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About Island Press
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Pauly, D. (Daniel)
In a perfect ocean : the state of fisheries and ecosystems in the North
Atlantic Ocean / Daniel Pauly and Jay Maclean.
p. cm. (The state of the world’s oceans series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 1-55963-323-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 1-55963-324-7
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Fisheries North Atlantic Ocean. 2. Marine ecology North Atlantic
Ocean. I. Maclean, J. L. (Jay L.) II. Title. III. Series.
SH213.2 .P38 2002
33.95’6’091631 dc21
2002152291
British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available.

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper
Design by Artech Group, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Margie and Marlon, and to Sandra, Ilya and Angela
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Contents
ix
List of Figures and Maps xiii
Preface xxii
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction xxi
1 A Brief History of the North Atlantic and its
Resources

Fisheries compliance with international
instruments 83
Institutions and Equity 89
x Contents
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4 What to Do? 91
Reducing Fishing Effort 94
Quotas 95
Vessel buy-back and destruction 98
Marine reserves 99
Fishery benefits 100
Using the precautionary approach 102
Transforming the Market 104
Reducing subsidies 104
Energy and/or carbon taxes 105
Educating consumers 106
Nonconsumptive use of the oceans 108
Accounting for future generations 108
Transforming Governance 110
Dealing with illegal catches 112
Reducing the scale of fishing fleets 114
Recommendations: Leaning on the Firewall Between
Science and Advocacy 116
Notes 121
References 153
Acronyms 165
Contents xi
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of the fraction of large fish killed due to North Atlantic
fisheries.
Figure 9. Decline and fall of a marine empire. 35
The charts, each representing one fish population, por-
tray the near universal decline, in the last decades, of the
abundance of commercial fishes in the North Atlantic,
and the increase of the fishing mortality to which they are
subjected.
Figure 10. Summary view of the decline in populations of large
predatory fishes in the North Atlantic since 1950. 36
Figure 11. Inflation plus. 38
The rising prices of fish in the North Atlantic Ocean com-
pared with the consumer price index, which represents
the average U.S. inflation rate since 1950.
Figure 12. More fuel, less fish. 42
The charts show the trend over time in the amount of fish
caught per unit weight of fuel, for a diverse set of North
Atlantic fisheries.
Figure 13. Running out of energy. 44
Changes in the edible energy extracted from caught fish
per unit of fuel energy used in catching groundfish and
invertebrates in Iceland, and Eastern Canada.
Figure 14. Going, going… 49
The larger, predatory fish types in the North Atlantic
have been decreasing since the 1950s, especially in areas
where they were formerly most abundant.
Figure 15. Fishing down North Atlantic food webs. 50
Trophic level trends in the North Atlantic, 1950 to 1998,
indicating the rapid (in the West) or gradual (in the East)
replacement of large predators in fisheries catches by

Breakdown of estimated 2.5 billion US$ of annual fish-
eries subsidies, by country/region of the North Atlantic,
and by type of subsidy.
Figure 25. Small is beautiful? 74
Comparisons of the small vs. large scale-subsectors in
Norwegian fisheries, using data for 1998.
Figure 26. International fisheries management. 84
Parts of the North Atlantic covered by various interna-
tional instruments devoted to fisheries management or
environmental protection.
Figure 27. What does it matter? 88
The major types of fish under the care of the six interna-
tional instruments are all in a state of decline.
List of Figures and Maps xv
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Figure 28. Clear advantages for future generations in restoring
marine ecosystems. 109
Net present value of an ecosystem, as seen by each of a
succession of 50 human year classes, with benefits repre-
sented by the area under each curve.
xvi List of Figures and Maps
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Preface
xvii
This volume, the first in a series, presents the findings of an ambi-
tious project—to measure the impact of fishing on the ecosystems
that make up the North Atlantic Ocean and to propose ways to mit-
igate that impact. The project arose from a request by Dr. Joshua
Reichert, the Director of the Environment Program of the Pew
Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, to answer six specific questions

bility of all humankind, not just of a small group of fishers, conser-
vation-oriented scientists are putting forward the case for new
arrangements in the stewardship of marine resources.
The project has drawn on fisheries and conservation literature,
and has conducted a number of new studies as well, in most cases
with new methodologies developed to best answer the questions
posed in assessing the many fisheries and ecosystems of the North
Atlantic Ocean.
This book offers a comprehensive assessment of fishery impact in
the North Atlantic Ocean and recommendations for mitigating that
impact. It serves as a model of tested methodologies for analyzing
and assessing the condition of other seas and ecosystems as well.
The project was called The Sea Around Us, a name drawn from
the outstanding book of this title by Rachel Carson.
1
We thank Uni-
versity of British Columbia President, Dr. Martha Piper, for remind-
ing us of that work, and thus inspiring the name of our project.
We hope that through this book, readers will realize the impor-
tance of maintaining and safeguarding marine ecosystems, which are
in many ways as indispensable to our well-being as the terrestrial
ecosystems that we inhabit.
Daniel Pauly, Vancouver
Jay Maclean, Manila
xviii Preface
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the Environment Program of the
Pew Charitable Trusts and particularly its Director, Dr. J. Reichert,
for the farsightedness and initiative shown in sponsoring this work,

