A global study holds forth the US, New Zealand and Iceland as good fish stock managers, but adds that more than half of the assessed stocks worldwide still need rebuilding.
The study, published in July in the Science magazine, is a joint effort that includes Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Canada, a controversial marine biologist who three years ago predicted that 90 percent of the world’s edible fish species would collapse by 2048, and some of his most outspoken opponents at the time. A 2006 radio debate brought Worm and fisheries biologist Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington in Seattle together to debate that paper, which later led them to launch an international research effort. The study, carried out over two years, involved 21 scientists who surveyed 166 areas where specific fish species are caught and looked intensively at 10 marine ecosystems.
“It was like a ‘CSI‘ for overfishing,” Worm said in an interview with USA Today.
Despite some hopeful signs to the effect that even collapsed stocks can recover, the scientists concluded that 63 percent of the assessed fish stocks worldwide still need rebuilding. Of the ten areas selected for intensive studies, the report found that those best managed were in the US, in New Zealand, and in Icelandic waters.
The key to saving threatened fish stocks, the study shows, is to reduce the outtake even below what has earlier been considered the maximum sustainable yield (MSY).
Measures recommended in the report include the closing of some areas to secure breeding, more selective gear, and individual catch quotas for fishermen.
A major problem, not unknown to critics of EU policy, is that many industrialised nations protect their own fish stocks, but still send their fishing fleets to countries with weaker laws or enforcement capacity. This is especially a problem in African waters.