wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  WWF 3 Nov 06
WWF urges governments and industry to act urgently on world's ocean crisis

Yahoo News 3 Nov 06
Better international cooperation needed on overfishing: EU

Yahoo News 3 Nov 06
Wiping out of fish stocks by 2048 'unlikely': FAO

Yahoo News 3 Nov 06
Experts urge action on fish stocks after stark warning

TOKYO (AFP) - Environmental experts across Asia have urged dramatic action after a report warning all marine fish and seafood species faced collapse within 50 years, although a South Korean official called the report alarmist.

The economic fallout from any changes to fishing practices would have a profound effect on the region, where Japan is the world's largest consumer of fish.

In the most exhaustive study to date on the subject, in the November 3 issue of the US journal Science, US and Canadian researchers warned that overfishing and pollution threatened the accelerated loss of ocean species, ecosystems and human food supplies.

Environmental group Greenpeace called for tough protection for large areas of ocean. "Overfishing and pirate fishing are destroying our oceans at an alarming rate," said Greenpeace spokesman Nilesh Goundar in Australia Friday, calling for 40 percent of oceans to be set aside as protected reserves.

"Ocean pirates are stealing up to nine billion US dollars worth of fish a year from some of the world's poorest people. "Urgent action worldwide is needed to change fishing practices and reclaim our oceans for marine life and coastal communities," she said.

But Oh Sung-Hyun of the South Korean fisheries ministry's maritime resources department said: "It sounds too radical to say the world's fish and seafood species are projected to collapse by 2048.

"And we need more scientific data before we consider the Greenpeace call for 40 percent of the world's oceans to be declared marine reserves," he said.

However, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Hong Kong said the city's once-thriving fisheries were in a " critical state" and had almost disappeared after decades of intensive and uncontrolled fishing. It blamed pollution, reclamation, dredging and dumping.

Andy Cornish, director of conservation for WWF Hong Kong, said: "Overfishing is a very serious problem in Hong Kong. We are losing diversities. We are losing big fish and only have very small species left."

Independent researchers in Pakistan painted a bleak picture. There had been no accurate assessment in its waters since 1980, said Shaheen Rafi Khan of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

"The government has acted on the premise of adequate stocks, setting no limits on the number of fishing vessels, restricting catch sizes or protecting threatened species," he said.

"But the stocks must have declined by 20 to 50 percent since then due to multiple bad reasons," he added. These include the replacement of traditional practices and industrial pollution.

In Thailand, overfishing was the main threat to marine species, while deforestation, pollution and agricultural waste posed the greatest danger to freshwater life, Dr. Chavalit Vidthayanon, a Thai freshwater species expert at the WWF said.

Ainun Nishat, Bangladesh director of IUCN, the World Conservation Union, said fish were losing breeding grounds. "Industrial pollution and nitrogen fertilizer for agricultural purposes has precipitated a drastic fall in the fish population. Alien fish being imported here and introduced to our water bodies is another reason of the destruction of our national fish stock," he said.

Just last month Japan accepted a major cut in its international quota for prized southern bluefin tuna as punishment for overfishing. About half of the species that live in waters close to Japan "(are) at a low level of preservation", Japan's fisheries agency said on its website.

In August the World Bank issued a report calling on the Philippine government to take better care of its degraded marine ecosystem, including curtailing fishing. It said economic losses from overfishing in the Philippines amounted to 125 million dollars a year.

Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, in Canada, lead author of the US/Canadian report, "Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services", said in a statement: "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048."

Twenty-nine percent of 8,000 fished species were considered "collapsed" in 2003, that is, their catches had declined by 90 percent or more, he said. The loss of marine diversity also appeared to increase the risks of coastal flooding, harmful algal blooms and oxygen depletion, the report said.

WWF 3 Nov 06
WWF urges governments and industry to act urgently on world's ocean crisis

Gland, Switzerland – Following the publication of a new analysis of the health of the oceans in the scientific journal Science, WWF says governments, industry and seafood consumers must tackle the crisis in the oceans or risk the food security and livelihoods of over a billion people.

The analysis by leading marine scientists took four years to compile and concludes that by 2048 stocks of all of the species currently fished for food will collapse.

“For centuries people have regarded the ocean as an inexhaustible supply of food, but in recent years human actions have finally pushed oceans to their limit,” said Dr Simon Cripps, Director of WWF’s Global Marine Programme.

“This study confirms the scale of the oceans crisis. Governments and industry must act or we’ll reach the point of no return for fisheries and the marine environment."

