1998 Year of the Ocean Ocean Living Resources 



and capture technology, all tend to promote operations and investments in the global fisheries 

 sector. The resulting overfishing and overcapacity has placed major and difficult responsibilities 

 on governments, especially with respect to management and fisheries enforcement. These trends 

 are exacerbated by the tendency of many governments to continue to promote fishery 

 development in the absence of meaningful access controls. 



In the United States, the passage of the 1976 Magnuson Fishery Conservation and 

 Management Act was intended to allow the domestic fishing fleet to replace foreign fishing 

 within the area between the states' outer territorial sea limits (usually three miles) and 200 miles 

 seaward — the Exclusive Economic Zone. However, the fisheries management system at that time 

 was not operating under the premise that these resources were threatened by overexploitation. In 

 the late 1970s to late 1980s, managers did not adequately consider the impact that fishing, albeit 

 by domestic fishermen rather than foreign vessels, would have on fish stocks. As a result, 

 domestic fishing capacity increases were generally unconstrained and even encouraged. By the 

 early 1990s, one objective of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act had been 

 accomplished — foreign fishing was gone. However, a second objective — to stop overfishing — 

 was far from being met. By the 1990s, the realization that overfishing could occur on a large 

 scale, and actually had occurred, was reaching an audience beyond the scientific community in 

 the United States and throughout the world. 



In the past two decades, the world's fishing nations have so excessively increased their 

 efforts that global fishing capacity in the traditional fisheries is estimated to be 30 percent greater 

 than required to take the world catch (Garcia and Newton 1995). In the United States, it has been 

 estimated that about one- third of all the fisheries for which sufficient data exist are overfished. 

 There is no similar calculation for the level of overcapacity in U.S. fisheries, but it is assumed to 

 be significant. A good example is the halibut fishery in the Gulf of Alaska, which before 

 regulations were instituted that limited access, saw 8,000 boats vying for the catch quota in two 

 24-hour marathon fishing derbies. 



In summary, overfishing has become a global problem. Evidence indicates that 

 overfishing and overcapacity exist worldwide: 



• in the countries that are developed, traditional fishing powers; 



• in resource-rich coastal countries that have tended to overestimate the potential of 

 these resources and have failed to institute adequate safeguards; 



• in countries in transition from centralized to market-based economies where 

 governments are struggling to reorder investment and economic policies in the 

 fisheries sector; and 



• in developing countries that have promoted their fishery sectors too aggressively, or 

 where demographic changes have provided incentives for destructive fishing 

 practices. 



C-18 



