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Ecology: The Moment of Truth—An Introduction ,

The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard
York
of Marine Ecosystem Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism , John Bellamy
Foster
by Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen The Political Economy and Ecology of Biofuels ,
Topics: Ecology (Jul 01, 2008) Fred Magdoff
Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and the
The world ocean covers approximately 70 percent
Imperative for Socialism , Minqi Li
of the earth. It has been an integral part of human Brett Clark teaches sociology at
The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic
history, providing food and ecological services. Yet North Carolina State University in
Global Warming , John W. Farley
conservation efforts and concerns with Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen teaches
Framing India’s Hydraulic Crisis: The Politics of the
environmental degradation have mostly focused sociology at Fort Lewis College in
Modern Large Dam , Rohan D'Souza
Durango, Colorado.
on terrestrial issues. Marine scientists and Blue Covenant: The Alternative Water Future ,
oceanographers have recently made remarkable Maude Barlow
discoveries in regard to the intricacies of marine food webs and the richness of oceanic Bill Livant (May 24, 1932-June 2, 2008) , Ben
biodiversity. However, the excitement over these discoveries is dampened due to an Livant
awareness of the rapidly accelerating threat to the biological integrity of marine
ecosystems.1
New from Monthly Review Press
At the start of the twenty-first century marine scientists focused on the rapid depletion of
marine fish, revealing that 75 percent of major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or
depleted. It is estimated “that the global ocean has lost more than 90% of large predatory
fishes.” The depletion of ocean fish stock due to overfishing has disrupted metabolic relations
within the oceanic ecosystem at multiple trophic and spatial scales.2

Despite warnings of impending collapse of fish stock, the oceanic crisis has only worsened.
The severity is made evident in a recent effort to map the scale of human impact on the
world ocean. A team of scientists analyzed seventeen types of anthropogenic drivers of
ecological change (e.g., organic pollution from agricultural runoff, overfishing, carbon dioxide
emissions, etc.) for marine ecosystems. The findings are clear: No area of the world ocean “is
unaffected by human influence,” and over 40 percent of marine ecosystems are heavily
affected by multiple factors. Polar seas are on the verge of significant change. Coral reefs and
continental shelves have suffered severe deterioration.

Additionally, the world ocean is a crucial factor in the carbon cycle, absorbing approximately
a third to a half of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The increase in the
portion of carbon dioxide has led to an increase in ocean temperature and a slow drop in the
pH of surface waters—making them more acidic—disrupting shell-forming plankton and reef-
building species. Furthermore, invasive species have negatively affected 84 percent of the Slavery in the British Empire and
world’s coastal waters—decreasing biodiversity and further undermining already stressed
its Legacy in the Modern World
fisheries.3

Scientific analysis of oceanic systems presents a sobering picture of the coevolution of

human society and the marine environment during the capitalist industrial era. The
particular environmental problems related to the ocean cannot be viewed as isolated issues
or aberrations of human ingenuity, only to be corrected through further technological
development. Rather these ecological conditions must be understood as they relate to the
systematic expansion of capital and the exploitation of nature for profit. Capital has a
particular social metabolic order—the material interchange between society and nature—
that subsumes the world to the logic of accumulation. It is a system of self-expanding value,
which must reproduce itself on an ever-larger scale.4 Here we examine the social metabolic
order of capital and its relationship with the oceans to (a) examine the anthropogenic causes
of fish stock depletion, (b) detail the ecological consequences of ongoing capitalist
production in relation to the ocean environment, and (c) highlight the ecological
contradictions of capitalist aquaculture.5

Marine Metabolism: Biological Richness, Energy Cycles, and

Trophic Levels
Ecologists now appreciate the complexity of biological relationships at multiple scales, Albert Einstein’s “Why
including primary productivity, carbon sequestration, and intricate food webs. New light is Socialism?”: The Enduring Legacy
being shed on oceanic ecosystems offering an emerging picture of the sea’s metabolism. In
of His Classic Essay
particular, research reveals great complexity and a resultant integrity among trophic level
interactions (food webs) between microscopic organisms, plankton, and larger predators.
Ivan Valiela, a marine biologist, states:

No topic within marine ecology and biological oceanography has changed more…
 than our notions about components and structure of planktonic food webs.
Knowledge about marine water column food webs has been considerably enlarged,
and made much more complex, by recent findings about the existence and role of
smaller organisms, release and reuse of dissolved organic matter, and
reassessment of the function of certain larger organisms.6

The metabolic interactions expressed among trophic levels are proving to be the underlying
source of great biological wealth and ocean resiliency.

According to marine scientists, “the genetic, species, habitat, and ecosystem diversity of the
oceans is believed to exceed that of any other Earth system.” For example, ocean
environments contain seventeen different taxa of life forms compared to eleven land-based
taxa. Oceans account for 99 percent of the volume that is known to sustain life—most of
which is still unknown. Scientists exploring the ocean’s middle depths have discovered a host
of new species composing productive ecosystems. The deep-sea bottom, of which little more
than 1.5 percent has been explored, has recently been the object of great interest due to its Toppling the First Ministry: Kerala,
abundant biodiversity. the CIA, and the Struggle for
Social Justice
For example, in one such Atlantic seafloor with an area of approximately twenty-one square
meters, scientists sampled and found 90,672 individual organisms representing 798 species,
of which 460 were previously unknown. These new discoveries have yielded important
insights regarding marine ecosystems. At the same time, they produce an appreciation of the
great uncertainty that still exists for much of the marine environment’s processes, such as
the role of currents, nutrient cycles, and biomass.7

Recent advances in trophic level understanding have developed in three areas: microbial
interactions, multi-tiered trophic dynamics, and upper trophic level controls. First, the new
array of facts offered by studying the base of the food web (diatoms, dinoflagellates, and
other microalgae) has led marine researchers to propose a new view of the planktonic food
web that includes a “microbial loop.” In the microbial loop, organic matter cycles through
microbes before entering the classic food web; this is a more complicated relationship than
was previously assumed.

