As the first chill of winter descends on the Northeast and the traditional cold-weather codfish run starts in earnest, fishermen and scientists are again at odds, debating whether the once fantastically abundant North Atlantic codfish populations are finally rebuilding — or hurtling inextricably toward collapse.

But even as regulators parse a recent gloomy assessment of Gulf of Maine codfish populations, the entire question of the commercial future of cod may soon become moot. Cod and other wild-caught whitefish, for centuries a staple of the Western diet, are on the way out.

Not long ago, any kind of colorless, neutral-tasting fish product sold in the United States or Europe (“whitefish” in fishing industry parlance) was made out of one of several wild species of the taxonomic order Gadiformes: cod, pollock, haddock, hake, take your pick. Over the eons, these fish came to congregate in the cooler latitudes in large enough numbers for fishing to transform itself from an artisan practice into an industry.

Largely thanks to the gadiforms, fish itself was also transformed — from a regionally specific menu item into a nameless transnational protein product. But beginning in the 1990s, right around the time the term “outsourcing” was entering the vernacular, two new fish appeared from the developing world that are remaking the whitefish portfolio.

The first, the tilapia, is well known in the United States, though most people don’t quite know what it is (a fish farmer once told me the first time he heard the word, he thought it was a stomach disease). The name spans an entire genus: the Nile and Mozambique species, the ones most commonly used for cultivation, hail from Africa (though three-quarters of all tilapia imported into the United States come from China and Taiwan).

The technology for breeding them comes from many sources, ranging from food-security-conscious Israel to former Peace Corps volunteers who saw how the fish could be thrown into stagnant, algae-infested ponds in developing countries and miraculously eat up all that algae and turn it into protein. The fact that the fish can go from egg to adult in nine months makes its appeal obvious.

The second fish is the Pangasius, a catfish-like creature endemic to Vietnam. American catfish farmers temporarily drove it from the market in the ’90s, insisting that it not be labeled “catfish” at all. But in Europe, Pangasius is as omnipresent as the tilapia is here, and equally confounding. “Qu’est-ce qu’un Panga?” or “What is a Pangasius?” asked the title of a recent French documentary.

Like the tilapia, it is a freshwater fish. Also, like the tilapia, it grows quickly. But Pangasius’s special talent is its ability to live in close quarters. One of the limiting factors in freshwater fish farming is the amount of dissolved oxygen in a pond. Costly aeration systems must churn oxygen into the waters of a pond or else the number of fish must be reduced.

Pangasius don’t seem to mind it so much when oxygen gets tight. In those moments the fish push their faces above the surface and open their mouths. Pangasius, it turns out, can breathe air.

This irrepressible biological trait (combined with cheap Asian labor and lax environmental standards) has allowed Pangasius to undercut Italian rainbow trout farmers and Greek branzino farmers and has even presaged a re-entry into the American market with the mysterious new name “swai” — now the ninth most consumed fish in America.

What’s curious about both the tilapia and the Pangasius is that they surged in the Western market when the classic fish of the Western whitefish sandwich were encountering troubles. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, the world saw a series of wild whitefish collapses, most notably in the North Sea, the Grand Banks of Canada and the famed Georges Bank off Massachusetts. Today, tilapia and Pangasius often account for more than eight billion pounds of whitefish annually — somewhere between a third to a half of all whitefish production, depending on the vagaries of the wild catch.

So whither whitefish in this next weird century of ours? If I were to bet, I’d say the odds are with the warm-water Asian upstarts. Yes, America still harvests two billion to three billion pounds of Alaskan pollock every year (the keystone species in today’s Filet-O-Fish).

And the melting of the polar icecaps may indeed extend the range of the traditional gadiforms to higher latitudes and open hitherto untapped fishing grounds to fishing fleets. But at a certain point heat may dramatically contract the range of the gadiforms on our buns. Which is good news for farmers of tilapia and Pangasius, which seem to grow faster the hotter it gets.

Deep below the ocean surface lies a cold, hostile environment where the light of day cannot penetrate. The life-forms inhabiting this murky world grow slowly, mature late and take time to reproduce. Many species live 30 years or more, some up to the grand age of 150. Most have not yet been defined by science.

This dark void, which lies beyond any country’s national jurisdiction, is in trouble.

The world’s deep-sea catch is steadily declining, and the high vulnerability of these fish populations and diverse marine ecosystems is well documented. Last year, officials from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea declared that in the Northeast Atlantic, 100 percent of all targeted deep-sea species have been fished “outside safe biological limits.” Yet the fishing continues, via trawlers dragging enormous weighted nets that, in a single pass, scrape clean the ocean floor.

This week, the United Nations will conducta review of high-seas fishing practices that could ultimately help save deep-sea ecosystems. Since 2004, a series of resolutions has been negotiated and approved, outlining a plan to safeguard the biological diversity of the deep ocean. Now fishing countries will once again be assessed to see if they have done what they pledged to do: protect deep-sea life while fishing in a sustainable way.

The answer, according to experts and environmental organizations around the world, is no.

After nearly a decade of talk, scientists and conservationists are asking the United Nations to take action and declare that any deep-sea fishing that doesn’t meet the terms of these resolutions is illegal, unregulated and unreported, and must be stopped.

While enforcement of these regulations is critical, what makes the destruction of the deep sea truly senseless is its cost — which is paid for by public money. Fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly and economist Ussif Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia examined subsidies to international bottom-trawl fleets and found that governments around the globe pay $152 million per year to prop up these fisheries.

Government subsidization of fishing is not new. But without substantial taxpayer support, these operations would incur losses of $50 million annually. In addition to the waste and cost, deep-sea catches are also relatively insignificant as money-earners for major economies. The European Union, for example, has one of the world’s largest deep-sea fishing fleets, yet its catches represent just 2 percent of the total value of all E.U. fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic. Meanwhile, the destruction from the deep-sea trawlers is irreparable.

Bottom fishing on the high seas is a global activity carried out by a small number of countries. A technical paper prepared for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in 2008 that 285 vessels worldwide are engaged in these high-seas operations and are registered to 27 flag states. The European community has the largest number of vessels (103), with the majority flagged to Spain. Other flag states with a relatively large number of vessels include New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and Australia. Deep-sea fish products are typically consumed in Europe, the United States and Japan.

We are spending millions in public funds to wreck seascapes that take millennia to form. Governments must realize that deep-sea fishing not only wastes taxpayer dollars but that destroying the unique marine life in the deep sea for a relatively small catch of slow-growing fish is a bad investment.

La piratería frente a las costas del África oriental ha ocupado los titulares en los últimos años, pero hay otro tipo de piratería a la que se ha prestado demasiado poca atención. La pesca pirata en todo el mundo está costando a los pescadores sus empleos e ingresos y está causando graves daños al medio oceánico.

La pesca pirata, con frecuencia llamada pesca ilegal, sin registrar ni reglamentar, priva a medio millón, aproximadamente, de pescadores respetuosos de la ley y a sus comunidades de hasta 23.000 millones de dólares al año en pescado y, como unos tres mil millones, aproximadamente, de personas dependen del pescado como su fuente primordial de proteínas, la pesca pirata tiene también importantes consecuencias antihumanitarias y para la seguridad alimentaria. Además, se sabe que las operaciones de pesca ilegal someten a la tripulación de los barcos piratas a unas condiciones laborales inseguras e injustas en el mar.

Además, la pesca pirata socava los medios de vida de los pescadores respetuosos con la ley de los Estados Unidos y de Europa. Cuando el pescado ilegalmente capturado llega a los mercados mundiales, sus precios bajan y disminuye la cantidad que se puede capturar legalmente y, para colmo de males, los pescadores ilegales usan con frecuencia aparejos destructivos que destrozan los hábitats, ponen en peligo la vida marina y amenazan la pesca correcta.

Como jefa de la Administración Oceánica y Atmosférica Nacional y Comisaria de Pesca de la Unión Europea, respectivamente, que somos, recientemente firmamos un acuerdo transcendental para fortalecer la cooperación conjunta a fin de abordar el flagelo mundial de la pesca pirata. Sólo trabajando juntos podemos luchar con éxito contra las operaciones de pesca ilegal.

Los EE.UU. han empezado a regenerar su pesca y velar por que sea sostenible. La Comisión Europea acaba de presentar una propuesta para reformar la política pesquera común encaminada a regenerar la pesca de Europa. Los datos científicos idóneos son la piedra angular de esas dos políticas, pero no basta con poner orden en nuestras respectivas casas.

Como los peces y otras formas de vida oceánica no permanecen dentro de las fronteras nacionales, la cooperación internacional es esencial para  la salud a largo plazo de los océanos del mundo y la sostenibilidad de la pesca y de los empleos del sector pesquero. Los EE.UU. y Europa tienen una responsabilidad mundial por ser dos de los mayores importadores de pescado. Tenemos que velar por qué se capturado de forma sostenible el pescado que importamos, para que nuestros mercados no contribuyan a la decadencia de los océanos y las comunidades pesqueras que de ellos dependen, en particular las de los países más pobres.

