Humankind is being challenged to rethink its relationship with the natural world.  The years ahead are going to have to be very different from the years behind.  Ever since we, as a species unlike any other, stepped outside the confines of the Earth’s natural systems and began to manipulate them for our own ends, it has been inevitable that one day consumption on demand for a growing population was going to hit the buffers.  Planet Earth is a very big place – but it is finite and so are the resources on it.  Some of those resources – metals for instance -  are non-renewable.  Others which are renewable – such as oil – take geological time scales to form.  It is estimated, for instance, that it took 3 million years to produce the amount of oil we use in one year!  With the non-renewables we only get one chance – hence the need to recycle.  However, miraculously, life on planet Earth throws up a whole host of regularly renewable resources, most of which have as their primary ingredients carbon and sunlight!  Food is clearly the most important of these.  A lot of our food now comes from plants and animals which we grow to eat on land – but in the sea we are still essentially hunter gatherers.

It is estimated that about one-sixth of the world’s protein is provided by fish.  Worryingly, this level of exploitation is clearly unsustainable.  Any number of studies in the last ten years have spelt out this message very clearly.  The evidence shows that at least one quarter of marine fish stocks are overharvested.  In many sea areas, the total weight of fish available to be captured is less than a tenth of that available before the onset of industrial fishing.  One of the most famous fish stock collapses of all times was on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland.  From 1850 to 1950 the catch of cod was between 100,000 and 300,000 tons per year.  Then we got greedy. By 1970 it had peaked at 800,000 tons.  Today it is dead as a fishery – and not recovering.  This is a pattern broadly replicated across the planet;  since the 1980s the quantity of fish caught by humans has been in decline – despite improvements in technology and increases in effort.  Worse still, the techniques being used to secure this excessive and unsustainable catch are in many instances damaging the wider marine environment, making it less capable of producing more fish for the future.

What does this mean at a local level?  Well, in Europe, we know that most fish stocks are being fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield and that 30% are outside safe biological limits.  This is the tragedy of the Grand Banks being revisited nearer home.  The sea could offer an endless annual harvest, fished within sustainable limits.  Once you start taking more than a species can sustain, you are in a downward spiral.  We are currently in that downward spiral – and also largely in denial about it.

Ahead of us lies a crucial event which will set a radically new direction – or put the final seal on our failure.  The Marine and Coastal Access Act provides for the establishment of ‘ecologically coherent network of well-managed marine protected areas’ in which all marine life, fish included, can thrive.   The decisions we make in responding to the challenges of this laudable aspiration will affect the ability of our descendents to avail themselves of food (and other services) from the sea.   That is a grave responsibility!

The fish we love to eat do not live in isolation in the marine environment.  They are part of the same complex networks which apply on land.  You can’t grow cows and sheep without grass;  you can’t grow cod and mackerel without plankton.  Fish need to live long enough to spawn successfully before being caught.  Their young need nursery areas which offer food and protection before they have any chance of reaching eatable size.  Our present management of the marine environment is diminishing breeding stocks, breaking food chains and destroying nursery areas.  Common sense requires us to change our ways.  Establishing an ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas would be a very good first step.

It is entirely understandable that the main economic beneficiaries of humankind’s unsustainable management of its marine environment should be concerned about change.  Of course it will affect them – how can it not?  Fishermen are now calling for ‘traditional’ fishing grounds to be excluded from the network.  Traditional is an emotive word.  Modern fishing has not been bound by tradition when it comes to fishing gear and fish-tracking technology.  If ‘traditional’ means carrying on as before, it is not an option.  It is traditional approaches which have brought us to this point;  sustainable practices are the only way out.

The quality of the network will in the end depend on political will.  Since political will is sensitive to public opinion, it is to be hoped that society is ready to support change as a gift to future generations.  There will be no gain without pain but, if we carry on as we are, the future will eventually be more painful as fish stocks collapse – and the potential gain will be gone.

In Victorian times, Thomas Huxley declared that the sea was too vast and bountiful for human activity to ever have a damaging impact.  We now know that not to be true, not least because of the 400 (and rising) dead zones now to be found in the world’s oceans.  Our impact to date has been profound, reducing life in the seas to a shadow of its former self.  Our future depends on getting the best out of our seas, sustainably.  If we fail, it is likely to be part of a much wider collapse of natural systems which will throw up challenges to dwarf those we face today.  Society must work with those affected by change to ease their pain;  they have acted in good faith to meet society’s needs by legal means thus far.  But it must not duck the challenge and leave the future to pay the price.