CHAPTER FIVE: OCEANS AND FISHERIES
Unit 5.1: Oceans as a resource
• Food: fish that includes true fish, finfish, shellfish and other sea animals that
can be eaten. World fishery yields are about 90 million tonnes year, with over
80 million tonnes of that coming from the sea. The main fisheries are located on
the continental shelves. This is because the water is shallow there, so light can
penetrate and there is more oxygen than further down. In addition, nutrients
from the land are abundant on the shelf.
• Chemicals and building materials: many materials in the oceans have been
eroded from the land, where rain and wind break down rocks, and are carried
into the oceans via rivers.
o Some substances can be extracted directly e.g. salt, magnesium, tin, gold,
titanium, diamonds.
Salt: seawater that is left behind over many weeks in the hot sun.
Diamonds: found in greater numbers in ocean floor than on land.
Much harder to mine ocean floor as it must be dredged, then the sediment silted.
Sand, gravel and crushed rock: mined for the construction industry.
▪ Physical damage can be caused to seabed and associated habitats if care is not
taken. In addition fine particle clouds that are produced resettle and interfere
with photosynthesis, they also act as a source of heavy metals that can enter
food chains.
As the mining of land depletes the sources of minerals there, mining the ocean
floor will increase
o Oil: chemical that is extracted by offshore drilling rigs.
• Wave energy: an enormous amount of energy in the waves is estimated to
produce twice the present world energy production if harnessed.
• Tidal energy: due to varying gravitational pull of the sun and moon, water in
the sea moves up and down on a twice-daily basis.
o This causes it to come onto land and later recede, which can be harnessed to
generate electricity
• Tourism: seaside is a major tourist attraction for centuries by many countries
near sea and ocean. People of more economically developing countries
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(MEDCs) are attracted to marine sites of great natural beauty, especially coral
reefs.
o Diving, snorkeling, windsurfing, jet skiing and deep-sea fishing or simply
sunbathing on the beach are some adventurous activities.
o There’s business in boat trips to view sea creatures, especially whales and
dolphins.
• Transport: ships are important to transport people and goods; however,
shipping is less common to transport people now due to the advent of aviation.
o Pleasure cruises are still an important economic sector and bulk freight is best
transported from country to country on ships
o Types of merchant (goods carrying) ships:
SHIP TYPE LOAD OR PURPOSE
Bulk carriers • Transport of food such as rice and
wheat
Container ships • Entire load is carried in lorry-sized
containers, known as containerization
Tankers • Transport of fluids, especially
liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied
natural gas.
• Transport of vegetable oils and
wine.
Refrigerated ships • Transport of perishable items such
as vegetables, fruits, fish and dairy
products
Roll-on/roll-off ships • Transport of vehicles, together with
their loads, that can be driven on and
off the ship
Coastal trading vessels • Used for trade between places that
are close together, especially in island
groups
Ferries • Used for mainly for the movement
of foot passengers, sometimes with
their cars, mainly between islands or
between mainland and islands
Cruise ships • Used for pleasure voyages where
the facilities on the ship are a crucial
part of the trip.
Ocean liner • Used to transport people from one
port to another
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Unit 5.2: World fisheries
• Distribution of major ocean currents:
o Surface currents: movement of the surface water of the sea in a constant
direction, are caused mainly by winds
o Prevailing wind: the direction from which the wind nearly always blows in a
particular area.
o Currents in the southern hemisphere are generally anticlockwise as the winds
blow from the south-east and force the western Australian, Benguela, and
Peruvian current northwards.
The Figure shows (a) prevailing winds and (b) currents of the world.
An important aspect of a current is whether it is warm or cold
Cold currents: come from the poles.
Warm currents: come from the tropics or either side of the equator.
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• Distribution of major marine fish populations:
o Main fisheries are located on continental shelves where water is shallow
(<150m below sea level), allowing light to penetrate with plentiful oxygen than
further below.
The figure shows the continental shelf
o Herbivorous fish rely on primary producers, mainly green algae called
phytoplankton. Carnivorous fish eat the herbivorous ones or other carnivores.
▪ The food web, starting with the phytoplankton. Thus, fish are found where
there are plentiful phytoplankton.