Los EE.UU., Europa y otros países como, por ejemplo, el Japón, han adoptado medidas importantes para abordar la pesca ilegal. Estamos empezando a identificar los buques pesqueros ilegales y a excluirlos de nuestros puertos pesqueros. Los países están adoptando medidas para seguir la pista de las importaciones de pescado y documentarlas. Esta semana, los EE.UU. y la UE vamos a comprometernos a luchar contra la pesca ilegal, fortalecer nuestra vigilancia e imponer el cumplimiento de las medidas de gestión conforme a nuestro papel de países que son partes en las organizaciones regionales de pesca y en diversos tratados internacionales. Nos comprometemos a impedir que los pescadores ilegales se beneficien de su piratería.

Lo que está en juego son millones de puestos de trabajo en unos océanos sanos. Lo que está en juego es la seguridad alimentaria en muchas partes del mundo. Lo que está en juego es la salud a largo plazo de los océanos del mundo. Como aliados que son, los EE.UU. y Europa están dando un importante paso adelante para poner fin al flagelo de la pesca pirata.

Weighing up to 80 tons and almost twice the length of a school bus, the massive fin whale — known as the greyhound of the sea for its swimming speed — was the victim of decades of commercial slaughter that killed the whales by the tens of thousands each year. Then, in 1986, with the species on the brink of extinction, the nations of the world agreed to a moratorium on commercial whaling, and this magnificent animal got a reprieve.

Except, that is, in Iceland. Today, over a quarter of a century after the moratorium took effect, Iceland is escalating its hunting and trading of fin whales (and other whale species), in disregard for international law, economic reason and ecological sanity.

Last month, the Obama administration went on the offensive. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke condemned Iceland’s “defiance of the commercial whaling ban.” And, citing Iceland’s illegal trade in whale meat, whale oil and other products, Monica Medina, the U.S. commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, expressed “deep disappointment” that Iceland was “not interested in cooperative international conservation of whales.”

Conservation groups (including my own) recently petitioned the administration to formally certify Iceland as “diminishing the effectiveness” of the whaling moratorium and of another global treaty that prohibits trade in endangered species. The request seeks a response with teeth, in the form of significant U.S. trade sanctions against Iceland, and identifies specific Iceland-based seafood companies that traffic in whale products.

The petition should be granted because when it comes to whale conservation, Iceland is a world-class outlaw.

First, it unquestionably violates the international moratorium on whaling, one of the great global conservation achievements of the last century. The moratorium resulted in an exponential reduction in the number of whales killed for profit — from an annual average of more than 38,000 in 1986 to less than 1,250 today — and it is credited with saving a remarkable list of whale species, from the gigantic blue whale to the singing humpback to the California gray whale. Although hunting of fin whales has largely ceased, the species remains on the endangered list under both U.S. and international law. Iceland’s expanding annual hunt is a notable exception.

Second, trade sanctions are essential because diplomatic efforts to persuade Iceland to stop its illegal whaling and trade have failed. The U.S. government once before certified Iceland as undermining international whaling law. That was in 2004, in response to Iceland’s illegal hunting of minke whales. No trade sanctions were imposed, in the hope that diplomacy would suffice. It didn’t. Since then, Iceland has become more aggressive and more flagrant in its flouting of international conservation norms.

This year, for example, Iceland landed 60 times more edible whale meat (including both minke and fin whales) than it did in 2004, and it shipped an estimated 800 tons of whale products, almost 10 times as much as in 2008, the next highest year for exports.

Third, Iceland’s whaling ignores the best available science. The scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission, considered the foremost authority on whale conservation, has calculated the annual sustainable catch limit for the population of fin whales hunted by Iceland as just 46 animals. Nevertheless, in 2009, Iceland increased its annual fin whale quota to 150, and it killed 126 in 2009 and 148 in 2010. In other words, Iceland hunts more than three times the number of fin whales that, according to the best scientific evidence, the affected population can spare to survive.

Finally, Iceland’s illegal whaling has little, if anything, to do with need, demand, food security or apparent economic sense. Iceland’s own market for whale meat is already saturated or dying from domestic disinterest. And, according to the managing director of Hvalur, the largest whaling company in Iceland, its focus is on exports to Japan, a country glutted with whale meat from its own “scientific research whaling” program.

With whale-related tourism on the rise around the world, it’s a mystery why these countries fail to understand that there is considerably more money in watching whales than in hunting them.

The Obama administration deserves credit and our strong support for demanding an end to Iceland’s brutal, outdated and illegal slaughter of the world’s most magnificent animals. But that demand must now be enforced with real trade sanctions, with a real economic impact that Iceland can no longer ignore.

“What’s the deal with fish oil?”

If you are someone who catches and eats a lot of fish, as I am, you get adept at answering questions about which fish are safe, which are sustainable and which should be avoided altogether. But when this fish oil question arrived in my inbox recently, I was stumped. I knew that concerns about overfishing had prompted many consumers to choose supplements as a guilt-free way of getting their omega-3 fatty acids, which studies show lower triglycerides and the risk of heart attack. But I had never looked into the fish behind the oil and whether it was fit, morally or environmentally speaking, to be consumed.

The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.”

The book’s author, H. Bruce Franklin, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.” Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain.

Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.

But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.

For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden. The perniciousness of menhaden removals has been widely enough recognized that 13 of the 15 Atlantic states have banned Omega Protein’s boats from their waters. But the company’s toehold in North Carolina and Virginia (where it has its largest processing plant), and its continued right to fish in federal waters, means a half-billion menhaden are still taken from the ecosystem every year.

For fish guys like me, this egregious privatization of what is essentially a public resource is shocking. But even if you are not interested in fish, there is an important reason for concern about menhaden’s decline.

Quite simply, menhaden keep the water clean. The muddy brown color of the Long Island Sound and the growing dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay are the direct result of inadequate water filtration — a job that was once carried out by menhaden. An adult menhaden can rid four to six gallons of water of algae in a minute. Imagine then the water-cleaning capacity of the half-billion menhaden we “reduce” into oil every year.

So what is the seeker of omega-3 supplements to do? Bruce Franklin points out that there are 75 commercial products — including fish-oil pills made from fish discards — that don’t contribute directly to the depletion of a fishery. Flax oil also fits the bill and uses no fish at all.

But I’ve come to realize that, as with many issues surrounding fish, more powerful fulcrums than consumer choice need to be put in motion to fix things. President Obama and the Congressional leadership have repeatedly stressed their commitment to wresting the wealth of the nation from the hands of a few. A demonstration of this commitment would be to ban the fishing of menhaden in federal waters. The Virginia Legislature could enact a similar moratorium in the Chesapeake Bay (the largest menhaden nursery in the world).

The menhaden is a small fish that in its multitudes plays such a big role in our economy and environment that its fate shouldn’t be effectively controlled by a single company and its bottles of fish oil supplements. If our government is serious about standing up for the little guy, it should start by giving a little, but crucial, fish a fair deal.

A desolate island in a frozen sea brings the world’s nations together with a new type of agreement: one giving an international commission the right to govern a landmass through unanimous vote. The year was 1912; the subject was the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean. Thereafter, it and the surrounding archipelago were to belong to no nation, its natural resources open to all.

That agreement was no doubt on the minds of the drafters of the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed to much fanfare 50 years ago Tuesday by 12 nations: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union and the United States.

The pact was a remarkable achievement considering the circumstances: it was the height of the cold war and a time of heightened tensions, including an exchange of gunfire in 1952 between Argentine and British expeditions. Seven nations had carved out overlapping territories on the bottom of the earth and had been previously unwilling to cooperate.

Nonetheless, thanks to the treaty, Antarctica was demilitarized, its frozen peaks and glaciers transformed into the world’s largest nature preserve and an international scientific laboratory. The land claims of the seven nations were neither recognized nor disputed — they were “left to die a natural death,” as The Times’s correspondent Walter Sullivan put it — but each keeps a proprietary eye over its patch of tundra.

The treaty dictates use of the continent to this day. At its annual meeting this fall in Tasmania, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources — a body created under the treaty in 1982 to protect marine life — agreed to create the first marine protected area in the region, which will put 36,000 square miles of ocean near the South Orkney Islands off limits to fishing or waste disposal.

Sound impressive? Actually, the newly protected area covers just a tiny fraction of the southern ocean. The original proposal was broader, but people who were involved tell me it was whittled down to make room for an experimental crab fishery. A plan to put scientific observers on every krill-fishing boat was also scaled back.

Worse, this sort of environmental timidity on the ocean pretty much sums up the 50-year history of the Antarctic Treaty. Year after year, the marine conservation commission defeats or defangs nearly every progressive proposal put before it. As we consider the treaty’s anniversary, it is worth considering whether the waters off Antarctica would be better off without it, instead leaving each nation with a historical claim to defend its own slice of the ocean’s bounty.

