A new study by an international team of scientists finds that industrial fishing is driving the world’s oceans toward collapse. The report outlines 11 key actions needed to maintain healthy oceans, including the reduction of harmful fishing methods and keeping fish populations at 60% of their natural levels.
One recommendation offered in the report is to restrict bottom trawling, a technique that drags heavy weights and nets along the ocean floor. Roughly 28% of fish globally are caught using bottom trawling. It also accounts for more than 437 million tons of bycatch, unwanted marine animals accidentally caught in nets and discarded.
In many cases, bycatch includes marine animals such as porpoises, seals, turtles and several bird species.
“Fishing is destroying these ecosystems, we’re reducing their functionality,” Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of Exeter and lead author of the report, told Mongabay by phone. “We’re starting to see the consequences — jellyfish explosions, harmful algae blooms — these are signs of ocean dysfunction.”
Species like giant skates, angel sharks and halibut, he said, have already declined by up to 99% due to overfishing.
Marine ecologist Graham Edgar from the University of Tasmania agreed that stronger protections were needed but said the report’s action points don’t go far enough.
He suggested expanding no-fishing areas to serve as a refuge for species and called for increasing funds toward independent ecological monitoring programs not affiliated with fisheries.
Others argue that even the current protections are too strict. Ray Hilborn, a fisheries scientist from the University of Washington, raised concerns that fisheries are leaving too many fish in the sea, not overfishing stocks. “The reason you protect the environment is to provide human benefits, not for the intrinsic value of nature,” Hilborn wrote in an email to Mongabay, saying that in some places, increased environmental protections could lead to more food insecurity.
Roberts, however, said people need to fish in a way that doesn’t harm the environment to guarantee long-term survival, for both fisheries and the planet.
“We expect the ocean to continue to perform vital ecosystem functions, like producing clean water and taking carbon out from the atmosphere and storing it in sediments,” he said. “But these are things that only can be guaranteed from healthy marine ecosystems. And what fishing is doing is destroying those ecosystems.”
Banner image: A Dutch super trawler fishing 30 miles off the coast of Mauritania. Image © Pierre Gleizes/Greenpeace.
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