of fish meal annually. This figure is also reached by Japan, which accounts for upwards of two-thirds of all Asiatic production, and Thailand now has an annual output of around 250,000 tonnes. Although now regularly experiencing difficulties through shortage of raw material, Europe produces over 1 million tonnes yearly and North America over half a million tonnes; and in Europe, production is very much dominated by the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The stabilisation of production from the mid-1970s is related partly to the over-fishing that developed in the Peruvian anchovy and 217

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several other important stocks, including the California sardine, the North Sea herring, the Namibian pilchard and the Norwegian capelin. There is also a situation now where in circumstances of scarce resources there can be pressure to allocate stocks which can be used either for reduction or human consumption, like North Sea herring and mackerel, to human consumption outlets. Since prices for human consumption outlets are very generally higher than for reduction, there are economic forces which in any case make this the preferential outlet. It is also the case that the international fish meal market is complicated by the existence of rival vegetable sources of cheap food protein, especially of soy meal, and there are now fears that the expansion of fish farming will be hampered by a shortage of highquality fish meal for feed. Most fish oil is now produced from reduction processes, although there is less detail available relating to it than for fish meal. Global output is of the order of 1.5 million tonnes annually, but upwards of half of it comes from unidentified fish species. The most important components of the production are anchovy oil (dominated by Peru) and capelin oil (dominated by Iceland); and the longer established oils from species like cod and halibut are also still of consequence.

PRODUCTION OF FRESH FISH In the other production sectors, the biggest fluctuations have been in the production of fresh fish. Here the overall trend is basically the result of the tendency for production to rise in the poorer nations while it falls off in developed nations because of the rise in the market share of the frozen sector. In Third World countries, in addition to an overall increase in production, the most feasible means of widening the market has been to increase the distribution range on land by making ice available to cut down spoilage. This contributed to the virtual doubling of the global fresh sector between the end of the Second World War and 1965, but since then there have been fluctuations as the increase in the Third World production of fresh fish has not always been sufficient to set off the global expansion of the frozen sector. In most European nations the fresh sector, which also involves fish being distributed in ice from the ports, continued as a major (if declining) sector into the early 1970s, after which the overall decline in the production of fresh fish was due to an increasing scarcity of supplies, allied to the continued growth of the frozen 218

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sector. The recovery of production in fresh fish since 1980 is due to increasing Third World production, although here too there has been a tendency for popular species to become scarcer.

CURING Cured production has expanded slowly in the period since 1948, in the main because the run-down in the developed world has been more than compensated by expansion in poorer countries, where it is generally still the most practicable method for preserving fish for out of season use. However, there has also been an expanding market in some specialised cures for higher value market sectors, and there has been a steady rise in the proportion of the Japanese market taken by cured products (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics 1988:271). Aggregate world cured production rose from 5.0 million tonnes in 1948 to 13.8 million tonnes in 1988. As a proportion of total production, the percentage has slowly gone down from over 25 per cent to under 15 per cent. In Europe the biggest single item of production in the early years of the twentieth century, that of cured herring which at one time was of the order of 4 million barrels annually (equivalent to upwards of 1 million tonnes), is a shadow of its former size. The total cured production now for all Atlantic herring fluctuates around 150,000 tonnes, of which about two-thirds are salted in barrels and one-third smoked. While the other great production sector of the North Atlantic area, that of salt-dried cod, proved remarkably resistant to change for several decades after the Second World War, it has recently declined in the face of shortage of the raw material and the diversion of output to the preferred modern outlet of freezing. Total output of salted Atlantic cod now runs at rather over 100,000 tonnes annually; however, one of the more recent trends induced by scarcity has been an increase in price of salt fish relative to fresh and frozen fish. As a result there has been an increased output of salted species like hake and pollack which are similar to cod (FAO 1983:6). While there has been some expansion of specialised cures, such as marinated and spiced items, for developed country markets, these in the main provide diet variety and hors d’oeuvres; the total quantities involved are small compared with the former production of cured herring and cod, which have been diet staples over large areas. However, there is a market for salt cured mackerel, especially in Japan, and the scale of this cure now 219

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approximates that of salt herring. It is in Japan that special fish preparations find a market on a major scale; there is now a large variety of fish roes, sausages, cakes, minces and other products, and the aggregate production of them is approximately 2 million tonnes annually. There is also a significant part of this production which consists of luxury items of crustaceans and molluscs. In the 1980s output of dried and salted shrimps and prawns increased by around 250 per cent to 42,494 tonnes in 1989; and the output of dried and salted squid both almost doubled in the 1980s and in 1989 exceeded 35,000 tonnes. The total global production by the old curing methods of drying and salting now fluctuates between 3 and 3.5 million tonnes. Of this a considerable fraction (around 600,000–800,000 tonnes) is of unidentified species, mainly in Third World countries. The main production of dried and unsalted fish is in tropical countries; total annual output now approaches 200,000 tonnes, and over threequarters is produced by the two nations of the Philippines and Myanmar (the former Burma). The production of dried and salted freshwater species is also dominated by tropical Third World countries, in this case countries in Africa; production has more than doubled during the 1980s and in 1989 almost one-half of the total output of 224,000 tonnes came from Tanzania and Nigeria. The main luxury salted product is salmon: output grew by about 60 per cent in the 1980s to a total of 161,400 tonnes in 1989, and almost all the output is produced by Japan. The global output of smoked fish has continued to rise slowly and is now around a million tonnes annually. Over 70 per cent of this is of unidentified species and the USSR is by far the most important producer with a full half of the overall total. The Third World countries of Ghana and Indonesia both produce over 50,000 tonnes annually. Smoked products continue to include semi-luxuries like smoked Atlantic herring, the output of which fluctuates around 50,000 tonnes annually. The main luxury product in this category is smoked salmon: the smoked sector is at the upper end of the market for salmon, along with the fresh and frozen sectors, and is now an important outlet for farmed salmon. Production rose upwards of threefold in the 1980s and reached 51,860 tonnes in 1989. The world distribution of curing is now heavily concentrated in south and east Asia and the USSR. Production in China approaches 1.5 million tonnes annually, while Japan and the USSR each account for about 1 million tonnes and Indonesia for about 0.5 million tonnes; and 220

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North and South Korea, the Philippines, India, Thailand and Burma are all major producers. In Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania are all important producers, and the remaining leading countries are around the North Atlantic. As well as Norway, Iceland and Canada, the traditional producers of salt-dried cod, these include the East European countries of Poland, Bulgaria and the former East Germany, the distantwater fleets of which now often serve as floating processing capacity for other countries like the UK and the USA; and a considerable proportion of the cured production of the USSR is also achieved in this way.

CANNING Canning is a modern method of food preservation which made an early impact on the fishing industry; it has continued to expand and aggregate production increased from 1.4 million tonnes in 1948 to 8.1 million tonnes in 1970, since when the rate of growth has slowed to minor proportions. Expansion in the 1950s and 1960s was partly due to the considerable expansion of canning at sea by the USSR and Japan. In the USSR a considerable part of the production consists of canned pelagic species, but the main markets are still in developed countries, where the canned outlet is the most prominent for the important tuna, sardine and salmon species and there are significant market sectors for species like pilchard, anchovy and mackerel. World production of canned fish is now dominated by Japan and the USSR, who between them produce well over 3 million tonnes per year. The USA ranks next, its production of about 400,000 tonnes per year consisting largely of Pacific salmon. Most of the main maritime countries of Europe continue to be important producers, and they have now been joined by a number of countries from different continents: these include Mexico, Peru, Chile and Brazil in Latin America; South Korea, Thailand and Burma in Asia; and Morocco in Africa. While there has been some addition to the canned category by the use of other airtight containers made of plastic and other materials, the total volume of this is minor. On the other hand there has been a marked growth in the production of specialised fish preparations and products not requiring airtight containers. This category increased from 650,000 tonnes in 1958 to well over 2 million tonnes in the 1980s.

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MODERN TRENDS WITHIN THE FROZEN SECTOR To a large extent the frozen sector must now be recognised as the ‘up market’ part of the market for fish, and it has increasingly operated on a global scale, with the main markets in developed countries able to attract supplies world-wide. However, the detail available for frozen production varies widely between countries, and a considerable amount of the data does not distinguish between the actual species processed; also, although there are separate statistics at the international level for that part of frozen production which is filleted first, other types of processing are not distinguished. It is not possible, for example, to show how much is gutted before freezing, although this is common practice with many species and in many countries. The USSR, one of the leading producers of frozen fish, has very limited detailed data available; and some other countries, including both North and South Korea, which are both now big producers, also aggregate most of their data in a general category. Despite this it is possible to distinguish a number of major patterns and trends. The biggest part of the frozen sector is that of whole frozen fish. The USSR with its great programme of freezing at sea now dominates world frozen production and regularly produces over 3 million tonnes annually. Japan is second in order and annually accounts for well over 1 million tonnes. China now produces about 1 million tonnes and both North Korea and South Korea have outputs of over 0.5 million tonnes. As well as developed countries like Canada, Norway, Iceland, the UK and Denmark, East European nations which invested in capacity for freezing at sea in distant waters are also important, and Poland and Romania both produce around 100,000 tonnes annually, with Brazil now exceeding this figure. The most important species which is frozen whole is the tuna, and much of this (probably the major share) is frozen at sea. The total frozen for all tuna species now tops 1 million tonnes annually; most important is the skipjack, for which production in some years has exceeded 400,000 tonnes; and totals for yellowfin, albacore and bigeye are all regularly over 100,000 tonnes. Japan is still very much the dominant nation in the production of frozen tuna, although Spain and France also play a significant part, as does Indonesia and several other emerging nations. Although of much less importance than tuna, other species of the warmer oceans are appearing in frozen production on an increasing scale. Croakers and to a rather less degree groupers are notable species here. 222

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In addition to tuna, other pelagic species which are important in the frozen sector are herring and mackerel. If such oily fish are caught at any distance from base, freezing is particularly necessary as the best means of preserving the food quality, as spoilage is more rapid. Herring was formerly the more popular of these two, but production suffered badly from severe over-fishing in the North Atlantic in the 1970s, although with partial success in stock rebuilding through conservation programmes, output of frozen North Atlantic herring had recovered to between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes annually in the later 1980s. Meanwhile there has been a strong increase in the output of frozen mackerel, partly as a substitute for herring; total output of frozen jack and horse mackerel species almost quadrupled in the 1980s, and by the end of the decade bordered on 250,000 tonnes. Japan contributed almost half of this and the next most important country now is Peru. Salmon tend to be frozen whole, and at a later stage made into cutlets before final consumption. World production of frozen salmon is now of the order of 100,000 tonnes annually, and has tended toward stability, a recent fall in the output of frozen Pacific salmon being offset by the increased production of frozen Atlantic salmon. It is noteworthy that the production of several whole frozen demersal species has fluctuated, and when production of one species declines, production of another tends to be boosted to satisfy market demand; there is a substitution effect, but the situation is also complicated by changes in the species used for the production of frozen fillets. Production of whole frozen Alaska pollack expanded rapidly from 95,220 tonnes in 1980 to 508,400 tonnes in 1984, but declined to 207,119 tonnes in 1989, mainly owing to restrictions imposed by the USA on the Japanese and other fleets which dominated the catching. This was partly made good by the expansion in production of the Atlantic cod from levels around 50,000 tonnes in the early 1980s to 124,774 tonnes in 1989, and of a big increase in Chilean hake from 18,397 tonnes in 1985 to 63,688 tonnes in 1989. The different species of halibut are generally very valuable, although supplies are limited, and production of all species has tended to fluctuate; in recent years the frozen output of no halibut species has been much over 15,000 tonnes. A prominent modern trend has been the rise in the production of fish fillets, the great part of which are now frozen. The peak of fresh unfrozen fillets was 357,016 tonnes in 1985, since when there has 223

