Years before an economic crisis taught everyone the risks of runaway growth, marine fishermen and fishery managers were already getting a crash course.
Worldwide fishing catches grew 400 percent between 1950 and 1994, following centuries of increasingly intensive commercial fishing, but it couldn’t last forever — big fisheries began crashing by the late 20th century, and global production leveled off in 1988. U.S. catches peaked six years later at 5.2 million tons, more than double the country’s 1950 total, and by 2008 they had fallen back down to 4.1 million, despite rising demand.
Fisheries and financial markets have a lot in common, according to a study published last month, and both can collapse dramatically after reaching certain tipping points. While such tipping points are difficult to predict, there are still clues beforehand. Stock markets often behave erratically when a meltdown is coming, the researchers found, and fisheries may undergo odd fluctuations in population and body size before they crash.