When I traveled to Antarctica as part of a scientific team in 2001, I devoured a delicious, flaky filet of Antarctic toothfish that had been harvested from the Ross Sea by a team from the University of Illinois. Little did I know how privileged I was. In the last six years, that research team has not caught another toothfish. Poor management and pirate fishing boats operating under flags of convenience have depleted the stock, threatening an ecosystem that supports penguins and killer whales. In October, Australian authorities discovered an illegal gill net, 80 miles long, swelling with 31 tons of toothfish.

The problem is not just a matter of powerful fishing countries like Norway and Japan outmaneuvering the conservation lobby, but a fundamental shortcoming of international agreements like the Antarctic Treaty. Because the conservation commission requires a unanimous vote for any sort of environmental action, it can be held hostage by a single party.

At the recent annual meeting, the commission again ignored scientific advice and struck down a market-based measure to fight rogue fisheries. The plan would have allowed nations to reject fish imports from countries that allow illegal vessels into their ports, but Argentina scuttled it, arguing that it was a threat to international law.

Other measures, like a blacklist of boats connected to illegal fishing, are rarely enforced and easily circumvented. For instance, when a Russian vessel called the Volna was placed on a provisional list in 2006, Russia disputed the evidence and vetoed the decision. New Zealand called Russia’s move a threat to the Antarctic Treaty system. But even if the boat had been added to the blacklist, it is doubtful that it would have been denied service at ports. According to a report from the Pew Environment Group, since 2004 blacklisted vessels have made 27 visits to ports that are committed to the treaty system.

By contrast, many countries that have their own island territories in the region have fought back against illegal fishing. In the 1990s, an estimated one-third of the toothfish harvest around Heard Island, an Australian territory, was illegally obtained; but since Australia and France, which controls other nearby islands, stepped up enforcement in 2002, that number has dropped to about one-tenth. Recently an Australian court ruled that it was illegal for Japanese boats to hunt whales within 200 nautical miles of Australia’s Antarctic land claim.

Perhaps it is time that other nations defend their own Antarctic claims. This would no doubt put the agreement in jeopardy, but rather than bowing down to an international body that has failed in its stated mission, individual states could negotiate their own regulatory and licensing agreements for fisheries. For example, New Zealand would be within its right to unilaterally establish a much-needed marine protected area in the Ross Sea. The Chileans and the Argentines, whose claims overlap along a peninsula south of the Falkland Islands, could hash out their own deals. Norway might well fish its own waters to depletion, but that would be the price of environmental gains elsewhere.

Most conservationists and fans of international law would be horrified by the idea of ditching the Antarctic Treaty. But consider this: the Spitsbergen Convention did not survive — since 1920 the island has effectively become part of Norway. Yet Norway, which has dug in its heels at nearly every meeting of the Antarctic conservation commission, has shown far more concern over an island it considers its own. It has established environmental protections at Spitsbergen, shut hazardous mining operations and reined in Russian fishing trawlers. It’s not a perfect system, but it might be a better one for Antarctica than the toothless treaty that many will be celebrating Tuesday.

Some of the best political decisions happen for the worst reasons. No clearer case can be found than the announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that he will support a ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna, a fish as endangered as the giant panda but far more palatable. The bluefin has been over-fished to near extinction within the borders of the European Union under the indifferent eyes of its fisheries inspectors.

The great irony underlying Sarkozy’s conversion to conservation is that it is France’s technically advanced but politically uncontrollable fishing fleet that is principally responsible for over-fishing the giant bluefin.

What Sarkozy said is extraordinary. It amounts to an admission by a European government that one of the world’s great environmental disasters has been going on in EU waters as a result of illegal and uncontrolled fishing by the Mediterranean nations and Japan. If a ban on international trade is all that will save the bluefin, we have on our hands a disaster comparable to the destruction of the blue whale or the northern cod.

Sarkozy is right when he says: “Ours is the last generation with the ability to take action before it is too late — we must protect marine resources now in order to fish better in future. We owe this to fishermen and we owe it to future generations.” This is the most obvious home-grown fisheries disaster since the foundation of the common fisheries policy. Brussels will now have to admit it — which can only spur reform.

Another reason why Sarkozy’s elegant speech is significant is that it amounts to the first shot in what is likely to be one of the great set-piece battles for conservation, as resonant as that to save the blue whale in the 1960s or the African elephant in the 1980s. For months scientists have been saying there are no more mature spawning adult bluefin left in the Mediterranean; a third of those on the Japanese market are below legal landing size; the population appears to have collapsed in 2007. Now the conservationists’ battle is likely to be taken up by whole nations in the run-up to the meeting in March of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

It is far too early to predict the outcome. A ban on international trade in bluefin under Cites is likely to be opposed by Japan as well as by the other big culprits in over-fishing. All sorts of dirty tricks may be expected. Success in reaching the necessary two-thirds majority of votes at Cites before the bluefin season opens again next year is likely to depend largely on alliances built in Europe and the United States before the formal listing application goes in this autumn.

Until Sarkozy stood up to speak on Thursday, no one knew whether Monaco’s proposal to list the bluefin under appendix 1 of the convention — the vehicle used successfully to stop the epidemic of ivory poaching that threatened the African elephant in 1989 — had a prayer. People were waiting for America or the UK to decide whether they were brave enough to support Monaco. Sarkozy was assumed to be opposed to a listing application. Huw Irranca-Davies, Britain’s fisheries minister, was reduced to rushing out a feeble statement supporting Sarkozy. In fact, our policy has been to support a less rigorous position that Canada and the United States, which have sport fisheries for bluefin, might back. Not much leadership there.

What impelled Sarkozy to take the lead in an area of policy in which France has long lagged behind? I suspect it was a battle of wills and egos. Sarkozy hates the fact that the fishing industry in the south of France — which was politically allied to Jacques Chirac, his predecessor and enemy — is out of control. He clashed with it over unpaid tax as a finance minister. This year he arranged a deal under which fishermen could apply for generous terms if they scrapped their vessels and gave up fishing. By February, the deadline, only one vessel, owned by a Spanish tuna firm, had applied. An international trade ban was the last weapon available against the industry that defied him.

The significance of France, as Europe’s sinner that repenteth, goes far beyond the bluefin. It will impact on other countries, including Britain, which participate in the disgraceful annual horse-trading round for quotas on European fish species in December. Sarkozy declared that every management decision for the seas and fish stocks in French waters would in future be based on scientific advice. He also said France would place 20% of its waters under special protection by 2020 to build up fish stocks (in half that area there will be a total ban on fishing). This is better than Britain’s proposals for marine reserves.

It remains to be seen how far Sarkozy’s conversion to conservation will play in the deliberations of the European Council or the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas — particularly if French fishermen decide to blockade ports and hold their government to ransom. What is certain is that he has raised the bar for other heads of state. What is Gordon Brown’s contribution going to be to restoring Europe’s seas other than a marine bill that is more about access to the coast than conserving fish? I am looking forward to finding out.

It is not often that a bureaucrat makes a major scientific discovery. So hats off to Peter Power. The European commission’s spokesperson for trade, writing to the Guardian last week, has invented a new ecological concept: excess fish. Seeking to justify policies that would ensure that European trawlers are allowed to keep fishing in west African waters, Mr Power claims that they will be removing only the region’s “excess stocks”. Well, someone has to do it. Were it not for our brave trawlermen battling nature’s delinquent productivity, the seas would become choked with these disgusting scaly creatures.

Power was responding to the column I wrote a fortnight ago, which showed how fish stocks have collapsed and the people of Senegal have gone hungry as a result of plunder by other nations. The economic partnership agreement the commission wants Senegal to sign would make it much harder for that country to keep our boats out of its waters. Power maintains that “the question of access to Senegalese waters by EU fleets … is not part of these trade negotiations”.

This is a splendid example of strategic stupidity. No one is claiming that there is a specific fish agreement for Senegal. But the commission’s demand that European companies have the right to establish themselves freely on African soil and to receive “national treatment” would ensure that Senegal is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and foreign firms. It would then be unable to exclude European boats. Is this really too much for a well-paid bureaucrat to grasp?

After that column was published, several people wrote to suggest that the problem is worse than I thought. Senegal’s fish crisis is part of a bitterly ironic story. As Felicity Lawrence shows in her book Eat Your Heart Out, the people of Senegal have become dependent on fishing partly because of the collapse of farming. In 1994, Senegal was forced to remove its trade taxes. This allowed the EU to dump subsidised tomatoes and chicken on its markets, putting its farmers out of business. They moved into fishing at about the same time as the European super-trawlers arrived, and were wiped out again. So fishing boats were instead deployed to carry economic migrants out of Senegal. Lawrence discovered that those who survive the voyage to Europe are being employed in near-slavery by … the subsidised tomato industry.

But this is just one aspect of a scandal that has been missed by almost every journalist in the UK. While we have been fretting about house prices and the Big Brother final, the European trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, has been seeking to impose new trade agreements on 76 of the world’s poorest countries: the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations. Posing as “instruments for development”, the economic partnership agreements threaten to beggar them.

