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1.Executive SummaryThe world is in the grip of a fisheries crisis that transcends political boundaries and affects north and south alike. Nearly everywhere, fisheries that have sustained coastal communities for generations have suffered catastrophic declines. In some areas, excessive fishing has driven staple species such as the Atlantic cod and the Atlantic halibut to commercial extinction. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that 70 per cent of the world's commercially important marine fish stocks are either fully fished, overexploited, deleted, or slowly recovering. Gone forever are the historical estimates that marine catches could top 500 million metric tons per year. Without doubt, we have exceeded the limit of the seas. To make matters worse, evidence is mounting that modern fisheries significantly affect the physical environment of the oceans and represent a serious threat to marine biological diversity. According to the FAO, indiscriminate fishing practices kill and waste between 18 and 40 million metric tonnes of unwanted fish, seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, and other ocean life annually-fully one-third of the world catch. Unsustainable, `dirty' fishing has become an industrial addiction. Attempting to bolster a faltering industry, governments pay US$54 billion per year to subsidize catches worth just US$70 billion. These payments sustain massive fishing fleets that `hoover' up fish at an alarming rate. Sophisticated vessels, mostly from developed countries that have overfished their own waters, now plunder the fishing grounds of developing countries, offering foreign exchange in return for fishing rights. Presently, more than 25 per cent of the fish caught by the European Community is taken from outside its home waters. Northern countries routinely tempt developing nations into opening up their coastal fisheries to overexploitation. Increasingly volatile `fish wars' have erupted all over the globe as fishing fleets clash over the remnants of rapidly declining stocks. In early 1995, Canadian officials touched off a transatlantic `turbot war' by seizing a Spanish trawler caught fishing illegally on the Grand Banks just outside Canada's 200-mile limit. Gunfire is a regular feature of fisheries disputes among Southeast Asian nations, and violent acts occur in territorial waters around the globe. In India, traditional fishers in Kerala state, angry at the decline of coastal fisheries, burned 14 trawlers, seized four others, and held a vessel owner hostage. In the Barents Sea, Norway's coastguard fired warning shots and slashed the nets of Icelandic trawlers fishing too close to an island over which Norway claims jurisdiction. Throughout modern history, governments have largely managed marine fisheries for the growth and development of their commercial fishing industries. Decision makers have paid scant attention to the sustainability of ocean fisheries, much less to the health of their associated ecosystems or the needs of artisanal fishers exploiting the same species. In virtually every case, the short-term social and economic needs of a region's fishing industry have rendered long-term sustainability of catches a futile management goal. Governments have typically devised politically-expedient `solutions' and then described them as environmentally necessary. These efforts have mostly been too little, too late. Management actions that might have prevented the disastrous collapse of fisheries, but which carried a price unacceptable to industry, have been scrupulously avoided. Many species have fallen victim to this vicious circle of overexploitation and mismanagement. Among the hardest hit have been the large pelagic (ocean-wandering) predators: tunas, swordfish, marlins and sharks-the `lions and tigers of the sea'. These magnificent animals include the largest of all bony fishes, which migrate over vast distances at speeds that can, on occasion, exceed 110 kph. Overfishing has reduced spawning populations of many of these species by more than 80 per cent in the past two decades. Of the 13 species of tunas, those of the genus Thunnus are subjected to the most intensive commercial fishing. The two largest, northern and southern bluefin tuna, have suffered steep declines in the past two decades. The spawning population of northern bluefin in the western Atlantic, for example, has fallen by nearly 90 per cent since 1975. The species' red, oily flesh is much prized in Japan for gourmet sushi and sashimi. A large, top quality bluefin can fetch more than US$30,000 dockside, sell at auction in Tokyo's Tsukigi fish market for US$60,000, and cost US$200 a plate at the sushi bar. Big bluefin are now so profitable it has become common practice to use spotter planes to locate them. Fishers may spend weeks hunting down just a few individuals. The bluefin is truly an `ocean-going Porsche'-as heavy, fast, and valuable as the sports car. Billfish, so-called after the long, spear-like projection of the upper jaw, range over vast distances in tropical and temperate waters. They include the sailfish, marlins, spear fish, and swordfish. Large numbers of billfish are killed by commercial fisheries, either as target species or as incidental bycatch in tuna and shark fisheries. In the Atlantic, spawning populations of these species have fallen dramatically since 1980 and continue to decline. The gold rush mentality seen in many fisheries is also pervasive in the world's shark fisheries. Every year, millions of sharks are hunted for their fins, meat, skin, and cartilage, while many more are caught and killed as bycatch in fisheries targeting other species. Still worshipped as gods of the sea in some maritime cultures, sharks are feared and hunted for sport or profit in others. Their unique life histories-most are slow to mature, bear live young and have low reproductive potential-make them a fragile resource, extremely vulnerable to overexploitation. Historically, every large-scale directed shark fishery has ended in collapse, but global exploitation and trade remain virtually unregulated. The international trade in fins for shark-fin soup, a popular delicacy in east Asia, now poses perhaps the greatest threat to sharks. Conservationists have responded to the growing crisis in marine fisheries by seeking to strengthen laws and treaties and bolster government action. However, the northern fishing industry, dependent on a steady income to sustain boat mortgages and marginal businesses, has steadfastly resisted change. Thanks in part to this political stalemate, the decline of world fisheries has proven virtually impossible to reverse. The history of fishery management is replete with spectacular failures, and managers have been unable to prevent the `mining' of most commercially exploited fish populations. In 1995, to help alleviate this global crisis, WWF launched a new, three-year effort known as the Endangered Seas Campaign to promote the conservation and sustainable use of marine fisheries worldwide. WWF will invest nearly US$1 million per year to reverse the effects of unsustainable fishing on marine fishes and the ocean ecosystems on which they depend. The campaign will work to build the necessary political will around the world to end chronic overfishing, restore devastated fisheries, improve management schemes, and reduce the use of destructive fishing practices. Fisheries are the last major world industry exploiting wild natural resources for food. Only a series of fundamental reforms of contemporary management, coupled with heightened public interest and powerful economic incentives, will bring chronic overfishing to a halt and shift the paradigm of fishery management from development and exploitation to conservation and sustainability. If we are to save marine fishes-both as an important source of food and a vital component of ocean ecosystems-we must bring to bear the same worldwide public concern that drove the international community to protect the great whales, tigers, and elephants. This increased public support, together with powerful market forces, must be used to create social, economic, and political incentives for fishing that is both sustainable and lean. That won't be easy, fish neither "sing" like whales nor look like pandas, but the stakes are high: the future of world fisheries, their associated marine ecosystems, and the millions of people who depend on them for food and employment.
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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature