Global fish catch much higher than reported
A paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications, show the annual catches between 1950 and 2010 were much bigger than thought, but that the decline after the peak year of 1996 was much faster than official figures:
Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined.
Here, using a decade-long multinational ‘catch reconstruction’ project covering the Exclusive Economic Zones of the world’s maritime countries and the High Seas from 1950 to 2010, and accounting for all fisheries, we identify catch trajectories differing considerably from the national data submitted to the FAO.
We suggest that catch actually peaked at 130 million tonnes, and has been declining much more strongly since.
This decline in reconstructed catches reflects declines in industrial catches and to a smaller extent declining discards, despite industrial fishing having expanded from industrialized countries to the waters of developing countries.
The differing trajectories documented here suggest a need for improvedmonitoring of all fisheries, including often neglected small-scale fisheries, and illegal andother problematic fisheries, as well as discarded bycatch.
And in the news one of the authors said:
“It was never really sustainable,” said Pauly. The decline since 1996 has largely been in fish caught by industrial fleets and to a lesser extent a cut in the number of unwanted fish discarded at sea.
“The fact that we catch far more than we thought is, if you like, a more positive thing,” he said. “Because if we rebuild stocks, we can rebuild to more than we thought before.”
There has been success in some places where fishing has been restricted for a few years, for example in the Norwegian herring and cod fisheries. On resumption, catches were bigger than ever.
But Pauly said: “I expect a continued decline because I don’t expect countries to realise the need to rebuild stocks. I don’t see African countries, for example, rebuilding their stocks, or being allowed to by the foreign fleets that are working there, because the pressure to continue to fish is very strong. We know how to fix this problem but whether we do it or not depends on conditions that are difficult.”
Here there is the answer from FAO.
Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined.
Here, using a decade-long multinational ‘catch reconstruction’ project covering the Exclusive Economic Zones of the world’s maritime countries and the High Seas from 1950 to 2010, and accounting for all fisheries, we identify catch trajectories differing considerably from the national data submitted to the FAO.
We suggest that catch actually peaked at 130 million tonnes, and has been declining much more strongly since.
This decline in reconstructed catches reflects declines in industrial catches and to a smaller extent declining discards, despite industrial fishing having expanded from industrialized countries to the waters of developing countries.
The differing trajectories documented here suggest a need for improvedmonitoring of all fisheries, including often neglected small-scale fisheries, and illegal andother problematic fisheries, as well as discarded bycatch.
And in the news one of the authors said:
“It was never really sustainable,” said Pauly. The decline since 1996 has largely been in fish caught by industrial fleets and to a lesser extent a cut in the number of unwanted fish discarded at sea.
“The fact that we catch far more than we thought is, if you like, a more positive thing,” he said. “Because if we rebuild stocks, we can rebuild to more than we thought before.”
There has been success in some places where fishing has been restricted for a few years, for example in the Norwegian herring and cod fisheries. On resumption, catches were bigger than ever.
But Pauly said: “I expect a continued decline because I don’t expect countries to realise the need to rebuild stocks. I don’t see African countries, for example, rebuilding their stocks, or being allowed to by the foreign fleets that are working there, because the pressure to continue to fish is very strong. We know how to fix this problem but whether we do it or not depends on conditions that are difficult.”
Here there is the answer from FAO.