Prediction: Oceans' Fish Gone by 2048

International Study by Ecologists & Economists Predicts Collapse of World Ocean Ecology

By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang
on Thursday, November 02, 2006

Nov. 2, 2006 -- The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.

That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.

The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, -- with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama -- was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.

The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.

"I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected," Worm says in a news release.

"This isn't predicted to happen. This is happening now," study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.

"If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all," Beaumont adds.

Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% -- a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries.

But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.

"A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences," Worm and colleagues say.

The researchers analyzed data from 32 experiments on different marine environments.

They then analyzed the 1,000-year history of 12 coastal regions around the world, including San Francisco and Chesapeake bays in the U.S., and the Adriatic, Baltic, and North seas in Europe.

Next, they analyzed fishery data from 64 large marine ecosystems.

And finally, they looked at the recovery of 48 protected ocean areas.

Their bottom line: Everything that lives in the ocean is important. The diversity of ocean life is the key to its survival. The areas of the ocean with the most different kinds of life are the healthiest.

But the loss of species isn't gradual. It's happening fast -- and getting faster, the researchers say.

Worm and colleagues call for sustainable fisheries management, pollution control, habitat maintenance, and the creation of more ocean reserves.

This, they say, isn't a cost; it's an investment that will pay off in lower insurance costs, a sustainable fish industry, fewer natural disasters, human health, and more.

"It's not too late. We can turn this around," Worm says. "But less than 1% of the global ocean is effectively protected right now."

Worm and colleagues report their findings in the Nov. 3 issue of Science.

:shocked: :shocked: No more fish!!!
I think it is time for "clonning" , Start clonning bait fish so the big fishes will have food to eat... Let put clonning to good use!!
:humpty: :hee: :btu:

Depressing on such a large scale you don't know where to begin to make a difference.

It wont be an issue for me come 2048 I will be gone too and my daughters will be well into motherhood .

go easy on the sea food.

my sorution:

The world ends in 1984...

ya have to farm the ocean instead of just harvesting it.:wiggle:

The world will bounce back, she has a sneaky way of making things right when needed ...

That's why we gotta catch em now, 95 south here I come.
More reason to make sure the hooks are real sharp :devil:

The world will bounce back, she has a sneaky way of making things right when needed ...

Well that's a lazy approach :sleeps:

Don't believe the hype. The analysis is flawed for the conclusions they are trying to reach. A well written rebuttal to this article follows.

The Research Article “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services”, (Worm et al., 3 November, p.787) projects that 100% of seafood-producing species stocks will collapse by 2048. The projection is inaccurate and overly pessimistic. This paper utilizes a dubious metric of stock collapse. It also fails to consider recent reports using more appropriate fish stock abundance data demonstrating that the proportion of overfished stocks has stabilized and is declining in the United States and elsewhere where increasingly effective fishery management is being pursued.

Worm et al. define “collapse” to occur when the current year’s catch is ≤10% of the highest observed in a stock’s time series. However, fish catch is rarely an adequate proxy for fish abundance, particularly for rebuilding stocks under management. A variety of biological, economic and social factors and management decisions determine catches; low catches may occur even when stocks are high (e.g., due to low fish prices or the effects of restrictive management practices), and vice versa. The inadequacy of Worm et al.’s abundance proxy is illustrated by the time series of data for Georges Bank haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). The highest catch for haddock occurred in 1965 at 150,362 t (1). This catch occurred during a period of intense domestic and international fishing (1). In 2003 haddock catch was 12,576 t, or 8% of the time series maximum. Under the Worm et al. definition, the stock would be categorized as “collapsed” in 2003. However, stock assessment data (1) estimate the total magnitude of the spawning biomass in 2003 to be 91% of that in 1965. Comparing the estimate of spawning stock biomass in 2003 to the level producing maximum sustainable yield (MSY), the stock was not even being overfished in 2003 (2), never mind being “collapsed”. We therefore question the utility of a metric that could so utterly misrepresent the status of this and many other important USA fisheries.

Since adequate stock measures exist for only a portion of world fish stocks, this purported world-wide meta analysis required using data that represent the lowest common denominator of data – the total magnitude of the catch. However, if the catch ratio metric is so prone to misrepresentation of the true status of populations, as illustrated above, a synthesis of world fisheries based on these data is equally flawed. At the least, the authors should have conducted a calibration of their stock collapse metric with more complete stock abundance data available from the many worldwide sources where such data exist.

The extrapolation of their stock collapse metric to 100% by 2048 does not comport with the recent history of stock status, particularly in the United States. The National Marine Fisheries Service annually publishes a report to Congress on the status of fishery stocks (2). These data indicate that for the year 2005 about 26% of stocks were classified as “overfished”. For most stocks “overfished” status occurs when the population size drops below 50% of the population required to support MSY. Even under this more conservative definition of stock reduction, the proportion of stocks classified as “overfished” is actually declining slighly; in 2004 28% of stocks were so classified. Extrapolating a 2% decrease in the number of overfished stocks per year leads to a prediction that no stocks in USA jurisdiction would be overfished by the year 2018. However, such a meaningless projection does not incorporate a large number of complex factors, such as the differing life histories of species, impacts of variable ocean conditions on recruitment and the increasing effectiveness of management measures, all significant shortcomings of the prediction method and data contained in the Worm et al. paper as well.

Serious problems of overfishing and stock status are being addressed domestically under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and internationally through the many regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs). Admittedly, more needs to be done to improve governance institutions and control measures. This includes eliminating or reducing illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing on the high seas, and increasing the effectiveness of RFMOs, for example in rebuilding depleted bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, stocks in the Atlantic. Nevertheless, we believe the future situation regarding the condition of marine fish stocks is far less bleak than suggested by Worm et al., in the United States and elsewhere.

Steven Murawski1, Richard Methot2, Galen Tromble3

1Director of Scientific Programs and Chief Science Advisor, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA, 2Office of Science and Technology, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, WA 98112, USA, 3Chief, Domestic Fisheries Division, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA

The world will bounce back, she has a sneaky way of making things right when needed ...

Tell that to the dinosaurs.