Posted on Fri, Nov. 03, 2006

Global fisheries in peril

BUT THERE IS TIME TO STOP COLLAPSE BY MID-CENTURY

By Marla Cone

Los Angeles Times

All of the world's fishing stocks will collapse before mid-century, devastating food supplies, if overfishing and other human impacts continue at their current pace, according to a global study to be published today [in the journal Science] by scientists in five countries.

Already, 29 percent of species that are fished -- including bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, Alaskan king crab and Pacific salmon -- and an array of California fisheries have collapsed and the pace is accelerating, the report says.

If that trend continues, the study predicts that ``100 percent'' of fished species ``will collapse by the year 2048 or around that,'' said marine biologist Boris Worm, who led the research team. A fishery is considered collapsed if catches fall to 10 percent of historic highs.

Without more protection, the world's ocean ecosystems will not be able to rebound from the shrinking populations of so many fish and other sea creatures, the scientists reported in the journal Science.

In recent years, marine scientists have warned about the toll of overfishing in many regions, but the new report offers one of the most dismal predictions for the future of the world's fisheries.

Yet there is hope, the scientists concluded: ``Available data suggest that at this point, these trends are reversible.''

If more protections are put into place, such as new marine reserves and commercial fishery closures, the volumes available for food would surge and the oceans could recover, they said.

``The good news is that it is not too late to turn things around,'' Worm said. ``It can be done, but it must be done soon.''

In June, the California Fish and Game Commission took steps to protect marine life in waters from Half Moon Bay to Santa Barbara. Fishing will be banned or sharply limited in 18 percent of California's ocean waters under the plan establishing marine reserves, the first broad network of protected marine areas in the nation.

The 29 zones, which are to take effect early 2007, would ban fishing over 94 square miles and limit it in 110 additional square miles -- a combined area more than four times as large as San Francisco.

At 48 areas already protected by marine reserves and fishery closures in California, Florida, the Philippines, the Caribbean and elsewhere, species declines reversed and catches nearby increased fourfold, the study says.

The researchers concluded that estuaries, coral reefs, wetlands and oceanic fish are all ``rapidly losing populations, species or entire functional groups.'' The scarcity of a highly nutritious food supply for the world's growing human population is the most visible effect of declining ocean species. But the scientists said other disruptions also are occurring as ocean ecosystems unravel.

The loss of diversity ``sabotages the stability'' of marine environments and their ability to recover from stresses, the report says.

``Our data highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale,'' the scientists reported. ``Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations.''

The authors are 14 marine scientists, and funding came from the National Science Foundation, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Andrew Sugden, Science's international managing editor, said the strength of the report ``lies in the breadth of the array of information the authors used for their analysis.'' The researchers combined information from a variety of sources, from small-scale local experiments to U.N. fisheries databases.

Worm and his colleagues said the similarities surprised and disturbed them. Even the smallest experiments -- measuring biodiversity in a few square meters -- mirrored the declines seen in entire ocean basins.

``Kinds of seafood that were very common and quite abundant in past decades are not there now,'' said co-author Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University.

Palumbi warned that ``unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood.''

The National Fisheries Institute, a U.S. fishing industry group, questioned the findings, saying that federal statistics ``show more than 80 percent of fish stocks are sustainable and will provide seafood now and for future generations.'' The group said that for the past quarter-century, wild fisheries worldwide have provided between 85 million and 100 million metric tons of seafood annually, and that aquaculture, also known as fish farming, is filling the growing demand.