Professor Ray Hilborn’s article titled “Net gains” (Upfront, February 18) should have been named “Net losses”. It was almost entirely based on misinformation and even disinformation.
One example of disinformation was that “fisheries … leave the base of the food chain alone”. It is true that we don’t harvest microplankton yet, but other elements of the food chain are under serious pressure. Examples include the overfishing of Antarctic krill, and the sad histories of the destruction of Pacific and North Sea herring, Chilean and North American sardines and Peruvian anchovies.
An item of misinformation involved the assertion that the oceans are not “being emptied of fish”. True, small forage fish are increasing in numbers, but only because we are killing the species that prey on them. We are actually undermining the food chain by taking the forage fish along with the species that used to eat them.
Even the argument that commercial fishing has less impact on the environment than other food industries because the “greenhouse gas footprint … depends almost totally on fuel use” ignores