The people of these countries know that trade is essential to pull them out of poverty. But they also see that unless it is conducted fairly, it impoverishes them more. Many are aware that the European equation of fair trade with free trade is nonsense.

Neoliberal economists claim rich countries got that way by removing their barriers to trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Ha-Joon Chang shows in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, Britain discovered its enthusiasm for free trade only after it had achieved economic dominance. The industrial revolution was built on protectionism: in 1699, for example, we banned the import of Irish woollens; in 1700 we banned cotton cloth from India. To protect our infant industries, we imposed ferocious tariffs (trade taxes) on almost all manufactured goods.

By 1816 the US had imposed a 35% tax on most imported manufactures, which rose to 50% in 1832. Between 1864 and 1913 it was the most heavily protected nation on earth, and the fastest-growing. It wasn’t until after the second world war, when it had already become top dog, that it dropped most of its tariffs. The same strategy was followed by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and almost every other country that is rich today. Within the ACP nations, the great success story of the past 30 years is the country whose protectionism has been fiercest: during the 1980s and 1990s, Mauritius imposed import tariffs of up to 80%. Protectionism, which can be easily exploited by corrupt elites, does not always deliver wealth; but development is much harder without it.

Mandelson’s attempt to deprive the poor nations of these strategies is just one of the injustices he is trying to impose. While he wants the ACP countries to eliminate tariffs on the import of almost all goods, Europe will sustain its farm subsidies. In combination, these policies could put millions out of work.

As Oxfam shows, he’s also negotiating to let European corporations muscle out local firms and make privatisation legally irreversible, threatening people’s access to health, education, water and banking. The ACP countries would be forbidden to impose tough capital controls in a financial crisis: the need for European companies to get their money out takes precedence over the economic survival of the poor. He wants them to adopt a plant-breeding treaty that bans farmers from saving their own seeds.

Mandelson tried to force all this through by last December, warning the ACP countries that if they didn’t sign up by then, world trade rules would ensure that they lost their preferential trading status with Europe. The UN trade adviser Dr Dan Gay tells me that people in the talks between the European commission, Fiji and Papua New Guinea claim that “Mandelson shouted ‘neocolonial style’ at ministers, suggesting that they were so incompetent that they had to rely on foreign advisers”. Mandelson’s office says he “did express the wish to negotiate with ministers present, rather than their advisers. However, he did not shout ‘neocolonial style’ at anyone.”

Either way, there is no question that the ACP countries have been bullied. In December their trade ministers published a joint statement deploring “the enormous pressure that has been brought to bear on the ACP states by the European commission”. Over half of them refused to sign anything; the rest initialled draft agreements. Mandelson is still twisting arms, trying to force the treaties through as quickly as possible. Last week the Caribbean heads of state were due to commit themselves, but pulled back at the last minute; they hold a meeting tomorrow to decide what to do next. I hope they have the balls to tear the whole thing up and start again.

If the aim of these negotiations had been to enrich European companies at the expense of the poor, Peter Mandelson has done well. If, as the commission claims, the partnership agreements are “primarily conceived as an instrument for development”, his interventions have been disastrous. He appears to have pursued these talks in the style of a 21st-century viceroy: no humanitarian concern is allowed to obstruct commercial interests.

In the short term, and within a limited frame of reference, the commission’s tactics might enhance our self-interest. But we are better than this. If the people of Europe knew what was being done in their name, I doubt that one in 10 would support it.

A lo largo del mes de agosto han venido sucediéndose las noticias sobre un conflicto pesquero entre Cantabria y el País Vasco. En lo dicho por unos y por otros se echa de menos algún dato referente a la legalidad aplicable. Al fin y al cabo, más allá de las cuestiones técnicas o de los intereses afectados, se trata de una actuación de los poderes públicos.

Es una lástima que circulen conceptos como «veto a los pesqueros cántabros en las aguas interiores vascas» (EL CORREO, 23-8-08) sin que ninguno de los actores intervinientes se tome la molestia, al parecer, de explicar lo que sucede y de demostrar que, como es de esperar, la actuación de la Administración autonómica está plenamente ajustada a la ley y al derecho… o todo lo contrario, en su caso.

Que los consejeros responsables de Agricultura y Pesca de las comunidades limítrofes «vayan de la mano» siempre es positivo. Que las cofradías respectivas intercambien todo tipo de conversaciones, también. Pero lo esencial será que la Administración, cuando actúe, lo haga de un modo transparente, comprensible, eficaz y ajustado al ordenamiento jurídico (Art.103.1 de la Constitución española).

En este sentido, alguna explicación habrá de ofrecerse a la opinión pública por parte de ‘quien corresponda’ diferente a la reiteradamente aparecida sobre un hipotético «veto a los pesqueros de Cantabria en aguas interiores vascas», porque semejante cosa, dicha así, no resulta aceptable desde el punto de vista legal ni moral y por eso mismo es tan llamativa (o demagógica).

Habría que explicar, por ejemplo, que cuando hablamos de las ‘aguas interiores’ estamos refiriéndonos a la finísima franja de agua comprendida entre la línea de bajamar real y la llamada línea de base recta (definidas para todo el territorio nacional en el Real Decreto 2510/1977 de 5 de agosto) a partir de la cual se comienza a medir el mar territorial (de 12 millas). Más allá de tan escuetos límites no hay ‘aguas vascas’ ni ‘aguas cántabras’ sino ‘mar territorial español’ y después de éste viene la ‘zona económica exclusiva’ (hasta las 300 millas) que ya ni siquiera es objeto de la soberanía nacional.

Esta franja costera de anchura variable, aunque breve en todo caso, queda en efecto bajo la competencia exclusiva de las comunidades autónomas ribereñas, que ejercerán en ella la ordenación pesquera, tal y como establece el artículo 148.1-11 de la Constitución española y consecuentemente el artículo 10.10 del Estatuto de Autonomía del País Vasco en cuyo desarrollo se aprobó la Ley 6/1998 de 13 de marzo, de Pesca Marítima.

Esta ley, similar a su correspondiente norma estatal (Ley 3/2001 de 23 de marzo, de Pesca Marítima) pretende una explotación adecuada y racional de los caladeros que sea compatible con la conservación de los ecosistemas marinos, para lo que determina (Art.11) que el Gobierno vasco podrá adoptar medidas tendentes a la fijación total del número de embarcaciones que puedan faenar, así como reglamentar el empleo de las diversas artes de pesca, los períodos y vedas, los tamaños mínimos, etcétera.
Dicho de otro modo. Que, sin que quepa efectuar por ello reproche alguno, la administración responsable deberá atender al interés general (protección de los recursos naturales y del ecosistema) controlando y limitando el esfuerzo pesquero en las zonas que le correspondan. Nada puede, entonces, oponerse a algún tipo de disposición normativa o de actuación administrativa en ese sentido. Nada. ¡en principio! pues, como ocurre con tantas otras cosas, la razón que se tenga sobre el ‘qué’ puede llegar a perderse a través del ‘cómo’.

En efecto, cualquier medida administrativa limitativa de los derechos subjetivos o intereses legítimos de los particulares (como es, por ejemplo, la retirada de las licencias de pesca profesional en determinadas zonas) debe llevarse a cabo a través de una resolución motivada «con sucinta referencia de hechos y fundamentos de derecho» (Art. 54 de la Ley 30/1992 de 26 de noviembre, de Régimen Jurídico de las Administraciones Públicas y del Procedimiento Administrativo Común). Huelga decir que tal resolución deberá ser, además, escrita y pública.

Si todo esto se ha cumplido en el presente caso, como cabe esperar, alguien debería darlo a conocer (en la página web del Gobierno vasco, desde luego, no aparece reseña alguna) y de ese modo ‘desfacer el entuerto’ que supone contemplar cómo aparentemente las medidas que se adoptan para la protección de medio ambiente marino en las costas de Vizcaya son de aplicación ‘a los de fuera’ pero no ‘a los de aquí’.
Las empresas son por naturaleza competitivas, incluidas las dedicadas a la pesca. Los pescadores, como todos los demás, deberían actuar en el ejercicio de su profesión guiados por una clara conciencia ecológica, pero la conciencia es algo deseable, no exigible. Las cofradías, a pesar de su (arcaica) consideración como corporaciones de derecho público sin ánimo de lucro, no son en realidad otra cosa que patronales de las que no cabe esperar un comportamiento propio de ONG. Las cofradías persiguen su particular interés, ni más ni menos.

La defensa de los intereses generales recae, para bien o para mal, en los hombros de la Administración. Son los gobiernos (cántabro y vasco en este caso) los obligados a realizar el interés general, no los intereses de ‘los suyos’. Que los pescadores, profesionales o aficionados, si no se pusiera coto a su actividad, esquilmarían el mar es evidente. Que las medidas para evitarlo deben ser, además de eficaces, justas y no discriminatorias, también.

