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Exclusive rights in the sea
Volume 10/Number 3/March 1979 ~ ~ ~ ( ~ ) ~ - ~
f~j~
Exclusive Rights in the Sea This m o n t h ' s 'viewpoint' article by Mr. C. C. Lucas raises a number of important issues and, although he does not say so, the same issues are being raised in one way or another, by other pressure groups with quite different objectives from Mr. Lucas. As the 'Viewpoint' article clearlyshows, cultivation of marine organisms for human food in waters around Britain is in a rudimentary state. Oysters have been cultivated for something like two millenia, but beyond that we are still pretty much at the hunter-gatherer stage of development so far as exploiting living marine resources is concerned. Other countries - spectacularly J a p a n - m a n a g e things differently. Britain's lack of interest in mariculture in the past had twin roots. The British consume a surprisingly narrow range of seafood products for such a maritime nation. Only high quality whitefish and a handful of species of shellfish are marketable and we have been able to indulge these very selective tastes because of the abundance of good, cheap meat and the teeming richness of the fisheries we had access to. In these circumstances, there was little incentive to go to a lot of effort to cultivate marine foods. All this is changing. Meat, though plentiful, is no longer cheap and British fishermen are either excluded from many of their former rich fishing grounds or are chasing depleted fish stocks nearer home, and are in danger of losing some even of those as they become exhausted. Fish is no longer a cheap food and the economics of mariculture look - or should look - a lot different from what they did 20 or even 10 years ago. So far, efforts by the White Fish Authority, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, the fishery departments and a very small sector of industry have been directed towards the culture of luxury marine products - salmon, sole, l o b s t e r - and the report by the U.K. Fisheries Research & Development Board in 1946 (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 7, 201) suggested that the scope for the developmentofamaricultureindustryinBritainforthese products, even after the present technical problems had been overcome, was extremely limited. Basically the argument was that if you are in the business of supplying luxury foods, the product must be scarce and the price high otherwise the economics of production become nonsensical, This was undoubtedly a disappointing report for the mariculture enthusiasts and it may well have been unduly narrow and short-sighted in its outlook. The cost of culturing long-lived organisms like lobsters, which are 7 or 8 years old when they first reach marketable age, is undoubtedly high and for this reason they will remain a luxury product. But as experience in these countries shows many marine products, notably bivalves, can be cultured without inordinate cost, and the Japanese fishfarmers, in particular, have shown that there are many ways of increasing the natural population of marine food
organisms by relatively simple means. A major stumbling block to such developments in Britain has been the extreme conservatism of British tastes in seafood. There is no market for sea urchins or abalone or most bivalves in Britain and to judge from experience in most countries, food habits, particularly in relation to fish and marine invertebrates, are exceedingly slow to change. This, however, ignores the potential for an export market. Conventional fishermen are of course aware of it and have not been slow to exploit it. Most lobsters caught on the Northumberland coast are flown to Paris. Cornish mackerel fishermen who were delighted to see Russian vessels excluded from their grounds because they were 'overfishing', now overfish themselves and sell their catch to Russian factory ships lying just outside the 12 mile limit. The Irish (who are as conservative as the British in their tastes for seafood) now have a healthy export of sea urchins to France from their prolific west coast. Such a policy has immediate returns but little long-term future. It makes little difference whether Russian or Cornish fishermen exhaust the mackerel stocks, except during the next few years while the stocks are being exhausted. I f the British taste for marine produce is limited and very selective, thisis not so of other countries. And if British waters are ideal for raising marine produce, it might be an idea to set about using them with a longterm market in mind instead of stripping them for a shortterm bonanza. This is the burden of Mr. Lucas's argument, but he goes further and points out that to develop such an industry, fish farmers will need to enjoy the privilege of ownership and exclusive rights which (by the happy accident that the Romans introduced oysters to Colchester some thousand years before Magna Carta gave everyone free access to fishing in tidalwaters) oyster cultivators have in some areas in south-east England. But here he runs up against entrenched interests, all emotive and all of such long standing that they are counted as 'God-given rights': freedom of movement on the high seas; Magna Carta, as the first declaration of human rights for Britain and the Commonwealth and the United States. Who could envisage nibbling away at that? Why, even Habeus Corpus might be at risk. So, no-one should doubt the formidable legal problems that must be overcome before areas of sea can be set aside for particular interests. But Mr. Lucas is not the only one looking for such exclusive rights in the sea. A number of coastal Local Authorities with a thriving tourist industry would be delighted to have the ownership of the foreshore and shallow seas so that they could regulate them in the interest of the tourists they attract and perhaps prohibit bait digging or water-skiing. The West Wales Field Society which has established a marine nature reserve in south-west Pembrokeshire between the National Nature Reserve on the island of Skomer and the mainland, seeks to prohibit fishing and other disturbing influences in the area. If marine National Nature Reserves are to become established, the Nature Conservancy Council will also be seeking exclusive rights, amounting to ownership, in coastal waters. In recent years, all these bodies have been warned off 65