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been some decline in the face of the continued rise in frozen fillets which reached 1,612,073 tonnes in 1989. The most important single species as a source of frozen fillets is the Atlantic cod, but for two decades now output has fluctuated and has been complicated by overfishing and conservation problems in the resource itself, and also by the continuing demand for the whole frozen and the salted article. The first complete data on production of Atlantic cod fillets date to 1977 when the output was 202,362 tonnes, although partial earlier data suggest that at the start of the 1970s output was about 50 per cent higher; it rose to 381,357 tonnes in 1987 and then declined sharply to 281,292 tonnes in 1989 owing to scarcity of supplies, which was in turn related to incomplete management success in containing overfishing pressures allied to a continuing demand for whole frozen cod. The recent shortfall in frozen cod fillets has been more than compensated by substantial increases during the 1980s in those of Alaska pollack and hake: production of frozen fillets of Alaska pollack increased almost six times between 1980 and 1988 when the total was 143,823 tonnes; and that of hake fillets increased by almost four times to 127,096 tonnes in the same interval. Also significant in the 1980s were increases in the production of frozen fillets of European plaice, which rose by over 250 per cent to a figure of 53,248 tonnes in 1989; and also of American catfish, which was insignificant in 1980 but amounted to 22,042 tonnes in 1989. There are other species which also compete in this same market sector: North Atlantic haddock was formerly the main competitor to cod, but in the 1980s production fluctuated at a ceiling which was between 60,000 and 70,000 tonnes. Meanwhile saithe, which has appeared on the frozen fillet market sector mainly because of difficulties in the supply of cod and haddock, increased to a peak of 104,728 tonnes in 1985, but has since fluctuated in a range between this figure and 60,000 tonnes. In summary, the supply sector of frozen demersal fillets is a high priority one, and when supplies of one species become scarce, other species are drawn on to make good the shortfall; although still dominated by supplies from the North Atlantic and North Pacific, there is an emerging tendency to draw supplies from other sea areas; production in Thailand, for example, by 1989 had risen to an estimated 17,000 tonnes. The example of trends in production in Canada, as the leading single producer of frozen fillets for the main market in the USA, is important (Figure 10.2). There has been a general upward trend since

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Figure 10.2 Species composition of fish fillets in Canada, 1958–89 Source: FAO, World Fisheries Yearbook

the Second World War, although it has been complicated at times by scarcity of raw material supplies of some important species. The early 1970s saw a sag in production with the problems of over-fishing prior to the extension of national limits in 1977. Cod has continued to be the main single species, although there was a serious shortfall in supplies in the early 1970s; following the extension of Canadian fishing limits to 200 miles in 1977 the upward trend in frozen cod fillets was resumed and reached a peak of 114,573 tonnes in 1983. It later became clear that there had been serious mistakes in the biological assessments of the cod stocks, and shortages have again become evident from the end of the 1980s (see Figure 10.2): the result has been a slump in the Canadian total production of frozen fillets. The most important other species have been flatfish, particularly flounder and turbot. In the 1960s, when other nations were catching most of the cod off the Canadian coast, redfish were as important as flatfish, although their importance has since considerably declined. In the early period after the Second World War haddock were next in importance to cod but persistent over-fishing has never allowed them to play other than a minor supporting role. A variety of other species, 225

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including, for example, saithe and Atlantic herring, have contributed fluctuating amounts to the total; and the most recent trend has been the increase in fish portions and fish sticks, which reflects later developments at the upper end of markets in North America. The USA itself is the main producer of fish portions and fish sticks: in the 1980s annual world output ran at around 200,000 tonnes, and about 75 per cent of this was produced in the USA. Crustaceans and molluscs are even more prone to spoilage at normal temperatures than other fish, and for them freezing is especially important to maintain food quality. They are also a quickly growing market sector in developed countries, and interest in their production is now world-wide. Total annual production of both crustaceans and molluscs is well over 1 million tonnes, and during the 1980s alone production in both categories increased by over twothirds. The great part of this production is now frozen, and although the production of frozen molluscs is still much dominated by Japan, crustaceans are frozen in a wide range of countries for the international market, and these include Third World countries to an important degree. While there are profitable market sectors in frozen crustaceans for various crabs, lobsters, spiny lobsters and other species, the species which are now of overwhelming importance are shrimps and prawns, which are widely farmed in warmer countries and account for over 60 per cent of the total world production of crustaceans. China leads in the output of shrimps and prawns with over 100,000 tonnes annually, while production in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Ecuador is over 50,000 tonnes. As well as frozen whole fish, there are market sectors for such specialised products as crab meat and peeled prawn tails. Squid are by far the most important species of molluscs which are frozen; a high proportion of them are frozen at sea, and the South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Oceans contribute an important share of production. Squid account for about one-half of the overall total production of frozen molluscs; they are especially popular in Japan, which produces some two-thirds of world production, and have also an important market in Mediterranean Europe. The most important other category of frozen molluscs is octopus, for which annual output now exceeds 100,000 tonnes annually and for which production is dominated by Mexico.

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REFERENCES Apostle, R. and Jentoft, S. (1991) ‘Nova Scotia and North Norway Fisheries. The Future of Small-scale Processors’, Mar. Policy 15 (2), 100–10. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (1988) ‘Fishing Industry’, in Japanese Agricultural Policies, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra. Banks, R. (1988) Fish Processing in the United Kingdom, Fisheries Economics Research Institute, Sea Fish Industry Authority, Edinburgh. Burgess, G.H.O., Cutting, C.L., Lovern, J.A. and Waterman, J.J. (1965) Fish Handling and Processing, HMSO, Edinburgh. Cutting, C.L. (1955) Fish Saving. A History of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times, Leonard Hill, London. FAO (1983) Cured Fish: Market Patterns and Prospects, Fisheries Technical Paper 233, compiled by Moen, E., FAO, Rome. Halapua, S. (1982) Fishermen of Tonga; Their Means of Survival, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji. Indian Institute of Management (1985) Inland Fish Marketing in India, Vol.1, Concept, New Delhi. Lawson, R.M. (1984) Economics of Fisheries Development, Frances Pinter, London.

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11 MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION OF FISH AND FISH COMMODITIES

The patterns of marketing and consumption in fish and fish-derived products have developed over centuries and are affected by established practice and cultural tradition as well as availability and price. From being largely local at one time, and much constrained by the perishable nature of fresh fish, distribution systems have expanded in spatial scale as well as in volume of flow, especially since the Industrial Revolution. A large part of the distribution now crosses international frontiers, and the proportion which does so has been rising during the period since 1938 for which comprehensive data are available. Nevertheless, almost two-thirds of the trade is still confined within national boundaries, although as a general rule in developed countries a higher proportion of the production does enter international trade. World trade in fish and fish products in fact mainly circulates between developed countries, although an increasing proportion of their imports has come from the Third World. Even for the developed countries it is still the case that the trade can in general be followed more completely and precisely at the international level: while data relating to this trade component are regularly collected for a variety of legal and fiscal reasons, internal trade flows within countries are less subject to systematic monitoring and tend to depend on sample surveys or might be indirectly derived from data on consumption. The main points of inspection for quality and hygiene are where fish are landed and processed, and there is less need for monitoring the distribution chains by which fish reach the consumer. While fish generally constitute a distinct market sector, trade in fish can be influenced by the prices of other foods and commodities. At one time the gadoids (including such species as cod, haddock and hake), which have been the most popular species of finfish in the Western 228

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world, were considerably cheaper than meat; but general scarcity of these species in the last three decades has driven up prices to levels comparable with meat (OECD 1982:110). In the market for fish meal also, which now absorbs tens of millions of tonnes annually, prices are affected by those of rival vegetable commodities, especially soy meal: hence the abundance of harvests on land as well as at sea complicates a market that is now world-wide.

THE INTERNATIONAL FISH TRADE It was estimated in 1938 that already 4,260 million tonnes of live weight equivalent of fish, or 23 per cent of the world catch, were traded between nations. This proportion was inevitably depressed during the Second World War and the immediate post-war period, but had recovered to 3,780 million tonnes (20 per cent of the total catch) by 1948. There has been a general and sustained rise both in tonnage and proportion since then, and certainly a very considerable rise in real value of trade as there has been an increasing tendency for more valuable items to be attracted to markets of greatest purchasing power at the international level. This has occurred despite the tendency of developed countries to use tariff barriers to restrict the free flow of high-value items into their markets in order to give protection to their own producers. The main trend of increased trade in high-value products, however, has been complicated by the great increase in volume of trade in low-value fish meal, which was responsible for the proportion of world production by tonnage of fish and fish commodities entering international trade in the later 1960s and early 1970s exceeding 40 per cent; although this sector of international trade continues to be the leading one in tonnage, it did sink back following the serious failure of the Peruvian anchovy fishery from 1972, while the trade in more valuable commodities has had a sustained increase. The total volume of the international trade since 1985 has consistently exceeded 30 million tonnes and now approaches 40 million tonnes; and it again approaches 40 per cent of total world output. The main part of the world’s fish production is still consumed in the country of production, and a large part of it is consumed in a fresh state within a limited distance of where it was caught. Even so, a significant part of the production of fresh fish does enter into international trade, although over limited distances; and increasingly there is a trend towards such fish being chilled in ice to help maintain 229

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quality. Exceptionally, particularly valuable items like lobster, shrimp, salmon and tuna in the fresh state may justify the use of air freight over longer distances that can extend to inter-continental destinations. With processed fish the amount, and usually the proportion, entering into international trade has in general increased, although to widely differing extents depending on the species and processing method (Figures 11.1 and 11.2). The rise in the international trade in cured fish has been very limited, and in the last two decades the proportion has actually fallen: this is related to the fact that most cured fish go to markets of restricted purchasing power, especially in Third World countries. In the case of the first modern method of processing to be developed—the category of ‘products and preparations’, which for the most part is canned fish—the rise has been steady rather than spectacular, and the proportion of production entering into international trade has been approximately constant. With whole frozen fish there has certainly been an increase in both the tonnage and proportion entering into international commerce, although most of this category is produced by nations for their own home markets; the amount being bought and sold annually in the international forum now exceeds 4 million tonnes, but it is only about one-third of global production. While there has been a large increase in the international trade in fish meal, this has fluctuated. Largely as a result of the dominant position gained by anchovy meal from Peru, there was a peak about 1970 when about 3 million tonnes annually, or well over half of the total world production, entered international trade. Following the collapse of the Peruvian anchovy fishery from 1972 onwards, both global production and international trade fell back for more than a decade; but subsequently the exploitation of other stocks, especially by Peru and Chile, has seen both production and trade reach a new peak, and nearly one-half of the output of 6.6 million tonnes entered the international market. The most prominent increases in international trade have been in high-value and luxury products for consumers in developed countries. For most of the period since the Second World War the leading product here was frozen fillets, for which the main part has been traded internationally since the 1950s, and which especially in its earlier stages was due to producers in a range of countries competing to get a share in the lucrative market of the USA. Between 1958 and 230

Figure 11.1 World production and trade in frozen fish, fish products and preparations, cured fish and fish meal, 1958–89 Source: FAO, World Fisheries Yearbook

Figure 11.2 World production and trade in frozen fillets, crustaceans, crustacean and mollusc preparations and molluscs, 1958–89 Source: FAO, World Fisheries Yearbook

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1989 the volume of frozen fillets entering international trade had multiplied fully ten times and was nearing 1 million tonnes: this was almost 60 per cent of the total production. More recently the great economic success of Japan, coupled with its much higher per capita levels of fish consumption, has made it the outstanding market for luxury fish products. In addition to frozen fillets, the international trade in crustaceans and molluscs has expanded strongly as they have come to have major shares in the upper end of the market. Crustaceans, which include mainly lobster, spiny lobster, prawns and shrimps, have now come to exceed frozen fillets in the tonnage entering international trade. This now tops 1 million tonnes annually and accounts for over 90 per cent of the total production of crustaceans. Between 1958 and 1989 the amount entering international trade increased by over 15 times. Most seaboard countries now contribute to it in some degree, and these include many Third World countries, the products of which include farmed panaeid shrimp as well as the yield of capture fisheries. The great part of this is frozen, but there is also a significant sector of specialised high-value cured products. Molluscs include species like squid and octopus as well as bivalve shellfish such as oyster and scallop. For around 15 years the major part of the output has entered trade at the international level. The volume traded increased by over eight times between 1958 and 1989, when it approached 730,000 tonnes; and this was over 57 per cent of total production. Preparations made from crustaceans and molluscs include such items as pâtés and pastes, which are also in general high-value products. Here there has also been a sustained rise both in output and in the amount and proportion traded on the international market. The total tonnage bought and sold on the international market increased seven times between 1958 and 1989, at which point it approached half a million tonnes. Since 1985 the proportion in international trade has been over one-half, and now approaches 60 per cent.

