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Today is World Fisheries Day— a healthy reminder of how important fisheries are, regardless of where we live.
Wild fisheries must be managed and harvested sustainably in order to successfully rebuild global fish stocks and reliably feed the billions of people around the world who rely on them.
Innovative solutions are needed to establish sustainable fishing practices as the norm and to give a boost to coastal communities that rely on healthy fish stocks.
But today, global fisheries are tremendous pressure—to feed the world’s growing population and from the effects of climate change and ocean acidification. There is, however, cause for optimism. Here are 5 reasons why: Read More »
On World Oceans Day we celebrated an ecosystem which is inextricably linked to our lives. Oceans cover about 70% of the planet and contain 99% of Earth’s living space. They are home to nearly half of all known species, generate most of the oxygen we breathe, help regulate the climate, and provide food for billions of people around the world. In fact, 2 billion people in the developing world depend on seafood for at least 50% of their nutritional needs.
There are myriad challenges facing the world’s oceans, including pollution, climate change, acidification and overfishing (often as a result of mis-management of fisheries), yet new policies and management tactics offer hope for improving the economic and environmental outlook of our oceans.
EDF is a founding partner of the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Oceans—an “alliance of more than 100 governments, international organizations, civil society groups, and private sector interests committed to addressing the threats to the health, productivity and resilience of the world’s oceans.” A separate but complimentary initiative is the “50 in 10 Initiative” which seeks to ensure that 50% of the world’s fish are caught under sustainable management by 2023. Consensus is emerging among global leaders that solutions to the problems we are facing exist—and can be scaled up to empower fisheries to deploy these proven solutions. Read More »
A number of scientific studies indicate that warming waters are affecting fish populations globally—and often in unpredictable ways. This finding is significant for fisheries management because as fish populations shift, whole ecosystems are changed. A recent study covering 40 years of data illuminates these changes in fish distributions and a Huffington Post article examines the research conducted to date and highlights the uncertain implications of this knowledge. The article extensively quotes our own scientist and Director of Spatial Initiatives, Jake Kritzer. Jake comments on the difficulty of making management predications without a complete understanding of how complex underwater ecosystems are shifting:
“It’s an immensely complicated situation. You have climate change overlaying everything, and it seems to be changing the way everything works, which means we have a lot of problems. It’s getting harder and harder to assess the stocks, to model them and understand their dynamics and predict what’s going to happen. Because those models are based on years and years of experience reading fish stocks and studying them, they have been tested over a long time and they rely on a certain set of assumptions and conditions that now seem to be rapidly changing. Tools that have been fairly well established and worked well in the past just don’t seem to be working as well anymore.”
Photo Credit: Nate Gray/flickr Monkfish, aka American goosefish, eats way better than it looks.
When it comes to seafood, we are creatures of narrow habit. The average American eats about 15 pounds of seafood each year (well below the global average for coastal nations), almost 60% of which is either shrimp, canned tuna or salmon. That number jumps to more than 80% if you include “whitefish” like pollock, tilapia and cod.
So when one of these few items becomes overfished, too expensive or less available, the market usually just tries to pass off some other species in its place.
For example, 20 years ago, no one knew what a slimehead or American goosefish was. But when Atlantic cod fisheries crashed, low-value orange roughy and monkfish slowly gained in popularity and are now staples on restaurant menus – even though most people have no idea what the actual fish look like. What started out as worthless bycatch (also known as trash fish) that usually got dumped overboard will now routinely run you $10/lb or more in the market.
But how can we ensure that this iconic fishery – and others like it on the Pacific coast – don’t disappear quietly in the night? Our experience with orange roughy and monkfish provides one important answer: Previously unfamiliar fish can win the hearts of seafood lovers and help strengthen local fisheries. Read More »
Congress is about to embark on a review of what has worked and what hasn’t in a law widely regarded as having halted overfishing in many American fisheries. Though we have made progress here in the United States, overfishing is wreaking havoc on the world’s oceans and the mismanagement of our fisheries is the chief cause. Recent peer reviewed science estimates that 64% of global fisheries are depleted below the levels required to sustain production.
Overfishing can lead to the loss of important species that can upend the balance of critical ocean food webs leading to the further degradation of our ocean. To save the ocean, we must end overfishing.
One of EDF’s missions is to rebuild global fisheries with the best possible solutions that serve both fishermen and fish so that future generations can enjoy sustainable seafood, fishermen can continue to fish profitably, and our seas are healthy and abundant. Peer reviewed and published scientific evidence and our decades of experience have shown that catch shares are one of the best solutions for rebuilding depleted fisheries both in the United States and globally. Read More »
The ocean is enormous, supporting a vast array of life while providing food, fuel, recreation, and spiritual rejuvenation. But efforts to conserve the ocean, though valiant, are meager compared to the scale of the threats to the ocean. Ocean conservation advocates have achieved many notable successes, such as dramatic reductions in certain kinds of pollution, the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and major improvements in fishery management in some areas of the world. However, a recent analysis that EDF participated in suggests that 40% of the ocean is still strongly impacted by a range of threats, including shipping, the modification of rivers and estuaries, coastal development, pollution, and overfishing. How can we scale conservation efforts up to match the ocean’s vastness and the severity of these threats?
To answer this question, we must first accurately diagnose the problem. Conventional markets, which drive so much of mass human behavior, only value a few of the many goods and services that the ocean provides, like fish and oil. The critically important ocean processes that produce fish, regulate the climate, assimilate wastes, and provide all of the other goods and services on which the diversity of ocean life and we humans depend are generally not valued by markets. Because markets see value only in parts of the ocean, and not in the whole, the valuable pieces are extracted and the rest is degraded.
Conservation has been pushing back against market forces, among the most powerful forces in the world, in the form of regulation. While regulations like water quality standards and MPAs can be very effective, they often depend on high levels of enforcement because they are working against market forces and the incentives to exploit valuable resources without stewarding the ecosystems that support them. Regulations in this context are often perceived as threats to livelihood and human welfare, resulting in opposition and conflict. It is not surprising that it typically takes many years and sometimes decades to get ocean conservation measures in place. Read More »