Marine Pollution Bulletin
such a proposition by their parent ministries. Although some Departments may nowbethinkingtheunthinkable, it will be a tough-minded and very convinced one that tries to put such an Act on the statute book. One can almost hear the parliamentary debate and the vehement arguments that would be raised against curtailing public access and use of coastal waters. And it will not be only the basicissue of exclusive rights thatwill beopposed: itis more than likely that in many specific instances, the different interests that are seeking exclusive rights will be at loggerheads with one-another. Nature Conservation, which seeks to preserve great diverisity in the sea, is hardly likely to be compatible with mariculture which will tend towards monoculture, There may well be cogent reasons for limiting freedom of action in coastal waters in far more ways than we now accept. We have long since abandoned absolute freedom of ownership on land - we are regulated at every turn and
are quite used to the idea of land use planning. The notion that the seas are boundless and the moment we step beyond high water mark we are back to nature and everyone is a free man to do what he pleases is anachronistic. How much coastal waters need to be parcelled out for the exclusive use by particular interests and how far different activities can be harmonized in the same area, requires a great deal of careful thought. We have obviously a long way to go before sea use planning achieves the degree of sophistication achieved on land use planning, and no-one can claim that even that is beyond criticism. These will be thorny problems for Government to resolve, quite apart from the emotive issues raised by the basic question of exclusive rights in the sea. This is no reason for ignoring the matter and the sooner a policy for the sensible use of the foreshore and shallow sea is evolved and exposed to public debate, the better. R.B. C L A R K
Antarctic ~_LLrea~y in Doldrums
Other issues still unclear concern how the European Economic Community will be included in the final treaty
It now appears unlikely that a convention on Antarctic Krill exploitationwillbesignedforanumberofmonths.Progress towards completing negotiations for such a conservation convention on Antarctic marine living resources foundered when one country asked for the removal of two islands and their surrounding 200 mile zones from the treaty area. The government claimed there was already oveffishing around one of the islands and it wanted to control any future fishing itself, At the Washington consultation last year delegates ironed out differences on a number of key issues. The changes agreed on included a careful wording of the article relating to claims of sovereignty in the convention area so that the rights of both claimants and non-claimants would be protected. Thus the governments have managed to maintain the principle enunciated in the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, although many observers feel that, because of different interpretations of the convention language, disputes could easily arise. Also agreed on were changes in articles dealing with the conservation standard, observation and inspection, and financing. On the key issue of voting, it appears that the states have agreed on a 'consensus' vote for important decisions, How effective this new conservation regime will be, however, is dependent upon the attitude of states in the period between the signing of the treaty and its entry into force. So far there has been little discussion of what kind of interim measures might be established to protect the resources. This issue is closely linked to acceptance of a consensus or unanimous voting arrangement. If the fishing states show no interest in observing the conservation standards of the treaty from the very beginning, it is doubtful that a unanimity vote on future harvest quotas would result in genuine conservation measures. 66
since three of its members are already to be signatories. There has been little discussion spelling out the links between the new Commission and other international bodies concerned with managing living resources. In particular, the actions of the Commission will most certainly directly affect and be affected by the IWC, the Sealing Convention and FAO. If an ecosystem approach is to be seriously implemented, much more attention must be given to how these bodies will work together in managing in an ecological manner all the living resources of the Southern Ocean. SuHom
Voe
Collfel'ellce
A two day meeting organised by the Scottish Marine Biological Association in association with the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group will be held at the Dunstaffnage Marine Research Laboratory in Oban, Argyll, on 18-19 April, to discuss the 'Marine environment of Suilom Voe and the implications of oil developments'. The meeting is being held to collate the results and observations from the various scientific studies carried out in Sullom Voe over the past few years and to show how these have been used to set up a comprehensive monitoring programme to assess the effects of the oil terminal operation on the marine environment of the area. Five sessions will deal with the physical and chemical environment, the marine biology of SullomVoe, studies on Shetland vertebrates, pollution and monitoring, and Sullom Voe and other oil terminals. Further information and registration forms can be obtained from The Secretary, SMBA Meeting, Dunstaffnage Marine Research Laboratory, PO Box 3, Oban, Argyll, PA34 4AD.
