Bycatch: Fish That Are Too Small Or The Wrong Species That Are Thrown Back Into The Sea By Fisherman

Poor man's protein, source of 'good' oils, an endless variety - we're talking about fish, of course. While research is finding more and more healthy reasons for eating fish, the seas are losing more and more fish. In fact, in time to come, it will not be surprising if only the rich will be able to afford the "protein of the masses".

There are two reasons why this is happening. One is the increasing pollution which is making more and more seafood unsafe for consumption, if not killing it outright. The second, and more urgent, reason is overfishing occurring on a scale never seen before, especially in the past decade.

Generally, the amount of fish netted in the world's seas now is five times what was caught in the 50's. For example, the 1947 figure was 20 million tones, while 1994 recorded 106 million tones, according to international fisheries researches. The drastic increase in catch reflects the increasingly important role industrial fishing is playing in global fisheries. Fishing fleets originating from developed countries are now characterised by giant trawlers, typically more than 100 metres long, that come with gargantuan nets. Sweeping up nearly everything in their path, these giant sieves are living barren fishing grounds in their wake.

The really sad thing is, in the quest for commercially valuable species, huge amounts of bycatch - fish that are too small, too big, of the wrong species are thrown back into the sea. Usually dead or with little chance of surviving. While bycatch is sometimes treated as trash fish which are used for animal feed or fertilizers, the nett effect of picking up a lot of bycatch is that there is a tremendous waste of biomass and biodiversity. It is akin to inadvertently chopping down hundreds of trees just to get to that one valuable tree. Shrimping, for example, typically produces four kilogrammes of bycatch for every kilogramme of shrimp.

Then there are trawlers that operate too close to the shore, destroying corals and the surrounding sea bed that are important places for fish to breed. Closer to shore, small-scale fishermen, too, are sometimes responsible for the demise of a thriving fish population when they indulge in practices like poisoning, bombing and electrocuting to get their catch. And at other times, the destruction of fishing grounds has the approval and support of the state. Take for example, the clearing of mangroves for land reclamation and development - practically every coastal state on the west coats of Malaysia had done this despite the well-documented relationship between thriving mangroves and productive fishing ground.

It remains a fact that very few countries can boast a truly sustainable and socio-economically optimal fishery. Sustainable harvesting, just like sustainable development is difficult to achieve. Part of difficulty lies in the inability to estimate the number of fish in the seas. The only thing that can be measured reliably is fish that have been caught. Added to the equation are changing world climatic patterns, which complicate things by influencing temperatures and sea currents.