Join the Sea Around Us‘ Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller on July 26, 2017 at 1:15 p.m. ET /10:15 a.m. PT, for a free webinar where they will explain in detail the findings in the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries.
Category: New & Notable
Ten million tonnes of fish wasted every year despite declining fish stocks
Alaska Pollock. Photo by NOAA FishWatch, Wikimedia Commons.
Industrial fishing fleets dump nearly 10 million tonnes of good fish back into the ocean every year, according to new research.
The study by researchers with the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean at the University of Western Australia, and the Sea Around Us, an initiative at the University of British Columbia, reveals that almost 10 per cent of the world’s total catch in the last decade was discarded due to poor fishing practices and inadequate management. This is equivalent to throwing back enough fish to fill about 4,500 Olympic sized swimming pools every year.
Illegal foreign fishing and lack of reporting threaten Sierra Leone’s fisheries sector
Photos from Wikimedia Commons.
Illegal fishing accounts for about 30 per cent of catches by industrial foreign fleets in Sierra Leone, says a new study published in Marine Policy.
The paper states that, in the past decade, industrial foreign vessels have increased their presence and illegal activities in Sierra Leonean waters either on their own or by enticing small-scale fishers into illicit partnerships, such as acting as transshipment vessels in nearshore areas.
Reduced monitoring, control, and surveillance, related to the withdrawal of development aid, is spurring unlicensed operations, researchers say. The study estimates that more than 42,000 tonnes of fish were caught illegally in 2015 alone.
Marine Reserves help mitigate against climate change
Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Photo by NOAA’s National Ocean Service, Flickr.
Highly protected marine reserves can help mitigate against the impacts of climate change, a study by a team of international scientists has concluded.
Scientists say reserves can help marine ecosystems counter fight five key impacts of climate change: ocean acidification; sea-level rise; increased intensity of storms; shifts in species distribution, and decreased productivity and oxygen availability.
Thought Antarctica’s biodiversity was doing well? Think again
Photo by Tak, Flickr.
Twenty-three experts involved in the study “Antarctica and the strategic plan for biodiversity,” recently published in PLoS Biology, debunked the popular view that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are in a better environmental shape than the rest of the world. In fact, the difference between the status of biodiversity in the region and planet Earth as a whole is negligible.