Second, it has been found that oceanic food webs often have five trophic levels or more, as
opposed to freshwater systems where three levels are more typical. Valiela describes this yet-
unexplained discovery as a significant qualitative difference between the two environments.
Previously, trophic interactions among freshwater fish were thought to be analogous to
pelagic fish and management decisions were based on such comparisons. Exploring the
multi-tiered dynamics of ocean food webs as unique from freshwater systems provides a
more complex research question for the scientific community. Uncertainty colors all
speculation of how vulnerable ocean systems are compared to freshwater and land
ecologies.8

Finally, researchers have found that species in the upper trophic positions seem to be closely
coupled to food availability. This means that the top predators exist near the carrying
capacity of their environment. This is not the case with most bony fishes in freshwater
environments, which usually exist in an environment with an abundant prey population. The
life history characteristics of the upper trophic creatures suggest they are easily susceptible
to overexploitation. Little room exists in the population of top marine predators to absorb
losses of food resources.

For example, the ability of whales to recover to their earlier abundance after massive human
predation is now dependent on the availability of krill. Although the large-scale hunting of
whales has dramatically declined, the massive exploitation of krill as a protein source and as
an animal-feed additive may now jeopardize recovering whale populations dependent on krill
as a food supply.9
Unequal Exchange: A Study of the
There is a significant amount of interaction and dependence of the ocean’s top predators on
Imperialism of Trade (Updated
Edition)
lower trophic levels. Trophic level interactions represent a marine food web based on energy
flow and describe one element of the ocean’s metabolism. Many other relationships besides
trophic level interactions exist between ocean organisms, such as the relation between
organisms and their immediate habitat, which can include coral reefs and kelp forests. Both
of these realms, on which species depend, are highly vulnerable to resource exploitation.

Capitalism and Marine Fishery Exploitation

Humans have long been connected to the ocean’s metabolic processes by harvesting marine
fish and vegetation. Harvesting methods and processes have varied depending on the
structure of social production. Subsistence fishing is a practice woven throughout human
history, beginning with the harvesting of shellfish along seashores and shallow lakes, and
progressing with the development of tools such as stone-tipped fishing spears, fishhooks,
lines, and nets. This was originally based upon fishing for use of the fish. What was caught
was used to feed families and communities. Through the process of fishing, human labor has
been intimately linked to ocean processes, gaining an understanding of fish migrations, tides,
and ocean currents.

The size of a human population in a particular region influenced the extent of exploitation.
But the introduction of commodity markets and private ownership under the capitalist
system of production altered the relationship of fishing labor to the resources of the seas.
Specific species had an exchange value. As a result, certain fish were seen as being more Roses for Gramsci
valuable. This led to fishing practices that focused on catching as many of a particular fish,
such as cod, as possible. Non-commercially viable species harvested indiscriminately
alongside the target species were discarded as waste.

As capitalism developed and spread, intensive extraction by industrial capture fisheries

became the norm. Increased demands were placed on the oceans and overfishing resulted in
the severe depletion of wild fish stocks. In Empty Ocean, Richard Ellis states, “Throughout the
world’s oceans, food fishes once believed to be immeasurable in number are now recognized
as greatly depleted and in some cases almost extinct. A million vessels now fish the world’s
oceans, twice as many as there were twenty-five years ago. Are there twice as many fish as
before? Hardly.” How did this situation develop?10

The beginning of capitalist industrialization marked the most noticeable and significant
changes in fisheries practices. Mechanization, automation, and mass
production/consumption characterized an era of increased fixed capital investments. Profit-
driven investment in efficient production led to fishing technologies that for the first time
made the exhaustion of deep-sea fish stocks a real possibility. Such transformations can be
seen in how groundfishing, the capture of fish that swim in close proximity to the ocean’s
bottom, changed through the years.

Industrialization began to influence the groundfishery around the early 1900s, as Openings and Closures: Socialist
technological developments were employed to further the accumulation of capital. The Strategy at a Crossroads: Socialist
introduction of steam-powered trawlers from England in 1906 heralded a significant change Register 2025
in how groundfish were caught and rapidly replaced the sail-powered schooner fleets. Prior
to steam trawling, groundfish were caught on schooners with baited lines during long
journeys at sea. Due to lack of refrigeration and freezing, most of the cod catch was salted.

The competitive markets organized under capitalist production welcomed the increased
efficiency of steam-powered vessels, without a critical assessment of the consequences of
increased harvest levels. More captured fish meant more profit. The switch to trawling was
complete by 1920, and the consequences of the second industrial revolution organized
under capitalist forces would soon change the human-nature relationship to the ocean,
extending the reach of capital.

The expanded geographic range and speed of fishing fleets allowed for increased productivity
of catch as well as increased diversity of captured species that were deemed “valuable” on
the market. Technological developments and improved transportation routes allowed the
fishing industry to grow, increasing its scale of operations. Cold storage ensured that fish
would be fresh, reducing spoilage and loss of capital. In Cod: A Biography of the Fish that
Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky explains, “Freezing [cod] also changed the relationship of
seafood companies to fishing ports. Frozen fish could be bought anywhere—wherever the
fish was cheapest and most plentiful. With expanding markets, local fleets could not keep up
with the needs of the companies.” Advances in the transportation infrastructure allowed
people in the Midwest to consume the increased harvests of cod and haddock, leading to a The Class Struggle and Welfare:
significant expansion in the market. Major marketing campaigns promoted the consumption Social Policy under Capitalism
of fish to increase sales. Together these factors enhanced the accumulation of capital within
the fishing industry, and companies invested some of this capital back into their fleets.11

By 1930 there were clear signals that the groundfishing fleet’s ability to capture massive
quantities of fish had surpassed natural limits in fisheries. A Harvard University investigation
reported that in 1930 the groundfishery landed 37 million haddock at Boston, with another
70–90 million juvenile haddock discarded dead at sea. The sudden rise in fisheries harvest
(creating a subsequent rise in consumer demand through marketing campaigns) resulted in
stress in the groundfish populations, and landings plummeted.

