« August 2008 Table of Contents 
One Man's Opinion: Fishermen need more than a Band-Aid
By Peter Redmayne
August 01, 2008
It's hard to pick up a newspaper or a magazine without
reading about the pains of soaring fuel prices. For fishermen,
the pain has been particularly acute. While U.S. fishermen have
stoically suffered in silence, that's not the case
elsewhere.
After blockading ports in May, hundreds of European
fishermen tromped off to Brussels to protest the high cost of
fuel and the low price of fish. Fishermen are a crusty,
independent lot, but few people expected this protest to turn
into the melee it did. After surrounding the EU headquarters
for hours, fishermen started throwing firecrackers and rocks
and shooting flares at police, who called in water cannons and
helicopters. As the fishermen retreated they broke into other
EU buildings. Order was eventually
restored, but only after
74 fishermen were hauled off to jail.
Irish fishermen joined the fray and blockaded the ports of
Cork and Waterford in June to send a message that they
could not keep fishing as long as they were losing money every
time they left the dock. In addition to outrageous fuel costs,
the Irish fishermen were protesting the growing supply of cheap
imports, especially from Iceland, and illegally caught fish,
which have helped keep fish prices low. To make matters worse,
Irish fishermen say the Byzantine EU regulations require them
to discard a lot of the fish they do catch and throw the dead
fish back overboard.
Japanese fishermen decided they, too, had had enough of high
fuel prices and convinced some 200,000 boats to tie up this
July to get the government's attention. Like fishermen in
Europe, the Japanese fleet wanted a government handout to
offset the high price of fuel.
Over the short term, politicians are likely to avoid a big
stink by agreeing to some of their fishermen's demands. Longer
term, though, the fishing industry almost everywhere needs some
serious restructuring to live in what increasingly looks like a
sustained period of very expensive oil.
Even before the recent surge in oil prices, in most
fisheries around the world there were too many boats chasing
too few fish. Now that $100-a-barrel oil seems like a bargain,
these fisheries can support even fewer boats. Fisheries
managers need to face the fact that after years of dragging
their feet they will have to change the way they manage their
fisheries. Boats and fishing jobs will simply have to go.
In Killybegs, Ireland's largest fishing port, most of the
pelagic fleet is tied up for almost nine months a year, hardly
an efficient use of men or boats. If consumers aren't willing
to pay more for fish - and given the economic outlook in the
United States and EU that's a reality that could be around for
some time - fisheries managers are going to have to find ways
to make fishermen more efficient. That means finding ways to
let fewer boats catch more fish per trip.
In places like the EU, where multiple countries share a
common fisheries resource, it will be a monumental task given
its bitter legacy of fish fights. Still, if fisheries managers
keep doling out Band-Aids instead of real solutions,
fishermen's blockades, tie-ups and protests could become a
permanent feature of the global fisheries landscape.
Contributing Editor Peter Redmayne lives in Seattle