Can We Stop Paying Fishermen to Catch the Last Fish?

With over 80 percent of all fish stocks declared fully exploited or overexploited, it is harder and harder for fishermen to find and catch the last fish. But enormous government subsidies make it not only possible, but profitable, for fishermen to do just that.  The oceans are running out of fish but rather than scaling back, the fishing fleet is larger than ever—like the global nuclear weapons arsenal capable of blowing up the planet several times over, today's fishing fleet can catch 2.5 times as many fish as is sustainable.

A decade ago, the World Trade Organization members agreed that something had to be done to reign in the unsustainable use of government funds to construct more and bigger boats in a sea of shrinking fish populations. But so far, negotiations have run dry, as trillions of dollars continue to poor into an ever-emptier sea. In a series of reports released last year in the Journal of Bioeconomics, researchers noted that U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for an average $713 million in direct subsidies to fisheries every year.

And nearly 60% of global fisheries subsidies go towards increasing the capacity of the fishing fleet.

Such payments not only hurt the fish, they also tend to hurt small-scale fishermen and communities in developing countries, where corrupt governments sell-off the rights to access domestic fishing grounds to European, Asian and U.S. fleets. Local fishermen are left with nothing to catch, the local people with no food.  Such mismanagement winds up costing tens of billions in lost revenue—you can't cash in on fish that are no longer there to catch.

A decade of conversation is long enough. It is time for World Trade Organization member countries to take direct action to curb damaging fisheries subsidies. You can help by joining Oceana's campaign to encourage U.S. WTO Ambassador Ron Kirk to lead the charge and get the WTO to enact strict limitations on fisheries subsidies around the globe.

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