All over the world, protesters are engaged in a heroic battle with reality. They block roads, picket fuel depots, throw missiles and turn over cars in an effort to hold it at bay. The oil is running out and governments, they insist, must do something about it. When they’ve sorted it out, what about the fact that the days are getting shorter? What do we pay our taxes for?

The latest people to join these surreal protests are the world’s fishermen. They are on strike in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Japan, and demonstrating in scores of maritime countries. Last month in Brussels they threw rocks and flares at the police, who have been conspiring with the world’s sedimentary basins to keep the price of oil high. The fishermen warn that if something isn’t done to help them, thousands could be forced to scrap their boats and hang up their nets. It’s an appalling prospect, which we should greet with heartfelt indifference.

Just as the oil price now seems to be all that stands between us and runaway climate change, it is also the only factor which offers a glimmer of hope to the world’s marine ecosystems. No east Asian government was prepared to conserve the stocks of tuna; now one-third of the tuna boats in Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea will stay in dock for the next few months because they can’t afford to sail. The unsustainable quotas set on the US Pacific seaboard won’t be met this year, because the price of oil is rising faster than the price of fish. The indefinite strike called by Spanish fishermen is the best news European fisheries have had for years. Beam trawlermen – who trash the seafloor and scoop up a massive bycatch of unwanted species – warn that their industry could collapse within a year. Hurray to that too.

It would, of course, be better for everyone if these unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear. The EU has a programme for taking fishing boats out of service – the tonnage of the European fleet has fallen by 5% since 1999 – but the decline in boats is too slow to overtake the decline in stocks. Every year the EU, like every other fishery authority, tries to accommodate its surplus boats by setting quotas higher than those proposed by its scientific advisers, and every year the population of several species is pressed a little closer to extinction.

The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it. Over seven years, European taxpayers will be giving this industry €3.8bn. Some of this money is used to take boats out of service and to find other jobs for fishermen; but the rest is used to equip boats with new engines and new gear, to keep them on the water, to modernise ports and landing sites; and to promote and market the catch. Except for the funds used to re-train fishermen or help them into early retirement, there is no justification for this spending. At least farmers can argue – often falsely – that they are the “stewards of the countryside”. But what possible argument is there for keeping more fishermen afloat than the fish population can bear?

The EU says its spending will reduce fishing pressure and help fishermen adopt greener methods. In reality, it is delaying the decline of the industry and allowing it to defy ecological limits for as long as possible. If the member states want to protect the ecosystem, it’s a good deal cheaper to legislate than to pay. Our fishing policies, like those of almost all maritime nations, are a perfect parable of commercial stupidity and short-termism, helping an industry to destroy its long-term prospects for the sake of immediate profit.

But the fishermen only demand more. The headline on this week’s Fishing News is “Thanks for Nothing!”, bemoaning the British government’s refusal to follow France, Spain and Italy in handing out fuel subsidies. But why the heck should it? The Scottish fishing secretary, Richard Lochhead, demands that the government in Westminster “open the purse strings”. He also insists that new money is “not tied to decommissioning”: in other words no more boats should be taken off the water. Is this really a service to the industry, or only to its most short-sighted members?

I have a leaked copy of the draft proposal that European states will discuss on Thursday. It’s a disaster. Some of the boats which, under existing agreements, will be scrapped and turned into artificial reefs, permanently reducing the size of the fleet, can now be replaced with smaller vessels. The EU will pay costs and salaries for crews stranded by the fuel crisis, so that they stay in business and can start fishing again when the price falls. Member states will be able to shell out more money (€100,000 instead of €30,000 per boat) without breaking state aid rules. They can hand out new grants for replacing old equipment with more fuel-efficient gear. The proposal seems to be aimed at ensuring that the industry collapses through lack of fish rather than lack of fuel. The fishermen won’t go down without taking the ecosystem with them.

What makes the draft document so dumb is that in some regions, especially in British waters, the industry is just beginning to turn. While Spanish, French and Italian fishermen clamour for a resumption of bluefin tuna fishing – knowing that if they are allowed to fish now this will be the last season ever – around the UK it has begun to dawn on some fishermen that there might be an association between the survival of the fish and the survival of the fishing.

Prompted by Young’s seafood and some of the supermarkets, who in turn have been harried by environmental groups, some of the biggest British fisheries have applied for eco-labels from the Marine Stewardship Council, which sets standards for how fish are caught. Fishermen around the UK also seem to be taking the law more seriously, and at last to be showing some interest in obscure issues such as spawning grounds and juvenile fish (which, believe it or not, turn out to have a connection to future fish stocks). By ensuring that far too many boats, and far too many desperate fishermen, stay on the water, and that the remaining quotas are stretched too thinly, the EU will slow down or even reverse the greening of the industry.

Why is this issue so hard to resolve? Why does every representative of a fishing region believe he must defend his constituents’ right to ensure that their children have nothing to inherit? Why do the leaders of the fishermen’s associations feel the need always to denounce the scientists who say that fish stocks decline if they are hit too hard? If this is a microcosm of how human beings engage with the environment, the prospect for humanity is not a happy one.

Shiver me timbers, boys and girls, we is awash in a sea of pirates down here in the Southern Ocean and it’s time for a parley to do a little ‘splaining on the subject. This ocean now rivals the 17th century Caribbean for reported acts of piracy. The only thing lacking is the Sea Shepherd member Orlando Bloom.Japanese whalers are accusing the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace crew members of being pirates. Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace are accusing the whalers of being pirates. The whalers and Greenpeace are accusing Sea Shepherd of being pirates. The Japanese government is throwing the word piracy about as freely as the governor of Jamaica once did.

No one has sunk any ships, looted any cargos, kidnapped any damsels (just a couple of blokes) or forced anyone to walk the plank yet – but listening to the rhetoric, the public could be forgiven from thinking these activities are ravaging the Southern main.

My ship, the Steve Irwin, does fly a modern version of the Jolie Rouge, the original name of the banner that evolved into the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger. We decided years ago that if people were going to call us pirates, we would adopt our own version, and designed the crossed Neptune trident and shepherd’s staff with the skull.

As soon as we hoisted that black flag, kids from around the world began to write to us in support. Our Jolly Roger hats and shirts have become our most popular merchandise. Why? Because there is a romance associated with piracy that is separate from the reality. Some pirates were noble heroes and some were dastardly villains. It’s all a matter of perspective. If you love whales, we be heroes; but if you eat whales then we be pirates.

Back in the 17th century it was not the British navy that shut down piracy in the Caribbean. The military and the politicians were not interested. Piracy was finally shut down in the Spanish Main by the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. It took a pirate to end piracy. His reward was to be appointed governor of Jamaica, where he was able to pilfer more booty through politics than he ever did from the deck of a ship.

There are pirates of profit, like the Japanese; pirates of opportunity, like the politicians; and pirates of compassion, like Sea Shepherd. It is a little difficult to cast Sea Shepherd’s unpaid volunteers, selflessly trying to save the lives of whales, as ruthless pirates.

On the other hand, the Japanese whalers are illegally stealing and killing whales from a sanctuary and territory that is supposed to be under the sovereignty of Australia. The whalers have also taken hostages, demanding conditions for their return.

So why do those pirates in Canberra consistently refuse to protect Australian territory from illegal foreign exploitation? The answer is the same for those politicians today as it was for British politicians in 1650 – there’s money to be made, under the table and through the back door; there are trade agreements to consider; and some pirates – especially the Japanese – have good public relations firms and powerful financial backing. So we have Australia condemning the Japanese and doing very little to stop their whaling fleet’s ruthless plundering.

At least proper piracy has a long list of renowned and admirable practitioners: John Paul Jones, who founded the navies of both the US and Russia; Jean LaFitte, who stood with General Andrew Jackson in defence of New Orleans; and Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, knighted by Elizabeth I.

I stand in honourable company as a modern-day pirate, though I’ve not shot anyone, burned any ships, looted any cargos or kidnapped anyone. We are also pirates with a sense of humour and a moral code of non-violence. In 30 years of eco-piracy we have never injured a single poacher, though we’ve sent nine whalers to the bottom. Instead of cannon balls, our guns shoot coconut cream and chocolate pie-filling. We toss stink bombs instead of grenades and we are so non-violent we don’t even eat meat or fish on our ships. No fish, fowl or mammals have died in the making of our high seas campaigns.

What we do is defend the whales from illegal slaughter by ruthless and merciless killers. If people want to call us pirates for that, we’re proud to be so. We have whales to save and Japanese ships to attack.

The change in public opinion about whaling has been dramatic. Thirty years ago Australian vessels would hunt sperm whales with the government’s blessing – but just two days ago an Australian customs ship, in Antarctic waters to video Japanese whaling activities, played a key role in winning the freedom of two anti-whaling activists. The hostage crisis began when they boarded a Japanese harpoon boat on Tuesday. Because Paul Watson, the leader of the conservation group Sea Shepherd, refused to cease his disruption of the whaling fleet, the Japanese refused to return the activists. But the stalemate was broken two days later when the Australian ship agreed to accept, and transfer, them.

