Frontline; To the Last Fish

[Narrator] This is a story about fishing. A revolution in fishing. Fishing Gone haywire. It's about the sea is running out of fish. [boat engine sounds] Here is as good a place as any to start the story. The coast of New Zealand. This is where a fishing war was fought. [boat engine sounds] My credentials for doing this story are that I have never caught a fish. And I get seasick. I was starting from scratch. How do you find the fish? [Pinar] A lot of instinct a lot of experience. [inaudible overlapping voice] [narrator] Brian Pinar has caught a lot of fish

and makes a good living at it. He has a little 40 foot boat, and a crew of one, and he hauls in the tuna one fish at a time. The hook and the line. Hundreds of New Zealanders make their living this way. [Pinar] It's probably one of the best sign of surviving [inaudible] [narrator] Yes it is old fashioned. Stone age men fish this way. [Pinar] Well you know you wouldn't call a king your uncle because it's just that feeling of [inaudible] your own ability your own- [narrator] Pinar likes the independence and solitude of fishing, but he is not exactly alone out here. Sitting about 50 miles Out, looking like factories, are what fishing has become. They are Japanese squid jiggers. These are factories, with crews of 80 pulling in great quantities of squid and processing them on the spot.

[Pinar] [inaudible] [narrator] They make Brian Pinar uneasy. But It's only squid. They don't bother the precious tuna. Nobody in New Zealand knew about a much greater threat farther out at sea. Until one day in 1988. [Japanese] There was a distress call. A large Japanese fishing boat had caught fire. Rescuers spotted 22 other boats nearby. 12 days later another call for help. A Taiwanese vessel was sinking. Again, other fishing boats were all around but none came to the stricken boats aid. Evidently, they were so determined to keep their fishing fleet from being discovered, they were willing to let one boat sink. Its crew was lost. The discovery of these fishing boats was frightening news to New Zealand.

[Bishop] Scientists say the foreign fleet could easily wipe out our share of tuna inside two years and it's making New Zealand fishermen angry. [speaker one] [inaudible] living with the restrictions that the government's put on us. [speaker two] I don't think the government should allow the foreign driftnetters in. [Bishop] Meanwhile tuna fishermen are left wondering if this year's bumper catch, May be the last. This is Bishop, with the The [inaudible] news. [Narrator] This is what New Zealanders were afraid of. It's a driftnet. It unreels from the back of a boat. Floats hold one edge at the surface, while lead weights hold the other edge to the 30 or 40 feet. The nets hang in the water waiting to snag the gills or fins of passing fish. Gill nets have been used for a thousand years or more. But early drift nets were no more like these, than a picket fence is like the China wall.

The cord is synthetic, cheap, and so light-weight a single boat may carry 30 miles of it. [boat engine noise] A hydraulic winch reels the net in. Tons of fish are harvested. [inaudible] Nothing used before has taken so many fish so easily, and so cheaply. Through the early 1980's, a United Nations agency was encouraging fishermen to use drift nets. as an answer to world hunger. [fishermen chattering] The Japanese were first to carry the idea to extremes, putting huge nets on boats that could hold 500 tons of fish. They were too successful. Their own government chased them from Japanese waters. They headed for the high seas and were joined there by other big driftnet vessels from Taiwan and Korea.

In the North Pacific, they began to harvest an immense concentration of flying squid. A delicacy in some countries. Squid the size of a man's forearm. Some went into the Bering sea and began catching salmon, illegally. The salmon come from American and Soviet springs, and return to those same streams to spawn and die. Holding American and Soviet fisherman on different arsenals to catch them. [ocean waves and boat engine] In 1983, most of the world got its first look at the driftnet boats when the environmental group, Greenpeace took it's ship into the Bering sea and found them catching not just fish, but birds, seals, rare turtles, dolphins, whales. People who might not care if the oceans were fished clean

of squid, want these animals left alone. [boat engine running] Greenpeace Greenpeace and another environmental group, Earth Trust, took their cameras underwater for a more chilling look at the driftnets in action. [footage of sharks suspended in nets] ["?Deetle?"] We found dozens of species of animals in the nets even though the fishermen were only after Albacore and Gill fish. Van "?Deetle?" led a Greenpeace expedition that took some of the pictures. ["?Deetle?"] The drift nets are designed to collapse around anything that touches them. And in that way they are completely indiscriminate. Earth Trust produced a videotape. Accusing the driftnet fleets of strip mining the seas. [Earth Trust narrator] What you are seeing now is a baby common dolphin that died of suffocation after being entangled in an invisible drift net. Each year, this scene is repeated tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of times.

