[4animals] 2050 the year of no more fish, scientists warn

[vaalea]

2050 the year of no more fish, scientists warn 
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=3b78aea6-3ce6-4e2b-a840-5d610d944f74&k=50888
Margaret Munro, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, November 03, 2006 

The world's fisheries are on track to collapse by 2050, warns a Canadian-led research team calling for a revolution in the way the oceans are managed.

The researchers, whose assessment of the dying seas is published in the journal Science today, say it's not too late to save the fisheries that feed millions of people. But major changes are required, and soon.

''It's bad but we know we can turn this around,'' says Boris Worm, head of the international team and a fisheries biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Twenty-nine per cent of fish and seafood species, including Canada's once immense Atlantic cod fishery, have collapsed to less than 10 per cent of their original size, the researchers say. They warn all other fish and seafood species could suffer the same fate, as erosion of the planet's marine ecosystem appears to be accelerating.

''This trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa (species) currently fished by the mid-21st century,'' they say.

''We are predicting we are going to run out of everything in future if we don't change our behaviour,'' Worm said in an interview.

The team notes bigger boats and new technology are chasing fewer fish the global catch fell by 13 per cent between 1994 and 2003.

Federal fisheries officials acknowledge the oceans have been mismanaged in the past, but say changes have been made both internationally and in Canada to try to prevent further decline. Close to 100,000 people work in Canada's fishing industry, which produces almost $5 billion worth of seafood annually for export and the domestic consumption.

''In the event that we don't make these changes that predication might in fact be something that has some credibility, but we are making changes to prevent that from happening,'' David Bevan, DFO assistant deputy minister, says of the study's ''grim'' forecast for 2050.

''The only caveat I have, I guess, is that it has been tough slogging and we are dealing with ecosystems under significant change due to temperatures.''

A warming trend is evident in the waters on all three Canadian coasts.

''We see four-and-a-half-degree temperature increases in some of our stations off Newfoundland,'' Bevan said.

While climate change is a clear threat to ocean ecosystems, Worm and his colleagues from the U.S. and Europe show humans have already had a devastating impact at a local, national and global level. Overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction, which dates back hundreds of years in many parts of the world, is so widespread they say it now threatens ''global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability.''

The researchers tracked 1,000 years of change in 12 coastal regions from the Adriatic Sea to the Gulf of St Lawrence. They also combed through global fisheries catch data from 64 marine ecosystems and assessed the impact of removing millions of tonnes of fish every year.

They say the elimination and depletion of stocks and species like the Atlantic grey whale, right whales, the Atlantic walrus, and the once plentiful cod, haddock and salmon stocks from the Gulf of St. Lawrence sabotages the ecosystems' stability and potential for recovery.

But with careful management, damaged ecosystems can be restored. The researchers assessed 48 protected marine areas and found marked recovery.

''We see ecosystem recovery almost every time,'' says Worm. ''We have to think of the ocean the way we think of the land.''

He says the kind of industrial harvesting now used at sea would not be allowed on dry land, and is calling for more sustainable fishing, zoning of oceans to protect key ecosystems, and the creation of more protected areas.

As evidence of unsustainable operations, he described hydraulic dredges the size of a small rooms being used to blast clams out of the seafloor off Newfoundland.

''They're basically liquefying the bottom and sucking things out.''

And he says Canada's once rich East Coast fishery has hit a new low by opening a fishery for sea cucumbers and hagfish in Cape Breton.

''That's the bottom of the barrel we're scraping right there,'' says Worm. ''After that it is jellyfish and then no more.''

Bevan says hydraulic dredging is tightly controlled and confined to small areas. As for Cape Breton's sea cucumbers and hagfish, he says it's a small exploratory test fishery.

Bevan stresses in the last decade the Fisheries Department has taken a new proactive approach to preserve marine ecosystems and fish stocks.

''We realized we had to change,'' says Bevan, who points to the integrated ground fish plan recently introduced in B.C. as evidence of the department's new approach.

''What we've done is make sure every individual fish that is caught and killed is accounted for and covered off by a quota,'' says Bevan.

And West Coast salmon, he says, are now managed to ensure survival of weaker stocks.

But Worm says DFO is still making what he considers misguided decisions, such as opening a small cod fishery in Newfoundland this summer, even though the stocks show little sign of recovery.

He's also baffled by Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn's recent refusal to support a proposed UN moratorium on bottom trawling in international waters, a practice likened to clear-cutting on the sea bottom.

Ottawa has committed to setting aside 10 per cent of Canadian waters as marine protected areas by 2012, but so far only 0.5 per cent has been, says Jennifer Smith of the World Wildlife Fund.

''Canada has fallen way behind,'' she says.

Bevan says creating marine protected areas takes time because the provinces, fishers, the oil and gas industry, First Nation groups and local communities all need to be consulted.

''We're working on it,'' he says of the 10 per cent target.

Cod and oysters: tastes our grandchildren may not savour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fish/story/0,,1938418,00.html

James Randerson, science correspondent
Friday November 3, 2006
The Guardian 


The sensuous thrill of an oyster washed down with a cool, crisp white wine. The treat of battered cod and chips on a drizzly night after closing time. Your grandchildren will taste neither of these delights, or indeed any wild-caught seafood, if industrial fishing continues at its current rate, according to a huge analysis of the health of the world's oceans. 
Projecting current fishing levels into the future, the researchers predict that all stocks will have collapsed by 2048. "We asked, 'if this trend which has been very strong and very consistent over the last 50 years were to continue, where ... would we end up?'" said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who led the study. "And the answer is you end up with no seafood."

The team looked at data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and other sources. Between 1950 and 2003, 29% of fish and invertebrate fisheries within all 64 large marine ecosystems worldwide had collapsed. These regions account for 83% of the world's seafood harvest. Projecting these trends into the future, all stocks decline by at least 90% (the definition of a fishery collapse) by 2048. "Biodiversity is a finite resource. We can predict when we are going to run out of species," said Professor Worm. 

One feature of marine ecosystems that emerged from the analysis was that as more species are lost, the collapse of the remaining species becomes more likely. "You are also losing the ability of the system to self-repair and recover." 

And there are economic benefits of protecting diversity. When the team looked at the impact of designating protected areas they found that preventing fishing boosted biodiversity by 23%. More surprisingly, around the protected areas the catch for fishermen increased fourfold. 

"This analysis provides the best documentation I have ever seen regarding biodiversity's value," said Peter Kareiva, lead scientist for the Nature Conservancy. "There is no way the world will protect biodiversity without this type of compelling data demonstrating the economic value of biodiversity." 

The challenge will be whether decision-makers heed the message. "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean's species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood," said co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University. "The data show us it's not too late," said Prof Worm. "We can turn this around. But less than 1% of global ocean is effectively protected right now." 

In numbers 

29% Percentage of currently fished species collapsed (below 10% of original population) by 2003 

2048 When all commercial species will have collapsed if trends continue 

13% Decline in global fishing yields since 1994 

100 Number of times greater the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef is than its value as fishing resource
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