Here's a short Friday post for your amusement. If you can't laugh at all this human confusion, what can you do?
I came across a Wonk Blog report (Washington Post) called Just how badly are we overfishing the oceans? It was written not long ago on October 29, 2013.
It's by Brad Plumer, who in my experience is a good reporter who does his homework.
I mean, just the fact that Brad is writing about overfishing does him credit.
Anyway, Brad was doing the "evenhanded, fair & balanced, report both sides" thing that you always see in mainstream press sources. (For example, was Stalin a bad guy? Despite the fact that at least 20 million people were killed by his government, historians are divided on this question...)
So just how badly are we overfishing the oceans? Are fish populations going to keep shrinking each year — or could they recover? Those are surprisingly contentious questions, and there seem to be a couple of schools of thought here.
The pessimistic view, famously expressed by fisheries expert Daniel Pauly, is that we may be facing The End of Fish. One especially dire 2006 study in Science warned that many commercial ocean fish stocks were on pace to “collapse” by mid-century — at which point they would produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch. Then it's time to eat jellyfish.
Other experts have countered that this view is far too alarmist. A number of countries have worked hard to improve their fisheries management over the years, including Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. "The U.S. is actually a big success story in rebuilding fish stocks," Ray Hilborn, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, told me last year. Overfishing isn't inevitable. We can fix it.
I dealt with these optimistic "experts" in Exaggerated Claims About Over-Fishing The Oceans? (April 23, 2012). Brad continues—
Both sides make valid points — but the gloomy view is hard to dismiss. That's the argument of a new paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin by Tony Pitcher and William Cheung of the University of British Columbia that weighs in on this broader debate. They conclude that some fisheries around the world are indeed improving, though these appear to be a minority for now.
So, in their paper, Pitcher and Cheung review a number of recent studies that use indirect measurements instead.
For example, they note that recent analyses of fish catches suggest that about 58 percent of the world's fish stocks have now collapsed or are overexploited...
The gloomy view is hard to dismiss. No kidding. See Brad's report for additional details (the indirect measurements).
Here's the new paper.
Fisheries: Hope or despair?
Tony J. Pitcher and William W.L. Cheung
Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, CanadaAbstract
Recent work suggesting that fisheries depletions have turned the corner is misplaced because analysis was based largely on fisheries from better-managed developed-world fisheries. Some indicators of status show improvements in the minority of fisheries subjected to formal assessment. Other indicators, such as trophic level and catch time series, have been controversial.
Nevertheless, several deeper analyses of the status of the majority of world fisheries confirm the previous dismal picture: serious depletions are the norm world-wide, management quality is poor, catch per effort is still declining. The performance of stock assessment itself may stand challenged by random environmental shifts and by the need to accommodate ecosystem-level effects.
The global picture for further fisheries species extinctions, the degradation of ecosystem food webs and seafood security is indeed alarming. Moreover, marine ecosystems and their embedded fisheries are challenged in parallel by climate change, acidification, metabolic disruptors and other pollutants.
Attempts to remedy the situation need to be urgent, focused, innovative and global.
History of the status of world fish stocks from the FAO catch database 1950–2008, using a catch-only algorithm revised to meet earlier objections.
Hello Dave,
I found THE right approach: "It could always be worse!" :-/
Alex
Posted by: Alexander Ač | 11/08/2013 at 11:13 AM