Economic Overfishing

Is overfishing only a biological problem? The Pacific halibut fishery has long been considered the outstanding success of sustainable management. The International Pacific Halibut Commission was formed in 1923 by the United States and Canada to jointly manage the halibut stock on the Pacific...

Historical Overfishing

Is overfishing a new problem? Although they are mammals, whales were originally thought to be fish and their exploitation was referred to as the whale fishery. As governments replaced kingdoms and fisheries regulations came into being, management of whale fisheries became the province of...

Overfishing

What is overfishing? Overfishing is harvesting a fish stock so hard that much of the potential food and wealth will largely slip through our fingers. Yield overfishing is the most common. It prevents a population from producing as much sustainable yield as...

Ecosystem Impacts of Fishing

How does overfishing affect ecosystems? Early explorers’ accounts are full of wonder at the natural wealth of the New World and astonishment at the size of fish. Writing in 1615 about John Cabot’s voyage off Newfoundland, Peter Martyr said, “in the sea adjacent [he]...

Marine Protected Areas

What are marine protected areas? One of the crown jewels of marine ecosystems is the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) off the northeast coast of Australia. The reef stretches along 2,600 km of the Queensland coast and consists of 900 islands and 2,900 reefs. It...

Trawling Impacts on Ecosystems

How do trawls and dredges work and why are they still used to catch fish? “Enormous bottom trawl nets are dragged along the sea floor, catching all marine life and killing all habitats—they swallow and destroy everything in their path.” This is how an environmental...

Recreational Fisheries

Are recreational fisheries fundamentally different from commercial fisheries? The simple answer is yes, recreational fishing is very different from most commercial fisheries. Many more people participate, their catch and effort are harder to measure, and the overall objective of recreational fishing is often very...

Illegal Fishing

Is illegal fishing an important problem in overfishing? On August 7, 2003, the Australian patrol vessel Southern Supporter spotted a vessel thought to be illegally fishing within the Australian 200-mile economic zone around Heard Island, 2,400 miles southwest of Perth in the...

Deepwater Fisheries

What happened to the orange roughy stocks? In 1987, the director of the primary fisheries research laboratory in Australia, Roy Harden Jones, announced that a research survey for a species called orange roughy had found schools off southern Australia with an estimated total biomass...

The Status of Overfishing

Are the world’s stocks overfished? The most authoritative assessment of the status of commercial fish stocks comes from FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Every two years FAO publishes a report that summarizes the status of commercially important fish stocks....