The study also reveal that stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of marine fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. And it reports that as a result of marine biodiversity loss there will be more beach closures, more blooms of potentially harmful algae and more coastal flooding.

According to WWF, many governments are failing to prevent over-fishing and ocean destruction. In particular, many are ignoring scientific advice, increasing catches rather than enforcing wise management, and failing to clamp down on pirate fishing.

The global conservation organization is calling on governments to implement conservation and management measures, including reducing fishing pressure, stopping destructive fishing practices and establishing effective networks of marine protected areas, if they’re to prevent empty oceans, empty plates and lost livelihoods in the future.

“Despite the serious problems within the world’s oceans, responsible retailers in Europe, Japan and the US are responding to the increasing demand for seafood from well-managed fisheries,” adds Dr Cripps.

The best way for consumers to identify seafood coming from well-managed fisheries, he said, is through the Marine Stewardship Council label, an independent non-profit organization set up to promote solutions to the problem of overfishing. It has developed the only independent and international fishery certification programme and eco-label in the world.

Yahoo News 3 Nov 06
Better international cooperation needed on overfishing: EU

BRUSSELS (AFP) - International cooperation must be increased in the fight against overfishing, the European Commission said after a bleak report warned that fish stocks could disappear in the coming decades.

"The study speaks of a certain number of direct and indirect causes and overfishing is one of them," said Mireille Thom, spokeswoman for European Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg.

The European Union's executive arm made the warning following a report in the US magazine Science that accelerating overfishing and pollution of the oceans could wipe out fish stocks by the middle of the century.

The good news, Thom said, is that biologists believe that "if we act on overfishing, the ecosystems could come back to life". "The measures are already in place but international cooperation must be strengthened to put an end to illegal fishing, which is an international problem," said Thom.

Illegal fishing happens for the most part out in the open sea where effective surveillance is impossible. Because of persistent overfishing, fish stocks have fallen in EU waters for the past three decades, plunging the sector into crisis.

The European Commission in September proposed tightening protection for endangered deep-sea fish stocks in EU waters.

Yahoo News 3 Nov 06
Wiping out of fish stocks by 2048 'unlikely': FAO

ROME (AFP) - The conservation status of fish and crustaceans in the world's oceans is "unacceptable" but dire predictions published in the US magazine Science are "unlikely", according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"To state that all exploited taxa will have collapsed by 2048, the authors have made a simple extrapolation of their results across the next 40 years. This is statistically dangerous," said Serge Michel Garcia, director of the FAO's Fishery Resources Division.

He added: "Such a massive collapse ... would require reckless behaviour of all industries and governments for four decades, and an incredible level of apathy of all world citizens to let this happen, without mentioning economic forces that would discourage this from happening."

The US-Canadian study warned that accelerating overfishing and pollution of the oceans could force seafood completely off of mankind's plates by the middle of the 21st century.

The scientists said they were "shocked" and "disturbed" by the conclusions of their own research, saying the trend toward mass disappearance of fish and seafood species was speeding up.

If not reversed, they said, humans would have to stop eating seafood by 2048.

"Most if not all conclusions regarding the relation between species diversity and the resilience of the ecosystem ... have been available for years if not decades," Garcia said in an e-mail to AFP.

"It is evident that a further decay of the situation of wild stocks can only be globally detrimental for food security," he said.

The effort to combat the situation, "as we see it from FAO, shows contradictory signs of progress ( in a few leading countries) and stagnation (in many developed ones)," he wrote.

FAO member states are "struggling to implement" a 2001 code of conduct for responsible fishing, " often despite unfavouravble economic and social conditions", he said.

Positive signs include the implementation of the "ecosystem approach", which also dates from 2001 and is "progressing rapidly in a small number of leading countries", along with quotas and eco- labelling, he said.

In the Mediterranean Sea, trawling below a depth of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) is prohibited, he added.

"Faster progress (would require) a stronger political will ... fuller collaboration of the industry, more participative governance and more deterrent enforcement," Garcia said.

Noting that the UN agency estimates global demand for fish at 180 million tonnes in 2030, Garcia said: "Assuming that wild stocks continue to produce about 90 million tonnes as they do today, this implies doubling the present aquaculture production with a not insignificant impact on the environment and a potential shortage in fish meal (used for aquaculture feed)."

Currently some 35 million tonnes of fish is processed into feed for farmed fish and livestock. Nearly one fish in two, 43 percent, consumed in the world last year came from fish farms, compared with nine percent in 1980.
links
Related articles on Wild shores
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com