3 November 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5800, p.
745 DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5800.745 News
of the Week
Erik Stokstad
If a new analysis of marine ecosystems data is
correct, commercial fish and seafood species may all crash by 2048. (Read more.)
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem
Services
Boris Worm,
Edward B. Barbier, Nicola Beaumont, J. Emmett Duffy, Carl Folke, Benjamin S.
Halpern, Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Heike K. Lotze, Fiorenza Micheli, Stephen R.
Palumbi, Enric Sala, Kimberley A. Selkoe, John J. Stachowicz, and Reg Watson (3
November 2006)
Science 314
(5800), 787. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1132294]
| Abstract » |
Full Text » |
PDF » |
Supporting Online Material »
It may be time to say bye to fish
and seafood in 50 years
- Indian Express
It may be time to say bye to fish and
seafood in 50 years
WASHINGTON, NOV 3: The world’s
fish and seafood could disappear by 2048 as overfishing and pollution destroy
ocean ecosystems at an accelerating pace, US and Canadian researchers reported.
Oceans’ dead zones could snuff out life from fish stocksThai kisses 19 cobras on his way to record bookNo need to call them dogs anymoreStingray kills Croc Hunter IrwinagenciesTrophy hunting to save barasingha?
If current global trends continue, the
loss of fish and seafood will threaten humans’ food supplies and the
environment, according to the most exhaustive study to date on the subject,
published in the the US journal Science today.
“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 international team of ecologists and economists wrote in “Impact of
Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services”.
The four-year analysis was the first to study all existing data on ocean species and ecosystems and synthesize them to understand the importance of biodiversity at the global scale.
“Whether we looked at tide pools or
studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging,” said
lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, in Canada. He said the
disappearance of species from ocean ecosystems had been accelerating. editor@expressindia.com
Vanishing seafood study
dismissed - Guardian
Unlimited
Hélène
Mulholland and agencies Friday November
3, 2006 Guardian Unlimited
The fishing industry today branded as "superficial" a study
that claimed seafood could be off the menu within 40 years due to the damage
caused by commercial fishing to marine ecosystems.
If seafood species continue to decline at the present rate through
over-fishing and pollution there will be little left within four decades
according to a study in the journal Science.
But Seafish, the UK seafood industry body, and the Scottish Fishermen's
Federation (SFF) said the study does not deal with reality or note continuing
attempts to protect fish stocks.
The SFF chief executive, Bertie Armstrong, said the report was
"superficial": "It takes a ridiculously long timescale and does
not mention the efforts being made in Europe to recover stocks as quickly as we
can."
Mr Armstrong said the study's authors made no mention of the 1992
Johannesburg convention, when world environment leaders agreed to try to
restore fish stocks to sustainable levels by 2015.
"The main difficulty with this article is that it has taken a lot
of basic assumptions and come out with the bold statement that there will be no
fish by 2048," he said.
"It is a doomsday prediction that ignores the reality of what the
world is actually trying to do to remove the ills that it describes." The
government paid heed to today's research, which reports that under current
trends, almost 30% of fished species populations had already reached tipping
point.
Pollution, habitat destruction and climate change all took their toll on
fish species, the report says.
Loss of fish from the oceans also had harmful knock-on effects,
including a deterioration of water quality, less protection of shorelines,
oxygen depletion, and higher numbers of toxic algal blooms, the research found.
Fisheries minister Ben Bradshaw said the warning represents the world's
biggest environmental challenge after global warming.
He ruled out a complete ban on cod fishing, saying a "zero
catch" would see "the end of all fishing in the UK". Mr Bradshaw
told the BBC the government had already clamped down on illegal fishing and set
fishing quotas "in line with the health of stocks".
He said: "If there were to be a zero catch for cod, we would have
to close almost all of the UK fishing industry because there's almost no part
of our fishing industry that doesn't catch some cod as by-catch."
But Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National party, dismissed the
research. "I don't agree with these findings. Some stocks are low but on
the other hand haddock stocks are on a 30-year high," he said.
"Undoubtedly, unregulated fishing can produce stock depletion, but
this is not the case in Scotland, where we have some of the most lucrative
waters in the world."
The study on marine biodiversity trends was one of the most wide-ranging
ever conducted.
Researchers first analysed the results of 32 experiments that
manipulated the fate of marine species on small local scales.
Next they tracked 1,000 years of change in species diversity across 12
coastal areas. In each one they looked at trends affecting between 30 and 80
economically and ecologically important species, drawing information from old
archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data.
Then the team sifted through all the available catch records for 64
ocean-wide regions spanning the years 1950 to 2003.
Collectively, these large marine ecosystems (LMEs) produced 83% of
global fisheries yields over the past 50 years.
Finally, the scientists investigated the recovery of biodiversity in 48
marine reserves and areas closed to fishing.
Study leader Dr Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Halifax,
Canada, said: "Species have been disappearing from ocean ecosystems and
this trend has recently been accelerating.
"Now we begin to see some of the consequences. For example, if the
long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to
collapse within my lifetime - by 2048."
Seafish is now commissioning its own scientists to review the report's
finding.
It believes that steps such as voluntary closure by the fishing fleet of
areas around the coast and growth in certification of sustainable fisheries by
the Marine Stewardship Council may not have been taken into account.
More robust seafood sourcing policies from large retailers giving
consumers confidence when they are buying fish are also being encouraged.
