Original story

SatWeb, 14.7.2018

A whale of a catch or an end to fishing?

Experiments with sensory baits prompt angry response from Protect Our Oceans

According to the Paris-based POO, the world’s seas cannot sustain the sort of extensive fishing that is represented with the new baits now being tested. In addition, the organization argues that a large part of the gargantuan fishing hauls being recorded will go to waste or be used wastefully, because the technology involved is not yet able to distinguish between sought-after fish and other species, or even between young fish and fish of the correct size for foodstuffs uses.

In the Andaman Sea, off the coasts of Thailand and Burma, trials are currently underway on new fishing methods, based on audio-, vibration-, and smell effects, and on certain specific sounds, or “words”, that researchers have discovered from studies into the way fish communicate.

The concept of marine creatures having a “language” is familiar enough from whales or dolphins, but more recently it has been observed that many other species have several parallel means of communication. For example, many small fish that move in shoals indicate external dangers by warning sounds that are well above the human audible range. In some species the warning signal may be a smell given off by one or more fish in the group, which spreads almost instantaneously to the surrounding members. Certain fish are capable of even more complex communication, for example in shepherding and directing the movements of the shoal.

A consortium of four large fishing concerns has pooled its resources under the declamatory banner of More Food For Children (MFFC), and is currently testing new fishing methods in the Andaman Sea. Reports have come in of huge underwater loudspeakers being used to transmit warning signals, at which all the fish of a specific type in a large area take off in the direction away from the sound source. Similar loudspeaker systems are set up as repeaters on the sides of the area being fished, and the stampeding fish are thus shepherded straight towards huge nets strung at the end of this “corridor”. Catches are huge, but thus far the system has shown little in the way of real accuracy, as the nets have bulged with not only the fish being sought, but also many other types that have been panicked into trying to escape. Provisional figures suggest that these “spin-off” fish account for around 40% of the total catch, and naturally many of them are of little commercial or nutritional value.

Similar experiments have been carried out with vibrations in the water that resemble those of the movements of large predatory fish, again prompting panic among the smaller species. Catches in this case have been quite astronomical, up to hundreds of thousands of tons of fish in a single day.

Fears of entire species being wiped out

International fishing regulations do not as yet set any limits on this kind of fishing. Protect Our Oceans has warned, however, that these methods are so devastatingly effective that they will almost inevitably lead to the wiping out of entire species of fish from large areas - and in the case of localized fish, perhaps their permanent removal from the planet. The organization is thus proposing to the IFC and the United Nations that an immediate ban be placed on extensive sensory-bait fishing of this type.

MFFC has naturally moved to defend its position. The enterprise is backed not only by the four large fishery concerns referred to, but also by numerous international foodstuffs giants, who hold around 40% of the stock in the firm. These companies have already launched a broad-based multimedia campaign against POO, arguing that the environmentalists have no evidence to suggest fish species are threatened, or even that numbers of fish will decline materially as a result of the new methods. According to MFFC, there are still many species of fish in the oceans that have hardly been exploited at all, and MFFC is concentrating its attention specifically on these.

Political observers, meanwhile, are sceptical that attempts by groups like POO to restrict or ban such fishing practices will succeed, as the aching shortage of protein-rich foodstuffs is already posing a threat to the healthy growth of children in both the developing and the developed world.

Toteuma-arvio 2026

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Johtopäätös: ydin eläinten aistien teknisestä hyväksikäytöstä ja ekologisesta riskistä toteutui.