Fishing in Antarctica

December 12, 2008

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During the past decade I’ve spent a fair amount of time walking on, kayaking past, meeting new people on and sleeping along the world’s coastlines. A constant theme among the people met during the course of those travels has been the growing problem of over fishing around the globe. Virtually everywhere we’ve gone – from Chile to Gabon, Croatia to Tasmania – the question of how to rein-in the pressure man is putting on the world’s fisheries is raised, thanks to an increased appetite for fish and the unfortunate waste involved in most industrial fishing.

Pack Ice, east of Crystal Sound

Statistics are scary: Fifty-two of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited. Seven of the ten top fisheries on the planet – accounting for thirty percent of all caught fish – are fully exploited. As many as ninety percent of the ocean’s large fish have been fished out. Unless the current situation improves, stocks of all species currently fished for food are predicted to collapse by 2048.

What does this have to do with Antarctica? This morning I asked my friend, U.K. field biologist Richard White, what kind of fishing goes on in the Southern Ocean? He’s worked previously as an observer on fishing boats, including stints monitoring the sea around South Georgia Island. Truth is there isn’t much pressure on the Southern Ocean simply because there aren’t that many fish. The Patagonian Toothfish (known more politely around the globe as Chilean Sea Bass) is quite popular and at risk of being over fished, but doesn’t range quite this far south. The only evidence he’d seen of poaching down here was for krill, apparently made into a paste for Asian markets. Otherwise you don’t see sight of fishing boats down here, legal or illegal. (The whaling still taking place each summer season by the Japanese, which hunt four hundred minke whales each year for “science,” is on the opposite side of the continent from where we are.)

My questions for Richard followed a sighting we had earlier this morning. Studying the pack ice just off the continent, something jumped out at us. In my experience along the Peninsula, it’s rare to find any sign of man afloat on the sea here. But this morning, under a bright, glaring sun, we spied in the near-distance something orange sticking out of the frozen pack. Mystified at first, we looked again through binoculars.

A fishing buoy froze into the ice. It was the second Richard had seen this year; on top of the two he remembers seeing last summer season, suggesting that currents are starting to carry some of the ocean’s floating detritus closer and closer to Antarctica pristine coastline.