Competitive markets create incentives to expand production, regardless of resource decline.

Thus, in reaction to decreased stocks due to overfishing, groundfishing fleets moved farther
offshore into waters off of the coast of Canada to increase the supply of valuable fish to new
markets. The fleet’s ability to continue moving into unexploited waters obscured recognition
of the severe resource depletion that was occurring. As a result, the process of overfishing
particular ecosystems to supply a specific good for the market expanded, subjecting more of
the ocean to the same system of degradation.12

The distant water fleets were made possible by the advent of factory trawlers. Factory
trawlers represent the pinnacle of capital investment and extractive intensification in the
global fisheries. In Distant Water William Warner presents a portrayal of a factory trawler’s
A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth,
capacity:
and One-Hundred Years of The
Great Gatsby
Try to imagine a mobile and completely self-contained timber cutting machine that could
smash through the roughest trails of the forest, cut down trees, mill them, and deliver
consumer-ready lumber in half the time of normal logging and milling operations. This was
exactly what factory trawlers did—this was exactly their effect on fish—in the forests of the
deep. It could not long go unnoticed.
Factory trawlers pull nylon nets a thousand feet long through the ocean, potentially
capturing 400 tons of fish during a single netting. Industrial trawlers can process and freeze
their catch as they travel.13 Such technological development extended the systematic
exploitation and scale of harvesting of fishes.

The natural limits of fish populations combined with capital’s need to expand led to the
development of immense trawlers that increased the productive capacity and efficiency of
operations. These ships allowed fishermen to seek out areas in the ocean where valuable fish
were available, providing the means to capture massive quantities of fish in a single trip.
Overcoming the shortage of fishes in one area was accomplished by even more intensive
harvesting with new ships and equipment, such as sonar, in other regions of the oceans. The
pursuit of vast quantities of commercial fishes in different areas of the ocean expanded the
depletion of other species, as they were exploited and discarded as bycatch. The swath of the
seas subjected to the dictates of the market increased, whether a fish was sold as a Paraguayan Sorrow: Writings of
commodity or thrown overboard as a waste product.14 Rafael Barrett, A Radical Voice in
a Dispossessed Land
Competition for market share between companies and capital’s investment in advanced
technology intensified fishery exploitation. Competing international companies sought 1 2 3 … 5 Next Page
nature’s diminishing bounty, causing further international conflict in the “race for fish.”
President Truman responded to these disputes by attempting to expand U.S. corporate
interests. He issued two proclamations expanding U.S. authority beyond territorial waters
trying to further territorial enclosure of its adjacent seas out to the limits of the continental
shelf. Coastal states around the world struggled to transform the property rights of the open
ocean to benefit their nations. In response to growing conflict, the United Nations convened
the First United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva in 1958.

Eventually, most nations voted to sign the UN Law of the Sea article, “irrevocably
transforming” international law and constituting “a fundamental revision of sometimes age-
old institutions.”15 (The U.S. Senate, however, has still not ratified the Law of the Sea
Convention.) In the end, the convention established a property regime according to the
prescription of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The EEZ put regions of the high seas
adjacent to coastal waters entirely within the management purview of the coastal state, up to
two hundred miles from their shore. In this zone, states have exclusive rights to living and
non-living resources for extraction and economic pursuits.

The collapse of fisheries due to overexploitation coupled with the expanding seafood market
forced companies to look elsewhere for “the most traded animal commodity on the planet.”
African nations—such as Senegal, Mauritania, Angola, and Mozambique—confronting dire
economic conditions sold fishing access to European and Asian nations and companies. In
the case of Mauritania, selling fishing access provided over $140 million a year, which equaled
a fifth of the government’s budget. Few countries can resist such bait, given the need for
monetary resources. Industrialized trawlers descended into African waters, combing their
seas for the treasured fish commodities. In the past three decades, Africa’s fish population in
the ocean has decreased by 50 percent and thousands of fishermen have become
unemployed.16 The expansion of capitalist fishing practices continues to decimate fisheries
and spread ecological degradation, as profits and food are funneled back to core nations.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the world capture from fisheries
increased from approximately 20 million tons in 1950 to 84.2 million tons in 2005. A dominant
narrative explains that human population growth is solely responsible for this increase in
capture; however, recent research demonstrates that social structural factors such as
economic growth are also propelling the depletion. Since around 1989 the world capture of
marine fish has declined by 500,000 tons per year amidst increasing fishing effort.

There have been sharp declines in the populations of tuna, cod, and marlins. During the
1960s and ’70s, shelf fisheries in the Atlantic started to collapse as a result of overfishing.
Operations moved to the deep sea. Deepwater fishing has seriously affected the populations
of deep-sea fish, such as the roundnose grenadier, onion-eye grenadier, spiny eel, spinytail
skate, and blue hake. The populations of these deep-sea fishes have plummeted by over 87
percent in seventeen years. It is expected that these fishes will be driven to the point of
extinction—to the detriment of the ecosystems in which they live. Part of the vulnerability of
these fishes is that they can live to around sixty years of age and do not sexually mature until
their late teen years.17

Changes in the market can transform the demand for particular fish species. In the early
1900s, bluefin tuna was seen as being only suitable for use as pet food. But given their
strength and size—weighing up “to three quarters of a ton and [having] a length of four
meters”—they were deemed worthy opponents to be hunted. In the later half of the
twentieth century, bluefin tuna became “the most desirable food fish in the world” with the
spread of sushi and sashimi restaurants. Given the machinations of capitalism, this has also
caused them to become “the most endangered of all large fish species.”