LEADING COUNTRIES IN THE INTERNATIONAL FISH TRADE In the pattern of international world trade there are more large exporters than large importers (Figure 11.3): conveniently here the main set of data relates to value rather than tonnage. The big importers especially are dominated by developed countries, although 232

Figure 11.3 Leading fish exporting and importing countries by value, 1989 Source: FAO. World Fisheries Yearbook. 1989

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developing, as well as new industrial, countries can be fairly high up on both lists. While trade volumes for both imports and exports show some relationship with levels of population and income, other factors do play a major role in governing the levels of trade. Asiatic countries very generally get a relatively high proportion of the animal protein in their diet from fish, and are prominent in high positions on both lists; by contrast in developed Western countries the animal protein requirement in the diet is dominated by the products of farm livestock. The fact that in the recent past the USA and Canada have risen to the top of the list of exporters by value is related to the increased output that they have enjoyed under the new regime of 200-mile limits, coupled with the high proportion of high-value items, such as salmon, lobster and frozen fillets, in their exports. They each now account for around 7–8 per cent of total world exports. On the other hand, Japan, the former leading exporter, has now sunk to tenth in the list of exporters, following the enforced cut-back on its distant-water fisheries with the general extension of national fishing limits to 200 miles. Thailand and Korea have gained the status of major exporters by the modernisation of a considerable sector of their fisheries; and China’s high position is related to a major development programme in the last decade. In the Scandinavian countries the formerly undisputed position of Norway as leading exporter has been prejudiced by the decline in its resource base; and although Denmark is not without similar resource problems in its position in the European Community (EC), its ability to trade unhampered in that big common market, allied to the processing of large quantities of farmed salmon from Norway, has enabled it recently to get ahead of its Scandinavian rival in value of exports. Iceland’s exports now hover around $1 million in value; and in value of exports in relation to population it is far ahead of any other country. With the slowing down of the increase in production in Japan, its high and expanding requirements have been largely met from an increase in imports, and the value of its imports is now over 25 per cent of the world total, about double that of its nearest rival, the USA. The especial popularity of high-value items like crustaceans and molluscs in France and Italy is mainly responsible for their positions in third and fourth places on the list of importers; Spain, although with lower per capita purchasing power than these other Latin rivals, has a relatively high proportion of fish to animal protein in the diet, and its large distant-water fleet has also been seriously constrained in its operation by the extensions to 200-mile limits around the Atlantic. 234

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The consequent increase in imports has now placed it ahead of the UK and Germany in value of imports. It is also noteworthy that immediately behind these two big EC countries in eighth place on the importers’ list is Hong Kong: this new Asian industrial country is limited in its population, but it has to import virtually all its food supplies, and is among the world leaders in per capita fish consumption. The fact that several countries appear both on the list of leading exporters and on the list of leading importers is itself a comment on the stage to which international trade has now developed, on the reduced real cost of transport and on the greater availability of information on supplies on the global scale. As well as the trade in distinctive specialised products, a factor of increasing significance is that of lower labour costs in especially the Third World countries, which has enabled them to increase their production and their contribution to international trade.

DISTRIBUTION OF FISH WITHIN COUNTRIES Trade flows in fish and fish products within countries are less clear than international flows, essentially as there is less need for them to be recorded and monitored. However, a variety of surveys from various countries does allow some main characteristics and patterns to be distinguished. Associated with proximity to the source of supply, it is common for a relatively high proportion of trade flows to be concentrated in the coastal zone, or in the vicinity of major inland lakes and rivers: traditional diet patterns and preferences in such locations tend to include higher per capita levels of consumption. While there are inescapable problems in distributing a perishable food commodity like fish over long distances, for a long time it has been distributed in quantity over considerable distances in a cured state. Data from two läner (counties) in the south of Sweden show that fish constituted 30– 40 per cent of the animal food in farming households in the late nineteenth century (Norsander 1984:359–60). The improved transport of the modern period has allowed fresh fish to be distributed much more widely. In Europe it became one of the most important sources of food protein in inland settlements, especially among lower income groups, as it was frequently much cheaper than meat. In Japan there was a large increase in fish consumption from the 1930s associated 235

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with the big national programme of fisheries expansion, and this has continued through most of the period since the Second World War (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics 1988:275–6). The marked advances in the distribution of fish from the ports in the railway age has been prolonged and adjusted with the modern transfer of much of the traffic to road. This first gave enhanced flexibility in destination, and often made it feasible to transport smaller loads; and within the last two decades there has in the developed world been increased use of refrigerated truck transport, both to maintain quality better and to cover longer distances. Even so the fish trade is still a relatively small one in nearly all countries, and modernisation of the transport system has been slower than in many other fields; a large part of the reason for this is the restricted extent to which it can secure economies of scale by using such expedients as container transport. The distribution of fish to the consumer can be through specialised wholesalers and retailers, although it can also be a part of the general food trade. Specialised fish market stances have been quite common historically in cities in Europe, especially in the coastal zone, and in the modern period the increase in supply inland with improved transport stimulated the rise of such outlets as fish shops and fish friers. However, fish distribution tended to show limited economies of scale because of its perishability and of the frequent limited size of consignments. In Britain, with a relatively efficient distribution system, it was calculated in the 1950s that distribution costs were about 90 per cent of the price paid by port wholesalers (Taylor 1960:7), while in Norway in the early 1960s distribution costs ranged from 200 per cent to 300 per cent of the value at first sales (Meltvedt 1964:117–18). Although distribution chains tend to be short in the Third World, their limited efficiency often means that the price to the fishermen is only 30–40 per cent of the final selling price. Also, with the more elaborate preparation and packaging of fish that has become common in the consumer society, it has been pointed out that fishermen may get as little as 20–25 per cent of the final retail value (Lawson 1984:104). It also became frequent in the modern period for fish to be sold by semi-specialised shops in combination with other food items like poultry or vegetables. While whole fish have tended to keep reaching the consumer through such outlets, the streamlining of the modern retail food trade that has come with the modern dominance of supermarkets has inevitably also affected the fish trade, 236

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and numbers of specialised fish shops have been in decline: this has been particularly the case in the older industrial countries in Europe of Britain and Germany, but has been slower in Latin countries like France and Spain. It was already the case in West Germany that by 1960 the general food trade handled the majority of fish products (including such items as fillets and canned fish), although 65 per cent of the trade in whole fish went through fishmongers (Göben 1964:163). The entry of fish, along with other food items, into freezer distribution chains in North America occurred generally during the early period after the Second World War, and lagged behind in Europe. While freezer chains have developed more strongly in northern Europe since the 1970s, they have been slower to come elsewhere. In 1977 in Spain consumption of frozen fish was still only 22 per cent of that of fresh and chilled fish (Scott and Ellis 1979:16), although by the early 1980s the consumption of frozen fish in Britain was about 50 per cent greater than that of fresh and smoked fish together (Young 1984:26, 30). While it is obvious that the greatest potential benefits from freezer distribution chains are in the tropics, their development outside Europe and North America is still very limited, and purchasing power in much of the Third World is still too restricted to make their general installation feasible. This may be illustrated by the costly attempt by government in Ghana to develop freezer chains for a population which traditionally consumed most of its fish in a dried or smoked condition: the main result was that the processors moved inland and continued to prepare the fish for the consumer in the traditional manner, although it had to be unfrozen first (Lawson 1984:117).

INTERNATIONAL VARIATIONS IN THE IMPORTANCE OF FISH IN THE FOOD SUPPLY Fish has a relatively small role in the total global food economy: it has been computed to account for 0.6 per cent of the total calorie intake and 9 per cent of the protein intake of the world’s people (Bell 1978:22). In a variety of situations at the local, regional and national scales it can of course be much more important. In Third World countries, surveys have shown fish to account for up to 50 per cent of total protein intake, and it can be over 80 per cent of animal protein intake (Rao 1962:244). While fish represent less than 5 per cent of the monetary value of food at the primary producer’s level, it can be as high as 20 per cent or more in 237

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countries like Norway, Portugal and South Korea, and is over 10 per cent in all the countries of south-east Asia; it also approaches 10 per cent in many developing countries (FAO 1968:4–5). There have been various estimates of food intake and diet composition for different countries in recent decades; and quite frequently these estimates have included the fish component in the diet. There can be little doubt that the best basis for international comparison is in the material collected by FAO, and over the last decade there has been an improved basis for comparison in the comprehensive food balance sheets compiled which give the total weight of fish going to the edible market in each country and the average per capita consumption. The levels of consumption in countries where the average individual intake was 30 kg/head or more in the later 1980s is shown in Figure 11.4. However, the standard convention adopted for reducing figures to a common base for international comparison of expressing all consumption in live

Figure 11.4 Countries with over 30 kg per capita fish consumption, 1986–8 Source: FAO, World Fisheries Yearbook, 1989 238

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weight equivalent of fish must have a general tendency to inflate figures in the light of the frequent practices of gutting, curing and now filleting fish prior to consumption; as a general rule the edible weight is only around 30–40 per cent of the live weight. In any event, the proportion of the world’s population for whom fish is an important or vital constituent in the diet is substantial: it has been estimated that although fish constitute only about 12 per cent of the total consumption of animal protein, for half of the world’s people fish provides 50 per cent or more of the animal protein in the diet (Meseck 1962:25). It is also the case that over wide areas, especially in Africa and the Far East, the consumption of animal protein is still below 10 g/head per day, compared with the average of over 60 g/head per day in the developed world: more than 20 countries are still in this position, according to the most recent figures. This shortfall is only partly made good by the intake of vegetable protein, and the problem of unbalanced diets persists; and among the poorest peoples there has been very little if any progress since the 1950s. It has also been recognised that the lack of continuous supplies to the market has seriously impeded the formation of fish-eating habits in Third World situations; moreover, defects in marketing structure constitute the major bottle-neck in distribution to the consumer, while high profit margins are associated with reduced market risks to the merchants and traders. However, the great potential increase in demand is shown by the income-expenditure elasticities in excess of 1.0 shown in surveys in countries like India and Egypt (Hamlisch and Taylor 1962:402–3, 409). Elasticities on this scale have also been reported from Indonesia and Vietnam, although with economic progress in countries like Thailand and the Philippines elasticities have dropped to under 0.5 and in the Philippines have tended towards zero in the cities (Smith 1987:35–6). There are marked variations in all major regions of the world in the importance of fish in the food supply: these are partly explained by relative ease in availability, but consumption levels are also related to the degree of competition from other sources of food protein and the purchasing power in different national markets; and they are influenced not a little by cultural tradition. Trends in fish consumption on any comprehensive basis can only be followed for relatively recent times, although longer-term trends are known for some developed countries. The general trend in Europe, especially in seaboard countries, was for consumption rates of fish to increase after development of the railway network brought inland 239