▪ Phytoplankton produce their own food by photosynthesis which requires light,
water and carbon dioxide (CO2).
▪ Most ocean water has absorbed all the sunlight by a depth of only 200m. This
200m deep zone is called the euphotic zone, below which photosynthesis will
not take place.
▪ Water is abundant in the oceans and CO2 dissolves in the water from the
atmosphere, therefore light is likely to be the limiting factor for photosynthesis.
▪ Limiting factor: of all the factors that might affect a process, that one is in
shortest supply.
• Not all areas with continental shelves have significant fisheries because:
o Phytoplankton need not just light, CO2 and water, which allow it to make
carbohydrates such as sugars, but they also require mineral nutrients to make
proteins.
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▪ Making proteins requires a source of nitrogen and sulfur.
▪ Nucleic acids, which form the genes of living things, also require phosphorus.
▪ The green pigment chlorophyll, which is essential for photosynthesis, requires
magnesium.
o The most important fisheries of the world are where the current system stirs
up decaying material from the seabed, which is rich in nutrients.
• Upwelling: areas where minerals at the ocean floor are brought up to the
surface by currents. An example is the Peruvian anchovy fishery off the west
coast of South America.
The Figure shows the basis of the Peruvian anchovy fishery
The upwelling described above is disturbed approximately once every 10 years
by an event called the El Niño Southern Oscillation, also called the ENSO or
just the El Niño
• El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO): the change in the prevailing winds that
leads to change in the pattern of currents in the oceans of the South Pacific.
o El Niño leads to warm nutrient-poor water comes into the region from the
equator, which results in no upwelling of the cold, nutrient rich water that
supports the anchovy fishery.
o No nutrients mean the phytoplankton do not grow well, so there’s less food
for the fish.
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o Much of the production of the anchovy fishery was used for fishmeal which is
used to feed farmed fish, thus countries where this is important, are affected by
a crash in the anchovy fishery.
The figure shows The Peruvian coast in an El Niño year
Unit 5.3: Impact of exploitation of the oceans
Overfishing of marine fish species:
• Overfishing: when the number of fish that is caught is greater than the rate at
which the fish reproduce or breeding, leading to a fall in fish numbers in an
area.
o Demand for fish as food due to increasing world population;
o Technology and improved fishing methods have also played a major part,
much bigger boats, which can work a long way from a port for many weeks; it
is now possible Finding fish easily by using SONAR and detailed weather data;
o Creation of huge nets that scoop up everything in an area, often half of which
is discarded as bycatch (animals caught by fishers that are not the intended
target of their fishing effort).
Sustainable fishing involves monitoring how many fish are left in order to
provide for the next generation of fishers and their customers.
Impact of overfishing of marine fish species:
1. Lack of growth in fish caught globally since 1990s, leading to loss of job
and reduction in food supply;
2. Size of fish gets progressively smaller, increasing demand for food;
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3. Harvest of untargeted/protected/endangered marine species that are
discarded at the sea or shore;
4. Reduction in marine biodiversity, causing a disruption in food chain
The following list provides some examples of nets:
1. TRAWL NET (INCLUDING BOTTOM TRAWL NETS)
• Catch all types of unwanted species and damage the seabed.
2. DRIFT NET
• Drift with the current and are not anchored.
• Often used in coastal waters.
3. SEINE NET (INCLUDING PURSE SEINE)
• Hang like a curtain in the water.
• A variant called the surrounding net is often used.
4. DREDGE NET
• Dragged along the seabed, mainly to catch shellfish and other types of fish
living in the mud. Thus, they dig into the seabed with teeth or water jets.
The figure shows some of the many types of nets used around the world to catch fish.
Farming marine species (Mariculture): reduces the exploitation of
fisheries
o Due to the increasing human population, the increase in demand for fish as
food is above the production capacity of oceans and seas;
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o Overexploitation of the fisheries leads to a decline in wild fish populations;
So, people are increasingly farming fish in controlled environments. Farming
fresh-water fish, aquaculture, has been carried out for hundreds of years,
farming various shellfish has also been practiced for hundreds of years and can
be a very important source of both income and food.
