Fishing: War at Sea

In the midst of all its other problems —from the tax cut to civil rights—the Senate of the U.S. last week found time to take up two bills that are essentially wartime measures. Wartime, that is, for the U.S. fishing industry. Across the world’s oceans in recent months, dozens of fishing nations have battled in a series of “fish wars”—usually nonviolent but sometimes under gunpoint—that have important economic and political consequences for the nations involved (see color pages). As one of the participants, the $381 million U.S. fishing industry has turned to the Government for the help that most of the world’s other fishing fleets already receive.

Spurred by the presence of Russian trawlers that have invaded traditional U.S. fishing areas off the Northeast coast, the Senate passed a bill empowering the Administration to penalize foreign fishing vessels that venture into U.S. territorial waters, and extending U.S. jurisdiction to include the waters of the continental shelf. The next day the Senate approved a bill granting a 55% Government construction subsidy for the U.S. fleet, which is woefully antiquated in comparison with the fleets of other major fishing nations. The U.S. industry, warned Senator Warren G. Magnuson, “is caught in a cold and losing wet war with Soviet Russia, Japan and other foreign nations.”

Antitank Guns. Moving onto Georges Bank off Cape Cod and the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, proliferating Russian trawlers snag American nets, ram smaller boats in the fog and often force fishermen right off the banks; in Alaska, fishermen recently became so furious about Russian trawlers pulling their crab pots that they began ordering antitank guns to mount on their decks, were dissuaded only by a flying visit from Alaska Governor William A.

Egan. Texas shrimpers have to deal with Mexican gunboats that wait to pounce on them over western Gulf of Mexico shrimp beds; and San Diego tuna men are still bitter about last spring’s capture of two of their boats by Ecuador, which assessed $26,000 in fines.

U.S. fishermen are not the only ones whose tempers have been rubbed as raw as a seaman’s salt-sanded hands.

The Brazilians and the French have vied with gunboats over Brittany lobster boats working in traditional Brazilian fishing waters. Icelandic gunboats chased British trawlers from Iceland’s cod grounds, and the Danes are shooing them away from the Faeroe Islands. Norway is chasing Swedish fishermen from grounds that the Swedes have fished for hundreds of years. Japanese boats are barred from South Korea, badgered by the Russians in the North Pacific. Irish corvettes have scattered Dutchmen and Belgians from Ireland’s herring grounds, and Canada last year ordered a Russian fleet out of the Bay of Fundy. Even the conference table can become chilly; last week in Tokyo, Japanese, U.S. and Canadian delegates labored through the fifth week of a conference stalemated by a U.S.Canadian refusal to let Japanese fishermen fish for trout, halibut and salmon east of the 175th longitude.

Cannon Law. Behind most of the fish wars is a confusing juridical problem that three international conferences since 1930 have failed to solve. Since 1703, when they based original measurements on 18th century naval cannon ranges, major nations generally have established their territorial limits at three miles offshore. But fishing limits are something else, and more and more nations are pushing their boundaries beyond three miles—Mexico nine miles, Canada to twelve, and such nations as Chile, Peru and Ecuador to an imperious 200 miles offshore. Many nations have settled on a twelve-mile limit, but the U.S. up to now has refused to recognize any jurisdiction beyond the traditional three-mile limit.

International feuding has flared because the oceans, from which primeval life came, have become more and more an important source of food for a world faced with the prospect of overpopulation. Since the beginning of the century, the fishing yield of the world has increased tenfold, from 4,400,000 tons to 45 million tons; by 1970, the catch is expected to equal 61 million tons. More than 200 countries send fishing boats to sea to help feed their populations, and 48 of these countries account for the great bulk of the world’s fish catch, amounting to more than $3 billion worth a year. There are 4,967,000 commercial fishermen at work, and in the U.S. alone well over half a million people are employed in fishing and related fields—cleaning, canning, packing, distributing. But fishing ranks far, far down on the list of U.S. industries; in 30 years, meat-eating Americans have kept their consumption of fish unchanged at short of eleven pounds per person.