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centres within reach of ports and made a cheap source of food protein available to greater numbers of people. This was succeeded, however, by a phase in the mid-twentieth century when rising living standards and purchasing power in the most advanced countries caused fish consumption to decline as preference grew for such commodities as meat and poultry. Incomplete data for 1938 show consumption rates in Europe ranging between 7 kg and 18 kg per capita per year product weight in most of the seaboard countries on the open ocean, although it was known to be considerably higher in Portugal, Norway and Iceland; and in landlocked countries like Austria and Switzerland the comparable figures were as low as 1.5 kg per capita per year (Hamlisch and Taylor 1962:408). Living standards improved fairly rapidly after the Second World War, and the general trend thereafter was for total consumption rates to increase. However, the trend was actually more complex, as it diverged markedly between different fish items: demand for cured products notably fell off and showed very low income-expenditure elasticities of demand, while demand for fish fillets and shellfish rose rapidly and shellfish showed elasticities of 1.0 or more (Coull 1972:218). More recent work in Britain has found that wet fish are likely to dominate fish demand for the immediate future, but that consumption of frozen fish fell less with increasing prices (Young and Burton 1987:4). By comparison the elasticity of demand in Germany for the traditional food staple of salt-cured herring by the 1960s approached zero (Göben 1964:180). Parallel differences in elasticity of demand have also been noted in Japan: in 1983 the income elasticity for high-priced fish was 1.77, while the corresponding figures for low-and medium-priced fish were 0.20 and 0.14 respectively (Smith 1987:36). More recently the expanding market for health foods together with the greater availability of quality fish products, including those from fish farming, has meant that total consumption levels of fish have again been showing a distinct if gradual upward trend in developed countries. Recent studies in the UK have shown that the market share of fish in the total food market has been increasing relative to the majority of other foods, including meat (Sea Fish Industry Authority 1989:68–9). The FAO data indicate that fish consumption rates have been increasing almost everywhere, as in many other situations, including many Third World countries, fish have made a contribution to improving and betterbalanced diets. In totals of edible fish consumed, Japan, China and the USSR all exceed 8 million tonnes annually; however, China’s use of fish for other 240

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than human food is minor, while Japan uses over 5 million tonnes and the USSR almost 3 million tonnes for other purposes: these are mainly as feed in stock and fish farming. Only Peru and Chile, the big fish meal producing countries in South America, are rivals to Japan in the tonnage of fish allocated to non-food uses, and for them it is a main export product. The USA uses about 5 million tonnes annually for human food, with over 1 million tonnes in addition going to farming and fish farming outlets. There are in east and south Asia five other countries which are conspicuously high consumers: these are nations which either have great populations or which are now classed as new industrial countries. India, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand all consume 2 million tonnes or more; in all of these apart from Thailand and South Korea other uses than human food are minor, but in the case of Thailand a full half of the consumption now goes to livestock and fish farming. There are a dozen other countries consuming over 1 million tonnes annually: they are mainly developed nations, with a main concentration of them in Europe. Thus France, Spain, Italy and the UK all require well over 1 million tonnes annually for the edible market, and in the Latin countries a relatively high proportion of this is from crustaceans and molluscs. Denmark also comes into this category because of the large production of fish meal in connection with livestock farming. North Korea and Mexico also consume over 1 million tonnes of fish annually: the main part of this supplies the edible market, although a large part in both cases goes to other uses, supplying fish farming and livestock farming. Very prominent in levels of per capita consumption are islands in a wide variety of locations and stages of development. This is at an extreme in developed lands in cooler climates where farming is restricted: recent figures give the average level in Iceland as 92.4 kg per year and in the Faroe Islands as 86.4 kg; and in Greenland it is 85.2 kg. Even where climatic conditions are less rigorous, in many islands which are relatively wealthy the convenience of food from the sea allied to long tradition is associated with high per capita levels of consumption. Thus in Japan it is 71.2 kg, in St. Pierre and Miquelon 75.9 kg and in St. Helena 70.7 kg. Even in Third World island situations elevated per capita rates of fish consumption may be found: in the Seychelles the level is 54.5 kg per head, in the Solomon Islands 52.4 kg and in Fiji 47.5 kg. 241

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For other developed countries it is rare for consumption levels to exceed 30 kg per capita, although in coastal countries like Norway and Portugal it is well over this level.

INTERNAL DIFFERENCES IN CONSUMPTION LEVELS WITHIN COUNTRIES While information here is restricted and in some cases dated, it is clear that there are substantial differences in levels of fish consumption within countries. Consumption is characteristically higher in fishing ports and indeed in fishing families. In Spain in 1977 in the port of Pontevedra in the leading fishing area of the north-west, per capita consumption was 3.5 times the national average, which implied that it was 72.7 kg per year compared with the national figure of 20.8 kg (Scott and Ellis 1979:16). The great part of the Spanish consumption is now in the categories of fresh, chilled and frozen fish, and data at the provincial level show considerable variations in consumption throughout the country. In 1977, for example, there were conspicuously high per capita levels in the Atlantic coast provinces of Pontevedra (71.9) and in Huelva (50.7); this compared with figures of 18.8 and 16.8 in the interior provinces of Madrid and Zaragoza respectively (Scott and Ellis 1979:46). In the USSR it has been reported that annual per capita consumption levels on the Baltic coast were around 20 kg, while in the interior parts of the country they fell to 5 kg (Sisoev 1972). Most clear was the situation in West Germany in 1954: in the coastal ‘land’ of Schleswig-Holstein and the cities of Hamburg and Bremen annual consumption was over 30 kg per capita, but there was a decrease with distance inland which was especially rapid near the coast. The ‘land’ of Nedersachsen had a figure of 18 kg and Nordrhein-Westfalen 11 kg, while in the extreme south in Baden-Württemberg it fell to 4 kg (Meyer-Waarden and von Brandt 1957:63). It has also been found that per capita fish consumption in fishing families in Norway at over 100 kg per year was over twice the national average (Gerhardsen 1964:11). A study made in the USA utilising 1969 data gives some additional details of areal variations in a pattern of fish consumption (Bell 1978:39–40). Although it only distinguished between coastal and noncoastal states, it did give details for different fish commodities. In coastal states per capita consumption for fish was 46 per cent higher than in inland states. The differential was very much higher for some 242

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species of shellfish which are particularly perishable: in the coastal areas per capita consumption rates were 24 times higher for lobsters and 11 times higher for clams. Superimposed on the general pattern by which consumption levels fall off with distance from the coast is the concentration of purchasing power in major cities, which are the main inland nodes in the system. In the case of Spain, the province of Madrid is the main single destination of fresh and chilled fish from four out of the five major landing provinces of La Coruña, Guipuzcoa, Pontevedra, Cadiz and Huelva; and only in the case of Guipuzcoa is the province of Madrid exceeded by that of Barcelona. In the case of the leading landing province of La Coruña, 30.4 per cent of the fish in 1974 went to the province of Madrid and 17.4 per cent went to that of Barcelona. From the province of Pontevedra the percentages dispatched to the provinces of the two major cities were even higher at 45.4 per cent and 34.4 per cent respectively. Over most of the remainder of the country there is more evidence of the prominence of the nearest available sources of supply: the Seville and Cordoba provinces were next to Madrid, for example, in the percentage of fish sent from Huelva, and the Navarra and Zaragoza provinces were next to Barcelona and Madrid in the percentages sent from Guipuzcoa (Scott and Ellis 1979:44). In the Third World details on internal variations in consumption levels are rare, but a sample survey in India found that per capita consumption in urban areas was 33 per cent higher than in rural areas (Indian Institute of Management 1985:4). However, the pattern of production and distribution still reflects the fact that well over half the supply of fresh fish to the domestic market is from inland water. Production from rivers and ponds predominantly went for local disposal; and the production of fish from ponds and brackish water was well dispersed and in small quantities: 78 per cent and 65 per cent respectively of the production from these sources were consumed in rural areas. By contrast the production from reservoirs and lakes was in general more concentrated, and 70 per cent and 60 per cent respectively were sold in urban areas. Nevertheless the major share of production from all types of inland water was consumed within 100 km of the source (Indian Institute of Management: 6, 21–3).

243

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REFERENCES Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (1988) ‘Fishing Industry’, in Japanese Agricultural Policies, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 265–93. Bell, F.W. (1978) Food from the Sea: the Economics and Politics of Ocean Fisheries, Westview Press, Boulder, Colo. Coull, J.R. (1972) The Fisheries of Europe. An Economic Geography, G.Bell, London. FAO (1968) Fish in the Food Economy, Basic Study No. 19, FAO, Rome. Gerhardsen, G.M. (1964) ‘Notes on the Fisherman-Farmer Way of Life, especially in Norway’, in Gerhardsen, G.M. (ed.) Some Aspects of Fishery Economics, Vol. II, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, 2–15. Göben, H. (1964) ‘Marketing Channels for Fish in the Federal Republic of Germany, and some Changes in their Structure’, in Gerhardsen, G.M. (ed.) Some Aspects of Fishery Economics, Vol. II, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, 162–73. Hamlisch, R. and Taylor, R.A. (1962) ‘The Demand for Fish as Human Food’, in Heen, E. and Kreuzer, R. (eds) Fish in Nutrition, FAO, Fishing News Books, London, 385–410. Indian Institute of Management (1985) Inland Fish Marketing in India, Vol.1, Concept, New Delhi. Lawson, R.M. (1984) Economics of Fisheries Development, Frances Pinter, London. Meltvedt, K. (1964) ‘Notes on an Attempt to Analyse Costs of Fish Marketing in Norway’, in Gerhardsen, G.M. (ed.) Some Aspects of Fishery Economics, Vol.II, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, 106–23. Meseck, G. (1962) ‘The Importance of Fisheries Production and Utilisation in the Food Economy’, in Heen, E. and Kreuzer, R. (eds) Fish in Nutrition, FAO, Fishing News Books, London. Meyer-Waarden, P.F. and von Brandt, A. (eds) (1957) Die Fischwirtschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Wesliche Berliner Verlagsgesellschaft, Heinemann K.G., Berlin Wilmersdorf. Norsander, G. (1984) ‘Fishfood among Swedish Countrypeople’, in Gunda, B. (ed.) The Fishing Culture of the World. Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. OECD (1982) International Trade in Fish Products: Effects of the 200-Mile Limit, OECD, Paris. Rao, K.K.P.N. (1962) ‘Food Intake, Nutrition Requirements and Incidenceof Malnutrition’, in Heen, E. and Kreuzer, R. (eds) Fish in Nutrition, FAO Fishing News Books, London, 237–47. Scott, I. and Ellis, R. (1979) The Marketing of Fish and Fishery Products in Europe. No.2 Spain, Fishery Economics Research Unit, White Fish Authority, Edinburgh. Sea Fish Industry Authority (1989) Pelagic Species Review, Report No. 2002, Edinburgh. Sisoev, N.P. (1972) Personal communication. 244

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Smith, P. (1987) ‘Future Demand for Fish in the Southeast Asia Region’, in FAO Indo-Pacific Commission, Symposium on the Exploitation and Management of Marine Fishery Resources in Southeast Asia, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, 28–42. Taylor, R.A. (1960) The Economics of White Fish Distribution in Britain, Duckworth, London. Young, T. (1984) A Study of Demand for Fresh, Cured and Frozen Fish in Great Britain, Fishery Economics Research Unit, Sea Fish Industry Authority, Edinburgh. Young, T. and Burton, M. (1987) An Analysis of Market Shares of Fish Products, Fishery Economics Research Unit, Sea Fish Industry Authority, Economics Research Papers No.5, Edinburgh.