The bluefin tuna population continues to be decimated by overfishing, and the practice of
capturing half-grown tuna at sea and placing them in floating pens—known as tuna ranches
—where they are fed until they are ready for market has only worsened the situation. While
this helps control the production process, it involves catching the fishes “before they are old
enough to breed” and keeping “them penned up until they are killed.” As a result of this
practice and overfishing, bluefin tuna are threatened with depletion.18

The geographic span of ocean exploitation has widened as capitalist operations of extraction
continue. Even the Antarctic waters are increasingly under assault as the fishing industry
gears up to plunder the krill population. Since the 1970s the numbers of krill have declined by
80 percent, largely due to global warming. But fishing operations are adding to the depletion.
These tiny crustaceans eat carbon-rich food near the surface of the water, thereby they help
remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

They have long been one of the primary sources of food for seals, whales, and penguins.
Progressively they have been incorporated into the insatiable appetite of global capital.
“Suction harvesting” swallows up huge quantities that are processed, frozen, and stored on
newly outfitted ships. From here, the krill are to be used as feed for fish-farms (aquaculture)
or transformed into omega-3 oil and other health supplements.19

Fleets of ships burning fossil fuels to harvest from the open oceans have exacerbated the
deterioration of marine ecosystems. The depletion of fish stock increases the distance that is
necessary to travel in order to catch certain species of fish, such as tuna and swordfish. It
also expands the regional scope of exploitation, the number of species captured as bycatch,
and the scale of depletion. In 2000, 80 million tons of fish required the burning of 13 billion
gallons of fuel and the release of approximately 134 million tons of carbon dioxide. This
means that global fisheries used up to 12.5 times the amount of fuel energy that they
provided as edible-protein energy.20

During the 1970s and ’80s fishing ships became more automated, with the trend toward full
automation becoming common. Today, navigational aids, such as geographic positioning
systems (GPS), and weather prediction models enhance the ability of fishing fleets to catch
the most amount of fishes in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of human
labor. The synthesis of technical development and transformed property rights under the
competitive framework of global capitalism has resulted in the massive extraction of marine
fish and an intensified social metabolism organized for the pursuit of profit.

Ecological Degradation of Marine Ecoystems

Species-Level Effects
The intensified extraction of fish from already stressed oceanic ecosystems—fueled by capital
accumulation and the free appropriation of nature—has resulted in significant consequences
to the metabolic interactions between marine trophic levels. Marine scientists note that the
removal of 100 million metric tons (which includes both capture and aquaculture) of fish from
the world ocean will lead to long-term, large-scale disruptions in marine ecology. Of direct
concern are “species level effects,” in particular the removal of target and non-target marine
life. Continued harvest of fish species to population levels that are below the sustainable
numbers required for reproduction will eventually lead to extinction.

The orange roughy, for example, began to be commercially exploited ten years ago. This fish
lives to be 150 years old and only begins to reproduce at age 25. By continually removing the
oldest fish first, the industry has depleted the population of reproducing adults. (Harvesting
this fish generally results in the destruction of coral forests.) The orange roughy species is
now threatened with extinction. As mentioned earlier, the depletion of fish stock for
commercial fishing in coastal waters led to the capture of fishes in the deep sea—such as
roundnose grenadier, onion-eye grenadier, spiny eel, spinytail skate, and blue hake—
subjecting them to the dictates of the market, driving them to the point of extinction.21

Industrialized capitalist fishing allows for vast quantities of target fish to be harvested at
once. At the same time, it leads to an immense amount of non-target marine life—bycatch—
being captured. Bycatch are commercially unviable species, thus they are seen as waste. The
“trash fish” are often ground up and thrown back into the ocean. Part of the bycatch includes
juveniles of the target fish, which, if the mortality is increased among this population,
undercuts the success of recovery. Obviously, the populations of the discarded species are
negatively affected by this practice, furthering the depletion of marine life. The most wasteful
operation is trawling for shrimp. The capture and discarding of bycatch disrupts the habitats
and trophic webs within ecosystems. The scale of the disruption is quite significant. It is
estimated that an average of 27 million tons of fish are discarded each year in commercial
fisheries around the world, and that the United States has a .28 ratio of bycatch discard to
landings.22

Species extinction is the direct impact of overfishing, which is in part driven by the pursuit of
capital accumulation and is facilitated by the technological innovations that are employed for
this particular purpose, in what has become known as a “race for fish.”23 Capitalist practices
are creating a loss of marine biodiversity and undermining the resiliency of marine
ecosystems. Valiela states, “The magnitude of the fishing harvest and the examples of major
alterations to marine food webs by predator removal suggest that effects of fishing are
ecologically substantial at large spatial scales.” The “major alteration to marine food webs”
due to overexploitation provides the clearest example of ecological degradation in the
metabolic processes of the ocean.24

Fishing Down the Food Chain

Equally disrupting, but less apparent than species effects, are the ecosystem effects caused
by fishery exploitation, especially “fishing down the food chain.”25 As overfishing depletes the
most commercially viable top predators (i.e., snapper, tuna, cod, and swordfish), competition
drives commercial fishers to begin harvesting species of lower trophic levels. The downward
shift is global, according to the model analysis of UN statistics describing worldwide catches
of fish over a forty-year time span. If this quest is pursued to its logical end, scientists warn it
will lead to the wholesale collapse of marine ecosystems. Fishing down the food chain erodes
the base of marine biodiversity and undermines the biophysical cornerstone of ocean
fisheries. The recent discoveries of marine trophic interactions suggest that the lower trophic
levels of marine food webs provide an integral and complex foundation—disrupting this base
undermines the metabolic cycle of energy flows within marine ecosystems.

