Rational Fishing: A Cause That Got Away?
In the course of detailing the terrible costs of overfishing in the world’s oceans, “To the Last Fish”--marking another entry in one of “Frontline’s” best seasons ever (at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15)--dramatizes how removed humans are from the food chain.
What once was one of the simplest, most immediate means of food gathering has undergone a profound methodological transformation. As reporter Al Austin discovers, overfishing is caused by high-tech fishing approaches, which take on the oceans as something to be mined, not conserved for long-term sustainability.
The words doomsday and crisis get tossed around on this program, but even with dismaying footage of unlucky sea mammals fatally trapped in the nets of floating fish factories, the tragedy of overfishing doesn’t hit home until the end. Austin recalls how “someone said overfished oceans are like the destruction of the rain forest. The difference is that you can see what’s in a rain forest. It’s harder to tell with an ocean.”
And like rain forest depletion, fish mining pits the needs of economic livelihood and resource conservation against each other, raising serious questions about the ability of international law to police outlaw countries. Mechanically casting miles-long driftnets off the stern of ships, fishing operations (in Taiwan and France especially, according to Austin and the watchdogging Greenpeace) have seriously depleted the overall fish supply. Taiwanese vessels illegally go mining as far away as the Bering Sea.
Fisherman everywhere, it seems, will resist any curbs on driftnetting: Austin shows Frenchmen of the sea vowing violence against any changes in European law. Most disturbing of all, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is so underfunded that its research ships--key tools for studying the effects of overfishing--have been docked for nearly two years. “To the Last Fish” darkly implies that by the time the ships get out of harbor, overfishing may end--because there may be no fish left.
