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May 7, 2010
Overfishing prompts a ban
Legislation attempts to replenish dwindling stocks in the Galilee.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
“When I was a kid, fishermen would toss out 150 hooks and haul in 100 kilos of fish,” said Shaul Rokach, a 57-year-old fishmonger from Jaffa. “Today, the fishermen toss out 3,000 hooks. He starts letting them out and doesn’t know when it will finish and, in the end, he hauls in 15 kilos – maybe. They can’t even cover the cost of the bait let alone the fuel.
“Once my smile spread from ear to ear,” he added. “My pockets were full of money. We’d strut down the piers. Now, they’re just trying to kill off the profession.”
Rokach is not the first fisherman to complain there are no longer any fish to catch in the Holy Land. Tradition holds that Jesus and his disciples fished the famous Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. According to the New Testament, apostle (Simon) Peter ran a fishing business on the shores of the lake. He complains that his net keeps coming up empty. When Jesus tells him to cast his net again, it comes up bursting with fish (Luke 5:4).
Generations have carried on this fishing tradition and, today, the most popular fish in the lake is dubbed “St. Peter’s Fish,” more commonly known as tilapia.
But, after being nearly fished to death, in the coming weeks, the Israeli government will begin to enforce a total ban on fishing in the biblical Sea of Galilee, in an effort to bring it back to life. The new two-year ban will force some 200 licensed fishermen out of the sea in search of a new trade.
“We will support the fishermen and make sure the lake is restocked with fish,” Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said when announcing the ban after his weekly cabinet meeting.
The Sea of Galilee has witnessed a dramatic decline in fish, largely due to illegal practices such as catching breeding fish, which prevents fish populations from growing. Millions of hungry migratory birds also feed heavily on the fish.
The ban on fishing in the fresh water sea has been discussed for some time. The formal plan was jointly formulated by Israel’s Agriculture Ministry, Environment Ministry and Treasury.
“There is a world-wide trend in the decline of fish,” said Hagay Noyberger, chief fishing ranger of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture. “In Israel, it’s the same. It’s caused by pollution, overfishing, global warming and other phenomena.”
Prof. Menachem Goren, an aquatic biologist at Tel Aviv University, said overfishing is the principal problem in the declining fish stocks.
“There are too many fishermen, too many boats, overfishing and no management,” he said. “The situation has become very bad, not just in the reduction in the numbers of fish, but also in the size of those which remain.”
Ministry of Agriculture reports show that there has been a steady 20 percent decline each year in Israeli fish catches. In 2000, for example, almost 4,000 tons of fresh catch was recorded. By 2006, just over 2,000 tons of fresh fish were caught.
Unlike neighboring countries, Israel does not ban fishing during the three- to four-month fish reproduction season, which has worked to deny the fish population a chance to recover.
“In most Mediterranean countries, fishing is banned during the summertime and this allows the fish to breed and to grow,” said Goren. “Here, in Israel, we don’t have any regulation of this kind right now. So the fishermen fish all year round and they don’t give the fish any chance. They remove the mothers while they are small before they get to maturity and that is it.”
Noyberger said this, too, was about to change.
“We want to close areas to fishing in order to replenish the stock. It is a long process and not something that takes a day or two,” the fish ranger said.
Noyberger refused to elaborate, but reports say these no-fishing zones will be off the coast of Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and the rich breeding grounds of Achziv, just south of the Lebanon border.
It is feared that the result of these changes is that Israeli fishermen are a dying breed, and the few who do remain say many have quit the trade out of frustration.
Rokach, known as “Shaul the Fishmonger,” has abandoned his boat to make a living importing fish.
“I’ve got salmon from Norway, grouper from Egypt, and cod and mackerel and sea bass,” he said, rattling off his imported stock. “People love fish a lot. All the fishermen I know are retiring and there are no new fishermen. I miss it, but let me remain with my good memories.”
The Ministry of Agriculture admitted it has a plan to encourage the retirement of at least a third of the country’s legal fishing fleet. There are about 400 licensed boats in the Mediterranean, Sea of Galilee and Red Sea and about 3,000 registered fishermen.
“In order to improve fishing for the coming generations, there is a trend to try and reduce the fishing fleet,” said Noyberger. “It is not something that will happen tomorrow but, if possible, we will, in the coming years, reduce it by a third so that those who do remain will be able to make a living.... The fishermen who are less active might find it worth their while to leave the profession.”
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