Striped Bass Fishing Forums Forum banner

Ocean fisheries collapsing, study says

3K views 1 reply 1 participant last post by  Striperjim 
#1 ·
Ocean fisheries collapsing, study says

Stocks could be gone by 2048, scientists say

By MARLA CONE, Los Angeles Times
Posted Friday, November 3, 2006

All of the world's fishing stocks will collapse before midcentury, devastating food supplies, if overfishing and other human impacts continue at their current pace, according to a global study to be published today by a team of scientists from 12 academic institutions in five countries.
Already, 29 percent of species that are fished -- including bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, Alaskan king crab, Pacific salmon and an array of California fisheries -- have collapsed and the pace is accelerating, the report says.
If present trends persist, the study predicts that "100 percent of [fished] species will collapse by the year 2048 or around that," marine conservation biologist Boris Worm said at a news conference Thursday. A fishery is considered collapsed if catches fall to 10 percent of historic highs. Worm, an assistant professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, led the team of researchers responsible for the report.
In addition, ocean ecosystems will be unable to recover from shrinking populations of many species of fish and other sea creatures, the scientists report in the journal Science.
In recent years, marine scientists have warned about the toll of overfishing in many regions, but the new report offers one of the most dismal predictions for the future of the world's fisheries.
Yet, there is hope, the scientists concluded
If more protections are put into place, such as new marine reserves and the closing of commercial fisheries, the volumes available for food would surge and the oceans could recover, they said.
"The good news is that it is not too late to turn things around," Worm said. "It can be done, but it must be done soon."
The researchers concluded that estuaries, coral reefs, wetlands and oceanic fish are all "rapidly losing populations, species or entire functional groups." The scarcity of a highly nutritious food supply for the world's growing human population is the most visible effect of declining ocean species. But the scientists said other disruptions also are occurring as ocean ecosystems unravel.
The loss of diversity "sabotages the stability" of marine environments and their ability to recover from stresses, the report says.
Water quality is worsening and fish kills, toxic algal blooms, dead zones, invasive exotic species, beach closures and coastal floods are increasing, as wetlands, reefs and the animals and plants that filter pollutants and protect shorelines disappear. Climate change also is altering marine ecosystems.
"Our data highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale," the scientists reported. "Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations."
The authors of the report are 14 marine biologists and economists.
Andrew Sugden, Science's international managing editor, said the strength of the report "lies in the breadth of the array of information the authors used for their analysis." The researchers combined information from a variety of sources, from small-scale local experiments to United Nations fisheries databases.
Worm and his colleagues said the similarities surprised and disturbed them. Even the smallest experiments -- measuring biodiversity in a few square meters -- mirrored the declines seen in entire ocean basins.
"Kinds of seafood that were very common and quite abundant in past decades are not there now," said co-author Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University.
Palumbi warned that "unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans' species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood."
The National Fisheries Institute, a U.S. fishing industry group, questioned the findings, saying that federal statistics "show more than 80 percent of fish stocks are sustainable and will provide seafood now and for future generations." The group said that for the past quarter-century, wild fisheries worldwide have provided between 85 million and 100 million metric tons of seafood annually, and that aquaculture, also known as fish farming, is filling the growing demand.
 
See less See more
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top