Tuesday, September 11, 2012

About Those Collapsing Fish Stocks

It's estimated that the global fishing fleet is more than twice what would be needed to completely fish out the world's oceans.   As fish stocks collapse in one place or another, larger, ocean-ranging vessels move on to the next unlucky target.

Australia is dealing with one of these right now, the second-largest trawler in the world, the Dutch FV Margiris.


At 143-metres long, the Margiris is the largest trawler, by far, to ever enter Australian waters.   It was originally issued permits to take 18,000 tonnes of mackerel and red bait fish but concerns quickly built over the ship's massive by-catch of creatures ranging from sea turtles to dolphins.

 

Finally a flotilla of 200-small boats turned out to blockade the Margiris in port forcing the government's hand.   Now it has imposed a 2-year moratorium on the vessel while it studies its environmental impact.

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2 comments:

  1. cyloke10:02 AM, September 11, 2012

    " global fishing fleet is more than twice what would be needed to completely fish out the world's oceans."

    Hey do you have a link to that study?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Mound of Sound11:25 AM, September 11, 2012

    You could check out the "Sea Around Us" project at UBC. PLOS.org had a report on fisheries collapse a couple of years back. The UN's environmental branch, UNEP.org has a variety of information on this, including the role of government subsidies in keeping global fisheries chasing disappearing stocks.

    And you can check out this link:

    http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et1098/et1098s2.html

    It's a report on a WWF study showing the fleet overcapacity is five fold.

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