▪ Mariculture: aquaculture practiced in marine environments e.g. closed section
of an ocean, tanks, ponds and raceways filled with seawater.
Farming marine fish (mariculture) is generally much more difficult than farming
fresh-water species and has not been enormously successful so far
Advantages:
▪ It reduces the pressure on wild population, allowing their population to
increase;
▪ Production is constant;
▪ No bycatch, as non-interest species are unlikely to be present in the farm;
▪ No erosion of seabed, that is usually caused by trawl nets.
Other marine fish being harvested include threadfin (Polydactylis sexfilis) and
bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus). The most productive form of mariculture is
salmon farming, although the fish is only marine for part of its life.
5.4 Management of the harvesting of marine species
Every country with a coastline has a zone of 200 nautical miles around it
designated by the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea as the
economic exclusion zone (the zone around a country's coastline that is
under the control of that country). Inside this zone the country responsible
must attempt to manage its fisheries so that they are sustainable.
A variety of strategies exist to do this.
• Net types and mesh size and shape:
Certain net types, such as the drift net mentioned above, are now banned from
use in certain areas
o If mesh size is too small, juvenile fish will be caught. If this happens the
number of fish that grow to maturity and reproduce is reduced
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o A diamond-shaped mesh catches fish more easily, thus a square mesh panel is
often included in an otherwise diamond net.
The figure shows a square-mesh panel in an otherwise diamond-mesh net allows the
escape of smaller fish
Other fishing methods:
o Many fishers use fish aggregation devices (FADs) for tuna fisheries, includes
the usage of a log suspended below the surface of the sea from a buoy.
This attracts the tuna together with other species, including tuna predators, once
a good aggregation of fish is collected, they are gathered in a giant net. This will
take all other species and younger tuna fish with it, leading to a large bycatch.
o Solution: Use pole and line method for catching the tuna. Done right, this
method is highly selective with very little or no bycatch.
• Quotas: (the legal limit on the amount of fish that can be caught)
Many fisheries scientists and others believe that the imposition of quotas is one
of the most important ways in which fisheries can be managed
o Legislators such as governments sometimes multinational organizations (such
as the European Union set limits on how many and what type of fish can be
caught;
o The limits are set according to the information gathered from networks across
the world about fish populations;
o These limits ensure enough fish are left to reproduce and replenish the fishery
for the following season.
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• Closed seasons and protected areas:
o In a way similar to the setting of quotas. Governments and other legislation
bodies can pass laws that can close fisheries down for part of the year, most
commonly in the breeding season.
• As with quotas and closed seasons some fisheries are protected by preventing
fishing in certain areas, often where the target species is known to breed.
• International agreements (implementing and monitoring):
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is main
law governing marine fisheries in the USA;
▪ It aims to control the country’s terrestrial waters, conserve fishery resources,
enforce international fishing agreements, develop underused fisheries and
protect fish habitats.
Economic exclusion zone:
▪ Every country with a coastline has a zone of 200 nautical miles around it
inside which the country responsible must attempt to manage its fisheries so that
they’re sustainable.
o International agreements are needed to regulate fisheries in international
waters, leading to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
▪ Such an agreement is needed in the Mediterranean where a 200 nautical mile
exclusion zone has no meaning.
o Monitoring: a model system is operated by the African country of Namibia.
▪ Larger vessels in its waters have on board observers and air patrols detect and
deter unlicensed vessels;
▪ All landings are monitored at the country’s two fishing ports;
▪ In addition, all vessels in the exclusion zone must keep daily logs of their
catches.
Effectiveness of these strategies:
▪ Because of the vastness of the oceans, it is difficult to monitor fishery laws
and agreements, monitoring organizations based in ports have more success;
▪ Due to fishing being important for both income and food for many people,
there is a huge incentive for illegal activities, quotas can easily be avoided by
simply not declaring how many fish are being caught;
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▪ Overstretched authorities may not be able to check every boat, and fishers may
be willing to risk under declaring the size of their catch and not being checked;
▪It is not difficult to use a net with small mesh size, and in areas where patrols
are inadequate, fishers frequently trespass in areas where they are not supposed
to fish.
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