Just as bread or meat is the staff of life for many nations, for others fish is the very stuff that life is made of. Fishing plays a vital role in the economies of dozens of nations, such as Japan, Ecuador, Peru, Canada and Norway. For many food-short nations, the “panic for protein” to feed their people leads only to the sea, which now contributes a meager 12% of the supply of animal protein consumed by the human race. Throughout the world, the fishing industry not only supports thousands of fishermen—who lead probably the roughest and most ill-paid lives of any workers—but countless satellite industries. From Madagascar to Greenland, the catch of the sea, ranging from the lordly tuna through the pedestrian cod and herring to the rarer but often treasured whale and shark, is industriously smoked, fried, salted, baked, dried, roasted, stewed, pickled, casseroled or even eaten half-rotten (as in Iceland) or quite raw (as in Japan).

Reshuffled Ranks. Despite this, only about 15% of the world’s edible fish stock is being fully exploited. The trouble is that the exploitation has taken place in the known and favored areas, mostly within 100 miles of land, where a concentration of effort has often led to a depletion of valuable fish. The Russians off Cape Cod, for example, are out for herring rather than the hake, haddock and cod that most American fishermen are after—but the other species tend to disappear after the herring, their natural food, becomes scarce. Industrial pollution in such nations as Japan and the U.S. has tended to drive the fish farther from shore and to make worse the lot of the smaller inshore fisherman.

Scientists like to talk of the sea’s “harvest,” but the sea is a vast wilderness, and fishing is essentially a hunt for an unstable and unpredictable commodity. Despite its importance to so many nations, fishing is still one of the world’s most backward industries, estimated to be about at the stage that agriculture was a thousand years ago. To fisherman and scientist alike, the 139 million square miles of ocean are still mostly a mystery—but the mystery at last is being approached in a more scientific way. Today’s fishing boats have doubled in size, and they are built so that they can haul their nets over the stern instead of hoisting them alongside in the laborious old “otter” process that tired crews, reduced fishing time and endangered fishermen in heavy weather. They are routinely equipped for better fishing with such sophisticated electronic devices as Fathometers and radar, sonar and loran.

U.S. tuna men have changed their ways—and increased catches—by using giant purse seine nets instead of old-fashioned baited hooks. The Japanese have pioneered in a new and promising field called pelagic—or oceanic—fishing. Almost all fishing is now carried out at the surface or on the bottoms of the continental shelves that jut from the world’s mainlands. By experimenting with trawling at mid-water reaches, and gauging depths by telemetry and echo soundings, Japan and such other nations as Iceland are opening up a whole new field of mid-ocean fishing.

The changes in technique have already reshuffled rankings among fishing nations. Before World War II, the U.S. was second, behind Japan. The Japanese, who consume five times as much fish per person as Americans, still lead everyone. But Japan is followed by Peru, which has forged an incredible industry (7,000,000 tons last year) almost totally out of the anchovies that are borne up the Peruvian coast on water currents, and Red China and Russia are now third and fourth. The U.S. has sagged to fifth place by allowing its fishing fleet to atrophy—even though it imports more fish than any other nation in the world.

Factories at Sea. Armed with modern methods, the fleets of the world’s major fishing powers roam far from their homelands in search of a good catch. The Russians and the Japanese have perfected deep-freeze factories right on board ship that enable them to stay at sea for up to six months. The Russians lead in oceanographic studies that help them find good fishing grounds, and have perhaps the world’s most modern fishing fleet. They fish in fleets shepherded by 15,000-ton mother ships that carry helicopters to spot fish schools and frogmen to untangle nets; occasionally, the Russians even use submarines to lead their trawlers to happy hunting grounds.

The future of fishing is even more exotic, to judge by the U.N. fishing congress held recently in London. Japan is trying out salt-pond “farms” on the Inland Sea, where yellowtail and sea bream are raised and dumped into the adjacent sea when grown. England is farming plaice somewhat in the manner that trout rivers are restocked. The 600 delegates from 50 fishing nations at the congress also saw the coming use of underwater television, fish hunts by submarine, fish herding by means of electric fences or bubble barriers, unattended sonic devices that could float like logs and signal the approach of schools—and even fish mating calls simulated by scientists as potent lures. Some day, as countries turn more and more to the sea to feed their growing population, the hunters may all become scientists, and the ancient sea may finally be persuaded to yield a harvest.