No Fish by 2050
Enjoy the next 50 years of aquatic cuisine, for that might be all we have left.
By Jack Penland
November 02, 2006 | Environment
Research unveiled today is projecting that by the year 2050, all current fish and seafood species will collapse. The report is the work of 12 researchers worldwide and is published in this week's edition of the journal Science.
"I was chilled," says the report's lead author, Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who adds, "I was really shocked because, I didn't expect it to be so soon."
Worm and the other researchers studied worldwide fishing records from the past 50 years, fishing records from 12 places that stretch back as long as 1,000 years, and records of small scale controlled studies. He says the studies all point in the same direction, "We see very clearly the end of the line.
Processing fish in an industrial fishing ship (courtesy of National Environmental Trust)
It shows that we're going to run out of viable fisheries, out of all seafood species by the year 2050." He says the report shows that one third of the fisheries have collapsed, but that the trend is accelerating, and that, "We only have another 40 or 50 years now."
Worm says the problem is that commercial fishing is harming the ability of the fish to maintain steady populations, especially against other threats such as pollution and global warming. Additionally, fishermen often unintentionally catch and kill sea life nobody wants to eat, what fishermen call "bycatch." However, that bycatch is often the food for the commercially important fish.
Not all marine biologists agree that the situation is so desperate. Among them is Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington. He says his studies show areas can be depressed down to 20 to 40 percent of prior levels of fish and suffer only a 15 percent drop in commercial production. He says, "Now, to me that's not a crisis. I defy you to find many things in life where you get 85 percent of maximum."
Worm says the situation can be reversed, adding that the researchers also examined the records of protected areas and found the fish quickly returned. He adds the group is not advocating banning fishing, but instead becoming, "more intelligent about what we take out of the ocean and what we put into the ocean." |
