Tag: fishing down

Ageeba - Mediterranean coast -Egypt

Egyptian Mediterranean fisheries in urgent need of better management

Ageeba - Mediterranean coast -Egypt

Ageeba beach on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Photo by Aya Gallab, Wikimedia Commons.

Egyptian fisheries need to be better managed to secure the overall health of the Mediterranean Sea’s marine living resources, new research has found.

In a recent paper in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management, researchers with the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport reconstructed Egypt’s marine fisheries catches from the Mediterranean in the last 100 years and found strong evidence of resource overexploitation. Such overexploitation has pushed fishers to go farther and deeper, increasingly resorting to species lower in the food chain.

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New Zealand Fishing Boats

Overfishing and climate change impacts on New Zealand’s fish populations were hidden – until now

New Zealand Fishing Boats

New Zealand fishing boats. Photo by QFSE Media, Wikimedia Commons.

Pelagic-oceanic fish commonly caught in warmer waters, such as skipjack tuna and blue mackerel, have been increasing in New Zealand’s waters since the 1950s, while cold-water species such as southern bluefin tuna display strong reductions in overall catch from the 1970s onwards, new research has found.

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China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

Japanase sardinella. Image by Totti, Wikimedia Commons.

Smaller fish and invertebrates, such as gazami crab or Japanese sardinella, are replacing larger, more commercially valuable fish such as largehead hairtail in the Bohai Sea in northeastern China.

A new study by scientists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries shows that industrial fisheries have severely affected food webs in the Bohai Sea, with organisms that occupy lower levels in the food web becoming more common than larger predators.

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