In addition, many thousands of seabirds are caught in drown in these nets- [Narrator] Japan responded with a videotape of its own defending the drift nets and accusing Earth Trust of lying. [Japanese videotape narrator] Drift nets do not catch every form of sea life in their paths. They are much more selective than that. Unfortunately, some otherwise well-meaning environmental organizations mistook propaganda for fact and misguidedly embraced the cause. [inaudible radio chatter] [Narrator] By 1988, a fleet of 1200 driftnet vessels was working the North Pacific. Laying out enough net each night to circle the world. The same United Nations agency that had recommended driftnets now estimated that the high seas nets were killing from 300,000 to 1 million animals a year. Most of them dolphins and porpoises. [inaudible fisherman chatter] They were also killing something like a million birds a year. Birds that dived for the squid in the nets.

and became entangled themselves. Scientists admit they had no accurate figures. Only the fisherman can see what most of the nets are bringing up. [speaker three] We saw giant ocean sunfish entangled in the nets, massive fish weighed perhaps over a ton, over 100 years old. More than likely bigger than the divers we were sending down to- to photograph. [Narrator] Greenpeace says hundreds of these majestic fish were dying in the driftnets. [speaker three] They didn't immediately suffocate when they hit the nets and we were able, in a couple of instances, to cut them free and send them on their way. [boat horn] Environmental groups have hounded the drift netters at sea.

This Greenpeace crew stole three miles of driftnet from a Japanese boat in the North Pacific. [speaker three] The vessel that it belonged to just steamed over the horizon laying the rest of its net. As we spent four hours pulling the three-mile section out of the water and probably didn't realize until the next morning that that we had left the area with the net. [narrator] They carry their prize to Washington. And laid it out on the Capitol lawn. One tenth of one boat's net. Another group, named Sea Shepherds, took more drastic action. They ran two driftnet vessels at sea, hoping to disable the hydraulic winch systems that operate the nets. [inaudible radio chatter]. [boats honking] A fisherman

responded by throwing a club at the Sea Shepard crew. Then he went for a knife. [commotion from ships] [commotion from ships] [inaudible talking] In 1984, some of the driftnet boats began quietly steaming south, chasing the migrating tuna. Into the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific around New Zealand. They had been there four years before the burning ship gave them away. By that time there were almost 200 of them spreading thousands of miles of driftnet in the path of the tuna.

New Zealand sent this research boat out to find the driftnet fleet, and find what impact it was having. [Murray] -see the net coming in on the portside [narrator] the chief scientist on this expedition was "?Tobin? Murray" [Murray] we have to be really careful and come up along the other side. [narrator] By fishing around the driftnets Murray can tell that they were not only catching huge amounts of tuna, but wasting millions more. Tuna were tearing free or falling from the nets. Injured or dead. [Murray, holding a tuna] Terribly, badly damaged. [narrator] When he fished close to a driftnet, Murray says Often, every fish he examined was damaged by the net [Murray] -and broken Tail and fins where it got caught up in the net. [Narrator] Scientists calculated, that the South Sea's driftnets were taking five times what the species could stand. It seemed to spell ruin for New Zealand's fishing industry. [New Zealand Prime Minister] And I have to say that it is essential that this practice be wiped out. [Narrator] New Zealand's Prime

[Narrator] Minister declared war on the drift netters. [Prime Minister] We regard it from an international legal point of view as analogous to piracy. Piracy, you will recall, became punishable by international law by anybody because it was a crime against all nations. [narrator] New Zealand and 21 island nations in the South Pacific banned driftnets from their waters and then went to the United Nations seeking to rid all the seas of large scale drift nets. [speaker four] Those who engage In this ecologically irresponsible activity should be in no doubt that the [inaudible] they use are unacceptable, Wherever they are used. [UN speaker] [inaudible] Solution to large scale electric driftnet fishing- [Narrator] on December 22nd 1989, two years after they discovered the driftnet fleets in their waters. New Zealand and little island nations won a great victory. A UN resolution. [UN speaker] It is so decided. [narrator] The driftnet boats must leave the South Pacific. And they must leave the high seas everywhere by June

June 1992. On paper, the driftnet's days were numbered. But the resolution has no teeth. No enforcement powers. Japan promised to comply, but what about Taiwan? Taiwan is not even a UN member. [speaker five] If you're looking for the big bandit, it is the Taiwanese fleet and the- [narrator] Former US Senator "?Colum Tillian?" is head of an American delegation that deals with fishing rights in the North Pacific. ["?Tillian?"] What you've got is a bandit fleet that their own nation can't control that delivers- [narrator] I had heard a lot of things about Taiwan's driftnet fleet. About their sneaking into the South Seas. Lying about what they were catching there. Going after protected American salmon and selling them on the black market. Ramming ships that tried to stop them. [airplane noises] Kaohsiung Harbor. Home port of the Taiwan driftnet.

