June 19, 2013 — All of these animals dine on vast schools of tightly packed prey fish, commonly referred to as forage fish. Scientists and fishermen are becoming increasingly aware of their singular importance as the fuel that drives productive coastal ecosystems. At the same time, global demand is growing to catch forage fish for secondary purposes such as chicken feed, fertilizer, and bait for industrial longline fishing overseas.
But catching too many of these forage fish can severely disrupt the ocean life that they sustain. A lack of forage fish can have serious repercussions – especially for the fishing industry. Without little fish, there can be no big fish.
That’s why many fishing and conservation organizations – including The Pew Charitable Trusts – are rightly advocating for new measures to safeguard forage fish. The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is responsible for managing marine fish on the West Coast, will have the opportunity to adopt some of these safeguards as it meets in Garden Grove, Calif., this week.
At the meeting, these West coast fishery leaders hould decide to prohibit new commercial fishing on saury – a key forage fish – until it can be shown that it won’t harm bigger fish, whales, and seabirds that depend on saury as a food source. Doing so will enable the council to ask important questions before US forage fishing begins rather than waiting until industrial-scale fishing boats are catching these important fish.
Internationally, these forage fish – including sardines, anchovies, and saury – already account for more than a third of the total catch of wild marine fish, with 90 percent of it processed into fish meal or oil.
To its credit, the council unanimously adopted a fishery ecosystem plan that begins to consider how everything is connected in the ocean. The plan’s top priority is to make sure that no new fishing begins on forage species without first evaluating the effect on the larger ecosystem and on other predator fish such as salmon, tuna, and lingcod.
Read the full opinion piece at the Christian Science Monitor
Saving Seafood has conducted extensive analysis on the debate surrounding forage fish. Links to our previous coverage is provided below:
On "Forage Fish", Pew's Peter Baker Misses the Mark