May 20, 2012 – Between 1950 and 2006, a WWF report notes, the world’s annual fishing haul more than quadrupled, from 19 million tons to 87 million tons. New technology — from deep-sea trawling to long-lining — has helped the fishing industry harvest areas that were once inaccessible. But the growth of intensive fishing also means that larger and larger swaths of the ocean are in danger of being depleted.
Daniel Pauly, a professor of fisheries at the University of British Columbia, has dubbed this situation “The End of Fish.” He points out that in the past 50 years, the populations of many large commercial fish such as bluefin tuna and cod have utterly collapsed, in some cases shrinking more than 90 percent.
Indeed, there’s some evidence that we’ve already hit “peak fish.” World fish production seems to have reached its zenith back in the 1980s, when the global catch was higher than it is today. And, according to one recent study in the journal Science, commercial fish stocks are on pace for total “collapse” by 2048 — meaning that they’ll produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch. On the other hand, many of those fish-depleted areas will be overrun by jellyfish, which is good news for anyone who enjoys a good blob sandwich.
The full WWF report (PDF), meanwhile, is chock full of brightly colored graphs charting the decline of wildlife across the globe. All told, global vertebrate populations have declined by some 30 percent since 1970. But that number masks a lot of variation. Wildlife actually appears to be recovering in the temperate areas, while it’s utterly collapsing in the tropics. (It seems there have been some modest conservation successes in the wealthier temperate regions — the European otter is staging an impressive comeback, for instance.)
The big thing the WWF paper emphasizes, however, is that human consumption patterns are currently unsustainable. We’re essentially consuming the equivalent of one and a half Earths each year. This is possible because we borrow from the future, as is the case with fish — one day the world’s fish population may collapse, but there’s plenty for us now. WWF doesn’t quite call it a Ponzi scheme, but that’s the first metaphor that comes to mind.
Read the full story at the Washington Post.
Analysis: The article references the controversial and disputed claim that global fisheries are estimated to collapse by 2048. The claim, originally published in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, was from a study done by Boris Worm, an associate professor at Dalhousie University in California. Worm was heavily criticized for this claim when the study was first published, including criticism from Steve Murawski, Director of Scientific Programs and Chief Science Advisor for NOAA, who stated that the proportion of overfished populations was actually decreasing, rather than increasing. Due to the wealth of disagreement, Worm ultimately decided to re-evaluate his idea.
In a more recent paper in 2009, also published in Science, Worm, working with with Ray Hilborn, a fisheries science professor at University of Washington and one of the main critics of Worm's 2006 work, reversed his original claim and concluded that almost all fisheries are rebuilding and only two-thirds are under the numbers they should be and are in the recovery process. This paper states that with the proper regulations and fisheries management, along with outreach to global fisheries, commercial fish populations can be restored.
The article also cites Daniel Pauly, a professor at University of British Columbia, an advocate of the idea of a future fisheries collapse he refers to as “The End of Fish.” However, Pauly’s ideas, much like the idea of an end of commercial fishing by 2048, is controversial in the marine science community. Hilborn, also a critic of Pauly's work, explains that rebuilding efforts in the United States have paid off. He writes that, “fishing pressure has been reduced in most ecosystems,” and that if current fishing conditions are maintained 83 percent of stocks are expected to recover.
Hilborn also argues that although Pauly’s claim that 70 percent of stocks are overfished is widely referenced in the media, it is untrue. His research, including his 2009 study with Worm, indicates that only 30 percent of fisheries are currently being overfished, although he admits that many fisheries in Africa and Asia lack sufficient data.
Missing in this discussion is the extent of current fisheries regulations in the United States. The author of the Post article claims that quotas are weak and “watered down” but does not acknowledge that the United States has some of the strictest fishing regulations in the world.