Fisheries worldwide appear to be on a downward spiral, with some of our favorite seafood species on the brink of extinction, but new research from the Environmental Defense Fund provides some hope.
Their latest study, conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Universities of California Santa Barbara and Washington, revealed that the majority of the planet's fisheries could be recovered within ten years, and commercial fish stocks could double by 2050 - but only if the world adopted more sustainable management strategies.
Currently, 85 percent of the world's fisheries are believed to be fully exploited or overexploited, and previous studies have found evidence suggesting that we're headed for a global fisheries collapse if management strategies are not implemented.
In fact, of the 4,713 fisheries - accounting for 78 percent of the world's annual catch - examined in the latest study, researchers found only a third were in decent biological shape.
"There's a really positive story right around the corner. We can have our fish and eat it too," said Amanda Leland, senior vice president for oceans at the Environmental Defense Fund and a co-author of the study. "It would be very hard to find another global, significant environmental challenge that could be solved so quickly."
An estimated three billion people worldwide rely on seafood as a key source of protein. Therefore, the recovery of struggling fisheries would significantly increase the amount of seafood available for harvest and to feed the world's growing population.
The problem is "business as usual" fishing practices will lead to a "continued collapse for many of the world's fisheries." However, if implemented today, sustainable management reforms such as secure fishing rights and science-based catch limits could generate yearly increases of more than 16 million metric tons of seafood, with annual profits of $53 billion, researchers explained.
In other words, the percentage of fisheries in the world that are considered biologically healthy would grow from around 47 percent today to 77 percent within just 10 years.
What's more is researchers found these reforms would yield a 204 percent increase in profits for fishermen by 2050. This is particularly reassuring, as 260 million people work in fishery-related sectors, most of which reside in developing countries.
"We no longer need to see ocean fisheries as a series of trade-offs," added Chris Costello, lead author and a professor of environmental and resource economics at UC Santa Barbara. "In fact, we show that we can have more fish in the water, more food on the plate, and more prosperous fishing communities - and it can happen relatively quickly."
Their study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