Overfishing of lower trophic levels has shortened the food chain and sometimes has
removed one or more of the “links,” increasing the system’s vulnerability to natural and
human induced stresses. For example, in the North Sea the cod population has been so
depleted that fishermen are now harvesting a lower trophic species called pout, which the
cod used to eat. The pout eat krill and copepods. Krill also eat copepods. As the pout are
commercially harvested, the krill population expands and the copepod population declines
drastically. (In other areas of the ocean, krill are captured and used as an animal-feed
additive, hindering the recovery of the whales that depend upon them for food.) Because
copepods are the main food of young cod, the cod population cannot recover from initial
fisheries exploitation.26

Fishing down the food chain illustrates how capture fisheries organized under competitive
market conditions and the drive to accumulate capital are dismantling the marine ecological
system that has been developing for millions of years. In addition, fishing for lower trophic
level species deceptively masks marine fish extraction, as millions of tons of fish are
harvested each year from the oceans. People continue to be provided with seafood on their
menus, never realizing the full impact of overfishing the top predators. Fishing down the food
chain, due to overfishing in the higher tropic levels, depletes the food resources on which
predatory fishes depend. As noted earlier, marine predatory species are extremely
vulnerable to losses of prey.

Collapse of Coastal Marine Ecosystems

The previous examples demonstrate how species extinction decreases the resiliency of
trophic level interactions. Even more problematic, however, is the widespread collapse of
entire ecosystems resulting from overfishing. Historical data suggests that species and
population declines due to overfishing are direct preconditions for the collapse of entire
coastal ecosystems. The collapse of whole-scale ecosystems not only threatens the ecological
resiliency of the marine environment, but also disrupts the human populations that rely on
the coastal ecosystem for subsistence or livelihoods. “Overfishing and ecological extinction
predate and precondition modern ecological investigations and the collapse of marine
ecosystems in recent times, raising the possibility that many more marine ecosystems may
be vulnerable to collapse in the near future.”27

Kelp forests, coral reefs, seagrass beds, and estuaries are examples of coastal ecosystems
that have collapsed in parts of the world due to overfishing and other forms of
environmental degradation. These ecosystems provide complex habitats for a multitude of
species and often are the foundation of many local fishing communities. For example, the
kelp forests of the Gulf of Maine experienced severe deforestation and widespread
reductions in the number of trophic levels due to the population explosion of sea urchins,
the primary herbivores that eat kelp. The following account details such a sequence of
events:

Atlantic cod and other large ground fish are voracious predators of sea urchins.
 These fishes kept sea urchin populations small enough to allow persistence of kelp
forests despite intensive aboriginal and early European hook-and-line fishing for at
least 5000 years. New mechanized fishing technology in the 1920s set off a rapid
decline in numbers and body size of coastal cod in the Gulf of Maine….Kelp forests
disappeared with the rise in sea urchins due to removal of predatory fish.28

In other words, industrial fishing operations intensified the exploitation of marine

ecosystems, transforming natural conditions.
A number of human activities are leading to the collapse of coral reefs. Overfishing is one of
the causes. Deforestation is another. Clearing forests leads to muddy rivers filled with
sediment, which moves downstream and smothers coral reefs. But the main force driving
massive destruction of coral reefs is global warming. The increase of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere contributes to a warming and increase in the acidity of ocean water. As a result,
multicolored, healthy coral reefs filled with a rich abundance of biodiversity are being
bleached and turned into gray-white skeletons. Without radical changes to the social
metabolic order, the death of the world’s coral reefs could take place within a few decades.
When coral reefs die, the fauna dependent upon them also die.29 Natural conditions,
everywhere, are being transformed by the social metabolic order of capitalism. A general
progression of environmental degradation accompanies this system of growth, creating
ecological crises in the conditions of life.

The most recent changes to coastal ecosystems caused by overfishing involve microbial
population explosions. The microbial loop has been found to be more sophisticated and
complex than ever expected. Population explosions of microbes are responsible for
increasing eutrophication, diseases of marine species, toxic bloom, and even diseases such
as cholera that affect human health.30 Chesapeake Bay is now a bacterially dominated
ecosystem with a trophic structure unrecognizable from that of a century ago. This rapid and
drastic change in ecosystem composition is due to the overfishing of suspension feeders that
filtered microbes out of the water column. Bacterial domination of Chesapeake Bay and the
deforestation of kelp beds in the Gulf of Maine serve as two examples of how depletion of top
predators leads to the collapse of entire ecosystems.

The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture fisheries has
led some optimistically to offer aquaculture as an ecological solution. However, capitalist
aquaculture fails to reverse the process of ecological degradation. Rather, it continues to
sever the social and ecological relations between humans and the ocean.

Aquaculture: The Blue Revolution?

The massive decline in fish stocks has led capitalist development to turn to a new way of
increasing profits—intensified production of fishes. Capitalist aquaculture represents not
only a quantitative change in the intensification and concentration of production; it also
places organisms’ life cycles under the complete control of private for-profit ownership.31
This new industry, it is claimed, is “the fastest-growing form of agriculture in the world.” It
boasts of having ownership from “egg to plate” and substantially alters the ecological and
human dimensions of a fishery.32

Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as aquabusiness) involves subjecting nature to the

logic of capital. Capital attempts to overcome natural and social barriers through its constant
innovations. In this, enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in, and develop new elements
of nature that previously existed outside the political-economic competitive sphere: As
Edward Carr wrote in the Economist, the sea “is a resource that must be preserved and
harvested….To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with
owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters.”33

As worldwide commercial fish stocks decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic
causes, aquaculture is witnessing a rapid expansion in the global economy. Aquaculture’s
contribution to global supplies of fish increased from 3.9 percent of total worldwide
production by weight in 1970 to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004, aquaculture and capture
fisheries produced 106 million tons of fish and “aquaculture accounted for 43 percent.”34
According to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, aquaculture is growing more
rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors.

