Too Few Fish in the Sea

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

When Eric Nurse, 52, first went to sea with the fishing fleet from the port of Champneys East in Newfoundland, the cod seemed plentiful enough to last forever. Like his father and grandfather before him, Nurse returned year after year to the frigid, treacherous North Atlantic to harvest the rich waters of the Grand Banks, one of the world's most productive fishing areas.

But not anymore. After providing nearly five centuries of uninterrupted bounty, the Grand Banks have suddenly run low on fish: northern cod populations have plummeted 95% in just a few years. Faced with the destruction of an irreplaceable resource, the Canadian government has done the unthinkable: prohibited all cod fishing indefinitely, and probably until the end of the century. Says Nurse, one of 27,000 fishermen thrown out of work by the ban: "Fishing is over for my lifetime. The question is, Will it ever come back?"

That question is being asked all over the globe -- almost everywhere that fishermen ply the seas. Many of the most popular fish on the world's seafood menu are becoming harder and harder to catch as their populations collapse under the relentless assault of modern fishing fleets. Haddock, cod and flounder are so scarce off Cape Cod that a large part of America's oldest fishing area is now off limits. Populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna of breeding age have dropped 90% since 1975, and Pacific stocks are starting to fall as well. Orange roughy from the waters off New Zealand, redfish from the Caribbean, salmon off the American Northwest, Atlantic swordfish, Pacific perch -- all are vanishing.

Worldwide, says the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 13 of 17 major ocean fisheries are in trouble. The annual marine-fish catch, having peaked at 86 million metric tons in 1989, dipped to 82.5 million tons by 1992. That's why representatives of 100 nations are now assembled at U.N. headquarters in New York City in the second of a series of meetings. The delegates are trying for the first time to put international controls on fishing for commercially valuable species.

So far, the fish deficit has had little impact on consumers. The prices of some scarce varieties, such as bluefin tuna, have jumped, but in other cases long-distance fleets have traveled to alternative fishing areas, often in the southern hemisphere. In addition, fish suppliers are selling more of species not popular in the past, including dogfish and whiting. Most important, seafood manufacturers are making up for the ocean-fish shortage through aquiculture, the use of fish farms. Large populations of everything from sole to scallops are raised in big tanks or cages near the shore.

None of this is any consolation to the many traditional fishing communities that are suffering. The anguish runs deep in New England, for example, where fishermen are upset about new restrictions on the size of their catch. Earlier this month a procession of fishing boats staged a demonstration in Boston Harbor, and a group of 20 outraged workers protested in Gloucester, Massachusetts, turning over cars and dumping fish off a truck. Massachusetts Governor William Weld promised $10 million in aid to fishing towns and called for federal help. That came last week, when the Clinton Administration announced a $30 million aid package for New England and said it planned to ask Congress for $50 million more. Declared Commerce Secretary Ron Brown: "We had to respond quickly to what is clearly a crisis. There's been gross overfishing in the New England fisheries and an extraordinary depletion of that natural resource." Some of the assistance, he said, will go toward training fishermen for new jobs.

That may be easier than ensuring an adequate supply of fish, which provides one-sixth of humanity's animal protein. As the population surges, so will demand. Trying to buy time by switching to alternative species or different parts of the world, says Michael Sutton of the World Wildlife Fund, "is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." And aquiculture is not a guaranteed solution: fish raised in crowded conditions on farms are vulnerable to disease and genetic defects from inbreeding.

The fishing industry began sailing into its predicament during the 1970s, when increasingly sophisticated technology enabled fleets of all sizes and nationalities to venture farther from port than ever before. Sonar and radar helped locate the fish wherever they were hiding. Satellite-navigation systems let ships return over and over to prime spots. Newly built "factory ships" deployed nets so huge that they could swallow 12 jumbo jets in a single gulp. Led by the U.S., many countries made waters up to 200 miles from their shores off limits to foreign boats. But as soon as intruding vessels drew farther out to sea, domestic fleets expanded to take advantage of reduced competition.

By the late 1980s, many kinds of fish were verging on "commercial extinction" -- they were still around, but not in great enough numbers to supply fishing boats. In some cases, countries have agreed on fishing bans until stocks recover. Last February, for example, six nations reached a tentative pact to restrict pollack fishing in an area known as the "doughnut hole," in the international waters of the Bering Sea.

But these arrangements don't always work: Russia has been trying to orchestrate a second pollack treaty in the Sea of Okhotsk, off Siberia, but Poland, South Korea and China have refused to go along. And even when nations enact bans or quotas for certain species, they can be difficult to enforce. Sometimes ships flying flags of convenience just ignore agreements.

Trying to forge a global treaty will be especially daunting. Countries with desirable fish off their coasts, including Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and Iceland, point fingers at so-called distant nations, such as Japan, Poland, Taiwan and the European Union countries, for taking too many fish just outside the 200-mile limit. The distant nations, in turn, blame coastal states for poor management inside the boundaries.

In fact, biologists agree that the most seriously endangered populations are those living near coastlines. While an all-encompassing treaty would be ideal, the most urgent need is for nations to do a better job of tending to their own fishing grounds. Putting restrictions on local fishermen is always politically tough -- but not as tough as trying to refill empty seas.

With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York, Gavin Scott/Ottawa and Dick Thompson/Washington, with other bureaus