f~j~
Exclusive Rights in the Sea This m o n t h ' s 'viewpoint' article by Mr. C. C. Lucas raises a number of important issues and, although he does not say so, the same issues are being raised in one way or another, by other pressure groups with quite different objectives from Mr. Lucas. As the 'Viewpoint' article clearlyshows, cultivation of marine organisms for human food in waters around Britain is in a rudimentary state. Oysters have been cultivated for something like two millenia, but beyond that we are still pretty much at the hunter-gatherer stage of development so far as exploiting living marine resources is concerned. Other countries - spectacularly J a p a n - m a n a g e things differently. Britain's lack of interest in mariculture in the past had twin roots. The British consume a surprisingly narrow range of seafood products for such a maritime nation. Only high quality whitefish and a handful of species of shellfish are marketable and we have been able to indulge these very selective tastes because of the abundance of good, cheap meat and the teeming richness of the fisheries we had access to. In these circumstances, there was little incentive to go to a lot of effort to cultivate marine foods. All this is changing. Meat, though plentiful, is no longer cheap and British fishermen are either excluded from many of their former rich fishing grounds or are chasing depleted fish stocks nearer home, and are in danger of losing some even of those as they become exhausted. Fish is no longer a cheap food and the economics of mariculture look - or should look - a lot different from what they did 20 or even 10 years ago. So far, efforts by the White Fish Authority, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, the fishery departments and a very small sector of industry have been directed towards the culture of luxury marine products - salmon, sole, l o b s t e r - and the report by the U.K. Fisheries Research & Development Board in 1946 (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 7, 201) suggested that the scope for the developmentofamaricultureindustryinBritainforthese products, even after the present technical problems had been overcome, was extremely limited. Basically the argument was that if you are in the business of supplying luxury foods, the product must be scarce and the price high otherwise the economics of production become nonsensical, This was undoubtedly a disappointing report for the mariculture enthusiasts and it may well have been unduly narrow and short-sighted in its outlook. The cost of culturing long-lived organisms like lobsters, which are 7 or 8 years old when they first reach marketable age, is undoubtedly high and for this reason they will remain a luxury product. But as experience in these countries shows many marine products, notably bivalves, can be cultured without inordinate cost, and the Japanese fishfarmers, in particular, have shown that there are many ways of increasing the natural population of marine food
organisms by relatively simple means. A major stumbling block to such developments in Britain has been the extreme conservatism of British tastes in seafood. There is no market for sea urchins or abalone or most bivalves in Britain and to judge from experience in most countries, food habits, particularly in relation to fish and marine invertebrates, are exceedingly slow to change. This, however, ignores the potential for an export market. Conventional fishermen are of course aware of it and have not been slow to exploit it. Most lobsters caught on the Northumberland coast are flown to Paris. Cornish mackerel fishermen who were delighted to see Russian vessels excluded from their grounds because they were 'overfishing', now overfish themselves and sell their catch to Russian factory ships lying just outside the 12 mile limit. The Irish (who are as conservative as the British in their tastes for seafood) now have a healthy export of sea urchins to France from their prolific west coast. Such a policy has immediate returns but little long-term future. It makes little difference whether Russian or Cornish fishermen exhaust the mackerel stocks, except during the next few years while the stocks are being exhausted. I f the British taste for marine produce is limited and very selective, thisis not so of other countries. And if British waters are ideal for raising marine produce, it might be an idea to set about using them with a longterm market in mind instead of stripping them for a shortterm bonanza. This is the burden of Mr. Lucas's argument, but he goes further and points out that to develop such an industry, fish farmers will need to enjoy the privilege of ownership and exclusive rights which (by the happy accident that the Romans introduced oysters to Colchester some thousand years before Magna Carta gave everyone free access to fishing in tidalwaters) oyster cultivators have in some areas in south-east England. But here he runs up against entrenched interests, all emotive and all of such long standing that they are counted as 'God-given rights': freedom of movement on the high seas; Magna Carta, as the first declaration of human rights for Britain and the Commonwealth and the United States. Who could envisage nibbling away at that? Why, even Habeus Corpus might be at risk. So, no-one should doubt the formidable legal problems that must be overcome before areas of sea can be set aside for particular interests. But Mr. Lucas is not the only one looking for such exclusive rights in the sea. A number of coastal Local Authorities with a thriving tourist industry would be delighted to have the ownership of the foreshore and shallow seas so that they could regulate them in the interest of the tourists they attract and perhaps prohibit bait digging or water-skiing. The West Wales Field Society which has established a marine nature reserve in south-west Pembrokeshire between the National Nature Reserve on the island of Skomer and the mainland, seeks to prohibit fishing and other disturbing influences in the area. If marine National Nature Reserves are to become established, the Nature Conservancy Council will also be seeking exclusive rights, amounting to ownership, in coastal waters. In recent years, all these bodies have been warned off 65
