Study Shows Worldwide Fisheries Are Failing, But There's Hope Yet
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
A bit of hopeful news on the environment emanated today. Perhaps mankind won't deplete world fish stocks after all. Three years ago, a team of Canadian university marine biologists published a controversial paper in the journal Science, predicting the collapse of 90 percent of the world's edible fish species by 2048.
But now the lead author of the article and his former opponent have completed a worldwide survey of marine fisheries and they find that:
The key to healing overfished marine populations, the scientists found, is to cut the number of fish taken to somewhat below what's long been considered the maximum sustainable yield.
"Unfortunately there's a significant period of low catches required to rebuild stocks to higher levels," but long term, most fisheries can rebound, says Hilborn.
The most effective ways to allow fish populations to recover include closing some areas to fishing to give stocks secure breeding areas, changing fishing gear so smaller and juvenile fish can slip through and establishing catch share programs that assign fishermen the right to harvest a certain amount of fish so there isn't the unbridled competition.
I wonder whether the worldwide will exists to repair the 63 percent of assessed fish stocks that still need rebuilding. To do so requires re-entering the north-south or developed-undeveloped nations debate, which has so shackled worldwide progress on climate change. Industrialized nations such as the United States have done a great job of protecting fisheries. But poor countries, particularly in Africa, have weak, unenforced laws allowing big companies from industrialized nations to come in and plunder their fish stocks.
We'd better act quickly. It takes a long time for depleted fish stocks to repair themselves.
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David Has A Point
However, population control will only delay the inevitable end of mankind. Maybe in a million years, or maybe tomorrow, our planet will be hit by a piece of space rubble over a mile in diameter... That's it - end of story - the slate wiped clean.
Add to that mathematical certainty the odds of bio or nuclear war, mutant viruses or bacteria - Or the grand finale of our sun going super nova.
We have no permanent future as long as all our eggs are in one basket - so to speak.
I observe we gave up trying to get another basket in 1969 - 40 years ago.
A final observation - The nations of the earth are speeding trillions of dollars on one enviro issue or another - everything from global warming to saving milk vetch weeds. Folks are so busy tinkering with the stuff of enviro-dogma they fail to realize that it is all for naught when the big one hits. I observe that we have the theoretical means to deflect a rock marked "Destination Earth" - if we detect it early enough. However, only a handful of people are watching the skies and no one is working on a means of deflection.
I find it amazing that people have swallowed the global warming nonsense which, at worst, would be an inconsequential blip compared to the most recent Ice Age. But, they turn a deaf ear and blind eye to, what every scientist on the planet will affirm, is an inevitable - but preventable - earth killing event.
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