Trawling for solutions

Hi there, welcome back to standing room only.

To reduce that Tryptophan induced coma resulting from 3 days of constant turkey intake let's dive right in with some positivity regarding our impacts on the marine environment of Hong Kong:

WWF-Hong Kong has been at the vanguard of environmental impact issues for 33 years and has been partially responsible for many of the environmental reforms across Hong Kong. Its Save Our Seas (SOS) campaign saw a focus on the protection of marine biodiversity. Perhaps the most prevalent result of the SOS campaign is the instigation of a trawling ban inside HK waters. Between 2004 and the ban's commencement on the 31st of December 2013 the SOS campaign applied concerted pressure on the Hong Kong SAR government through a program of public petitions and open letters from highly regarded members of academia (WWF-HK open letter) all aimed at raising awareness of the marine environments fragile state and providing researched evidence that changes need to be made quickly.

"The ban increases the public’s interest in and commitment to the sea. It will have a major positive impact on the whole ecosystem. Banning trawling is the best single action to help Hong Kong’s fishery on the road to recovery. It also shows that the government is beginning to listen to stakeholders other than the fishermen."

Prof. Yvonne Sadovy, Department of Ecology and Biodiversity, The University of Hong Kong (WWF-HK Save Our Seas supplement, 2011).

Prior to the trawling ban the management of fishery practices around Hong Kong was pretty minimal. Not surprising when we consider that, as noted in our initial fisheries post, after WW2 the primary focus for Hong Kong was to rebuild and enhance its fishing fleet in order to fulfil the growing demand for fresh fish in an increasingly competitive market (Cheung and Sadovy, 2005). Until relatively recently there simply wasn't a whole-hearted consideration of the sustainable nature of new fishery practices being adopted in HK and the situation manifested itself as a decrease in overall capture fisheries since the 1980s. In a broader perspective Hong Kong was suffering an exaggerated version of  the contemporary decreasing trend observed globally by Pauly et al (2002) whereby increasing fishery technology and expansion of fleet size resulted in over-exploitation of fishery resources and a major drop in the actual number of fish being caught per trip.

Cheung and Sadovys (2005) determination of  the variations of 'Total inshore landings' (total quantity of fish caught) and the  Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE, basically how many fish were caught per trip compared to 1950 catches) in Hong Kong waters between 1950 and 1997.  

"Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this huge increase of global fishing effort led to an increase in catches ... encouraging an entire generation of managers and politicians to believe that launching more boats would automatically lead to higher catches."

Shots-fired! Pauly's (2002) rhetoric places the blame for global over-exploitation of fishery resources squarely at the feet of the upper-echelons of power. 

The exclusion of Hong Kong waters to trawling practices is hoped to allow the local aquaculture to restore itself to its former glory. Samantha Lee, Senior Marine Conservation Officer for WWF-Hong Kong, expects marine stocks to recover by up to 30% inside of 5 years (Marine Science Today, 2013).

As well as increasing in numbers the decline in the mean-trophic value of catches, caused by the loss of larger slow growing species and highlighted in Mortons editorial (2005), is also estimated to reverse itself with a 10-20% increase over 5 years (WWF-HK 'submission to the Legislative Council', 2011: page 3).

Only time will tell if these changes can be maintained and have their desired effects, but for now I personally think that we can take this as evidence that the human race is beginning to take responsibility for its impacts and invest seriously in taking steps to lessen and hopefully reverse them.