Marine Pollution Bulletin
such a proposition by their parent ministries. Although some Departments may nowbethinkingtheunthinkable, it will be a tough-minded and very convinced one that tries to put such an Act on the statute book. One can almost hear the parliamentary debate and the vehement arguments that would be raised against curtailing public access and use of coastal waters. And it will not be only the basicissue of exclusive rights thatwill beopposed: itis more than likely that in many specific instances, the different interests that are seeking exclusive rights will be at loggerheads with one-another. Nature Conservation, which seeks to preserve great diverisity in the sea, is hardly likely to be compatible with mariculture which will tend towards monoculture, There may well be cogent reasons for limiting freedom of action in coastal waters in far more ways than we now accept. We have long since abandoned absolute freedom of ownership on land - we are regulated at every turn and
are quite used to the idea of land use planning. The notion that the seas are boundless and the moment we step beyond high water mark we are back to nature and everyone is a free man to do what he pleases is anachronistic. How much coastal waters need to be parcelled out for the exclusive use by particular interests and how far different activities can be harmonized in the same area, requires a great deal of careful thought. We have obviously a long way to go before sea use planning achieves the degree of sophistication achieved on land use planning, and no-one can claim that even that is beyond criticism. These will be thorny problems for Government to resolve, quite apart from the emotive issues raised by the basic question of exclusive rights in the sea. This is no reason for ignoring the matter and the sooner a policy for the sensible use of the foreshore and shallow sea is evolved and exposed to public debate, the better. R.B. C L A R K
Antarctic ~_LLrea~y in Doldrums
Other issues still unclear concern how the European Economic Community will be included in the final treaty
It now appears unlikely that a convention on Antarctic Krill exploitationwillbesignedforanumberofmonths.Progress towards completing negotiations for such a conservation convention on Antarctic marine living resources foundered when one country asked for the removal of two islands and their surrounding 200 mile zones from the treaty area. The government claimed there was already oveffishing around one of the islands and it wanted to control any future fishing itself, At the Washington consultation last year delegates ironed out differences on a number of key issues. The changes agreed on included a careful wording of the article relating to claims of sovereignty in the convention area so that the rights of both claimants and non-claimants would be protected. Thus the governments have managed to maintain the principle enunciated in the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, although many observers feel that, because of different interpretations of the convention language, disputes could easily arise. Also agreed on were changes in articles dealing with the conservation standard, observation and inspection, and financing. On the key issue of voting, it appears that the states have agreed on a 'consensus' vote for important decisions, How effective this new conservation regime will be, however, is dependent upon the attitude of states in the period between the signing of the treaty and its entry into force. So far there has been little discussion of what kind of interim measures might be established to protect the resources. This issue is closely linked to acceptance of a consensus or unanimous voting arrangement. If the fishing states show no interest in observing the conservation standards of the treaty from the very beginning, it is doubtful that a unanimity vote on future harvest quotas would result in genuine conservation measures. 66
since three of its members are already to be signatories. There has been little discussion spelling out the links between the new Commission and other international bodies concerned with managing living resources. In particular, the actions of the Commission will most certainly directly affect and be affected by the IWC, the Sealing Convention and FAO. If an ecosystem approach is to be seriously implemented, much more attention must be given to how these bodies will work together in managing in an ecological manner all the living resources of the Southern Ocean. SuHom
Voe
Collfel'ellce
A two day meeting organised by the Scottish Marine Biological Association in association with the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group will be held at the Dunstaffnage Marine Research Laboratory in Oban, Argyll, on 18-19 April, to discuss the 'Marine environment of Suilom Voe and the implications of oil developments'. The meeting is being held to collate the results and observations from the various scientific studies carried out in Sullom Voe over the past few years and to show how these have been used to set up a comprehensive monitoring programme to assess the effects of the oil terminal operation on the marine environment of the area. Five sessions will deal with the physical and chemical environment, the marine biology of SullomVoe, studies on Shetland vertebrates, pollution and monitoring, and Sullom Voe and other oil terminals. Further information and registration forms can be obtained from The Secretary, SMBA Meeting, Dunstaffnage Marine Research Laboratory, PO Box 3, Oban, Argyll, PA34 4AD.