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12 CONCLUSION

In the fast changing world of the late twentieth century, to look ahead in any field can be no simple or uncomplicated matter. Changes and developments have accelerated in fisheries as in so many other fields: the immediate past century contains almost the complete history of fishing with power-driven vessels and gear, and the present patterns and intensities of operation could never have been predicted in the late nineteenth century; and change itself has often become the norm. Now in all parts of the world age-old patterns are being changed, where indeed they have survived at all, and regional and local distinctiveness is being reduced as the world economy continues to develop and change continues to accelerate. For the immediate future it appears clear that conventional fisheries will continue to press closer towards the global limit of yield, although additional resources may be exploited in the most remote oceans and to some extent from deeper waters. For the great part the available resource base is known, at least in broad terms, and there will be a continuing and expanding task to monitor its use and to conserve it. A main issue now is that of right of access to fish resources: while the new regime of the International Law of the Sea has in the main resolved this at the international level, arguments from proximity, dependence and historical use are now frequent at regional and local levels as well. Fishing has a tendency to be especially important in outlying communities where alternative employment is, and is likely to remain, scarce. This is important in resource allocation in countries like Canada and Norway, and is also an important issue in the EC; it is also of major consequence in many Third World situations. Another issue of basic importance, and not only in the Third World, is the appropriate balance between artisanal fisheries on 246

CONCLUSION

the one hand and capital-intensive fisheries using the full armoury of modern vessels and equipment on the other. The employment given by the former often cannot be easily sacrificed, while the formidable catching power of the latter has proved very difficult to restrain with conservation programmes. Among current trends the major question is how far the present expansion of resource husbandry in fish farming will go: it is doubtful if anyone could have predicted the rapid expansion and intensification that has already been achieved in this field in the last generation. Even so, it would still require changes of an order of magnitude to make farming the main global source of fish, as the great extra overhead costs in intensive fish farming render its products only suitable for highincome markets. Yet fish remain the main source of animal protein for around one-half of the human population, and there can only be great potential for increase in production and markets. In south and east Asia especially, the continued increase in populations which already constitute half of the total human population, much of which is emerging from mass poverty as a result of economic development, is likely to see a sustained increase in the demand for fish. In many Third World countries expansion of fisheries and fish farming is built into development plans, along with objectives of promoting more efficient distribution. Another major development that has come with advanced economies is the grand scale of fishing as a recreational pursuit. In the developed world, and above all in North America, in inland water the importance of fishing as a leisure activity is far ahead of its importance as a commercial food source; and angling has continued to expand while commercial inland water fisheries have been in great relative and absolute decline. In North America there has also been considerable growth in recreational fishing in coastal marine waters. All the indications are that this increase in importance of sport fishing is likely to continue generally, and is already indeed acquiring an international dimension, including a link to tourism in the Third World and elsewhere. Although fishing is still one of the most distinctive of occupations, it is also clear that less and less can it be considered an activity in isolation. Fishing may be one of the most ancient activities engaged in by the human species, but it is now set in a context in which it impinges on a host of other activities. Hence important issues come to the forefront of the relation of fishing to other water uses, and this applies in both freshwater and saltwater environments. 247

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In the freshwater environment, there are a range of other major water users. As well as industry, irrigation, hydro-electricity and public water supply, these now include recreation; and inevitably fishing and fish farming must be to a degree in conflict with these other water uses, and operate in a situation in which planning and conflict resolution have to play increasing parts. Intertwined with all these is the pervading modern problem of pollution, with the great variety of harmful substances which not only may affect the quality of water in rivers and lakes but may also get into groundwater. Instances of pollution affecting freshwater fisheries are now relatively common, despite the body of legislation and regulations directed at maintaining water quality in most countries. Despite the great extent of the seas, the increasing pressures of different water users are also evident in the marine domain. Sea-use planning has become a prominent issue, especially in inshore waters in the vicinity of heavily populated lands in the developed world. Fisheries are seldom high in order of importance in sea use. Offshore oil and gas development, movements of commercial and naval shipping, recreation and even the dumping of various wastes have tended to be accorded higher priority than fishing. While a matter of serious concern, the proven effect of pollution on life in the sea is as yet very limited, although the gestation time for the effects of pollution in the sea could be a matter of centuries. For the future too there are the possibilities of energy requirements being met in significant degree from the sea. While the technical problems in harnessing them are formidable, there is great potential in tidal power, wave power and also in ocean thermal energy conversion which would utilise the great vertical temperature gradients of the warmer oceans. While national fisheries jurisdiction now generally extends out to 200 miles from coasts, shipping still retains the right of freedom of navigation under international law, and there is still little effective control in the dumping of bunker oil and other waste in the sea. Adequate surveillance of sea use, even off the shores of developed countries, is still relatively rare. There is now an increasing need for expansion of the regime of international law to control the pressure of intensifying sea use. Advances are certainly being made in this direction, although they inevitably take years to become codified and ratified, and there is the perpetual danger that new pressures and uses will outpace the progress of legislation and control. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), an agency of the United Nations, has been active since 1954 in 248

CONCLUSION

developing treaties and conventions. The main modern development here is the Montego Bay Convention, initiated at the International Law of the Sea Conference in 1982: this has been signed by most countries and is in the process of being ratified by them. While it is already having an impact on sea use, its force must become greater with general ratification. One of the concomitants of such moves within the international community has been the development of regional arrangements to cover marine activity in specified parts of the seas, and this is an obvious way of developing provision for different parts of the world. Among regional arrangements already in force are those in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the waters of the EC, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Most of these arrangements are still of limited moment, but do embody some indications of the formulation of coordinated marine policies; and there are various other groupings of countries where there is a maritime interest and some momentum towards developing supranational policies. In a number of situations, as in Iceland, in the South Pacific and off the west coast of South America, fishing does play a leading role in sea-use planning. While the revised regime of the International Law of the Sea has already had significant success in containing a situation of potential maritime anarchy which had emerged in the early 1970s, it is clear that it will need to be extended. There are on record some claims for effective jurisdiction extending beyond 200 miles. As far as fishing is concerned, the position with regard to long-distance fish migration needs to be further codified, and there are other issues such as the mining of manganese nodules from the deep ocean and the dumping of waste in international waters which need to be more fully covered. For fishermen and fishing communities the future must be one of constant challenge and vigilance. Although of direct importance to relatively few people, and of restricted weight in the great majority of modern economies, the fact that fisheries resources are already exploited at a level close to their global ceiling, and that their use interacts with a remarkable variety of other activities, could well mean that they have lessons for modern society that extend far beyond fisheries themselves.

249

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allsop, W.H.L. (1985) Fisheries Development Experiences, Fishing News Books, Farnham. Anderson, L.G. (1986) The Economics of Fisheries Management (2nd edn), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md. Barnabe, G. (ed.) (1990) Aquaculture, Vols 1 and 2. English version, translated from the French by Laird, L., Ellis Horwood, Chichester. Beddington, J.P., Beverton, R.J.H. and Lavigne, D.M. (eds) (1985) Marine Mammals and Fisheries, George Allen & Unwin, London. Beverton, R.J.H. and Holt, S.J. (1957) On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations, Fish. Invest. Ser. 2, 19, HMSO, London. Cushing, D.H. (1983) Key Papers on Fish Populations, IRL Press, Oxford. Glassner, M.I. (1990) Neptune’s Domain. A Political Geography of the Sea, Unwin Hyman, Boston, Mass. Groves, D.G. and Hunt, L.M. (eds) (1980) Ocean World Encyclopedia, McGraw-Hill, New York. Gulland, J.A. (1974) The Management of Marine Fisheries, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Harden Jones, F.R. (1974) Sea Fisheries Research, Paul Elek, London. Pitcher, T.J. and Hart, P.J.B. (1982) Fisheries Ecology, Chapman and Hall, London. Prescott, J.R.V. (1975) Political Geography of the Oceans, David & Charles, Newton Abbott. Rothschild, B.J. (ed.) (1983) Global Fisheries. Perspectives for the 1980s, Springer, New York. Royce, W.F. (1987) Fishery Development, Academic Press, Orlando, Fla. 250

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Sainsbury, J.C. (1986) Commercial Fishing Methods, An Introduction to Vessels and Gears, Fishing News Books, London. Von Brandt, A. (1984) Fish Catching Methods of the World (3rd edn), Fishing News Books, London.

251

INDEX

abalone 194 Aberdeen 94, 99, 100, 210 aboriginal fishing rights 144, 151; in fisheries management 171–2 acid rain 27 Africa 30; aquaculture in 186; catch, distribution of 111; fishing limits around 156; food supply, fish in 238–9; production trends in aquaculture 189 African Rift Valley 20 Alaska 31 albacore 222 van Alderwegen, H.A. 133 Alford, J.J. 170 Amazon River 114 anchovy: canning of 212, 221; catch, distribution of 109, 113; conservation, principles 23; fishing in industrial age 48; growth rates of 15; main ports in Peru, emergence of 101; oil from 218; yield, trends in 118–19 Anderson, L.G. 135 Andreska, J. 185 angling see recreational fishing; sea angling Antarctic Ocean 109–10 anti-fouling preparations 24–5 Antigua 238, 240 Apostle, R. 215 aquaculture 180–206; Asia, production systems in 191–3; disadvantages of 182; diseases

and parasites 187; early growth of 180–1; efficiency of 181–2; environment of 183–7; and environmental pollution 24; future of 202–4; intensification of 185– 6; Japan, production systems in 193–6; in western world 196–201; world production, features of 187–90 Arabian Sea: primary productivity in 8 Aral Sea 113 Arbroath 99 Arctic Ocean 110 Argentina 20 Aruba 238, 240 Asia: aquaculture in 181, 186; catch, distribution of 111, 114; curing of fish 220–1; employment in fishing 61–2, 67; fisheries licensing 165– 6; fishing limits 161–3; food supply, fish in 238–9; production systems in aquaculture 191–3; production trends in aquaculture 187, 189 Atlantic Ocean: management of fisheries in 103–4; primary productivity in 8; see also North Atlantic; South Atlantic auction markets 209, 211; and main ports, emergence of 93 Australia 44; catch, distribution of 111–12; fishing limits around

252

INDEX

156; fishing rights 160; joint fishing arrangements 161 Austria 240 Ayr 99 Bailey, R.S. 35 Baltic Sea 35, 149 Bangladesh 19, 61, 114 Banks, R. 209–11 Barbados 238 Bardach, J. 61, 181 Barents Sea 120 Barra 99 barter arrangements 207 Bartz, F. 33–4, 80 Basques 35, 38 bass 135 Belgium 76, 78, 125 Bell, F.W. 128, 237, 242 Bengal, Bay of 8 Benguela Current 8 Bergen 38 Bering Sea 45 Berka, R. 180, 191–2 Berkes, F. 171 Bermuda 238 Bertine, K.K. 26–7 bigeye 222 billfish 136 biological optimum for fisheries 57– 60 Biscay, Bay of 35, 38 Björndal, T. 198, 200 Black, W.A. 40 Black Bass Act (USA, 1926) 135 Black Sea 109, 149 Borgstrom, G. 45, 63 Boulogne (France) 95, 97–8 Brazil 20, 160 bream: in aquaculture 191, 196; farming in Japan 195 Bremerhaven (Germany) 95, 100 Bridlington 99 Bristol 40 British Columbia 31 British Isles see Great Britain Brixham 42, 99 Brown, B.E. 136 Brown, E.E. 32, 184

Browning, R.J. 44, 46 Brunei 238 Buckie 99 Buckland, F. 6 Bulgaria 221 Burgess, G.H.O. 215 Burton, M. 240 Butlin, J. 59 California 44, 144 Cambodia 20 Campbelton 99 Canada: aquaculture in 198; catch, distribution of 112; cod quotas 162; cod yield, trends in 121; curing of fish 221; distributionof employment in fishing 67–8; distribution of recreational fishing 126; economic efficiency in fishing 173–4; economic impact of recreational fishing 129–30; economic importance of fisheries 60–1; employment in fishing 62, 64, 65–6; fisheries licensing 164– 5; fisheries quotas, management of 168–9; fishing in industrial age 44, 46; fishing limits around 156; fishing rights 160; fleet size and replacement 166–7; freezing of fish 222, 223–5; fur farming 214; government, role of 80–1; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 86–7; hygiene and quality control 211; in international trade 233–4; local government in fisheries management 170–1; management of fisheries 103–4, 176–7; marketing of fish in 209; participation in recreational fishing 126–7; salmon, fisheries management of 150–2; surveillance of fisheries 173; trends in recreational fishing 124– 5; value of catch in 76–7 Canary Islands 98 canning of fish 212; early development 44; expansion of 221; global trends in 215–16; in international trade 230–1 253

