[Mb-civic] No Fish Story - Editorial - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

No Fish Story

Saturday, August 13, 2005; Page A20

THE DIRE ECOLOGICAL condition of the world's oceans -- and the role that 
overfishing plays in their degradation -- has been the subject of 
numerous studies and blue-ribbon commissions. The message is clear: The 
oceans are far more fragile ecosystems than people have believed, and 
only dramatic changes in human interaction with them can prevent 
irreversible degradation. A recent study of big-fish diversity worldwide 
is the latest to reinforce this depressing conclusion.

<>The study, released recently by Science magazine, examined the 
diversity of big predator fish species caught by Japanese fishing boats 
over the past five decades. An international team of scientists led by 
biologists Boris Worm and Ransom A. Myers at Dalhousie University in 
Nova Scotia studied records of the Japanese catch on what are called 
long lines -- that is, fishing lines stretching many miles and baited 
with multiple hooks. They corroborated these records with other sources, 
and they show that certain areas of the oceans -- generally temperate 
regions -- form particular "hot spots" of marine life. Yet as industrial 
fishing ramped up in the second half of the 20th century, these hot 
spots became much cooler, barely hotter, in fact, than the rest of the 
oceans. As the total catch of tuna, billfish and other big predator fish 
exploded over the past few decades, the diversity of species caught in 
any given area -- that is, the number of species caught on a given 
number of hooks -- plummeted by as much as 50 percent. While climate and 
other factors play a role, the authors wrote that they "could not 
identify a factor other than fishing that may plausibly explain 
long-term, global-scale declines."

These results are particularly disturbing because they deal with the 
open ocean, not with coastal waters, where depletion of fish species was 
already well established. A decline of species diversity could make 
oceanic ecosystems more vulnerable to climate change and other 
environmental shifts.

The good news in the study is that a few hot spots remain -- though they 
are dramatically less vibrant than they were. One of these is off the 
southeastern coast of the United States. Another is south of Hawaii. 
These areas desperately need protection. More broadly, commercial 
fishing needs to be brought down to levels that will be, in the 
long-term, sustainable and will permit whatever recovery of species 
diversity is still possible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081201448.html?nav=hcmodule

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