Tag: catch reconstructions

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 fish species disappear from Turkey’s Marmara and Black Seas

Popular fish species disappear from Turkey’s Marmara and Black Seas

Popular fish species disappear from Turkey’s Marmara and Black Seas

Bluefin tuna. Image from Pxhere, CC0.

Bluefin tuna, swordfish and Atlantic mackerel are among the fish species considered commercially extinct or extirpated on the Turkish side of the Marmara and Black Seas.

A new study by researchers with the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia, Mersea Marine Conservation Consulting, Turkey’s Central Fisheries Research Institute and the Institute of Marine Sciences and Management at the University of Istanbul, found that 17 fish species have been extirpated and 17 are commercially extinct in Turkey’s Black Sea, while 19 have been extirpated and 22 went commercially extinct in the Sea of Marmara.

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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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Declining trend in fisheries catches threatens food security in African coastal communities

Declining trend in fisheries catches threatens food security in African coastal communities

Declining trend in fisheries catches threatens food security in African coastal communities

Ghanaian fisherman. Photo from Pikist.

Fish catches in Africa have reached a peak and, in many cases, have moved into a declining trend that threatens the food security and economic development of coastal areas.

A new study by researchers at the University of Western Australia, the University of British Columbia and Ecotrust Canada analyzed fishery yields in the seven Large Marine Ecosystems or LMEs that surround the African continent and found that most fisheries in the region rely on overfished resources.

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