Only a fraction of the fleet is home at any time. Rusty hopes representing a kind of desperation. Its economy and its culture fed by fish. Taiwan has all but fished out its own water. With help from pollution. Fishermen have had to go farther and farther out. And to catch more and more fish to pay for the voyages. And find ways to catch the fish more cheaply. These boats were the answer. Masterpieces of economy. Most of them have had previous lives, and only continue to serve their owners Because they are big enough to hold mountains of nets and fish, and tons of fuel. [inaudible] are economical too. Each man is paid about 500 dollars a month. Most of them are recruited in foreign ports, where men will work for that. The nets themselves are everywhere in Kaohsiung. On the docks, in the streets, on

sidewalks. Like the boats in the harbor, these nets are only a sample. Most of Most of the nets are out at sea. The nets and the boats are owned by some businessmen who command their fleet from two large buildings that overlook the market. [Taiwanese businessmen] Yes, we will show you the different- here's the kind of net. [Taiwanese] Another type- [narrator] I was surprised when the boat owners agreed to talk about this. [businessmen] This is nylon [narrator] They have been shy of publicity in the past, but now they seem eager to talk about their difference. [businessmen] -different species, and this This unit is for shock. Bottom, bottom unit. So how to decide the species, target species? [narrator] The owners say the size of the mesh, the holes in the net, determine the size of the fish the nets

catch. That makes them efficient, and dolphins safe. [businessmen] So somebody say that Gill net kill every species that is wrong. Because we decide by the size of the net, smaller than this one will pass through. Bigger than this one will not yield. It will go away. [narrator] Underwater footage has shown it doesn't work that way. Even nets with small mesh may wrap around animals or large fish and they can't go away. [businessman] This is a [inaudible]? This is [inaudible] now in between the net and a [inaudible] this one to avoid- yield by birds, or another [inaudible]. [interviewer] This goes on the surface? [businessmen] yes. [interviewer] And so the dolphin and the bird can swim away? [businessmen agreement sounds] [inaudible]

[narrator] Back in New Zealand, "?Tobin?" Murray had talked about this technique, submerging the net to let dolphins swim over it. The scientists there tested it [scientist] and they found that even when they submerged the nets 15 meters. That they still caught dolphins. And, at the same time they caught significantly less of the species that they were interested in catching. [Businessman] Now we may can you know do our best to improve the net to avoid catching the- another members. So this is very important. And we're we were doing, we are doing, we need time to improve. Yeah it takes time anyway. But we are doing, we are proceeding. [narrator] The boat owner showed us a tape made aboard one of their driftnet boats. boats. Fishing for squid in the North Pacific Coast last year. They had edited the tape to about two hours. It shows mile after mile of driftnet being reeled in, With no dolphins, whales, turtles, or birds being caught. Only squid.

Evidence that driftnet fishing is clean, selective. An American observer named Michael Hoque is shown on board. The U.S. and some other countries have arranged with Taiwan to put observers on a sampling of the boats. We found Michael Hoque in North Carolina. [Hoque] You could go for a real long time and not see much of anything but squid and miscellaneous fish that are not in danger. Then all of a sudden here is Moby Dick in the net, You know [narrator] The rules of the observer program won't allow Hoque to say how many birds or animals he saw, but he thinks every net had something and sometimes very rare creatures. [Hoque] Large whales, small whales, sea turtles, seabirds, pinnepeds, sea lions and things of that nature. There were South African crew members aboard one of the vessels. They expressed a great concern for birds flopping around on the deck with broken wings. They just said look we're just trying to

make a living. And don't hate us for this. [Narrator] Hoque says he saw a few salmon caught but it didn't seem to be intentional. Some drift net boats have been found in illegal areas catching American salmon. salmon. [Lewis] The coastguard Came upon a Taiwanese vessel in the fog in the far North Pacific about- [Narrator] Wayne Lewis is a special agent for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. [Lewis] We had one of our agents and helicopter who was taking video [video footage] [inaudible] The camera caught the fishermen throwing their catch salmon overboard as fast as they could then the captain let the American agents on board. [Lewis] He admitted that he in fact had been out there fishing for salmon and he offered the boarding party gold and money and sex if

