The End of Seafood?
A
new study in the journal
Science predicts that overfishing, pollution and other environmental stresses will cause fisheries to crash completely by the year 2048 if current trends continue, leading to the end of wild seafood. The research portrays a bleak outlook for the future of living marine resources unless current fishing practices change: salmon, crab, clams and other marine life could become impossible to find in commercial amounts by mid-century, with jellyfish becoming the perennial catch of the day.
Besides the obvious effects of this loss of biodiversity on the marine environment and on the diets of the one billion-plus people who depend on marine life as their main source of protein, the economic consequences would be severe: the commercial fishing industry currently generates $80 billion per year and supports more than 200 million people worldwide. The study attributes the imminent decline of ocean ecosystems to pirate fishing, wasteful fishing practices and improper or inadequate fisheries management, among other factors.
Solutions
On a hopeful note, the authors point out that past efforts to set up protected ocean reserves can create conditions in which marine ecosystems rebound within a few years, with immediate economic benefits. Considering the steadily rising pressures that human activities are placing on fisheries, though, regulators will need to take action quickly to avoid the catastrophic decline of some species on which we've depended for generations. The reauthorization by Congress of a stronger Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), the major law governing U.S. fisheries, would be an important first step.
News Coverage of the Science Study