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capelin: in cod fisheries 39, 120; conservation, principles 23; oil from 218 capital-intensive production 68–70 Caribbean 40 carp 20, 32; in aquaculture 181, 184, 186; aquaculture in Asia 191; aquaculture in India 192; aquaculture in Japan 193; production trends in aquaculture 190 Caspian Sea 113 Castlebay 95 catch: Dutch, in recreational fishing 134; and main ports, emergence of 93; total global, trends 107; value of 76–8; world distribution of 108–11; see also landings catfish 20; in aquaculture 186; freezing 224 Chaussade, J. 8, 97, 187–8 Chesapeake Bay 170 Chile: catch, distribution of 109, 113; fish meal from 217–18; fishing in industrial age 48; fishing rights 160 Chimbote (Peru) 101, 119 China 19, 49; aquaculture in 184–6; catch, distribution of 109, 113; curing of fish 220–1; employment in fishing 61–2; fishing in historic times 32; food supply, fish in 239–40; freezing of fish 222, 226; in international trade 233–4; historic fisheries management 145; production systems in aquaculture 191–2; production trends in aquaculture 187–8 Churchill, R.R. 168 Clark, I.N. 175 Clark, J.G.D. 31, 38, 50–1, 105 Clark, L. 161 cod: in aquaculture 204; communities, variations in 13; conservation, principles 23; exports, and inshore fishing 86–7; fisheries 38–41; fishing in historic times 35; fishing limits, and Cod War 156–8; freezing 223–4;

growth rates of 14; migration of 17; open-sea fishing, expansion to 87; quotas, Canada 162; in recreational fishing 136; salting of 219; yield, trends in 120–1 Cod War, and fishing limits 156–8 Codification Conference (1930) 155– 6 Common Fisheries Policy (EC) 66, 167 Concarneau (France) 95, 97 Congo 238 conservation: principles of 21–2; and recent changes in spatial patterns 103 consumption of fish: within countries 235–7; internal differences 242–3; internationally 232–5 containers for landings 207 continental shelf: marine productivity on 12 convenience foods, fish as 214 Copes, P. 59–60 Corlay, J.-P. 8, 97, 187–8 Coull, J.R. 37, 72, 101–2, 115, 118, 156, 198, 240 crab: fishing in industrial age 47; freezing 226; stocks, variations in 13 croakers 223 Crothers, S. 174 crustaceans: in aquaculture 182; fish stocks, variations in 13; freezing 213, 226; growth rates of 15; in international trade 231–2; production trends in aquaculture 189; spatial organisation of fishing 98, 101; see also crab; krill; lobster; prawns; shrimp Crutchfield, J.A. 129, 135, 150 Cunningham, S. 59, 129, 182 curing of fish 212; expansion of 219– 21; global trends in 215–16 Cushing, D. 14, 35 Cutting, C.L. 32–4, 40, 212 Cuxhaven (Germany) 95, 100 cyprinid (carp) 20 Dahl, C. 145 254

INDEX

Dale, E. 200 DDT 23, 26 deep-sea fishing see open-sea fishing demersal fishing:cod 38; development of fishing methods 52–3; landings, Great Britain 94; main ports, emergence of 93–4, 98; open-sea fishing, expansion of 87–8 demersal species: fisheries management of 149–50; variations in 13 Denmark: aquaculture in 197; capital-intensive production methods 70; catch, distribution of 112; cod fisheries 40–1; economic importance of fisheries 61; employment in fishing 64, 66; fishing in industrial age 43; freezing of fish 222; herring yield, trends in 117–18; in international trade 233–4; landings, control over 210; overland distribution, developments in 102; productivity of labour 74–6; value of catch in 76–8; vessels and tonnage 71 developed countries: aquaculture in 196–8, 203–4; employment in fishing 63–6 developing countries see Third World dory schooners 44 Doumenge, F. 181, 185–6, 188, 192, 194, 196–7, 202, 204 drag nets 42; and fisheries management 145 dredges 42 drift nets: development of methods 51–2; in herring fisheries 36; in industrial age 46 drying of fish 212 Dutch: cod open-sea fishing, expansion to 87; fishing in historic times 35; herring fisheries 35–6; herring fisheries, management of 146; main ports, emergence of 92 East Anglia: herring fisheries 35, 37 East China Sea 45

East Germany 91, 221 Eastern Europe: fishing limits around 156; freezing of fish 222; production trends in aquaculture 190 economic efficiency in fishing 73–4; enhancing, moves to 172–5 economic optimum for fisheries 57– 60 economics of fisheries 56–83 Ecuador 49, 226 Edmondson, W.T. 26–7 eels: in aquaculture 181, 186–7; aquaculture in Japan 193, 196; fisheries in Holland 131–2, 134; smoking of 213; spawning of 21 Egypt 32, 114, 239 El Niño (Peru) 119 Ellis, R. 237, 242–3 employment in fishing 61–8; assecondary occupation 64–5 England see Great Britain Erie, Lake: mercury poisoning in 27 Esbjerg (Denmark) 95, 100 Eugenia Riveira (Spain) 98 Europe: aquaculture in 196–7; catch, distribution of 111–12, 114; fishing in industrial age 44; overland transport of fish 210; production trends in aquaculture 187, 189–90 European Community: economic importance of fisheries 61; fisheries licensing 165–6; fisheries quotas, management of 167–8; government, role of 81; local government in fisheries management 170; management of fisheries 104; prices of fish 211 eutrophication, and environmental pollution 24–5 Eyemouth 99 factory ships: and capital-intensive production methods 69–70; herring fisheries 36; in industrial age 47; open-sea fishing, expansion to 88, 90 Falmouth 99 255

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

farming and fishing in historic times 33–4 Faroe Islands xix; aquaculture in 198; cod fisheries 40–1; economic importance of fisheries 61; food supply, fish in 238, 241; management of fisheries 176–7; marketing of fish in 209 Fiji 238, 241 filleted fish 213, 215; freezing 223–4; in international trade 230–2 Finland 202, 214 Firth, R. 63 fish farming see aquaculture fish gorges 50 fish hooks 50 fish meal 48, 213–14, 215; expansion of 217–18; global trends in 215– 16; growth in production 109; in international trade 230–1; ports in Peru for 101 fish oil 48, 213–14; expansion of 218 fish ponds in Asia 191–3 fish stocks: variations in 12–14; fluctuations, and TAC 22; fluctuations in 79–80; population dynamics of, and theoretical optimum for fisheries 59 fish traps 50 fisheries: cod 38–41; commercial, in historic times 34–5; economic importance of 60–1; herring 35–7; in industrial age 41–9; modern management of 174–5; seasonal nature of 79; theoretical optimum for 57–60 fisheries management 144–79; adequacy of 176–7; fleet size and replacement 166–7, 1754; industrial period 148–54; licensing 164–7, 174; limits, extension of 155–63; local government 170–2; Mercantilist period 146–8; quotas, management of 167–9 Fishery Management and Conservation Act (USA, 1976) 136 fishing: historic times 32–5; methods,

development of 49–53; prehistoric 30–2; protectionism in 81–2; rewards from, division of 70–3 fishing gear: and fisheries management 145; see also nets and under purse seine fishing limits: extension of 155–63; 32-mile limit (Iceland) 146; 200mile limit 102–4, 159 fishing ports, main, emergence of 92–101 fishing rights 159–63; in USA 137 fleet size and replacement 166–7, 175 Fleetwood 93, 99 flounder: in angling 136; freezing 225 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 3, 9–10, 15, 17, 48, 86, 101, 107, 125, 127, 214–15, 219, 238 food chains 9 food supply, fish in 237–42; and nonfood uses 241 Formosa 45 France: aquaculture in 196–7; freezing of fish 222; in international trade 233–4; participation in recreational fishing 126 Fraserburgh 99 freezing of fish see frozen fish French Guyana 238 French Polynesia 238 fresh fish: auction markets in 209; in international trade 229–30; production of 218–19 fresh water: aquaculture in 180; aquaculture in Japan 193; catch, world distribution of 108, 113–15; ownership of 125; resources of 19–21 Friesian coast 33 frozen fish xviii, 213, 215; fillets 223–4; global growth of 215–16; in international trade 231; modern trends in 222–6 Gairloch 99

256

INDEX

Ganges River 20 Gdynia (Poland) 96 Geen, G. 175 George, Lake 20 Gerhardsen, G.M. 242 Germany: capital-intensive production methods 70; catch, distribution of 112; fish trade within 237; fishing in industrial age 47; fishing limits around 155; internal consumption differences 242; in international trade 233, 235; open-sea fishing, expansion to 87; trends in recreational fishing 124; value of catch in 76– 8 Ghana 208, 220–1, 237 Gibbs, J.J.L. 63 van Ginkel, C.J. 134 Girvan 99 Göben, H. 237, 240 Goldberg, E.D. 26–7 Gombak River 20 Gordon, H.S. 59, 164 Göteborg (Sweden) 95, 100 government: local, and fisheries management 170–2; role of 80–2 Great Barrier Reef: fish stocks communities, variations around 13 Great Britain: auction markets in 209, 211; capital-intensive production methods 70; catch, distribution of 112; Cod War (with Iceland) 156–8; demersal landings 94; economic importance of fisheries 60; employment in fishing 63, 64–5; fish trade within 236–7; fisheries licensing 166, 174; fisheries quotas, management of 168; fishing in industrial age 43, 47; fishing limits around 155; freezing of fish 222; government, role of 80; herringyield, trends in 115–17; in international trade 233, 235; licences for recreational fishing 124; local government in fisheries management 172; main ports,

emergence of 93–5, 98–100; open-sea fishing, expansion to 87; overland distribution, developments in 101–2; overland transport of fish 210; primary productivity around 8; rewards from fishing, division of 72; value of catch in 76–8; vessels and tonnage 71 Great Lakes 125, 138–40 Greenland 88, 238, 241 Grenada 238 Grenfell, Sir W. 208 Grevelingen, Lake (Netherlands) 134 Grimsby 42, 93–4, 99, 101, 210 de Groot, A.T. 131–4 Grotius, Hugo 146 ground seine 44 groupers 223 growth rates of fish species 14–15 Guadaloupe 238 Gunda, B. 50 van Haasteren, L.M. 131–4 haddock: stocks, variations in 13; freezing 224; in recreational fishing 136; smoking of 212–13; total allowable catch for 153–4 hake: curing 219; freezing 224 Halapua, S. 207 halibut: in aquaculture 204; fisheries management 149; fishing in industrial age 44; freezing 223; growth rates of 14; open-sea fishing, expansion of 88 Hamlisch, R. 239–40 hand lines in cod fisheries 39 Hannesson, R. 171, 175 Hanseatic League 34, 35 Hardy, A. 42 Hasslof, O. 34 heavy metals 26–7 Hepher, B. 183 herring: conservation, principles 23; curing of 219; development of fishing methods 51; fish meal from 218; freezing 223; migration of (North Sea) 15–17; stocks of 13 257

