Living Blue Planet Report

Living Blue Planet Report page 28

0

50

60

70

80

10

20

30

40

90

100

1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2011

Percentage of stocks assessed

Year

Underfished

Fully fished

Overfished Figure 20: Global

trends in the state of

marine fish stocks,

1974-2011 (FAO, 2014b).

Key

Overfished at

biologically

unsustainable levels

Fully exploited

fish stocks

Not fully exploited

stocks

which makes it politically difficult to restrain access to resources,

placing vulnerable populations in even more precarious situations.

At a global scale, IUU fishing has escalated over the last two

decades. IUU fishing is estimated to take 11-26 million tonnes of

fish each year, adding to the pressures on stocks (Agnew et al.,

2009). This represents 12-28.5 per cent of global capture fisheries

production (FAO 2014b).

Overfishing is also closely tied to bycatch, which causes

the needless loss of billions of fish, along with marine turtles,

whales and dolphins, seabirds and other species. Global bycatch

levels (excluding IUU fishing) are estimated at 7.3 million tonnes

(Kelleher, 2005).

While overfishing is a global problem, it is by no means

uniform and there is evidence that effective management can

successfully rebuild stocks. However, addressing the drivers of

overfishing throughout the vast majority of coastal waters and the

high seas remains an urgent challenge.

Newfoundland, in Canada, provides a sobering example

of what happens to communities when populations are fished to

commercial extinction. For centuries, the cod stocks of the Grand

Banks seemed inexhaustible. In the early 1990s, the fishing and

fish-processing industry employed 110,000 people. But in 1992 the

cod fishery collapsed and 40,000 people lost their jobs, including

10,000 fishermen. Today the cod stock, although showing signs of

recovery, remains well below pre-collapse levels.