Teach a man to fish

Unsurprisingly, a major reason for Hong Kong's original settlement and early expansion is due to it's exceptional marine resources. The East China Sea, South China Sea and freshwater outflow from the Pearl River provide large expanses of varied aquaculture.

The increasing population of Hong Kong and its demand for these fishery resources has resulted in their severe over-exploitation with little to no evidence of improvement. A study, commissioned by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the HK government, identified that over the last 25 years catches have decreased by almost 50%. In addition 12 of 17 commercial species in HK waters have been identified as being "heavily over-exploited" whilst the remaining 5 species are "fully exploited". The study is referred to in  the Fisheries Protection (Specification of Apparatus) (Amendment) Notice (2011) by LegCo (Hong Kongs Legislative Council), although the original document seems to be elusive, if you come across it please let me know.

Perhaps its the years I spent in my previous discipline of archaeology speaking but I feel that to appreciate the current state of affairs we really need to step back a little and take a quick look at how HK reached this situation. An article by Morton (2005) describes HK fisheries evolution from larger, slow growing species that are worth more to smaller, faster growing species that are worth less. The article, whilst not referenced, touches upon some of the land marks in this evolution, with a little fleshing out we can develop clearer idea of how the HK's fleet has evolved:

• The 'Fisheries Research Unit' (FRU) was conceptualised in the late 1930's (Morton 2005), although the its official establishment appears to have occured some 20 years later (Mellor 1981, pg 198). The FRU's aim was to determine how HK's technologically inferior fishing fleet could compete with Japans relatively mechanised, larger fleet which shared portions of the same waters and targeted the same species, effectively directly competing with China and HK for marine resources.

Late 19th Century Chinese fishing 'Junk', Courtesy of hongwrong.com

• The 2nd Sino-Japanese war saw the occupation of China. During this time the Japanese possessed a monopoly on fishery resource exploitation in the East China Sea. As a result supplies of fresh fish to HK were reduced to near zero (and as we have already seen Hong Kong is heavily dependent on imports from China). HK fishery was forced to deal with an overnight increase in demand, fairly at odds with its current, at the time, methods.
• However, Japanese occupation of HK towards the end of the war sparked a technological renovation of the local fishing fleet allowing  larger catches from larger areas to be acquired (Morton 2005).
• In 1960 a refreshed governmental focus on the state of HK's fleet began. The government assumed control of, and invested in,  the FRU (Chan et al, pg 4: 1996). Representing an official governmental recognition of the potentially troubling situation. This governmental interest and investment continued steadily for around twenty years.
• After governmental intervention the catch totals of the HK fleet were noted to rise annually from 53,000 to 224,000 in 1990. However, whilst fishery totals increased year on year it is reported that the catch per capita began to steadily decline from the late 1980's onwards. These declines are noted not only in Hong Kong but worldwide. Anderson et al's (2011) studies of trends in the expansion of invertebrate fisheries reflects Mortons conclusions of a declining trend in marine catches, albeit on a global scale, noting that total catches of marine invertebrates rose from 2 million in 1950 to 12 million present day (2011). Whilst the factors governing each decline are not identical (as we may venture into next time) they both involve a core theme of increased activity and exploitation reaching a tipping point, beyond which the environment cannot cope with the strain.

Join me next time when we will take a look at the methods that Hong Kong utilised during the enhancement of its fisheries.

After reading Anderson et al's (2011) on invertebrate fishery trends I started to read up on Sea Cucumbers.... I urge you to do the same: LOOK HOW CRAZY THEY ARE!

Courtesy of NationalGeographic.com