Subsidies paid to fishing fleets by their government often pays for 60% of the fuel cost.

Without these privateers’ subsidies the world’s catch would be a fraction of what it is today.

For a mere 1% of these privateer subsidies the world’s ocean pastures could be sustainably restored to historic health and abundance.

In 2013, Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain, paid $1.76 million for the first bluefin at Tsukiji, which weighed 489 pounds.

Fleets of ever larger and technologically advanced fishing boats are racing to see who can catch the last “million dollar tuna” or myriad other ocean fish before they become so rare that even with massive fuel subsidies they will be too costly to pursue.  These fleets are today’s Privateer, their pirate-like crews and owners paid rich bounties by their governments to show the flag and sink the competition.

To the victor go the swaggering spoils. Nations of the world pay out $27 billion subsidizing their fishing fleets, according to a report  by the Global Ocean Commission. This while the total value of the world marine catch is only $79 billion (FAO 2012 report). What other industry commands such a subsidy? All the while ocean fish populations are steadily collapsing.

There is a better way

A better use for some of this flag flying swag would be for a tiny fraction of these subsidies to fund ocean pasture restoration. Our solution is dirt cheap! For a cost of mere tens of millions per year, not the tens of billions of present industry subsidies, the job of bringing billions of additional fish back to sustainable abundance into the nets and onto the table can be rapidly and sustainably accomplished.

Within just a few years, we can bring back the fish and supply all of the world’s fishing fleets with an ocean restored to its former abundance. Our work of 2012 is delivering hundreds of millions for additional fish to the regions catch today. So as popular as blaming over-fishing  for the decline in fish production, the real reason behind declining catch is the collapse of ocean pastures.

Like any pasture as the grass (or plankton in the oceans) disappears so does the livestock. (Dust in the wind rpt.) By restoring and reviving ocean pasture health the need for fuel subsidies will fall as fishing becomes once again a profitable free enterprise. Fishing communities will be revitalized as billions of fish swim into the nets and onto the plates of people everywhere.

We’ve proven it just works!

Bear with me here’s some of the Global Ocean Commission bad news (the good news follows).

Such fleets of highly subsidized privateer fishing companies are also rightly described in economic parlance as zombies—unprofitable companies that will surely fail without massive government aid to keep them afloat. Governments are using them to keep fish prices low and to preserve their fleets and fishermen and to have their flags flying when the last fish of the ocean fish are caught.

But at what cost to the ocean.

In the case of the global high-seas bottom-trawl fleet. The highliner nations with the top 12 catches bunker these particularly harmful monsters with $152 million a year in fuel, worth a quarter of the value of the fish they catch. Fishing deep is high cost and inefficient and these marginally economic boats typically earn a meager 10% profit.  They simply could not stay in business if not for their  government privateer purses.

Governments are desperately afraid of cutting bait on these fishing industry subsidies because of the feared impact on jobs and local politics. In 2006 Spain choose to keep fishing and increased its fuel subsidy by 60% when fishermen blockaded its Mediterranean ports protesting high fuel prices. But the captains and the ships lion sized share of the money didn’t go to the common fisherman. These big boats and recipients of the maximum subsidies are not typically large employers: GOC reports that the biggest vessels catch 65% of all marine fish, while employing only 4% of fishermen.

Governments of 200 years ago choose to stop paying privateers to fly their flags and wage economic war. Those pirate ships became ships of commerce. Today governments can easily afford and almost immediately restore and revive the oceans and in doing so make those zombie ships honest vessels in a world with sufficient fish for all.

How To Bring Back Billions Of Fish, Feed The World’s Hungry – Ocean Pasture Restoration Repurposes Billions Of Tonnes Of CO2 Into Ocean Life

In 2012 after many years of development work my company Ocean Pastures completed a commercial-scale pilot project designed to restore and replenish a vital ocean salmon pasture in the N.E. Pacific. Ocean Pastures provided the technology, methodology, and scientific and engineering expertise via a limited technology license and other guiding business agreements with the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. It Just Works!

THE FISH CAME BACK THE VERY NEXT DAY