In 1977 the Australian government, in the face of Greenpeace protests, appointed the retired judge Sydney Frost to head an inquiry into whaling. As a concerned Australian and a philosophy professor working on the ethics of our treatment of animals, I made a submission: whaling should stop not because whales are endangered, but because they are social mammals with big brains, capable of enjoying life and feeling pain – not only physical pain, but distress at the loss of group members.

Whales cannot be humanely killed: they are too large – even with explosive harpoons it is difficult to hit the right spot. And because whalers are reluctant to use large amounts of explosive, which would destroy valuable oil or flesh, harpooned whales typically die slowly and painfully. If there were some life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the ethical case could be countered. But everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical.

Frost agreed that the methods were inhumane, remarking on “the real possibility that we are dealing with a creature which has a remarkably developed brain and a high degree of intelligence”. Malcolm Fraser’s conservative government accepted his recommendation that whaling be stopped, and Australia soon became an anti-whaling nation.

While Japan has suspended its plan to kill humpback whales, its whaling fleet will still kill a thousand whales, mostly smaller minkes. Japan justifies this as “research” – but the research seems to be aimed at building a scientific case for commercial whaling; so, if whaling is unethical, then the research is both unnecessary and unethical.

The Japanese say that he discussion of whaling should be carried out on the basis of evidence, without “emotion”. They think that humpback numbers have increased sufficiently for the killing of 50 to pose no danger to the species. On this narrow point, they might be right. But no amount of science can tell us whether or not to kill whales. Indeed, the desire to kill whales is no less motivated by “emotion” than opposition to it. Eating whales is not necessary for health or nutrition; it is a tradition some Japanese are emotionally attached to.

They have one argument that is not easily dismissed. They claim that western countries are just trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the Japanese. The best response to this argument is that the wrongness of causing needless suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific. (It is, for instance, a precept of Japanese Buddhism.)

But western nations are in a weak position to make this response, because they inflict so much unnecessary suffering on animals – through culling (the Australian slaughter of kangaroos), hunting and factory farms. The west will have little defence against the charge of cultural bias until it addresses needless animal suffering in its own back yard.

The fish lay on a table. The crowd at the barriers stood six deep. They held up cellphones and cameras to take its picture.

The fish had been bled, cleaned and beheaded. Alive, it had weighed about 500 pounds. What remained was still huge: a cylinder tapered at both ends; a cold, fat cigar; a suspended teardrop. It shone like polished steel. It was an awesome sight, one of the most prized fish in the ocean: a bluefin tuna.

Two days earlier it had been swimming off Spain. Now it was in a Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, N.J. A man with a microphone and rubber gloves patted its smooth belly and flexed its fins. He showed how the pectoral fins tucked into grooves in the torso, for speed.

It was like an auto show, with seafood: the Giant Bluefin Tuna Cut Performance, which comes to Mitsuwa Marketplace one weekend a year. Shoppers huddled close to ogle enormous fish, hear the spiel and buy bluefin sashimi at $54.99 a pound.

This fish, the man said, was 8 to 10 years old, young for a bluefin, which reaches spawning at 12. How lucky we were to see and soon eat such a precious commodity. He was right: unless you are an ocean fisherman, a seafood wholesaler or another bluefin, you won’t often encounter something so rare and beautiful before it is disassembled.

A man in a blue T-shirt pulled the pectoral fin out and hacked it off. Another mounted the table with a knife as long as a sword. He thrust it in and pulled along the lateral line, cutting through bones: click, click, click. Another long pass along the belly, and one quadrant was loose. It took two men to lift the dark red log away, to gasps and applause.

With the ribs exposed, other men scraped the bones with spoons, piling soft flesh onto plastic platters. Massive hunks were swiftly downsized: from ham to steak slab to sushi sliver. The fish, in many hundreds of pieces, was wrapped, weighed, stickered and passed to thrusting hands.

The bluefin tuna is at the pinnacle of the sushi and sashimi kingdom, and suffers greatly for it. Its numbers have plunged 90 percent since the 1970s. The bluefin is nearing collapse, and its abundant misfortune is passed on to countless other creatures — the unwanted fish, turtles and seabirds killed as bycatch, the immense tonnage of smaller fish vacuumed up to fatten captured bluefin in Mediterranean “farms.”

Governments and conservationists have long sounded the alarm, but no one really controls the open seas or has found the limits of the human appetite for luxury seafood. An international conference in Turkey last month could have slowed the carnage, but didn’t.

In a book about another ferocious and majestic fish, “Blues,” John Hersey defended fishing for sustenance while mourning the unhinged global slaughter that shreds fragile webs of ocean life. “We’d better marvel while we can,” he wrote.

If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them.A study in this week’s edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean’s megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%. Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone.

You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from eating shark’s fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of respectable newspapers.

In terms of its impact on both ecology and animal welfare, shark fishing could be the planet’s most brutal industry. While some sharks are taken whole, around 70 million are caught every year for their fins. In many cases, the fins are cut off and the shark is dumped, alive, back into the sea. It can take several weeks to die. The longlines and gillnets used to catch them snare whales, dolphins, turtles and albatrosses. The new paper shows that shark catching also causes a cascade of disasters through the foodchain. Since the large sharks were removed from coastal waters in the western Atlantic, the rays they preyed on have multiplied tenfold and have wiped out all the main commercial species of shellfish.

Much of this trade originates in east Asia, where shark’s fin soup – which sells for up to £100 a bowl – is a sign of great wealth and rank, like caviar in Europe. The global demand for shark fins is rising by about 5% a year. But if you believe that this is yet another problem for which the Chinese can be blamed and the Europeans absolved, consider this: the world’s major importer (and presumably re-exporter) of sharks is Spain. Its catches have increased ninefold since the 1990s and it has resisted – in most cases successfully – every European and global effort to conserve its prey.

The Spanish defend their right to kill rare sharks as fiercely as the Japanese defend their right to kill rare whales. The fishing industry, traditionally dominated by Galician fascists, exerts an extraordinary degree of leverage over the socialist government. The Spanish government, in turn, usually gets its way in Europe. The EU, for example, claims to have banned the finning of sharks. But the ratio it sets for the weight of fins to the weight of bodies landed by fishermen is 5%. As edible fins make up only 2% of the shark’s bodyweight, this means that two-and-a-half finless sharks can be returned to the water for every one that comes ashore. Even this is not enough for the Spanish, whose MEPs have been demanding that the percentage is raised.

Northern European civilisation doesn’t come out of this very well either. In 2001, the British government promised to protect a critically endangered species called the angel shark, whose population in British waters was collapsing. It ducked and dithered until there was no longer a problem: the shark is now extinct in the North Sea.

Why do we find it so hard to stand up to fishermen? This tiny industrial lobby seems to have governments in the palm of its hand. Every year, the EU sets catch limits for all species way above the levels its scientists recommend. Governments know that they are allowing the fishing industry to destroy itself and to destroy the ecosystem on which it depends. But nothing is sacred, as long as it is underwater. In November, the United Nations failed even to produce a resolution urging a halt to trawling on the sea mounts at the bottom of the ocean. These ecosystems, which are only just beginning to be explored, harbour great forests of deepwater corals and sponges, in which thousands of unearthly species hide. But we can’t summon the will to stop the handful of boats that are ripping them to shreds.

The power of the fishermen’s lobby explains the lack of protection for marine predators. Though fish species far outnumber mammal species, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species protects 654 kinds of mammal and just 77 kinds of fish. Trade in only nine of these is subject to a complete ban.

The rules that do get passed are ignored by both fishermen and governments. On Sunday, I stood with a fisheries manager on the banks of a famous sea trout river in Wales. Perhaps I should say a famous former sea trout river in Wales. For the past four years, scarcely any fish – sea trout or salmon – have appeared. He was not sure why, but he told me that trawlers in the Irish Sea land boxes of what appear to be bass; hidden under the top layer are salmon and sea trout. No one seems to care enough to stop them: government monitoring appears to be non-existent. The pressure group Oceana walks into European ports whenever there’s a public holiday and finds hundreds of miles of illegal drift nets stowed on the boats. Where are the official inspectors?

Of course, governments plead poverty. Which makes you wonder why they decided last year to allocate €3.8bn to the destruction of the marine environment. This is what you and I are now paying in subsidies to keep the ocean wreckers afloat. The money buys new engines, and boats for young fishermen hoping to expand their business. For the same cost you could put a permanent inspector on every large fishing vessel in European waters.

If we don’t act, we know what will happen. Another paper published in Science suggests that on current trends we’ll see the global collapse of all the species currently caught by commercial fishermen by 2048. Yet, if we catch the ecosystems in time – with temporary fishing bans and the creation of large marine reserves – they can recover with remarkable speed. I hope British ministers, now drafting a new marine bill, have read this study.

But beyond a certain point the collapse is likely to be permanent. Off the coast of Namibia, where the fishery has crashed as a result of over-harvesting, we have a glimpse of the future. A paper in Current Biology reports that the ecosystem is approaching a “trophic dead-end”. As the fish have been mopped up they have been replaced by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one. The jellyfish eat the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably irreversible. We have entered, the paper tells us, the “era of jellyfish ascendancy”.