Levin, Pamela Mace, Paul Medley, Lief Nøttestad, David Pimentel,
David Ramm, and Saul Saila.
We are extremely grateful for feedback received at a second
workshop, in May 2001, by our invited experts David Allison, Nancy
Baron, Philip Clapp, Kevern Cochrane, Paul Fanning, Richard
Grainger, Jay Nelson, Andy Rosenberg, Carl Safina, and Lisa Speers.
Thanks also to Amy Poon and Yvette Rizzo for reporting during
the workshops, and to Gunna Weingartner and Claire Brignall for
organizing them.
Thanks to graphic artist Diana MacPhail for improving our
graphs, to Mike Weber for helpful comments, and to Todd Baldwin
and his group at Island Press for turning our files into a presentable
book.
Daniel Pauly, Vancouver
Jay Maclean, Manila
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Introduction
xxi
The North Atlantic Ocean has always been portrayed as a danger-
ous, untamed place, a maelstrom of icebergs, sea creatures, and
“nor’easters,” a place only the bravest, strongest—or most desper-
ate—fishers dared to venture. For those who did, it held vast riches
of cod and swordfish, giant blue fin tuna, right whales, and winged
skates the size of barn doors. Its turbulence warded off the incur-
sions of fishers, and even in recent decades, it continues to claim
their lives, including those on board the Andrea Gail, the swordfish-
ing vessel whose plight was chronicled in the major motion picture,
The Perfect Storm.
It is a curiously underappreciated fact that the Andrea Gail had
been at sea a full 38 days—six days’ travel from her home port to a

The trawlers would not have destroyed the reef in one pass. First,
they dragged around it, lifting and removing the protective boulders
that had protected it, like the outer wall of a castle. Thanks to their pre-
cise geo-positioning systems, they were able to return day after day and
year after year to the exact same place, gradually eroding the outer
parts of the reef. Finally, they reached its central core, where the last
fish had found refuge, in the nethermost parts of a doomed castle.
About a hundred feet up is where most of the fish congregate,
where the longlines trail from boats like the Andrea Gail. There you
can find tuna, warm-blooded and swift as bullets until caught, now
big chunks of cold flesh. They are the target fish, sought because of
the huge prices they command in international markets. If they take
the bait, they will be turned into sublime dishes such as sashimi or
sushi, or steaks for backyard grills—or into cat food, if the fishers re-
trieve them too late, after their flesh has lost that special flavor.
xxii Introduction
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The longlines also snag swordfishes, large shiny knights without
armor, whose large eyes, and the warm brain behind them, help
them spot prey at depth, but not tell them from baited hooks. Each
year, fishers now struggle mightily to land fewer and smaller sword-
fish, once numbering in the millions in the North Atlantic. Their
slender bodies are sliced up for trendy restaurants.
The other fish dangling from the lines were not targeted; they are
the “by-catch.” Among them are small and large sharks. Some have
long pectoral fins, like bird wings; some have long tail fins, like giant
underwater squirrels. Once, sharks were thrown overboard when
caught by long-liners, but now their fins are cut off to supply a huge
million dollar market for shark-fin soup. The finned, bleeding car-
casses are thrown back overboard—thousands of them, day in, day

The vessel might have been constructed in a subsidized shipyard,
to keep jobs in a depressed region of the home country. Or it could
have been imported, second-hand and tax-free—another form of
subsidy—from a country with a “buy-back” scheme, which allowed
that country to modernize its fleet. Though it may be rusty and bat-
tered, its electronics are state-of-the-art The geo-positioning system
enables it to pinpoint its position within a few meters, thus enabling
it to return to the exact same spot and repeatedly trawl the same
productive reef until there is nothing worthwhile left to catch. It can
fish in bad weather, even in icy winters. It can travel great distances,
for months on end, and thanks to its blast freezers, return with its
catch in prime condition. What it cannot do is avoid the results of its
own success: a rapidly dwindling supply of fish in the sea. In the last
few years, too, its fuel efficiency— the amount of fish caught per
unit of fuel burnt in its huge diesel engines— has steadily dropped,
making it more and more costly to catch fewer and fewer fish.
“Fished out” local waters and upwardly spiraling fuel costs are
what drove the Andrea Gail further and further from Gloucester. It
needed a big catch to justify the rising cost of steaming to ever more
distant fishing grounds and staying at sea for weeks on end. When
carbon or energy-based taxes are finally put in place to combat global
warming, vessels like the trawler will cease to be economically viable.
The point may be moot, though, as the fisheries on which it depends
may long since have collapsed— and vessels like the Andrea Gail will
simply be retired, not swallowed by the North Atlantic.
* * *
Of course, this is not the kind of picture that interests either Holly-
wood or the fishing industry. Typically, the misleading image they
paint is one of relative abundance in the North Atlantic, one in
xxiv Introduction