they would forget what was going on. ["?Sy?"] Some of the criticism against the Taiwan driftnet fleet in the North pacific- [Narrator] I asked "?Jane Sy?" about this. About Taiwanese driftboats straying out of the squid zone to catch salmon. Mr. "?Sy?" is president of four fishing companies, and executive director of an association of boat owners. Mr. "?Sy?" "?Sy?" said no evidence that fishing boats have been doing that. [speaker six] Well I don't know how to respond to that. How anybody could say that the Taiwanese are not involved in this and haven't been doing anything escapes common sense and reason. [narrator] But what about the moratorium? The U.N. resolution that driftnet fishing should stop everywhere next year. I asked the spokesman for Tiawan's agriculture counsel which relugates fishing about that. [spokesman] Surely my comment will comply with those principles.

[narrator] That sounds like a promise to enforce the moratorium but it isn't quite. Taiwan's government avoids making that promise directly. The agriculture council spokesman does say the drift nets will be phased out. [spokesman] my comments or this [inaudible] licenses on driftnet fishing That all it will stop. [speaker seven] It's simply impossible for us to diminish operation of driftnet fishing. It's impossible. [narrator] Taiwan university law professor "?Kwin Jan Fu?" says it doesn't matter what the agricultural council says. Taiwan's people and its legislature will not allow drift netting to stop. ["?Jan Fu?"] The policy could not be fulfilled. I don't think so. We will do everything we can to stop that kind of wrong policy. Professor "?Fu?" may be right. The investment in the driftnet fleet is so great that even if Taiwan's government tries to reign it in, it may fail. There's there's too much money involved.

The boat owners hope to convince the world that the drift nets are safe after all. Failing that, they make it clear that an end to drift netting must be on their own schedule. [speaker eight] I think a long time. Maybe five years, ten years ["?Jung Ye-Lin?"] That's got to be a big problem. I mean in fact- [narrator] economist Jung Ye-Lin is Taiwan's most outspoken critic of drift net fishing. He too believes the owners will not be stopped. That their investment almost compels them to continue. ["?Ye-Lin?"]And this of course has a so-called vicious cycle. You know, the greater investment, greater the investment in the new technology. The greater catch they have to make it. [interviewer] And the faster they deplete the ocean? ["?Ye-Lin?"] The faster they deplete the ocean. Yes and driftnet is such a- some kind of reckless, suicidal approach to catch the fish. You know that I think will deplete the ocean resources in no time. [businessman, pointing at diagrams of fish] I think this one, this one and this one- [narrator] Consumers may be doing what governments have failed to do.

The biggest market for tuna caught by driftnets used to be America, but pictures of dead dolphins started an American boycott of tuna, and American catteries quit buying tuna caught in driftnets. The boat owners say it's unfair. [businessman] In fact the United States of America. Say yes, No unit prohibited. So no more market [inaudible] we say. We sell these fish to Thailand, to United States, Then comes [inaudible]. They reject, to buy the fish from the unit. So, all of this is coming into Taiwan [interviewer] oh so there's a price [businessman] yes So now most of our fisherman, the crew. Now go in the market without job. All marketing the world, rejected by The tuna from unit [interviewer] Don't you have any markets left? [businessman] Very small, the Taiwanese very small.

[narrator] But the catch of tuna by Taiwan's driftnets is anything but small. [speaker nine] How much fish would this transport transport ship hold? [inaudible] [speaker ten] 1100 tons. 1100 tons. [narrator] there are still companies willing to buy these tuna. and new markets may be opening. Perhaps ironically, mainland China. The tuna from this one Taiwanese transport vessel, is two thirds the amount of Pacific Albacore tuna caught in a full year by all American fisherman. [inaudible talking] [chiming] [narrator] Across the Pacific from Kaohsiung harbor in Newport, Oregon. Fishermen like Herb Goldberg were warning that the drift nets were having a disastrous effect on American tuna fishing. [Goldberg] They've been hammering Albacore since about 1980 and we've watched our catch

