{"id":40077151,"date":"2020-02-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/china-dialogue-ocean-staging.darkbluehq.com\/uncategorized\/13044-sustainable-fisheries-management-is-working-overfishing-conservation\/"},"modified":"2022-02-10T23:01:37","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T17:31:37","slug":"13044-sustainable-fisheries-management-is-working-overfishing-conservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/ocean\/13044-sustainable-fisheries-management-is-working-overfishing-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable fisheries management is working, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fisheries around the world are in better health than most people realise, according to a new study that suggests many populations are recovering and sustainable management plans are working.<\/p>\n

Key fishing grounds in Europe, South America and Africa are among those found to have healthy or improving numbers. But the good news has limits. The status of many unmanaged fisheries, especially those in South and Southeast Asia, are unclear. As global trade continues to increase demand, these regions are most likely being overexploited.<\/p>\n

Published last month, the study<\/a> is the latest comprehensive health assessment of the world\u2019s fish populations. The data paints an improving picture, with many fisheries now able to provide a sustainable catch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a narrative that fish stocks are declining around the world, that fisheries management is failing, and we need new solutions. And it\u2019s totally wrong,\u201d said lead author Ray Hilborn, a fisheries expert at the University of Washington, who led the study. \u201cFish stocks are not all declining around the world. They are increasing in many places, and we already know how to solve problems through effective fisheries management.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"sustainable<\/a><\/div>\n

Compiled by fisheries scientists from around the world, the new analysis looked at data on 882 fish stocks, including information available for the first time about catches from Peru, Chile, Japan, Russia, north-west Africa and the Mediterranean and Black seas. The researchers then compared this to details of fisheries management in about 30 countries. They found that more intense management led to healthy or improving fish populations, while little to no management led to overfishing.<\/p>\n

The study concludes: \u201cThe efforts of the thousands of managers, scientists, fishers and non-governmental organisation workers have resulted in significantly improved statuses of fisheries in much of the developed world, and increasingly in the developing world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study shows something else too: consensus and cooperation continues between two distinct camps of fisheries experts previously in conflict. The two sides \u2013 who disagreed on the health and likely future prospects of global fish populations \u2013 first combined to offer a joint assessment a decade ago. That 2009 analysis<\/a> concluded many depleted fisheries were making good progress towards recovery. But the data used only covered about 20% of the world\u2019s catch. In other words, the status of 80% of the fish landed every year across the globe remained a mystery.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s study is put together by a similar team of researchers and significantly extends the dataset, which now contains information on about half the world\u2019s catch. The results, Hilborn says, show that consumers in the developed world \u2013 including in North America and Britain \u2013 can now buy many fish species with a clear conscience. \u201cIf you want to be very careful, you need to look at exactly what species it is,\u201d he says. \u201cBut as a general rule, particularly those of us in the West, we\u2019re largely eating fish that come from well-managed fisheries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Buying seafood sustainably<\/p>\n

\n
\nWWF offers consumers a useful pick<\/a> of country-specific seafood guides.
\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

There are some important exceptions. For example, shrimp is the most popular seafood in the US, and the majority is imported from unmanaged fisheries in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the countries that have made progress domestically still import from countries where the situation isn\u2019t as nice. That is something else we should be conscious of,\u201d says Beth Fulton, a marine scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Hobart, Australia, who was not involved with the new study.<\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cSerious effort has to go into helping nations which do not currently have significant fisheries management capacity to tackle the issues they face, which go beyond a lack of resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many important fisheries are not included in the new dataset, sometimes because dozens of different species of fish are caught at the same time. That type of fishing activity is more difficult to track as management schemes typically focus on fisheries where a single species is targeted, such as cod or tuna.<\/p>\n

Hilborn says: \u201cThe unassessed fisheries are largely highly mixed fisheries. They may catch a hundred species in one haul of the net, and you can\u2019t regulate those on a species-by-species basis. So the toolkit for managing those fisheries is going to be different than what we dominantly use in the successes we\u2019ve had so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unassessed fisheries in India, Indonesia and China<\/a> represent 30-40% of the world\u2019s fish catch. \u201cChina is a big black box. It\u2019s the biggest fishing country in the world. And they have essentially no publicly available assessments of their resources,\u201d Hilborn says.<\/p>\n

Steve Palumbi, a fisheries scientist at Stanford University, says some caution is also needed with the data where they do exist. \u201cI\u2019m not as convinced that this shows the universal success of fisheries management schemes,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause regional data from the same countries \u2013 mostly the US and Canada \u2013 show different patterns.\u201d East coast fisheries in both countries have not responded well, whereas west coast fisheries, and Alaska have done better. \u201cIt may well be that there has not been enough time for the effect of management to take hold in the eastern fisheries, perhaps because they were so far down to begin with,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Reg Watson, a marine researcher at the University of Tasmania, says scientists tend to think about fisheries in two distinct ways. \u201cOne tries to save the oceans and all its life from the destruction of fishing. While the other tries to focus on the stocks that feed us and provide jobs and support to the millions around the world,\u201d he says. \u201cThe typical uncertainty associated with grand assessments of the world\u2019s ocean life leave room for both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Focusing on fish stocks might show that a fishery can provide a sustainable supply, he says, but such data don\u2019t necessarily offer a true picture of the health of a marine ecosystem \u2013 \u201clike our terrestrial systems they have likely been greatly simplified and now lack much of the diversity and resilience they once had.\u201d Watson adds: \u201cThis could be very important in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data shows management is saving fish populations, but the health of many Asian fisheries remains unclear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":40065464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50039901],"tags":[40027745,545,20000237],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000110,20000111,50040717],"class_list":["post-40077151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean","tag-blue-economy","tag-fisheries","tag-sustainable-development","country-china","country-india","country-indonesia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSustainable fisheries management is working, study finds | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Data shows management is saving fish populations, but many Asian fisheries likely remain overexploited, and declining species diversity is worrying\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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