Innovating for Healthy Oceans and Ecosystems

We partner with fishermen, create marine shelters and foster smart eating to keep seafood safe and plentiful

Recent news has painted a grim picture of America's fisheries, but the record is mixed. About half of stocks are overfished.

In November 2006, newspapers across the country featured a cautionary tale. According to a report in the journal Science, several of the world’s leading marine biologists concluded that, if bad fishing practices continued, in a worse-case scenario all fish and seafood species worldwide would crash by 2048. 

In reality, the record is mixed. There are many well-managed fisheries that produce seafood sustainably and provide good economic returns to fishermen. Whether gloomy conjectures about the future of fish come true depends on how we humans respond to the decline of fisheries, both biologically and economically, and whether we can apply lessons from successful fisheries to fix broken ones. 

Indeed, the threats to the ocean are many. The evidence has been building for decades that overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and coastal development are taking their toll. Domestically, more than half of all fisheries are overfished with most under stringent rebuilding plans to dramatically cut catches.

Worldwide, several stocks of tuna, swordfish, and sharks have been depleted, particularly in the Atlantic. Some fishing practices and gear, such as large-scale trawling, enormous longlines, and dynamite fishing, kill millions of fish unintentionally each year, as well as seabirds, dolphins, turtles and whales. Global warming, too, threatens these already compromised resources.

The challenge: A new way to think about oceans

We used to think the oceans were so big we could never deplete them. We now know we were wrong. The challenge for the 21st century is to change our thinking and behavior to maintain the oceans’ abundance. We can manage our enormous harvesting power, restore depleted fish populations and enjoy thriving ocean life.

Environmental Defense is leading the way toward creative, practical solutions to the most critical problems facing our oceans. Our team of scientists and economists work with key stakeholders in U.S. and Caribbean waters to give fishermen a financial stake in fisheries, safeguard biologically rich areas and build new markets for sustainable seafood.

Solution #1:  Fish more efficiently to restore fisheries

Too many of the world’s major fish populations are managed in a way that fosters overfishing. The result has been declining catches, economic hardship for fishermen and serious ecological damage in many fishing communities. One of Environmental Defense's main strategies is to transform the economics of fisheries to reward conservation over exploitation.

The key is to shift from a system that allows unbridled access to ocean resources to one based on sharing the catch rationally. A century ago, our country altered the way we managed our land. With the privilege of using public land for grazing, logging or mining came responsibilities to pay for access and to protect the resources. We need a similar transformation at sea.

Environmental Defense has been a leader in implementing market-based frameworks to allocate fisheries resources, called catch share programs or Limited Access Privilege Programs (LAPPs). These methods are proven to help replenish depleted fish stocks, enable fishermen to prosper, increase safety and reduce ecological damage.  (See "LAPPs: A promising way to revive fisheries and fishing communities.")

Under a catch share program, fishermen, communities or associations get a percentage share of the total catch allowed or designated access to certain fishing grounds. Their share value increases if the fishery is well managed and the stock expands; the value plummets if the fish population collapses. Just as landowners want to do right by their land, owners of shares in a fishery have a vested interest in preserving fish populations and protecting habitat.

What Environmental Defense is doing

• A landmark study we commissioned shows that well-designed and properly implemented LAPPs succeed (see our report at Sustaining America's Fisheries and Fish Communities).
• The Gulf red snapper has a brighter future thanks to a catch share program we helped develop.
• We’re working to revive ailing shrimp and reef fisheries in the Gulf.
• We helped revamp the key fisheries law to support wiser management.

Solution #2: Protect critical habitat with underwater “wilderness areas”

Although a critical piece, even successful catch share programs on their own are not enough to make our oceans vibrant and keep safe, sustainable seafood on our plates. Safeguarding the ocean's cradles of life is also essential. 

All around the United States, biologically-rich habitats — estuaries, wetlands, coral reefs, mangroves, shellfish beds, bays and sounds — provide feeding and spawning grounds for an abundance of  sea life. These sensitive areas are being damaged or destroyed at alarming rates by coastal development and pollution from fish farming and agriculture. Coral reefs in particular are under siege from pollution, disease and warmer water. 

Booming coastal counties are now home to more than half the U.S. population. As people flock to coastal areas, development pressures have spurred more housing, hotels, roads and fish farms to be built, increasingly crowding out critical marine habitat.

Underwater "wilderness areas," called marine protected areas (MPAs), are an important tool to rebuild fish populations and revitalize ocean ecosystems. These sanctuaries are off-limits to offshore oil drilling and mining, and fishing may be restricted or banned. MPAs can and should be sited in places that do the least economic harm to fishermen and other ocean users while providing the greatest benefits to both users and society at large. Well-designed MPAs are based onthe detailed knowledge that ocean resource users often have at their disposal.

Protected areas throughout the world have shown great promise. Fish are more abundant and larger in MPAs compared to those in nearby fishing grounds, and there is a greater diversity of species. Within protected areas, sensitive coral reefs may better withstand the rigors of warming oceans.

What Environmental Defense is doing

• In Hawaii's Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, we helped create the world's largest marine reserve.
• In California, we helped protect a vast tract of prime marine habitat through an innovative no-trawl zone.
• For more on our work to protect undersea habitat, see our 2006 Annual Report

Solution #3: Create demand for and supply of sustainable seafood

Unfortunately, as the health benefits of eating fish are becoming increasingly clear, consumers may find choosing sustainably produced seafood confusing because of seemingly contradictory information or lack of information. Recent reports have shown that a growing number of popular kinds of seafood are tainted with toxins such as mercury, dioxins or PCBs. Analyses suggest, however, that overall the benefits of eating seafood outweigh the risks.

As the world's appetite for fish grows, fish farming, or aquaculture, has exploded. In 1980, only 9 percent of seafood was farmed, today 43 percent is. Done right, fish farming can be a logical and sustainable way to help meet burgeoning demand for seafood. 

But without environmental safeguards, aquaculture operations can harm the environment:

• Fish farms can pollute surrounding waters with fish waste and antibiotics.
• Farmed fish can escape from net cages and spread parasites and disease to wild fish. 
• Conventional operations to raise carnivorous fish, such as salmon, consume more wild fish than the amount of farmed fish they produce. This use of wild fish can deprive other wild fish of a critical food supply, interrupting the ocean food chain.

What Environmental Defense is doing

• We've partnered with leading seafood buyers to develop purchasing standards for farm-raised seafood that limit contaminants, reduce water pollution and protect ocean habitat. 
• We maintain a popular list of best and worst seafood choices, highlighting fish that are heart-healthy (high in omega-3s) and those that are high or low in contaminants.

Posted: 19-Jul-2007; Updated: 19-Jul-2007