steadily decline from the same time to now. We used to average the American domestic albacore fleet: Oregon, Washington, California used to average 18,000 tons a season. Last year we were down to 1700 tons, 1750 tons was our catch last year. [narrator] From Washington to California, Fishermen talk of a lot of other problems besides drift nets. The rising cost of catching dwindling numbers of fish amid government regulations they consider anti-fisherman. Some are getting out. Or heading for Latin America where It's OK to catch a few dolphins or sea lions by accident. [birds squawking] At San Diego harbor in Los Angeles, Nick ?Mcalidge? says he's ready to give up. [Mcalidge] [inaudible] the way we used to be. Ten years ago, five years ago, even 20 years ago was beautiful here but what happened here is -you know, to tell you the truth, you could step from one boat to another all

the way across. That's how many boats we were here. 180 180 boats. So you see the difference today. [narrator] maybe too many boats. Here in San Pedro and everywhere else. The government lists over 100 species of fish as overfished and calls the condition of American fish resources, deplorable. The worst that 14 years ago. That's when the U.S. made foreign fishing boats leave American waters. Americans soon fill the vacuum. And when the competition got keener, they did what Taiwan had done. They look for new ways to catch the fish. [speaker 11] Poisonous fish. [speaker 12] its a what? [speaker 11] It's a poisonous fish [speaker 12] poisonous? [West] This is a color fathometer it just marks feed because what we're targeting on is is an animal that is a very opportunistic predator. So we know where there is feed. [narrator] Tony West has a 60 foot boat

and catches swordfish with a miniature version of the driftnet. [West] And this is a long range radar up to 30-48 miles and this is a short range up to 24 miles. [narrator] It sounds like the same vicious cycle the ecologist in Taiwan Mr. Lin talked about. [West] You'd need a couple of different fathom meters also [narrator] The fish become scarcer. The fishermen invest more money and technology to catch them [West inaudible in background] [narrator] They have to catch more fish to pay for it, and the fish get scarcer. [West] need backups and then our major communications line is all of these radios all over here. [speaker 12] We do use as much modern technology as we can. Part of it's an ego trip and part of it's keeping up with the Joneses. You know, you and I are fishermen and we're in competition with each other at the marketplace. And If you bring more than I do then it's not so much my ego but it's the standpoint that the price is going to go down. So I have to keep up with your production. So, if you get some new x y z machine that's going to do this for you, by gosh I better

get the same thing. So you get caught up into that syndrome. Now, if we if we throw away all that- [narrator] I got to see the technology at work one night. [Grossi] one of them is coming up you don't want fish to come up. [narrator] Gespari Grossi is looking for mackerel, or anything else he can catch: squid, bonita, anything except sardines. The government won't let him have sardines. Even though the San Pedro fishermen agree sardines are so plentiful they are hard to avoid. If he catches any, He'll have to throw them away. Like all the others. Mr. Grossi's boat has to have two of everything. Radar, Temperature gauges, sonar, depth finders, in daylight he sometimes even hires a spotter plane and pays the pilot five percent of his catch. [Grossi] on the rock bottom. Thats the rock bottom. [narrator] Mr. Grossi is an immigrant from Italy.

There was a time when his whole crew spoke Italian. Now they speak Spanish. Most are from El Salvador. California's fishing boats run on migrant labor. Just like California's farms and like Taiwan's fishing boats. The crew is paid a percentage of the catch. They say they've caught very little lately. Tonight, none of his gadgets can find Mr. Grossi any mackerel. He has the crew deploy the net anyway. The net cost him $70,000 dollars. It works by a system of cables and pulleys and bones and wenches. The clang and whir and crash about as the men work through the night on a slick heaving deck. They had made no money on this trip, because there are no fish.

Mr. Grossi has lost money. [interviewer] Did you have a good season? [Russo] Not really. We all struggle. San Pedro harbor is full of angry men like Sal Russo. Frustrated by how hard it is to make a living fishing. But blaming it on government regulations. [Russo] nobody even know us! Nobody know us, we don't exist. That's a shame. I think a bird, a dog anything. Yes. [inaudible] if I give my life if I have got to work to live like a jackass with us. That's shame. [narrator] Six thousand miles away in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of France, lies a little island named Île d'Yeu. It's an island of fisherman.

Always has been. [inaudible shouting] Now it's also a fresh battlefield in the fishing revolution. 136 boats harbored here. The fishermen of those boats catch more fish Than all other French fishermen combined Île d'Yeu is so proud of its fishing tradition that shops on the island sell a video tape about it [french] The historical footage shows tuna being caught with hooks and lines, but they couldn't catch enough fish this way to keep up with France's rising cost of living. Fishing and the island itself began to die. Like Taiwan, Île d'Yeu was rescued by the discovery of drift nets. Now all the fishermen of the island have put away their hooks and lines and have equipped their boats with drift nets.