It’s a good symbol. The jellyfish represents the collapse of the ecosystem and the spinelessness of the people charged with protecting it.

Mientras la flota cantábrica de bajura sigue sumida en una profunda crisis estructural, la Política Pesquera de la UE continúa sin diferenciar debidamente las problemáticas pesqueras de las distintas flotas en el contexto comunitario, optando hasta la fecha por pautas de reflexión incompletas que desdibujan cualquier aproximación de contenido social real al fenómeno pesquero en clave de sostenibilidad. Buen ejemplo de ello es el caso de la escasez de capturas de anchoa junto a la necesidad de establecer un cierre de la pesca de esta especie, los intercambios ilegales de cuotas entre Francia y Portugal o la proliferación, aún hoy, en aguas atlánticas de redes de deriva prohibidas formalmente desde enero de 2002. Todo ello, unido a cuestiones políticas y jurídicas de distinta naturaleza, ha derivado en la constatación de un hecho que los pescadores conocen a ciencia cierta: la existencia de límites en las pesquerías de nuestros océanos, tal y como sucede con todos y cada uno de los recursos naturales del planeta. Ello exige, una vez más, establecer o renovar los compromisos adquiridos en la materia para garantizar la sostenibilidad de los recursos marinos.

El principio de integración ambiental en las restantes políticas comunitarias se ha fortalecido al integrarse la misma en el artículo 6 del Tratado de la Comunidad Europea tras las reformas introducidas por el Tratado de Amsterdam. Sin embargo, la política pesquera de la UE sigue sin integrar debidamente este principio fundamental en la política pesquera, cuyo análisis se mantiene casi como estrictamente económico.

En este contexto y en el de la propia globalización económica, el caso de la flota cantábrica de bajura es claramente sintomático sobre la situación de escasez de recursos que se vive en el Golfo de Bizkaia. Además del paulatino descenso de los stocks y las capturas, el sector debe enfrentarse a factores externos que distorsionan la gestión sostenible de los recursos marinos. Para hacer frente a esta circunstancia, la participación del sector en el complicado fenómeno comunitario constituye una necesidad inaplazable. El derecho internacional, mientras tanto, se muestra impotente para lograr la ejecución de sus dictados, a pesar de sus notables avances retóricos en materia de protección de los mares y sus recursos.

En el plano de la UE, vienen siendo habituales las sentencias del Tribunal de Justicia de la Comunidad (TJCE) que constatan la violación, más o menos sistemática, del derecho europeo vigente. Entre otras, la sentencia del TJCE de 12-7-2005. En ella, por ejemplo, se demuestra que los inspectores comprobaron la presencia de peces de talla inferior a la permitida en cada una de las seis misiones que realizaron. En particular, constataron la existencia de un mercado de merluzas de talla inferior a la permitida, que se ofrecían, en contra de las normas de comercialización establecidas en el reglamento nº 2406/96. Por tanto, la sentencia llega a confirmar la existencia, en este caso en Francia, «de una práctica de venta de peces de talla inferior a la permitida sin que exista una intervención eficaz de las autoridades nacionales competentes, práctica que es tan constante y general que puede poner en grave peligro, por su efecto acumulativo, los objetivos del régimen comunitario de conservación y de gestión de los recursos pesqueros».

Además, «la similitud y la reiteración de las situaciones constatadas en todos los informes permiten considerar que estos casos sólo pueden deberse a la insuficiencia estructural de las medidas aplicadas por las autoridades francesas y, por ende, a un incumplimiento de la obligación de realizar controles efectivos, proporcionados y disuasorios que la normativa comunitaria impone a dichas autoridades». Ello supone, con toda claridad, la violación del artículo 228 del Tratado de la Comunidad Europea por parte de Francia, «al no garantizar un control de las actividades pesqueras conforme con las exigencias previstas en las disposiciones comunitarias». El TJCE considera, con carácter general, que la obligación de los Estados miembros de velar por que las infracciones de la normativa comunitaria sean objeto de sanciones efectivas, proporcionadas y disuasorias reviste una importancia esencial en el ámbito de la pesca. En efecto, si las autoridades competentes de un Estado miembro se abstuvieran sistemáticamente de ejercitar acciones de esta índole contra los responsables de dichas infracciones, correrían grave peligro tanto la conservación y la gestión de los recursos pesqueros como la ejecución uniforme de la política pesquera común.

El propio TJCE sostiene, igualmente, algunas de las claves fundamentales de la gestión de los recursos naturales en aguas comunitarias: «uno de los elementos clave de la política pesquera común consiste en la explotación racional y responsable de los recursos acuáticos de forma sostenible, en condiciones económicas y sociales apropiadas. En este contexto, la protección de los juveniles resulta determinante para la recuperación de las poblaciones. Por tanto, la inobservancia de las medidas técnicas de conservación previstas por la política común, en especial las exigencias en materia de talla mínima de los peces, constituye una grave amenaza para la conservación de determinadas especies y de determinados caladeros y pone en peligro la consecución del objetivo esencial de la política pesquera común».

En suma, los criterios normativos y jurisprudenciales en esta materia aparecen bastante claros, como consecuencia directa de los límites existentes en las pesquerías de todo el mundo. Otra cosa es que el cumplimiento real y efectivo de estos parámetros sigue estando pendiente en muchos contextos. Con ello, la política pesquera, sea cual sea su origen, debe decantarse por reafirmar la necesidad de cumplimiento de la normativa por parte de los Estados miembros y del sector pesquero en general. Ello requiere una visión sostenible y responsable de la explotación de las pesquerías en la UE, muy en la línea de cuanto se apunta en las sentencias del TJCE.

Este ejercicio de responsabilidad colectiva en la defensa de las pesquerías redundará en la protección de los derechos que necesariamente asisten a las comunidades pesqueras tradicionales sobre los recursos del mar. El fenómeno de la globalización económica no debiera encontrar apoyos jurídicos para el expolio de los océanos y, con él, el ahogo social de quienes necesitan del mar para subsistir.

Las masivas intervenciones regionales, estatales y comunitarias destinadas a rejuvenecer la flota pesquera en esta última década habrán conseguido, sin duda, incrementar la eficiencia y capacidad del esfuerzo pesquero de las distintas flotas de bajura y altura. Sin embargo, este desbordante potencial extractivo junto con el incesante mercadeo de cuotas pesqueras nacionales en el ámbito de la Unión Europea no han contribuido sino a dilapidar unos recursos marinos que se asumían como eternamente inagotables. Y, cómo no, llegaron las malas noticias.

La desaparición de la anchoa de nuestro mar constituye otro síntoma más de la grave y decadente situación en la que están sumidos los recursos biológicos de la plataforma continental. En estos momentos, más que arrojar balones fuera y culpar de todo a las consecuencias del naufragio del Prestige, es necesario que realicemos un ejercicio de autocrítica.

Cuando, desde el mismo sector pesquero hasta las más altas instancias europeas, existía al inicio de la campaña de la anchoa un conocimiento previo de la precariedad y fragilidad en la que se encontraba la especie, ¿porqué nos se tomaron las medidas oportunas? ¿Porqué se prefirió apostar a que nuestra mar nos salvaría una vez más de las disputas nacionales sobre las cuotas y privilegios pesqueros? Era, sin duda, más cómodo mandar a los barcos a faenar en vez de soportar la creciente presión de un sector en crisis.

Debemos ser conscientes de que realmente estamos aniquilando la gallina de los huevos de oro y, a menos que reaccionemos con contundencia, el bonito del Norte pasará a ser “del Sur”, para, a continuación, desaparecer. Como lo hizo el besugo y lo hará el verdel.

Como continuemos pescando al máximo de nuestras posibilidades (ya que, “si no, lo harán nuestros vecinos”), vamos de cráneo. La recuperación de nuestro ecosistema marino requiere de una planificación transfronteriza y global.

Es de sobra conocida, y el último informe de Greenpeace no hace sino avalarlo, la labor destructiva ejercida por artes de pesca como las de arrastre. También nos resulta familiar la falta de discriminación de las redes de cerco actuales, donde entra absolutamente de todo y tienen un elevado porcentaje de desperdicio.

Tal y como lo manifiesta el presidente de la Federación de Cofradías de Guipúzcoa, Jaime Tejedor, las importaciones de pescado de otros están arrojando los precios por los suelos y amenazan con llevar a la ruina al conjunto del sector de bajura. Sin embargo, el cliente final, cuyo apetito por la proteína de pescado no ha hecho sino aumentar en los últimos años, está pagando cada vez más por ella. ¿Qué es lo que está ocurriendo en la cadena de intermediación?, ¿cuáles son los factores que generan este desequilibrio?

Las artes de pesca tradicionales, a pesar de ser garantes de la sostenibilidad de nuestro ecosistema marino, están cada vez más infravaloradas y desaparecerán irreversiblemente a menos que se tomen cartas en el asunto.