Hailed as the “Blue Revolution,” aquaculture is frequently compared to agriculture’s Green

Revolution as a way to achieve food security and economic growth among the poor and in
the third world. The cultivation of farmed salmon as a high-value, carnivorous species
destined for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more lucrative (and
controversial) endeavors in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution, the
Blue Revolution may produce temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a
solution to food security (or environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of
distribution. Given that the Blue Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for
monetary gain trumps the distribution of food to those in need.36

Industrial aquaculture intensifies fish production by transforming the natural life histories of
wild fish stocks into a combined animal feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture, aquaculture
furthers the capitalistic division of nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world. In
order to maximize return on investment, aquaculture must raise thousands of fish in a
confined net-pen. Fish are separated from the natural environment and the various relations
of exchange found in a food web and ecosystem. The fish’s reproductive life cycle is altered so
that it can be propagated and raised until the optimum time for mechanical harvest.

Aquaculture interrupts the most fundamental metabolic process—the ability of an organism

to obtain its required nutrient uptake. Because the most profitable farmed fish are
carnivorous, such as Atlantic salmon, they depend on a diet that is high in fishmeal and fish
oil. For example, raising Atlantic salmon requires four pounds of fishmeal to produce every
one pound of salmon. Consequently, aquaculture production depends heavily on fishmeal
imported from South America to feed the farmed carnivorous species.37

The inherent contradiction in extracting fishmeal is that industries must increase their
exploitation of marine fish in order to feed the farm-raised fish—thereby increasing the
pressure on wild stocks to an even larger extent. Such operations also increase the amount
of bycatch. Three of the world’s five largest fisheries are now exclusively harvesting pelagic
fish for fishmeal, and these fisheries account for a quarter of the total global catch. Rather
than diminishing the demands placed on marine ecosystems, capitalist aquaculture actually
increases them, accelerating the fishing down the food chain process. The environmental
degradation of populations of marine species, ecosystems, and tropic levels continues.38

Capitalist aquaculture—which is really aquabusiness—represents a parallel example of

capital following the patterns of agribusiness. Similar to combined animal feedlots, farmed
fish are penned up in high-density cages making them susceptible to disease. Thus, like in the
production of beef, pork, and chicken, farmed fish are fed fishmeal that contains antibiotics,
increasing concerns about antibiotic exposure in society. In “Silent Spring of the Sea,” Don
Staniford explains, “The use of antibiotics in salmon farming has been prevalent right from
the beginning, and their use in aquaculture globally has grown to such an extent that
resistance is now threatening human health as well as other marine species.” Aquaculturists
use a variety of chemicals to kill parasites, such as sea lice, and diseases that spread quickly
throughout the pens. The dangers and toxicities of these pesticides in the marine
environment are magnified because of the long food chain.39

Once subsumed into the capitalist process, life cycles of animals are increasingly geared to
economic cycles of exchange by decreasing the amount of time required for growth.
Aquabusiness conforms to these pressures, as researchers are attempting to shorten the
growth time required for fish to reach market size. Recombinant bovine growth hormone
(rBGH) has been added to some fish feeds to stimulate growth in fishes in aquaculture farms
in Hawaii. Experiments with fish transgenics—the transfer of DNA from one species to
another—are being done to increase the rate of weight gain, causing altered fish to grow
from 60 percent to 600 percent larger than wild stocks.40 These growth mechanisms
illustrate capitalist aquaculture’s drive to transform nature to facilitate the generation of
profit.

In addition, aquaculture alters waste assimilation. The introduction of net-pens leads to a

break in the natural assimilation of waste in the marine environment. The pens convert
coastal ecosystems, such as bays, inlets, and fjords, into aquaculture ponds, destroying
nursery areas that support ocean fisheries. For instance, salmon net-pens allow fish feces
and uneaten feed to flow directly into coastal waters, resulting in substantial discharges of
nutrients. The excess nutrients are toxic to the marine communities that occupy the ocean
floor beneath the net-pens, causing massive die offs of entire benthic populations.41 Other
waste products are concentrated around net-pens as well, such as diseases and parasites
introduced by the caged salmon to the surrounding marine organisms.

The Blue Revolution is not an environmental solution to declining fish stocks. In fact, it is an
intensification of the social metabolic order that creates ruptures in marine ecosystems. “The
coastal and marine support areas needed for resource inputs and waste assimilation [is]…
50,000 times the cultivation area for intensive salmon cage farming.”42 This form of
aquaculture places even more demands upon ecosystems, undermining their resiliency.
Although aquabusiness is efficient at turning fish into a commodity for markets given the
extensive control that is executed over the productive conditions, it is even more energy
inefficient than fisheries, demanding more fuel energy investment than the energy
produced.43 Confronted by declines in fish stock, capital is attempting to shift production to
aquaculture. However, this intense form of production for profit continues to exhaust the
oceans and produce a concentration of waste that causes further problems for ecosystems,
undermining their ability to regenerate at all levels.
Turning the Ocean into a Watery Grave
The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under
global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance
are being decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the
same time that scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine
species, we are witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and
nutrient cycles are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global
warming.

The expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have
intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes
(both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the
species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive
processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capital’s control over
production without resolving ecological contradictions.

