Fishermen in Belize. Reference photo by Laslovarga, Wikimedia Commons.
The most commercially important marine species in Belize show signs of overexploitation, according to a recent report co-authored by members of the Sea Around Us.
Reference image of dead fish washed ashore during a golden algae toxic bloom. Photo by Michael Hooper, USGS.
Climate change-induced droughts and fish kills affect larger fish more severely than smaller individuals, according to new research.
In a paper published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from Leiden University, Sportvisserij Zuidwest Nederland and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia compared evidence from drought-induced fish kills in the Netherlands, fisheries management literature and multiple physiological studies. They confirmed that when water gets warmer and deoxygenated, larger and older individuals within a species tend to die in greater numbers than their smaller and younger counterparts.
Small-scale fisheries catches in Socotra, an archipelago that belongs to Yemen and is located off the north-eastern tip of Africa in the western Indian Ocean, reached an all-time high of 12,000 tonnes in 2000, declined to about 3,300 tonnes by 2014 and then slightly increased to 3,700 tonnes by 2019.
Black and white snapper in the Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons
Warmer water than that to which a fish is used to becomes an aggressor of sorts that impacts internal biochemical processes and forces the fish to stop growing at a smaller size than it would normally do in optimal habitat conditions, new research shows.