Christian Rafan is 28 years old. He owns this boat and has a crew of seven. The boat cost over a million dollars. The fisherman's [inaudible] planted most of the money for it. It used drift nets four miles long to Catch tuna, bass and swordfish. This is a very successful young man [french] [french] [french] [speaker 13] has been holding his own boat for one year and it works and he's really pleased with what he's doing. [french] [narrator] Italy also turned to driftnets, laying them out in the Mediterranean sea to catch swordfish. The European nets are much smaller than those of Taiwan and Japan. But even

so, these nets were killing so many whales and dolphins that Italy ordered it's fisherman to quit using them. Dead mammals are only part of Europe's fishing problems, and driftnets only part of the cause. Scientists say that in the waters surrounding Europe almost every species of fish is being depleted. Overfished by as much as 400%. [Pratts] Yes. Yes. Savier Pratts is a spokesman for the European Commission. [Pratts] The present stocks of Haddock in the North Sea are 12% of what they were in 1970. [interviewer] OK. [Pratts] So in 20 years we squandered 90 percent of our resources. [narrator] The Commission considered it a crisis. It's ministers met in Brussels just before last Christmas To impose new regulations for all European fisherman. High on the agenda was the driftnet. Every country was preparing for a ban. Every country except France. Helene Gore of Greenpeace contends the French drift nets pose the same threat as the great

Asian nets. [interviewer] [inaudible] Atlantic driftnets. [Gore] At the moment the only difference is you have longer nets or you had longer nets in the South Pacific. But I don't think the difference is that great and you had hundreds of boats in the Mediterranean and a growing fleet in the Atlantic. and if it's not stopped it's going to be more than comparable and it might be too late. [narrator] Back on the island of Île d'Yeu, Greenpeace is a dirty word. and the European Council not much better. [french translator for Rafan] If driftnet fishing in Île d'Yeu is banned than the whole fishing business will collapse, tumble down. [narrator] If drift nets are banned, Christian Rafan says, he and his family will be ruined. And in the long run So would the rest of the island. Rafan rips apart his own his own nets, hoping the show they won't harm dolphins. [french translator for Rafan] The dolphin can break it, see?

[narrator] Rafan says he doesn't want to think about whether his two young sons will follow in his footsteps and be fisherman. It's too sad to think about. [french] [french translator for Rafan] In the past [inaudible] to prevent us from working I think that fishermen will start to be violent. [narrator] And there was violence of sorts by French fisherman. They dumped 15 tons of overripe sardines in a Brussels street outside the European Commission headquarters to protest the imminent drift net ban. Two days later, the ministers adjourned, announcing new regulations but no drift net ban. They said they would try again this summer. For a moment. The fishermen of Île d'Yeu had won. Across the

Atlantic in American waters, driftnets have little or Nothing to do with what's happened. But the fish are disappearing just the same. Fishermen have found other ways to catch too much. New Bedford, Massachusetts is probably America's most important fishing port. Certainly its most famous. Herman Melville had Captain Ahab sail from here to find Moby Dick. Once they've killed too many of the whales. The New Bedford sea men began to concentrate. on fish. Old fisherman can remember pulling fish from the Atlantic in such numbers the boats where in danger of swamping. The fishermen still go out from New Bedford,

they still bring in fish. But, it is not the same. [Saunders] We just barely making it. [narrator] Alan Saunders is in with a load of cod. About 10,000 pounds for a week of fishing. About $9,000 dollars worth. The three crew members will get about a $1,000 a piece. The fuel costs $2,500. The ice a 1,000. Then there's food, maintenance, and the mortgage on the boat to pay. [Saunders] Some weeks we've done better this year. [narrator] To do better, they fish harder. Compared with the good days, twice the effort for half the fish. [speaker 15] It's scary. It's really scary. It's a doomsday situation if we keep on the way we're going. [interviewer] Fish disappearing? [speaker 15] Fish disappearing. Grounds getting worked so hard that you'll never ever come back. [speaker 16] So this is a crisis. Sure it's a crisis. [speaker 17] Of course it is. [speaker 18] [inaudible] Why wouldn't it be? Why shouldn't we be trying to [inaudible] it up. I still...

