Climate Action 2010-2011

Ecosystem based adaptation
Guitarfish, rays and other fish are tossed from a shrimp boat, La Paz, Mexico.
James P Leape
Director General of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International
World fish stocks: how can we
bring them back to abundance?
Two-thirds of the world’s fish stocks are at, or over,
their limits of sustainability; yet one in four people
depend on fish for their daily protein. How can the
international community collaborate to ensure the
recovery of major fisheries worldwide?
When an enigmatic Italian explorer first reported some
500 years ago that the waters of the Grand Banks off
Newfoundland were so full of cod he could hardly move
his ship, he might not have believed what was to follow.
For centuries, these once prolific waters withstood
continued fishing effort. Catches remained steady, providing
livelihoods for fishermen all along the coast and also
generating huge amounts of wealth for Europe, whose
vessels made the long trip to harvest the seemingly limitless
bounty. But then, in the 1950s, a lethal cocktail of technology,
knowledge gaps, and the economic imperatives of a society
based on fishing, pushed cod stocks over the edge.
| 158 |
Catch sizes peaked in the late 1960s, but by then the
death knell had sounded – though nobody seemed to
hear it. When the Canadian government declared a
moratorium on the cod fishery in 1992, Canada’s east
coast lost 40,000 jobs in hundreds of coastal communities.
Prevention would have been better than cure.
Many fisheries around the world are in danger of suffering
a similar fate. And while the international community can
and must collaborate to ensure their recovery, we must be in
no doubt about the scale of the issue.
Between 1976 and 2006, the total world trade of fish
and fishery products increased more than 900 per cent
to reach a record value of US$86.4 billion (export
value). In roughly the same period, the annual global
catch stayed level while the amount of fish in the sea
declined. Put simply, we are catching too many fish
and, as we have seen in the Grand Banks, such pressure
cannot be sustained.
www.climateactionprogramme.org