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

herring fisheries 35–7; Dutch, management of 146; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 87; main ports, emergence of 92, 95; opensea fishing, expansion to 87, 89; rewards from fishing, division of 72; yield, trends in 115–18 Herrington, W.C. 160 Hey, E. 156, 160 hinterlands, and inshore fishing 84–7 Hirtshals (Denmark) 100 Hodgson, W.C. 14 Holmes, R.W. 24, 27 Hong Kong 233, 235, 238 Horse Latitudes 7 Hubbard, L.T. 31 Hull 42, 93–4, 99, 210 Hultkrantz, A. 3 Huming Yu 145, 188 Hungary 19 Hutton, R.F. 125–6 ice, and fish preservation 42 Iceland: aquaculture in 198; cod fisheries 38–40; cod yield, trends in 121; curing of fish 221; economic importance of fisheries 60; employment in fishing 62; fisheries licensing 174; fishing limits, and Cod War 156–8; fishing rights 160; food supply, fish in 238, 240–1; freezing of fish 222; government, role of 81; herring yield, trends in 118; hygiene and quality control 211; in international trade 233; management of fisheries 103, 176; marketing of fish in 209; primary productivity around 8, 10; 32-mile limit 146; value of catch in 76, 78 Ijssel Meer (Netherlands) 131, 134 India 49; aquaculture in 192; catch, distribution of 113, 114; curing of fish 221; employment in fishing 61; food supply, fish in 239; freezing of fish 226; landings in 207; marketing of fish in 208, 209–11

Indian Institute of Management 202, 209–11, 243 Indian Ocean 110 individual fish quotas (IFQs) 173 individual transferable quotas (ITQs) 173, 174–5 Indonesia 49; catch, distribution of 113, 114; curing of fish 220–1; employment in fishing 61–2, 67; fish stocks, variations around 13; fishing as secondary occupation 64; fishing limits around 156, 163; fishing rights 160; food supply, fish in 239; freezing of fish 222, 226; productivity of labour 74 Industrial Revolution 41 inland water: catch, world distribution of 108, 113–15; Dutch, recreational fishing on 131–2; recreational fishing on 123–5; resources of 19–21 Innis, H.A. 39 inshore fishing: development of methods 51; herring fisheries 35, 37; in industrial age 48; in Japan 97; in spatial organisation 84–5 Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) 149 International Convention for the North-West Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF) 149, 161 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) 6, 148, 161 international fish trade 229–32; in industrial age 49; leading countries in 232–5 International Law of the Sea 41, 68, 102 Ireland: aquaculture in 198; government, role of 81; main ports, emergence of 100 Israel: aquaculture in 183 Italy: aquaculture in 197; in international trade 233–4; productivity of labour 74; value of catch in 76

258

INDEX

Jackson, R.I. 149 Jamaica 123 Japan xvii; aquaculture in 186–7; canning of fish 221; capitalintensive production methods 68– 9, 70; catch, distribution of 109, 112; curing of fish 219–20; economic importance of fisheries 60; employment in fishing 62–3; fish meal from 217; fish trade within 235–6; fisheries licensing 164; fishing in industrial age 44– 5; fishing limits around 155; food supply, fish in 238, 240–1; freezing of fish 213, 222–3, 226; hygiene and quality control 211; in international trade 233–4; joint fishing arrangements 161; main ports, emergence of 97; management of fisheries 104, 177; mariculture in 194; marketing of fish in 208; open-sea fishing, expansion to 88, 90–1; participation in recreational fishing 127; production systems in aquaculture 193–6; production trends in aquaculture 188–90; regional specialisation in aquaculture 195–6; value of catch in 76–8 Japan, Government of 63, 70, 91, 97, 127, 188 Japanese Fisheries Agency 90 Jentoft, S. 215 Johnston, D.M. 148 Joseph, E.B. 137 Joseph, J. 105 Jüngst, P. 88 Kaliningrad (USSR) 100 Kamchatka 8 Kani, H. 50 Kawakami, M. 187, 194–5 Kidder, A. 31 Killybegs (Ireland) 100 Kinlochbervie 99 Kirkcudbright 99 Kirkwall 99 klippfish 40

Korea 45; see also North Korea; South Korea krill: exploitation of 92; in food chain 9 Kuhlmann, H. 124 Kurien, J. 171, 175 Kustov, Z.D. 107 La Coruña (Spain) 98 labour: in fish plants 214–15; productivity of 74; rewards to 70 Labrador 88 lakes, resources of 19–20 landings 207–11; and main ports, emergence of 93, 97; see also catch Laos 19 Larkin, P.A. 6 Latin America 156, 188 Latvia xviii laver 195 Lawson, R. 61–2, 86, 171, 208–9, 236–7 Lea, E. 6 Leakey, M.D. 30 Lerwick 95, 99–100 Liberia xiii Librero, A.R. 193 licensing 164–7, 174 life cycle of fish species 15–19 Limfjord 34 lines see hand; long; trolling ling 40, 87 Lisbon (Portugal) 95 lobster: freezing 226; growth rates of 15; in international trade 230, 232; spatial organisation of fishing 87, 101; stocks of 13 Lochinver 99 Lofoten Islands 14, 120, 145–7 London 34 long lines: and cod fisheries 39; development of fishing methods 51–2 Lorient (France) 95, 97 Lowe-McConnell, R.H. 13, 15, 19– 21 Lowestoft 94, 95, 99

259

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

Macintyre, F. 24, 27 MacKay Consultants 130–1 mackerel: curing of 219; fish meal from 218; fishing in historic times 33; freezing 223; in recreational fishing 136; smoking 212–13 Magdalenian culture 31 Major, P.J. 175 Malawi, Lake 19 Malaysia xv; employment in fishing 63, 67; fisheries licensing 165; fishing as secondary occupation 64; fishing limits 163; food supply, fish in 238; inshore fishing in 86; management of fisheries 177; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91; productivity of labour 74 Maldive Islands 61, 62, 123 Mallaig 99 Manchuria 45 Marchak, P. 164 marginal productivity in fishing 59 mariculture 183, 194 marketing of fish: and consumption 228–45; monopoly control of 208–9; see also auction markets; international fish trade; sales and distribution Marten, G.G. 20 Martinique 238, 240 Matena, J. 180, 191–2 maximum sustainable yield (MSY) 21; fisheries management in industrialist period 148–54; in recreational fishing 137; and revenue and profits 58–9; and theoretical optimum for fisheries 57 McEvoy, A.F. 144 Mediterranean Europe 33, 98 Mediterranean Sea 109, 149 Melanesia 145 Mellars, P. 31 Meltvedt, K. 236 Mercantilist period 40; fisheries management in 146–8 mercury poisoning 26–7

Meseck, G. 239 Mesolithic era 31, 51; cod fisheries 38 Mesopotamia 32 Mexico 49, 113, 114 Mexico, Gulf of 89, 136 Meyer-Waarden, P.F. 242 mid-water trawl 46 migration of fish species 15–19 Milford Haven 93, 99 milkfish 184–5, 193 Mistakidis, M.N. 204 Miura, A. 190 Mizukami, C. 161 Moerman, D.E. 2, 145 Mohamed, M.I.H. 165, 167 molluscs: in aquaculture 182; aquaculture in Japan 194; freezing 213, 226; in international trade 231–2; production trends in aquaculture 188–9 Mori, K. 24 Moss, B. 20–1, 27 mother ships: development of 47; open-sea fishing, expansion to 89–90 Muir, J.F. 123, 201 mullet 186 Murmansk (USSR) 95, 100 Murphy, G.I. 14 mussels: in aquaculture 196–7; production trends 188 Myanmar (Burma) 220–1 Nahodka (USSR) 95, 100 Nakamura, E.K. 130, 136 Nakamura, M. 177 Namibia 217 Nash, C. 202 Nayar, M. 175 Nelson-Smith, A. 27 Netherlands: herring yield, trends in 115; in international trade 233; overland distribution, developments in 102; participation in recreational fishing 126–7; recreational fishing in 131–4 nets: development of methods 51; 260

INDEX

mesh size, and fisheries management 149–50, 153; see also drag; drift; purse; seine New England 40, 44, 138 New Zealand xvii, 44; catch, distribution of 111–12; economic efficiency in fishing 174–5; fishing rights 160; jointfishing arrangements 161 Newfoundland 66; cod fisheries 39– 40; cod yield, trends in 121; fishing limits around 156, 159; open-sea fishing, expansion to 88, 89; truck systems, fishermen in 208 newly industrialized countries 48; aquaculture in 193, 196 Newlyn 99 Niger River 20 Nigeria 114, 220–1 Nile River 20 Normans 34 Norsander, G. 235 North America: aquaculture in 196– 7; catch, distribution of 111–12, 114; cod fisheries 40; fish trade within 237; fishing in industrial age 44, 46; main ports, emergence of 96–7; prehistoric fishing in 31; production trends in aquaculture 187, 189–90;theoretical optimum for fisheries 59 North Atlantic Ocean:catch, distribution of 108–10; cod fisheries 38, 39; fish stocks, variations in 13; fishing in industrial age 47; fishing limits in 155; growth rates in 14; marine productivity in 10 North Korea: catch, distribution of 113; curing of fish 221; freezing of fish 222 North Pacific Ocean: catch, distribution of 108–10; fishing in industrial age 44–7; halibut fisheries management 149; marine productivity in 10; open-sea fishing, expansion of 88 North Sea: fishing limits in 155;

herring fisheries in 35, 37; in industrial age 41 North Shields 94, 99 North-West Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) 104, 121, 149 Norway xvi; aquaculture in 197–201; catch, distribution of 112; cod fisheries 38–40; cod yield, trends in 120–1; curing of fish 221; distribution of employment in fishing 67; economic efficiency in fishing 173–4; economic importance of fisheries 60–1; employment in fishing 62, 64–5; fish meal from 217; fish plants, size of 215; fish trade within 236; fisheries licensing 165; fisheries quotas, management of 168–9; fishing in historic times 32; fishing in industrial age 43, 46; fishing rights 160; fleet size and replacement 166–7; food supply, fish in 238, 240; freezing of fish 222; government, role of 80–1; herring fisheries 36–7; herring yield, trends in 117–18; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 86–7; hygiene and quality control 211; in international trade 233–4; landings, control over 210; local government in fisheries management 170; management of fisheries 104, 176–7; marketing of fish in 209; productivity of labour 76; rewards from fishing, division of 72; truck systems, fishermen in 208; value of catch in 76, 78; vessels and tonnage 71 Norway pout xix Nova Scotia 40, 215 Oban 99 octopus: freezing 226; in international trade 232 Oda, S. 155–6 offshore fishing see open-sea fishing oil spillage 27–8 Okhotsk, Sea of 10, 159 261

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

Olduvai Gorge 30 Olson, W.M. 31 Ooi Jin-Bee 67, 86, 101 open entry into fishing industry 57–9, 172; and recent changes in spatial patterns 103 open-sea doctrine, in Mercantilist period 146–8 open-sea fishing: cod fisheries 39; expansion in 87–92; herring fisheries 35–6; in historic times 35; quotas in, New Zealand 174– 5; in spatial organisation 84–5 Oporto (Portugal) 95 optimum yield in recreational fishing 137 Örebech, P. 173 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 69–70, 73, 175, 182, 187–8, 190, 202, 229 Östensjö, R. 37 overland distribution, developments in 101–2 oysters: in aquaculture 180, 185–7; aquaculture in France 196–7; aquaculture in Japan 194, 195; fishing in historic times 33; in international trade 232 Pacific Ocean: management of fisheries in 104–5; primary productivity in 9; see also North Pacific; South Pacific Palma (Majorca) 98 Papua New Guinea 160 Paraguay 19 Parrish, B.B. 12–13 Paulik, G.J. 8 PCBs 23, 26 Pearce, D.W. 60 Pearl River (Zhujiang) 192 pelagic fishing xvi; development of fishing methods 52–3; fishing in industrial age 46; herring 36; main ports, emergence of 98 pelagic species: fisheries management of 150; freezing of 223; variations in 13

perch 133 Perkins, E.J. 26 Peru: catch, distribution of 109, 113; fish meal from 217–18; fishing in industrial age 48; freezing of fish 223; main ports, emergence of 101; prehistoric fishing in 31 pet food, fish as 214 Peterhead 95, 99–100 Peterson, S. 183, 192 Petrapavlovsk-Kamchatsky (USSR) 100 Philippines: aquaculture in 191, 193; catch, distribution of 113, 114; curing of fish 220–1; economic importance of fisheries 61; employment in fishing 62; fishing as secondary occupation 64; fishing limits around 156; fishing rights 160; food supply, fish in 238; productivity of labour 74 Phoenicians 33 photosynthesis 7 phytoplankton 7 pike 31 pilchard 119; canning of 221; fishing in industrial age 48 Pinkerton, E. 172 Pittenweem 99 plaice 13 plankton see phytoplankton, zooplankton Plymouth 99 Poland 91; processing fish 221–2 pollack 136; curing of 219; freezing 223–4 pollution 23–8 Polovina, J.J. 20 Polynesia 145 Port Ellen 99 Portugal: fishing in industrial age 43; food supply, fish in 238, 240–1; productivity of labour 74 Postan, M.M. 39 Power, E. 39 prawns 210; freezing 226; in international trade 232 preservation of fish 42; salt in 34,