The opportunities... [narrator] These three men sound more like environmentalists than fishermen but they've spent most of their lives fishing, and say fishermen are conservationists. They left the sea in order to organize an event for fisherman and boat and try to get the government to save the fishing industry from itself. They want catch limits and limits on the number of boats. And they want those boats to stay in port for at least 10 days a month. [speaker 15] The way it is right now, any boat can come along and obtain a license and go fishing. What it's done is created a monster. It's created overfishing with modern technology like the latest in electronics. The bigger horsepower and boats, bigger towing, bigger gear, bigger nets, bigger [inaudible] dredges It's taken its toll on the fisher. If we don't get a management system, a conservation method in better than what we have right now, we don't feel it will be any any resource to manage in the very near future. Some boats are making back-to-back trips. They come in in the morning. They've been out for 10 to 12 days or 12 to

14 days. They come in, they off-load, another crew jumps aboard and goes right out. [narrator] Here in New Bedford harbor Is an example of the problem that we're talking about. It's a scallop boat owned by by Jens Isaacson [interviewer] What do you use- What does your boat usually stay in port for? [Isaacson] This one here? This port here now don't stay in the port. It comes in this morning for a half an hour, but the crew is new. [interviewer] So you have two crews? [Isaacson] Two crews. We have two boats with two crews. [narrator] Mr. Isaacson says his boat 'The Diligence' costs a million dollars. It has four engines. They burn 10,000 gallons of fuel in two weeks at sea. The boat carries a crew of nine comfortably. They have television, showers, good food.

To pay for itself, the boat has to bring in a million dollars-worth of scallops a year, Isaacson says. [interviewer] Do you think you could pay the mortgage on a boat like this if you were only allowed out for eight days and then had to stay in port for five? [Isaacson shakes his head] Couldn't make it at that rate. [Isaacson] Couldn't make it. [narrator] Isaacson has to get 10,000 pounds of scallops every time out to break even -- the average is 15,000 pounds -- Then goes right back out. So it's still possible to make a profit even as the fish disappear. [speaker 15] You just got to take the effort up the resources. No way this can sustain the pounding of it's taking. There's no way. We're very fortunate that- [narrator] So is greed the problem? And is the fisherman to blame? [speaker 19] Because it's over-fishing, the public feels the fisherman is to blame. Who the hell has allowed the over-fishing? The government has allowed this over-fishing to go on and on and on. [speaker 15] We've tried for the last three or four years, almost four years, now we've tried to get a different management

system. We're talking to deaf ears. We feel we're talking to deaf ears because we go to meetings and... [Narrator] This is the office that's supposed to manage America's marine resources. The National Marine Fisheries Service. It's a branch of the Commerce Department. No one seems to think the agency has done a good job. [McMannis] The agency has left the field in many areas because of its being economically devastated over the last 10 years by the Reagan and Bush administrations. Even this year we know- [narrator] Roger McMannis is president of the Center for Marine Conservation, an environmental organization which has sued the Fisheries Service to force it to do its job. [Mcmannis] The problems with the American fisheries management are not mysteries. They're not new revelations. There's been report after study after report done all pointing to the same problems. [narrator] About a year ago the Marine Fisheries Agency got this report card. A study

commonly called the Chandler Report. It describes an ineffective agency with too much to do and not nearly enough money to do it. Its agents spread much too thin to enforce regulations. Those regulations, the report says, are often based on pressure from fishermen rather than the needs of conservation. Fishermen are allowed to continue taking some of the most seriously depleted fish. [McMannis] We have fundamentally the capacity to wipe out stocks of fish and we're demonstrating that we can do that over and over again. We basically mine these living resources when we should be managing them for long-term sustainable development. [narrator] One of the surprising criticisms of the Marine Fisheries Agency contained in the Chandler Report is that despite being underfunded, the agency keeps asking for less money than Congress wants to give it. [Fox] I fully endorse virtually everything that's in the Chandler Report. I think it's an excellent study- [narrator] That amounts to a

confession, because William Fox is the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. He got a job last year after being one of the agency's severest critics and a new follow-up study says Fox is improving the agency. [Fox] I don't think there's any one bad guy that you can point to. The system is very complex and the system has failed. One way of looking at it- [narrator] Fox says the key to conserving fish to set quotas for how many fish can be caught, but the government should not over-regulate how the fisherman can catch them. [Fox] We need to turn that around and say that this is the quantity of fish that that can be taken. And to then to allocate those harvest rights so that individuals can make a rational decision about how much capital investment they put in, in order to in order to take that and they can make a decision decision...[narrator] He predicts the fish will make a comeback, but not soon because many species are in very bad shape. [Fox] Well, you're talking five years, 10 years, even 20 years