Debemos de dejar de pensar exclusivamente en clave de región o país. Todas estas amenazas requieren de esfuerzos globales que, permitiendo la subsistencia del sector pesquero y atajando la precariedad en la que se encuentra, contribuyan a una gestión sensata y racional de los recursos marinos.

Y mientras tanto, nuestro querido Cantábrico languidece sobre un lecho marino arrasado e inhóspito. ¿Hasta cuando lo vamos a permitir? O mejor dicho: Hasta siempre, anchoa.

El pez grande se come al chico, y el hombre se los come todos. El caso de la anchoa del Cantábrico es el cuento de la civilización que no escucha las advertencias de sus Casandras, la historia de la especie que no reacciona ante pequeñas señales de alarma y sólo lo hace cuando ya es demasiado tarde. Pero es también una metáfora de sistemas políticos que no funcionan, del desierto en el que claman los científicos y de la inexorable defunción de ciertos mitos vascos por muerte biológica.

“Es un problema global que ya ha causado enfrentamientos armados entre países pesqueros, tiroteos entre pescadores y hambre en el mundo en vías de desarrollo. Si la actual mala gestión continúa, podemos prever un futuro en el que millones de pescadores se quedan sin trabajo. Un futuro en el que los principales consumidores de pescado -sobre todo en los países en vías de desarrollo- pierden acceso a su principal fuente de proteínas. Un futuro en que culturas pesqueras tradicionales, desde Nueva Escocia a Malasia, desaparecen”. Lo decía Peter Weber, investigador del Instituto Worldwatch, en un informe sobre pesca en 1994.

Dieciséis años después de su profecía, la flota del Cantábrico -unos 200 pesqueros- sólo ha podido capturar 720 toneladas de anchoa en esta temporada, en comparación con las 3.000 toneladas que pescó en 2003, el año del naufragio del Prestige y del chapapote. En los años sesenta, la flota levantaba 80.000 toneladas y en el 2001 todavía se capturaron 20.000 toneladas de anchoa. El boquerón ha muerto, o está a punto. Los arratzales, después de reclamar a la UE el cierre urgente de la pesquería, salen hoy a la mar para pescar otras especies, mientras lo hacen también unos 80 arrastreros franceses, en busca de los escasos despojos de la anchoa, en cumplimiento de absurdas componendas políticas en Bruselas.

La cuestión de la anchoa es un caso perfecto para ilustrar las deficiencias del sistema cuasi-federal que tenemos en España y el precio que pagamos por anteponer discusiones bizantinas sobre esencias patrias y nacionalismos casposos a la solución de problemas concretos, léase el boquerón. Al ser la pesca un sector de competencia comunitaria, fue en Bruselas, a finales de 2005, donde se originó el despropósito al que asistimos. El Gobierno vasco, junto a cofradías de pescadores, científicos, ecologistas y la propia Comisión Europea, defendía el establecimiento de una parada biológica (pesca cero) para permitir la recuperación de la especie. Pero el Gobierno de Vitoria no tiene voz en las instituciones de la UE.

El Gobierno español, que es quien se sienta en la mesa del Consejo de Ministros de la UE, compartía inicialmente la tesis de la parada, pero terminó por aceptar una cuota de capturas de esta especie de 5.000 toneladas (4.500 para España y el resto para Francia) en 2006, a cambio de que Francia aceptara que la flota española pueda capturar cebo vivo en la zona de seis millas de sus costas.

La cuestión pone de relieve la necesidad de desdramatizar el debate sobre la participación de las Comunidades Autónomas en la definición de la política española en la Unión Europea. La solución requiere aceptar de una vez por todas la forma cuasi-federal del Estado español y articular mecanismos de coordinación eficaces y estables entre las 17 autonomías y de éstas con el Gobierno central, siguiendo el ejemplo de países como Bélgica, Austria y Alemania. En ellos nadie ve en peligro la existencia del Estado porque éste garantice la participación de los entes federados en la definición de las políticas a nivel nacional y en los debates y negociaciones a nivel comunitario. Abrazar la lealtad constitucional y el espíritu federal que implican estos modelos es la distancia que nos separa de ellos.

En segundo lugar, el agotamiento del caladero de la anchoa tiene que ver también con el papel insignificante que atribuyen los políticos a la voz de los científicos. Aprobar una cuota de 5.000 toneladas cuando todos los informes científicos demostraban que la biomasa de la especie estaba desde hacía al menos dos años por debajo del límite de subsistencia, resulta imprudente y contrario a la más tímida aplicación del principio de precaución ecológica. “En caso de que el stock se halle efectivamente en torno o por debajo de la biomasa límite, se desconoce la dinámica del recurso y su capacidad de recuperación”, dice el informe de 26 de mayo del centro de investigación marina Azti. Sabemos que jugamos con fuego y nos da igual, cual aprendices de brujo.

El ex vicepresidente de Estados Unidos, Al Gore, se queja amargamente en su reciente documental sobre el cambio climático (An Inconvenient Truth, en su título original) de que la voluntad política no es sensible ni suele movilizarse ante señales de alerta sobre pequeñas alteraciones de hoy que apuntan a cambios dramáticos mañana. Y actuar mañana suele ser demasiado tarde.

La desaparición de la anchoa supondría la extinción física de una nueva seña de identidad vasca, como ya ocurrió antes con el lobo o las ballenas del Cantábrico, que sólo existen en los escudos de ciertas villas vascas, y como podría ocurrir con el roble si siguen avanzando los pinares, la desertificación de la península y la explotación forestal. Quizás no esté lejos el día en que sea la especie humana la que esté en peligro de extinción. Ese día, el último nacionalista vasco y el último centralista español seguirán discutiendo sobre los derechos irrenunciables de sus respectivas naciones, ambas desaparecidas, y la última librería venderá el último ejemplar del Manual del ecologista coñazo.

When the International Whaling Commission convenes tomorrow, its worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling will be under attack. It should be. The time has come for regulations that recognize that whaling, handled right and in moderation, can be sustainable.

The moratorium, in place since 1985, has accomplished a great deal. Most countries, including the United States, have given up whaling, and as a result, many species that were dwindling are now on the rebound.

But there are also loopholes that a handful of persistent whaling nations have managed to slip through. Norway has never recognized the moratorium; Japan and Iceland claim that they kill whales for research, though they sell surplus meat for food. Now these countries are clamoring to hunt larger species and to do so in international waters.

In April 2004, I spent two weeks on the 53-foot Norwegian whaling ship Sofie, living with its five-man crew. I saw the Norwegians shoot six minke whales with grenade-tipped harpoons, drag them to the boat and kill them with blasts to the skull from a .458-caliber rifle. Once onboard, the whales dwarfed us all. But at an average of 25 feet and seven tons, the minke is small — for a whale.

There are 120,000 to 182,000 minkes in the North Atlantic. Norwegian whalers hunt them every spring and summer along the fjord-carved coast of Arctic Norway, shooting 639 in 2005 and selling their red, beef-like meat for about $10 a pound. Given the animal’s healthy numbers, killing and eating limited numbers of minke whales is sustainable, despite the Norwegian quota increase to 1,052 whales for 2006.

Whalers cite success with the minke programs to make their case for going after larger, more profitable species. But minkes have never been heavily hunted; as a result, their numbers far exceed those of larger whales like humpback or fin, two species Japan plans to hunt in 2006.

For its part, the International Whaling Commission, which is essentially a trade organization founded to preserve whale numbers for future hunting — not for conservation — is predisposed to serve whalers, not the public good. That’s why it has failed to come up with a nuanced framework that can accommodate both environmental and economic needs.

The commission focuses on specific whale numbers rather than on general ocean health. But the old saw that all whales are in danger of extinction simply isn’t true. Seven of the mammal’s 37 species are still endangered, but only two are in serious trouble. Environmentalists need not bother with saving every whale. They’d be better off coming up with a plan to save the oceans.

Whales can become endangered by the loss of other ocean life that sustains them; and when whales are hunted, rather than allowed to die from natural causes and feed back into the ecosystem, that endangers the habitat, which in turn endangers whales. The debate over how to save the whales, therefore, needs to focus on both whaling and ocean health.

With proper management, whaling need not cause extinctions or deplete ecosystems, but as it stands, the fox is guarding the chicken coop. Whales need at least 50 more years to repopulate before hunting of larger species should resume. The commission, however, has proven incapable of allowing stocks to replenish fully, as we’ve seen with the moratorium’s sloppy loopholes. Moreover, whaling nations have allegedly influenced the votes of commission members in exchange for development aid.

A more disinterested body needs to govern whale hunting, and I suggest the United Nations. Fifty years would give the United Nations time to configure a global fishing commission — and the International Whaling Commission time to dismantle. Limited whaling of certain species would continue, while the others would be given a rest. Conservation is the best option not just for the environment, but for the fishing industry as well. Whaling, however distasteful, needs to be reinvented with global resources — not just whales — in mind.