So long and thanks for all the fish
I recently came across this summary of the state of the world's marine life after decades of industrial scale pollution, warming, acidification, trawling, nutrient runoff and overfishing. It is from this paper.
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Genocide
6 days ago
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DD: Sharks in GBR in 'quite rapid' decline.
Guardian: We must suffer short-term economic pain to make our seas sustainable. Why the UK really ought to be protecting at least 25% of its marine area.
Age: Another threat from rising CO2 in the oceans. Apart from ocean acidification (and ocean warming caused by rising CO2 in the atmosphere), more dissolved CO2 in the oceans appears to be negatively affecting the central nervous system of fish.
NYT: A case study in overfishing.
New study says tuna numbers are down 60% over last 50 years.
nef: Lost at sea: £2.7 billion and 100,000 jobs. The economic costs of overfishing in the EU.
Scottish fishing industry among culprits. Yet they get away with fines a fraction of the value of their illegal take.
The unnatural history of the sea. This book argues, based on historical records, that even many contemporary marine biologists suffer from shifting baselines and so are unaware of just how productive the oceans used to be. No one alive has seen them in anything like a pristine state, since industrial-scale human suppression of marine life began hundreds of years ago in many places and more than a thousand years ago in some.
Guardian: Plenty more fish in the sea? The NEF has calculated that the UK has just exhausted the annual productivity of its domestic fisheries and effectively relies on imports of cod and haddock for the rest of the year.
Monbiot: The great riches of our seas have been depleted and forgotten.
Basically, it's hard to know exactly what the oceans were like before human activities became dominant, but the historical evidence we have seems to indicate a much, much greater abundance than anything dreamed of in our living memory.
CAP: The end of overfishing in America. Some progress being made in US fishing regulations in the last couple of years.
Guardian: Climate change linked to declining Caribbean fish stocks.
Guardian: Mackerel off MSC eat list.
Monbiot: UK fisheries madness continues.
Guardian: Cod stocks in recovery. Some good news.
TreeHugger: DNA testing finds that 33% of all fish sold in the US is mislabelled as a more commercially desirable kind. This includes 59% of all fish sold as "tuna" and 74% of all fish sold at Sushi restaurants.
PhysOrg: Report supports shut down of all high seas fisheries. Fish in the high seas may be worth more as a carbon sink than as food.
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