in order to get recovery. [speaker 20] We are really woefully lacking, I think, in the Northeast ground-fishing industry of some reliable numbers, numbers that- [narrator] This March, hundreds of fishermen met in Maine and asked Mr. Fox to come talk to them about his plan. [Fox] ...research again to get us out of the mode of simply being able to [inaudible] cast and get us into the mode of- [Narrator] Reaction of the fisherman was the predictable. [speaker 21] You fellows seem to have a lot to tell I'm going to ask you a question, well I- I don't really know and you're basically saying you tell us you really don't know. and it bothers us fisherman. [crowd member] Here, here. [speaker 21] that we gotta be told we've got to do all this stuff, but nobody really knows anything. That don't make much sense. You guys got some jobs, but I don't think we're going to have any if you keep on. Save the fish but lets vote for people. [Narrator] This is something Fox, the fisherman, and environmentalists all agree upon.

The government doesn't know enough about oceans and fish to make wise rules. It's guessing at the toll the fisherman's arms race is taking. And what it means to kill so many marine animals, to catch so many tuna, and squid, and scallops. Here at a place called Woods Hole on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, America's premiere marine research vessel, "The Albatross 4", one of the ships built to find the answers, lies idle. Tied up at dock for the last year and a half Ron Smallowitz once commanded her. [Smallowitz] This ship basically is the cornerstone of the whole fishery system. She's laid up right now for a lack of funds. [interviewer] Is there something telling about that? [Smallowitz] Well, I think so. Well all that ship sits here there's things taking place out in the ocean now that we have no knowledge. [narrator] Smallowitz estimates he's spent 3,000 days at sea doing exploratory fishing and studying the effects of different kinds of fishing here. He believes the

revolution in fishing has left man and the sea desperately out of balance. balance. [Smallowitz] What we've seen is a growth in the fishing vessels. And the electronic gaze that a fisherman has to help them catch the fish. The size of his engines, the size of his deck and equipment all have increased. The predators become more efficient. That fish is the same fish. Now okay, and it's losing. [Smallowitz] This what's called an innovation treadmill. And that'll keep on going, going on until conceivably the last fish is caught. [narrator] No matter what or what country or what sea, the story I found was

always the same. Fishing technology run amok. Technology and pollution running amok hand-in-hand, chasing fewer and fewer fish as the world bleeds for more and more. While governments look away. I found almost no one who was optimistic about a solution. Is it possible to manage the seas? Is it possible to make fishermen stop hunting the vanishing game, and begin to tend it, and conserve it, in time. In New Bedford they talk of three years to doomsday. A crisis. Seas overfished 400%. Taiwan Taiwan, it's own waters so desolate, Taiwan's boats go halfway

around the world in search of fish. I heard the same warnings everywhere. And the same resistance. [interviewer] What do you believe is going to happen to the drift net fleet of Taiwan? [Taiwanese] [Narrator] In Taiwan, the spokesman for the drift net fleet, Mr. ?Tsai?, said he still hopes his government will allow the high seas drift net fishing to continue. And what if it doesn't? What if the government orders an end to it? [Speaker 22] The government the government's policy is according to the real of the fishermen, then we'll accept, but if not then we will defy. [narrator] And in France on the island of ?Île d'Yeu?

[interviewer] What will you do if they banned drift net fishing? [french] [french translator] They said that Of course drift net fishing is their life. So they will fight. And if Brussel banned drift net fishing they will use violent action. [speaker 15] The biggest part of the fishermen who are asking the government to do anything better than what they were doing right now because there's no light at the end of the tunnel; absolutely no light. It's just a doomsday situation if we keep on the way we're going. [Speaker 23] So that's an [inaudible]. That's a long time ago. So there were [inaudible] all done. That was 50 years ago. But they're still growing. [interviewer] So you think it will spring back? [speaker 23] Yeah, it goes in cycles

Fishing [inaudible] never dies. [speaker 24] Fishermen are like everybody else. We live for today; to hell with tomorrow. Except some of us. And that's why the three of us are as sharp because we believe in these kind of things instead of being out there and taking a last call up at the last fish. [narrator] It's like the rainforest, someone said. The overfished oceans are like the destruction of the rainforests. The difference is you can see what's happening to the rainforests. It's harder to tell with the ocean. We've taken and taken from the seas, expecting a never ending harvest. hoping everything will be all right down there. Now something has gone wrong. And It's getting very

late.