Diminishing returns: World fisheries under pressure

Overview

World fisheries face a grim forecast. Forty-five years of increasing fishing pressure have left many major fish stocks depleted or in decline. Despite the increasing attention of policymakers and industry representatives, progress toward better management of fish harvests has been slow, and the government policies and market forces behind the trend toward global overfishing remain largely in place.

Overfishing was recognized as an international problem as far back as the early 1900s. However, prior to the 1950s, the problem was confined to relatively few regions such as the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and the Mediterranean Sea [1] [2]. With the expansion of global fishing activities in the 1950s, the exploitation of global fish stocks has followed a predictable pattern, progressing across the oceans as each region in turn reaches its maximum productivity and then begins to decline. (See Overfishing has progressed from ocean to ocean.) This same boom-and-bust cycle of exploitation has typified the exploitation of other of the world’s renewable resources from forests to whales. In effect, fish are the last wild creatures to be hunted on a large scale.

Overfishing has progressed from ocean to ocean
Peak harvest year of high-value (Demersal) fish by region
FISHING AREA	YEAR OF MAXIMUM HARVEST	RECENT HARVEST (000 metric tons)	MAXIMUM HARVEST (000 metric tons)
Atlantic, Northwest	1967	1,007	2,588
Antarctic	1971	28	189
Atlantic, Southeast	1972	312	962
Atlantic, Western Central	1974	162	181
Atlantic, Eastern Central	1974	320	481
Pacific, Eastern Central	1975	76	93
Atlantic, Northeast	1976	4,575	5,745
Pacific, Northwest	1987	5,661	6,940
Pacific, Northeast	1988	2,337	2,556
Atlantic, Southwest	1989	967	1,000
Pacific, Southwest	1990	498	498
Pacific, Southeast	1990	459	508
Mediterranean	1991	284	284
Indian Ocean, Western	1991	822	822
Indian Ocean, Eastern	1991	379	379
Pacific, Western Central	1991	833	833
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 1996 (FAO, Rome, 1997), p. 36.

Sixty percent of the world’s important fish stocks are “in urgent need of management” to rehabilitate them or keep them from being overfished, according to a recent analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This analysis, based on fish harvest records from 1950 to 1994, found that 35 percent of the most important commercial fish stocks show a pattern of declining yields and require immediate action to halt overharvesting. Another 25 percent show steady yields but are being fished at their biological limit and are vulnerable to declines if fishing levels increase [3]. The harvest of overexploited fish stocks has dropped 40 percent in only 9 years, from 14 million metric tons in 1985 to 8 million metric tons in 1994. These numbers mask more precipitous drops in certain fish stocks such as Atlantic cod, haddock, and redfish, which have all but collapsed in some areas of the North Atlantic [4]. (See “Some Fish Stocks Have Collapsed from Overfishing”.)

Such declines prompted the World Conservation Union in 1996 to add several commercial fish species-including Atlantic cod, haddock, and bluefin tuna – to its influential “red list” of species whose survival is in some degree endangered [5].

References and notes

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 1996 (FAO, Rome, 1997), p. 13.

2. R. Grainger and S. Garcia, Chronicles of Marine Fishery Landings (1950-1994): Trend Analysis and Fisheries Potential, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 359 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1996), pp. 8-9, 42-43.

3. R. Grainger and S. Garcia, Chronicles of Marine Fishery Landings (1950-1994): Trend Analysis and Fisheries Potential, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 359 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1996), p. 31.

4. R. Grainger and S. Garcia, Chronicles of Marine Fishery Landings (1950-1994): Trend Analysis and Fisheries Potential, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 359 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1996), pp. 10-11.

5. William Stevens, “Fierce Debate Erupts Over Degree of Peril Facing Ocean Species,” New York Times (September 17, 1996), p. C-1.