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Our Ravaged Seas

Globalization Is Destroying the World's Oceans

By Thomas Schulz

Part 2: 'Everything Was Gone'

More than 70 boats descended on the schools of ocean perch. "Everything was gone within two weeks," says Hartmann, who disapproves of the practice.

Hartmann is also the chairman of the Association of German Deep-Sea Fisheries. He is familiar with the problems surrounding the current reputation of fishermen, including their supposedly relentless greed for the catch and their lack of concern for the environment.

This is why he spends a lot of time talking about fishing practices designed to preserve populations and about the need to cooperate with scientists and environmentalists. He says restrictions are indispensable, "for reasons of conscience," but also for economic reasons. "I still want to have this job in 20 years. That'll only happen if there are still fish."

When he talks about such changes, Hartmann uses expressions like "paradigm shift" and "ethical necessity." He is not your stereotypical seaman, not someone who, with a deeply tanned face and hands battered by the elements, likes to tell fishermen's yarns. Sometimes he seems almost out of place on the bridge, peering at his laptop through his angular designer glasses. There is a stark contrast between Hartmann and his surroundings where, despite the open doors, there is an unbearably rancid stench, a fatal mix of fish, machine oil and old sweat.

Hartmann didn't even grow up on the coast, but in Cologne. He bought his first cutter in 1977 for 100,000 German marks, using money borrowed from friends. Since then his ships have become a little larger every few years. The "Atlantic Peace," which Hartmann bought used seven years ago for 18 million German marks, is his crowning achievement.

But Hartmann hasn't gone out himself in years. These days he prefers to leave the fishing up to his partners. The "Atlantic Peace" is a limited partnership consisting of three captains. One has to stay on land, says Hartmann, "to make sure that we weren't put out of business, as a one-ship operation." The threats to his business include the EU bureaucracy, competitors who often operate dozens of ships, and market fluctuations that stopped having anything to do with daily prices at the fish auction in the port city of Bremerhaven long ago, but instead are determined by exchange rate fluctuations between the yen and the dollar.

Two weeks before the "Atlantic Peace" entered the port of Reykjavik, Hartmann had sold its entire catch -- 19,851 boxes of black halibut, with a little ocean perch mixed in -- for a price of €1.4 million ($2.14 million), negotiated with a Danish wholesaler that primarily supplies Asian food companies.

Hartmann does well when fish is in short supply in Japanese supermarkets, because he's paid more money for his halibut. His business does poorly when the Chinese economy falters, because that prompts the Chinese to shift from buying Hartmann's expensive ocean perch to cheap fish from Vietnam. But one thing is constant: Not a single fish caught by the last German deep-sea fishing vessel goes to Germany.

Globalization has reached the fishing industry in full force. "Anyone who doesn't recognize this," says Hartmann, "is quickly out of the picture."

Germans Prefer it Frozen

For most domestic fishermen, selling their catch in Germany is no longer worth the trouble. These days they supply only 15 percent of the fish on German supermarket shelves. This is not for any lack of demand: Germans are eating more fish every year, with per capita consumption up to 16 kilos (35 lbs.), a 20-percent increase over ten years ago. But Germany is a country of inexpensive fish, where even twice-frozen packaged fish, once spurned, is a top seller. One variety is Alaskan pollock, caught by Russian trawlers, frozen, sent to China to be filleted, refrozen and then shipped off to German supermarkets.

Hartmann gets €3.37 ($5.16) for a kilo of halibut. This is decent, but less than the going rate for cod, which has become rare. Because cod can only be sold in filet form, two-thirds of the catch volume is discarded. In the case of halibut, on the other hand, heads and fins are used. "The Chinese go for that," says Hartmann.

These factors make it worthwhile to target black halibut, "even though it's damned hard to fish." Black halibut swims at great depths, down to 1,500 meters (4,920 feet), and it takes an experienced captain as well as sonar, plotters and 3D underwater monitors to fish it up.

The bridge of the "Atlantic Peace" is reminiscent of a navy frigate more than a fishing boat. Deep-sea fishing today is equal parts high tech and manual labor: Hardly any fish in the ocean is safe anymore.

Traveling at two or three knots, the "Atlantic Peace" drags a long (70-meter) net across the ocean floor, even through drifting ice and during storms. Halibut sweeps into a giant net opening, which is 30 meters (98 feet) wide and 12 meters (40 feet) tall. After only half an hour, up to 20 tons of fish can be crowded into the end of the net. The net has to be reeled in after four hours, "otherwise the fish are quickly limp and descaled."

A giant stern winch pulls up the net. The process can take up to 30 minutes, and then the catch -- tens of thousands of fish squeezed into the green net, with mesh no smaller than 140 millimeters, to let young fish escape -- is brought on deck. The crew quickly opens the net and lets the fish slide down to their deaths. The entire lower deck of the "Atlantic Peace" is a processing factory consisting of metal conveyor belts and flashing circular saws.

When the fishing is good, the machines run 24 hours a day, performing an endless cycle of beheading, gutting and freezing. There is no daylight on the lower deck. It's a cold, crowded space with an unsteady floor. Working in this on-board processing plant is a back-breaking job, no matter how much technology there is to make it easier.

A seaman can earn €5,000 ($7,650) a month for the work -- good money, and yet the industry lacks new blood. "The aging workforce is a problem" says Hartmann, adding that some ships are practically manned with retirees.

Meaningless Quotas

There is still money to be made in fishing. The "Atlantic Peace" grosses about €8 million ($12.2 million) a year, while returns fluctuate between one and 15 percent. The industry will remain profitable for as long as the quotas exist, but that could change any year. Hartmann always carries around the EU's most current quota distribution list, in the form of a huge Excel table, dozens of columns that reflect, in condensed form, EU fishing policies.

There is a number for every country, every fishing zone, every fish species and every boat or fleet. According to the table, the "Atlantic Peace" is entitled to a quota of 4,500 tons of halibut, cod, Pollock, ocean perch and shellfish.

But with the exception of the total catch volume, the numbers are meaningless. Fishermen trade with one another, depending on what types of fish they specialize in. Hartmann, for example, has just traded his 800 tons of cod off the Norwegian coast for 600 tons of halibut from an Icelandic vessel off Greenland.

The quotas are revised each year, in months of negotiations among the EU countries and with their neighbors. "We never know what'll happen," says Hartmann, "and if things don't go our way, we can end up with only half as much fish the next year."