Tag: Deng Palomares

Preliminary assessments of 26 West African fish stocks hint at overexploited populations

Preliminary assessment of 26 West African fish stocks points at overexploited populations

Preliminary assessments of 26 West African fish stocks hint at overexploited populations

Bonga shad (Ethmalosa fimbriat) taken from the waters of Guinea Bissau. Photo by Falia, Wikimedia Commons.

Twenty-six fish and invertebrate populations that live in the waters of eight West African countries are likely overfished or at risk of being overfished, a new Fisheries Centre Research Report reveals.

Preliminary results from the application of the CMSY and LBB stock assessment methods to fish populations in the EEZs of Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone, indicate that some stocks – such as that of cassava croaker off the coast of Liberia – are strongly overexploited.

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Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

Octopus at a fish market in Indonesia. Photo by Deng Palomares.

Fish market favourites such as orange roughy, common octopus and pink conch are among the species of fish and invertebrates in rapid decline around the world, according to new research.

In the first study of its kind, researchers from the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the University of Western Australia assessed the biomass —the weight of a given population in the water— of more than 1,300 fish and invertebrate populations. They discovered global declines, some severe, of many popularly consumed species.

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