It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that “short of human extinction, there is no
sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently ‘break down’ under the weight
of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.”44 Capital is driven by the competition for
the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of
capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction
of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years. Such requirements stand
opposed to the immediate interests of profit.

The qualitative relation between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to
accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, “Time is everything,
man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone
decides everything.”45 Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs,
and the circulation of capital—not the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects
natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its
economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of
nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift.

As a result, the system is inherently caught in a fundamental crisis arising from the
transformation and destruction of nature. István Mészáros elaborates this point, stating:

For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the elementary

 conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the
way in which capital relates to them—the only way in which it can. This is true not
only of humanity’s energy requirements, or of the management of the planet’s
mineral resources and chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global
agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even
the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no human
being can survive: water itself….In the absence of miraculous solutions, capital’s
arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and
time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and
nature itself].46

An analysis of the oceanic crisis confirms the destructive qualities of private for-profit
operations. Dire conditions are being generated as the resiliency of marine ecosystems in
general is being undermined.

To make matters worse, sewage from feedlots and fertilizer runoff from farms are
transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading marine ecosystems with excess
nutrients, which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This leads to oxygen-poor
water and the formation of hypoxic zones—otherwise known as “dead zones” because crabs
and fishes suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that remove
nutrients from the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around the
world. A dead zone is the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At
the same time, it contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological
crisis of the world ocean.

Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and aquaculture, the oceans are experiencing
ecological degradation and constant pressures of extraction that are severely depleting the
populations of fishes and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if current
practices and rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around the
world could collapse by the year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what
is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of
global society itself.