262

INDEX

36, 38, 39; see also canning; drying; freezing; smoking prices 211 processing of fish: development of 212–15; global trends in 215–17; in international trade 230; secondary 210–11; see also preservation production trends 107–22; anchovy 118–19; in aquaculture, world 187–90; cod 120–1; by continent 111–12; herring 115–18; inland waters 113–15; by nation 112–13; by ocean 107–11 productivity: of aquaculture 183–4; areal variations in 10–12; of labour 74; primary 7–9; in rivers 20–1 Pruginin, Y. 183 purse-net xvi; anchovy yield, trends in 119; and herring yield,trends in 117 purse seine: development of fishing methods 52–3; in industrial age 46, 48 quotas: cod (Canada) 162; in management of fisheries 167–9, 173, 174–5 Radcliffe, W. 32, 145 Rao, K.K.P.N. 237 Rasmussen, B. 14 recreational fishing 123–43; distribution of 125–7; economic impact of 128–31; in impounded water (USA) 137–8; in Netherlands 131–4; participation in 126–7; in United States 123, 135–42 red mullet 33 red tides 26 regional development programmes 81 returns to capital 70 Rhine, River and estuary 131 Rice, R.C. 67, 163 rivers: catch, distribution of 114; and environmental pollution 25;

fishing in historic times 32; resources of 20–1 roach 133 Romania 222 Romans 33 Rostock (Poland) 96 Royce, W.F. 149 Ruddle, K. 145, 192 Sabri, J. 67 sailfish 136 saithe: freezing 224; in prehistoric fishing 31; stocks of 13 Sakhalin 10 sales and distribution: and prices 211; Third World 209–11; and trade within countries 235–7 salinity and fish stocks, variations in 12 salmon: in aquaculture 186, 197–8, 200–1; aquaculture in Scotland 201; canning of 212, 221; curing of 220; economic impact of recreational fishing 128, 130; fisheries licensing 164; fisheries management of 150–2; fishing in industrial age 44, 46, 47; freezing 223; in international trade 230; local government in fisheries management 171–2; migration of 17–19; production trends in aquaculture 188; ranching in Japan 194; recreational fishing of 123; smoking of 212–13; spawning of 20–1; USA, recreational fishing 135 salting of fish: in cod fisheries 38, 39; and fishing in historic times 34; in herring fisheries 36; in international trade 231; in processing of fish 212 Samoa 238 sardines: canning of 212; fishing in historic times 33; fishing in industrial age 44, 48 Sarig, S. 202 Sarkar, S.R. 3 Sauer, C.O. 30–1, 35, 38 sauger 26 263

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

Saul, A. 35 Saville, A. 35 scallops 232 Scalloway 99 Scandinavia: cod fisheries 38; distribution of recreational fishing 126; fishing limits around 155–6 Scarborough 99 Schmidt, J. 19 Schmied, R.L. 136 Scotland xx; aquaculture in 198, 201; cod fisheries 40; demersal landings 94; early fisheries management 145; economic impact of recreational fishing 130; fishing in historic times 32; government, role of 81; herring fisheries 37; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 86–7; main ports, emergence of 93, 95 Scott, I. 237, 242–3 Scott Gordon model for theoretical optimum for fisheries 59 Scrabster 99 sea angling, USA 135–6 Sea Fish Industry Authority 240 seaweeds: in aquaculture 182; aquaculture in Japan 194; production trends in aquaculture 189–90 seine nets: and cod fisheries 39; development of fishing methods 51–2 sewage, and environmental pollution 25 Seychelles 238, 241 Shaw, S. 123, 201 shellfish: in international trade 232; marketing of 209; see also crustaceans and also crab; krill; lobster; shrimp Shepherd, J. 181, 183, 186, 193, 203 Shetland Islands: cod fisheries 40; employment in fishing 62; herring fisheries 37; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 86–7; truck systems, fishermen in 208 shrimp: freezing 226; in international

trade 230, 232; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91; production trends in aquaculture 188, 196; spatial organisation offishing 87 siluroid (catfish) 20 Singapore 238 Sisoev, N.P. 242 Skagen (Denmark) 100 Smith, H.D. 36 Smith, P. 239, 240 Smögen (Sweden) 100 smoked fish 212–13; in international trade 231 smolt xx snapper 136 snook 135, 136 Solecki, J.J. 90 Solomon Islands 62, 238, 241 South America: catch, distribution of 111–12, 114; prehistoric fishing in 31; production trends in aquaculture 189 South Atlantic Ocean 89; catch, distribution of 108–10 South Korea 48–9; catch, distribution of 113; curing of fish 221; economic importance of fisheries 61; food supply, fish in 238; freezing of fish 222; in international trade 233–4; marketing of fish in 208; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91 South Pacific Forum Fisheries (FFA) 161 South Pacific Ocean 89; catch, distribution of 108–10; fisheries management in 149; joint fishing arrangements 161 Soviet Union xviii; canning of fish 221; capital-intensive production methods 68–9; catch, distribution of 112, 114; curing of fish 220–1; economic importance of fisheries 60; fishing in industrial age 47; fishing limits around 156; freezing of fish 213, 222; government, role of 80; main ports, emergence of 100;

264

INDEX

management of fisheries 104; open-sea fishing, expansion of 88–90; overland distribution, developments in 102; production trends in aquaculture 189 Spain: fishing in historic times 33; food supply, fish in 238, 240; freezing of fish 222; internal consumption differences 242–3; in international trade 233–4; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91; overland distribution, developments in 102; value of catch in 76, 78; vessels and tonnage 71 spatial organisation 84–116; area exploited, expansion of 87–92; later changes in 102–5; main ports, emergence of 92–101; overland distribution, developments in 101–2 spawning: in aquaculture 185; and fisheries management 150; in rivers 20–1 spear fishing 50 Spitzbergen 88 sports fishermen, expenditure of 130 sprats 212 squid: conservation, principles 23; fishing in industrial age 47; freezing 226; in international trade 232 squid-liners xvii Sri Lanka 208 St Helena 238, 241 St Kitts Nevis 238 St Pierre & Miquelon 238, 241 Stabler, M.J. 129 Steele, J. 15 Steinmetz, B. 126–7, 132 Stornoway 95 Stroud, R.H. 135–7 Sudan 19 Sulikowski, T. 89–90 Sullivan, K.M. 121 supply curve, backward bending 58, 60 sustainable growth in fishing 59–60

Sweden: fish trade within 235; fishing in industrial age 46; in herring fisheries 36–7; herring yield, trends in 117; hinterlands, and inshore fishing 87; ownership of inland water 125; participation in recreational fishing 126; value of catch in 76 Swinoujscie (Poland) 96 Switzerland 240 Symes, D. 164 Tahiti 188 Taiwan 91, 193, 196 Tanganyika, Lake 19 Taniguchi, K. 194 Tanzania 30, 114, 220–1 Tarbert 99 tarpon 136 Taylor, R.A. 236, 239–40 temperature: and fish stocks, variations in 12–13; primary productivity and 7 tench 133 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 136–7 Tett, P. 7, 12 Thailand 48–9; aquaculture in 191, 193; catch, distribution of 113; curing of fish 221; fishing as secondary occupation 64; freezing of fish 224, 226; in international trade 233–4; main ports, emergence of 101; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91; productivity of labour 74 Third World: curing of fish 220–1; economic efficiency in fishing 77–9, 172; employment infishing 61, 66–7; fisheries licensing 165– 6; fishing in 47–8; fishing limits 163; food supply, fish in 237–40; inshore fishing in 84–6, 161–3; internal consumption differences 242–3; landings in 207–8; local government in fisheries management 170–1; main ports, emergence of 96, 101; 265

WORLD FISHERIES RESOURCES

management of fisheries 176–7; processing of fish in 212; productivity of labour 74; recreational fishing in 123; sales and distribution 209–11 32-mile limit (Iceland) 146 tilapia: in aquaculture 184. 186; aquaculture in Asia 192–3 Tlingit Indians (Alaska) 31 Tonga 207 Tonkin, Gulf of 45 Tonlé Sap (Cambodia) 20 Torell, M. 48, 67, 91, 101 Torres Strait Agreement 160 Torrey Canyon disaster 28 total allowable catch (TAC) 21–2; and cod yield, trends in 120–1; and economic efficiency 172–3; and fisheries management 152–4; recommended and adopted for North Sea haddock, 154; and herring yield, trends in 117–18 trade: in cod 39–40; within countries 235–7; in herring 36; see also international fish trade trap-net skiffs xiv trawlers/trawling xix, xv; and capitalintensive production methods 69– 70; development of fishing methods 52–3; in industrial age 42–3, 47; main ports, emergence of 93; open-sea fishing, expansion of 88 trolling lines 51 trout: aquaculture in Europe 197; aquaculture in Japan 193; and environmental pollution 26; spawning of 21 truck systems, fishermen in 208 Trudeau, H. 173 tuna: canning of 221; conservation, principles 23; development of fishing methods 51; fishing in historic times 33; fishing in industrial age 44, 47; freezing 213, 222–3; growth rates of 15, 17; in international trade 230; joint fishing arrangements 161;

and management of fisheries 104; open-sea fishing, expansion of 91; quota system for 175; stocks of 13 Tuomi, A.L.W. 125, 130 turbot: in aquaculture 204; freezing 225 Turkey 171 Turner, R.K. 60 200-mile limits 102–4, 159 Uganda 114 Ullapool 99–100 Unger, P.W. 36, 146 United Kingdom see Great Britain United Nations 155 United States: angling 197; canning of fish 221; catch, distribution of 112, 114; distribution of recreational fishing 126, 139; economic impact of recreational fishing 128–31; employment in fishing 62; fisheries quotas, management of 168–9; fishing in industrial age 46, 49; fishing limits around 155; fishing rights 160–1; hinterlands, and inshorefishing 87; internal consumption differences 242–3; in international trade 233–4; joint fishing arrangements 161; local government in fisheries management 170–1; management of fisheries 103–4; migration for recreational fishing 140–1; participation in recreational fishing 126–7; production trends in aquaculture 188; recreational fishing in 123, 135–42; salmon, fisheries management of 150–2; trends in recreational fishing 124; value of catch in 76–7 USSR see Soviet Union Utterstrom, G. 36 Vanuatu 238 de Verde, Bay xiv Vietnam 239

266

INDEX

Vigo (Spain) 95, 98 Vikings 34 Vladivostok (USSR) 95, 100 Von Brandt, A. 242 water: primary productivity in 7; see also inland water weirs 50 Wendt, C. 125–6 West Loch 99 whales 35 Whitby 99 Wick 95, 99 Wilk, S.J. 136

World Bank 48 Yahaya, J. 163, 177 Yarmouth 95 Yellow Sea 45 yellowfin 222 yellowtail 195, 196 Young, T. 237, 240 Zaire 114 Zenkevich, L. 10 Zhong, G. 192 zoo-plankton: distribution of 10–11; in food chain 9; in inland water 19

267