Stop Subsidizing the Depletion of Ocean Fish.

Several forces are pushing the world's major fish stocks toward the brink of collapse - the relentless growth in demand for seafood, for example, and the fact that there arc just too many boats pursuing too few fish. But currently, the problem that seems to be attracting the most attention is the use of flags of convenience (FOCs) - a perfectly legal practice that nevertheless makes a mockery of international law.

International law requires fishing vessels, like all ships, to be enrolled in some national registry, as a means of identifying the ship and tracking its activities. But there's nothing to prevent unscrupulous owners from registering a ship under the flag of a nation that has not signed or does not abide by the fishing treaties. In effect, such a ship becomes exempt from international conservation requirements. The fishing treaties have many imperfections - in both their stated objectives and in the degree of compliance - but they have allowed for real progress, and that is now being seriously undercut by FOC fishing. In the waters surrounding Antarctica, for example, more than half of the illegally caught Patagonian tooth-fish was brought aboard FOC vessels. (The tooth fish is the latest seafood fad following in the wake of the orange roughy, whose populations have now largely collapsed from overfishing.) In the western Atlantic, illegal FOC fishing accounts for up to 20 percent of the catch of the beleaguered bluefin tuna.

And the problem is getting worse. Since 1980, the number of nations maintaining FOC registries has increased from 11 to 27. About 10 percent of the world's fishing vessels are now registered with FOC nations. Soon, even the landlocked nation of Mongolia is expected to be selling its flag to fishers. It's not surprising, then, that the world's largest fishing nations - notably Japan, the United States, Great Britain, and Spain - are growing increasingly concerned about FOC fishing. In March 1999, at a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization meeting, more than 100 fisheries ministers endorsed the idea of some sort of crack-down on the practice.

But simply going after the FOC nations is not going to solve the problem. After all, the companies that own the ships are generally based in countries that have signed the treaties - and of course, that's where most of the seafood ends up as well. You could say that the FOC crisis is just a symptom of an underlying disease: the international fishing economy has developed in a way that encourages people to buy their way out of the system and flout the international rules that are supposed to govern it.

Clearly those fisheries ministers were right to be outraged by the FOC situation. But there is something just as outrageous going on in their own ports. Japan, the United States, the European Union states and other major fishing countries are subsidizing their fishing fleets at the rate of $20 billion annually. Most of those fleets are already far over capacity. It's time to start putting a good deal of that money into improved treaty compliance and other measures that will help take the pressure off the world's fisheries. If we're serious about ending overfishing, a good first step would be to stop subsidizing it.

Notown