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GLOBAL fish stocks may have declined without anyone noticing. For the past
few years, China has unwittingly misreported how much fish it takes from its
ocean waters, masking the extent of worldwide overfishing.

There have been long-standing concerns that China has been reporting
implausibly high fish catches. Now a computer model of the area developed by
researchers based in British Columbia suggests that, between 1995 and 1999,
China鈥檚 claimed ocean fish catch was about twice what should be possible based
on conditions in the area.

Estimates of annual global fish catches, which are in the range of 80 million
tonnes, could have been inflated by about 5 million tonnes.

Andrew Rosenberg, a former deputy director of the US National Marine
Fisheries Service who is now based at the University of New Hampshire in Durham,
says the work challenges the conventional wisdom that the global fish catch is
stable. 鈥淭he inflated numbers we had in the past gave everybody the sense that
there is plenty of time to deal with this issue. There isn鈥檛 plenty of time,鈥� he
says. Rosenberg hopes the information will spur on the many governments who have
signed fishing treaties but have yet to implement them.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization compiles statistics on global fish
catches. But they are based on data voluntarily provided by each country, which
is often impossible to verify. So Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly at the University
of British Columbia estimated the likely fish catch in a given area using a
computer model that considers factors such as how much food is available at
certain depths, temperatures and latitudes. The model successfully predicted the
majority of reported catches at different locations around the world. But there
were massive discrepancies for Chinese waters.

Based on the analysis, the team concluded that China had inflated its figures
by roughly 100 per cent. Other lines of evidence support this conclusion. For
instance, Chinese researchers have published data showing fish stocks have
declined in areas where reported catches have increased.

Pauly worked with Lillian Chang, a Chinese-born fishing consultant based in
Canada, on a study of Chinese fishing practices. They concluded that the root of
the problem was that junior fishery managers in China were more likely to gain
promotion if production increased in their fishing grounds.

Richard Grainger, head of statistics at the FAO鈥檚 fisheries department in
Rome, says China has been working with the FAO to reform its reporting system
and is dedicated to managing its fisheries more effectively. 鈥淲hen they decide
to do something, they don鈥檛 muck about.鈥�

But if Watson and Pauly鈥檚 analysis is correct, global fish numbers have
appeared to be stable or even growing, despite an actual decline. Rosenberg says
that this has encouraged governments to continue subsidising fishing.