Better regional management of fisheries could also have an effect.
The Seafish chief executive, John Rutherford, said: "We need to
review this report in detail to fully understand its source data and
methodology, and are commissioning scientists to undertake this work on our
behalf.
"We need to understand if there are things we can learn from the
research to help us on the path we are already travelling.
"There is always more to be done, but the industry is moving in a
positive way and this should be recognised."
Your
favorite seafood may be in peril, study says - Seattle Post
Intelligencer
Friday, November 3,
2006
Your favorite seafood may be in peril,
study says
If
overfishing and other trends harming fish stocks around the world continue on
their current path, we'll be saying sayonara to the seafood we love best in
coming decades, according to a new scientific study published today.
In
a report that echoes some of the trends alarming scientists who study Puget
Sound, researchers examined large marine ecosystems that produced more than
four-fifths of the world's seafood during the past half-century.
Already
nearly a third of the fish stocks are in collapse and all of them will be by
midcentury, the scientists warned -- although they said changes made now could
save our bacon-wrapped scallops and other such morsels.
The
study's authors defined collapse as fish stocks dropping to one-tenth of their
historic abundance -- approximately what's happened to many salmon runs in the
Pacific Northwest. They examined catch records from the United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organization for 1950 to 2003.
"We
didn't know when we put it all together that the trajectory would be so
inexorably down," said Reg Watson, a University of British Columbia
scientist and co-author.
They
acknowledge that much of what they are reporting amounts to correlation, rather
than proven cause and effect. But, said lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie
University in Nova Scotia, "I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent
these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected."
Twelve
biologists, fish scientists and economists from the United States, Canada, Sweden
and Panama contributed to the work.
Government
fisheries managers and industry groups questioned the findings, saying they
believe steps already are being taken to guard America's fisheries.
"By
developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and
result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to
ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage
native species," the National Fisheries Institute countered.
Changes
that could be undertaken to stave off collapse include reducing catch levels
and setting aside large areas of the ocean where fishing is not allowed, the
study's authors said. They examined 44 marine reserves and four large-scale
fisheries closures.
Their
conclusion was that when fishing was banned, the number of species grew and
"these increases in biodiversity were associated with large increases in
fisheries productivity ... in fished areas around the reserves."
"These
results suggest that at this point it is still possible to recover lost
biodiversity, at least on local to regional scales," the authors wrote in
a paper appearing today in the journal Science.
Preserving
large numbers of species is key, the authors said.
"Having
a more diverse marine environment actually cushions against the shocks that
come along naturally, in addition to the things we do to it," Watson said.
He
pointed out that "collapse" does not equal "extinction."
"The
good news is that it looks like some (fish stocks) can bounce back readily,"
Watson said.
Seafood
has become a growing part of Americans' diet in recent years. Consumption
totaled 16.6 pounds per person in 2004, the most recent data available,
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That compares
with 15.2 pounds in 2000.
Joshua
Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment program,
pointed out that, worldwide, fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200
million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion
people, many of whom are poor, fish is the main source of protein, he said.
Seattle
is the home port for much of the fleet involved in America's single biggest
fishery, which targets pollock in waters off Alaska. The bland white fish is
used in fish sticks, fish sandwiches, fake crab and other dishes.
"There
is an excellent ecosystem-based approach used in the North Pacific and that
includes having conservative catch levels (and) trying to learn more about the
ocean environment to fully understand the impact not just on the target fishery
but the entire ecosystem," said Jim Gilmore, a spokesman for the
Seattle-based At-Sea Processors Association.
The
North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing in the waters
off Alaska, in 2005 set aside about a half-million square miles to protect
undersea corals. Large areas around the Aleutian Islands are off limits to
protect Steller sea lions.
Every
year the council's scientific committee, composed of government and university
scientists, figures out an "acceptable biological catch level" that
is supposed to guard the long-term sustainability of the fishery, said David
Witherell, deputy director of the fisheries council.
"It's
basically the surplus of fish that can be taken," Witherell said. "We
expect no short-term or long-term impacts from (fishing at) that level. We're
looking to maintain the abundance and biodiversity of the fish we have out
there for generations to come."
The
research team behind today's study also called for a reduction in pollution
that has depressed fish stocks. They found a strong correlation between
urbanization and the reduction in the number of species that survive.
In
Puget Sound, fish stocks were hammered by overfishing during the 1980s and
'90s, and the ecosystem is in decline, scientists say.
Counterintuitively,
perhaps, numbers of shrimp and prawns appear to be on the rise. Watson, of UBC,
has worked in shrimp fisheries for decades and said he has seen the pattern
before in which finfish such as salmon and rockfish are overfished, and shrimp
populations go crazy.
"That
is not really a measure of how natural and intact marine ecosystems are,"
Watson said.
Puget
Sound in recent years has seen an explosion in the number of spot prawns and
coonstripe shrimp. But that could be a bad sign for the Sound's overall health.
Fishermen, fisheries managers and scientists trace the trend in part to the
fact that salmon, rockfish and other creatures that once ate the shrimp have
been overfished.
See
the first installment of the P-I's six-part series
"The
Sound of Broken Promises" at seattlepi.com/specials/brokenpromises/
This report
includes information from The New York Times and The Associated Press. P-I reporter
Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com.
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