Notes
1. Ivan Valiela, Marine Ecological Processes (New York: Springer, 1995); Jeremy B. Jackson, et al.,
“Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems,” Science 293 (2001):
629–37.
2. Pew Oceans Commission, America’s Living Oceans (Arlington, Va.: PEW, 2003), v; Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, The State of World Fisheries and
Aquaculture (Rome: FAO, 2002), 23; Ransom A. Meyers and Boris Worm, “Rapid Worldwide
Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities,” Nature 423 (2003): 280–83; Jennie M. Harrington,
Ransom A. Myers, and Andrew A. Rosenberg, “Wasted Fishery Resources,” Fish & Fisheries 6,
no. 4 (2005): 350–61.
3. Benjamin S. Halpern, et al., “A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems,”
Science 319 (2008): 948-952; Jennifer L Molnar, et al., “Assessing the Global Threat of Invasive
Species to Marine Biodiversity,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 (2008),
doi:10.1890/070064; Callum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 2007).
4. István Mészáros, Beyond Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), 40–44; John
Bellamy Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002).
5. Metabolism—the relationship of interchange within and between nature and humans, of
regulatory processes that govern the regeneration of a system—is a foundational concept in
ecology. Marx used a metabolic approach for studying the environmental problems of his
day, looking at the metabolism of natural systems. Whereas the metabolic rift was originally
described in the context of agriculture and the soil crisis, we extend its usage to study the
interaction between society and the oceans. Mészáros notes that each mode of production
creates a particular social metabolic order, which can be characterized by the material
interchange between society and nature. See Mészáros, Beyond Capital, 40–45; John Bellamy
Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review). This essay, here, draws upon our article,
“The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology,” Organization & Environment 18, no. 4 (2005): 422–44, in
which we extend and develop in detail metabolic analysis as it relates to marine ecosystems.
6. Valiela, Marine Ecological Processes, 275.
7. Pew Ocean Commission, America’s Living Oceans; Elisabeth Borgese, The Oceanic Circle (New
York: United Nations University Press, 1998).
8. Farooq Azam, et al., “The Ecological Role of Water-Column Microbes in the Sea,” Marine
Ecology Progress, Series 10 (1983): 257–63; Valiela, Marine Ecological Processes.
9. James A. Estes, “Exploitation of Marine Mammals,” Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of
Canada 36 (1979): 1009–17; M. Omori, “Zooplankton Fisheries of the World,” Marine Biology 48
(1978): 199–205.
10. Richard Ellis, The Empty Ocean (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003), 13.
11. Mark Kurlansky, Cod (New York: Walker and Co., 1997), 138–39.
12. Northeast Fisheries Science Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
accessed April 10, 2005, from Kurlansky, Cod.
13. Today’s trawlers now use technology developed by the military to fish waters as deep as
one mile from the ocean’s surface. They cost as much as $40 million to build, and they reach
the length of a football field. There are currently over 37,000 industrial trawlers in the world’s
oceans, aiding in the total annual harvest of over 80 million tons of fish. See William Warner,
Distant Water (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1983), viii.
14. Kurlansky, Cod.
15. Javier Perez de Cuellar, “International Law is Irrevocably Transformed,” in United Nations,
The Law of the Sea: Official Text of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with Annexes
and Index, A/CONF.62/122 (New York: United Nations, 1983), xxix; Mike Skladany, Ben Belton,
and Rebecca Clausen, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind: A New Oceanic Imperialism,” Monthly
Review 56, no. 9 (February 2005): 14–24.
16. Sharon Lafraniere,“Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow,” New York
Times, January 14, 2008; Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Europe’s Appetite for Seafood Propels Illegal
Trade,” New York Times, January 15, 2008; John W. Miller, “Offshore Disturbance: Global Fishing
Trade Depletes African Waters,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2007.
17. FOA, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (Rome: FAO, 2004), 6, 123; FOA, The State of
World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006 (Rome: FOA, 2006), 3; Harrington, Myers, and Rosenberg,
“Wasted Fishery Resources.” Rebecca Clausen and Richard York, “Economic Growth and
Marine Biodiversity,” Conservation Biology 22 no. 2 (2008): 458–66; Jennifer A. Devine, Krista D.
Baker, and Richard L. Haedrich, “Deep-Sea Fishes Qualify as Endangered,” Nature 439 (2006):
29.
18. Richard Ellis, “The Bluefin in Peril,” Scientific American (March 2008): 71–77.
19. Juliette Jowit, “Krill Fishing Threatens the Antarctic,” Guardian, March 23, 2008.
20. Peter H. Tyedmers, Reg Watson, and Daniel Pauly, “Fueling Global Fishing Fleets,” Ambio 34
no. 8 (2005): 635–38.
21. Valiela, Marine Ecological Processes; A. Lack, Katherine Short, and Anna Willcock, Managing
Risk and Uncertainty in Deep-Sea Fisheries (Australia: World Wildlife Fund, 2003); Devine, Baker,
and Haedrich, “Deep-Sea Fishes Qualify as Endangered.”
22. Dayton L. Alverson and Steven E. Hughes, “Bycatch,” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 6
(1996): 443–62; Larry B. Crowder and Steven A. Murawski, “Fisheries Bycatch,” Fisheries 23
(1998): 8–16; Harrington, Myers, and Rosenberg, “Wasted Fishery Resources” Lance E. Morgan
and Ratana Chuenpagdee, Shifting Gears (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003); Dayton L.
Alverson, Mark H. Freeberg, Steven A. Murawski, and J.G. Pope, “A Global Assessment of
Fisheries Bycatch and Discard,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 339 (Rome: FAO, 1996).
23. Harrington, Myers, and Rosenberg, “Wasted Fishery Resources,” 358.
24. Valiela, Marine Ecological Processes, 514.
25. The concept of “fishing down the food chain” was first introduced in 1998. Since then it
has received international attention. See Daniel Pauly, Villy Christensen, Johanne Dalsgaard,
Rainer Froese, and Francisco Torres Jr., “Fishing Down Marine Food Webs,” Science 279 (1998):
860–63.
26. In addition to fishing pressures, cod populations are confronting different environmental
conditions, which are making population recovery difficult. Global warming is increasing the
temperature of the oceans. A warm-water copepod plankton available in late summer has
displaced the cold-water copepod plankton, which bloomed at the same time that baby cod
needed such food. The shifts in plankton species due to the warming of the oceans has
further complicated the conditions for cod to regenerate their numbers. Additional capture
of cod in the North Sea could decimate the population to the point of no recovery. See
Debora MacKenzie, “Cod Starved to Extinction,” New Scientist 180 (2003): 8.
27. Jeremy B. Jackson, et al., “Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal
Ecosystems,” Science 293 (2001): 629–37.
28. Jackson, et al., “Historical Overfishing,” 631.
29. Carl Folke, et al., “Regime Shifts, Resilience, and Biodiversity in Ecosystem Management,”
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, & Systematics 35 no. 1 (2004): 557–81; O. Hoegh-Guldberg, et
al., “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification,” Science 318 (2007):
1737–42.
30. Jackson, et al. “Historical Overfishing,” 636.
31. Aquaculture can be broadly defined to include all historic forms of controlled rearing of
aquatic organisms. For the purposes of this paper, we solely address capital intensive
aquaculture of high trophic level species in the marine environment. For the remainder of the
essay, the term “aquaculture” will only be referring to this contemporary form of capitalist
aquaculture.
32. Snigda Prakash, “Soybean Industry Looking for Ways to Make Soy-based Food More
Palatable to Farm-Raised Fish,” National Public Radio, Morning Edition, May 26, 2004.
33. Edward Carr, “A Second Fall,” The Economist 347 (1998): 3–4.
34. FOA, State of World Fisheries, 2002; FOA, The State of World Fisheries 2006, 3.
35. Rosamond L. Naylor, et al., “Nature’s Subsidies to Shrimp and Salmon Farming,” Science
282 (1998): 883–84.
36. Fred Magdoff, “A Precarious Existence,” Monthly Review 55, no. 9 (February 2004): 1–14;
Fred Magdoff, “The World Food Crisis,” Monthly Review 60, no. 1 (May 2008): 1–15.
37. Naylor et al., “Nature’s Subsidies.”
38. Given the continual pressures placed on the fish stock in the oceans, compounded by the
demands of aquaculture, capital is seeking out other forms of fishmeal as a substitute for
marine derived protein sources. Corporations are working to modify soybeans as a fish feed
substitute. See Prakash, “Soybean Industry Looking for Ways.”
39. Don Staniford, “Silent Spring of the Sea,” in Stephen Hume, et al., (eds.), A Stain Upon the
Sea (Madeira Park, British Columbia: Harbour Publishing, 2004), 149; Ronald Hites, et al.,
“Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon,” Science 303 (2004): 226–29;
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
40. Sea Grant News Media Center, “Bovine Hormone Could Provide Boost to Tilapia
Aquaculture,” http://www.seagrantnews.org/news/tips/tip_2003_feb.html; Thomas T. Chen, et
al., “Transgenic Fish and Its Application in Basic and Applied Research,” Biotechnology Annual
Review 2 (1996): 205–36.
41. Naylor et al., “Nature’s Subsidies.”
42. Nils Kautsky, et al., “The Ecological Footprint,” EC Fisheries Cooperation Bulletin 11, no. 3–4
(1998): 5–9.
43. Tyedmers, Watson, and Pauly, “Fueling Global Fishing Fleets.”
44. Paul Burkett, “Natural Capital, Ecological Economics, and Marxism,” International Papers in
Political Economy 10, no. 3 (2003): 47; Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1999).
45. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 54.
46. Mészáros, Beyond Capital, 174; Foster, Ecology Against Capital.
47. Boris Worm, et al., “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services,” Science 314
(2006): 787–90.

2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August)

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