No fish in the sea


If we continue to treat the oceans as we do now, they will be unable to provide us with all the goods and services we take for granted.

Hunters have already decimated most of the great whale populations. Fur seals and sea turtles have been savagely overexploited. Coral reefs have been ransacked for souvenirs and mudflats "ploughed up" by people hunting for bait and shellfish.

But even more worrying, perhaps, is the way we have run down the oceans' fish stocks. According to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization, the sea can afford to yield 100 million tonnes of fish a year. In 1988, fishermen were already hauling in 97.4 million tonnes. Figures are falling now, not because people recognize the need to restrict catches, but because fish supplies are so low.

Meanwhile, government subsidies encourage fishermen from developed countries to use information gathered by planes, helicopters, and satellites to decide where to set their nets, which can be as long as 65 kilometres. And poverty and pressure to pay off international debts force developing country fishermen to catch and export all they can.

Fishermen often begin by catching large, high - value fish such as grouper. Like many other fish that are caught for food, grouper are predators. When large numbers of predators are removed, the whole food chain is upset. On overfished coral reefs in the Caribbean and the Red Sea, for example, populations of reef - eroding sea urchins have exploded.

In 1983, almost 80,000 olive Ridley turtles swam off Mexico' s Pacific coast. Now thanks to egg collectors and fishermen, fewer than 1,000 remain.




In the 19th century, commercial whaling fleets killed vast numbers of sperm whales. This century, they started to hunt right whales before moving on to the huge blue whales. When blue whale stocks ran out, they turned to the smaller fin whales, and finally to the still smaller sei whales. Now the only species to exist in relatively large numbers is the 10 - metre - long minke whale - and even minkes are considered endangered in the northern hemisphere.



This pattern of overharvesting one species and then turning to another one is mirrored by the fishing industry. Having exhausted supplies of valuable turbot and halibut, northern fishing fleets now pursue species such as whiting and spiny dogfish that they had previously discarded as "trash".




Picture of a grouper

Grouper, Great Barrier Reef. Australia


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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund for Nature