4 Environment Alert Bulletin

Overfishing,
a major threat
to the global marine ecology

In 2002, 72% of the world's marine fish stocks were being harvested faster than
they could reproduce. Fishing activities have various negative impacts on
marine ecosystems. The greatest concern is the rapid depletion of fish
population due to extensive commercial fishing. A full one-fourth of the total
catch (27 million tonnes in 2003) is not those targeted, and most often are lost.

Background
Overfishing occurs when fish are caught faster than they subsistence fishermen to large-scale mechanised fishing
can reproduce, and for many scientists it has become vessels, directly or indirectly employs some 200 million
one of the greatest impacts of human activity on oceans. people worldwide. The economic sector depending on
Overfishing increases the vulnerability of ocean ecosys- fisheries is therefore a crucial element for the development
tems and may contribute to the decline of other marine of a large number of countries.
species including birds and mammals. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of
The record figure for total fisheries production the United Nations (FAO), 47% of global fish stocks are fully
(captured and farmed) was around 100 million tonnes exploited, thus offering no reasonable expectations for
and was calculated for the year 2000. This apparent further expansion, and another 18% are reported as over-
abundance masks a serious decrease in the productivity exploited. Major changes in the composition of global catch
of many fish species. to species of lower economic values have been reported,
The deterioration of global fisheries is raising signifi- since high-demand species are being captured even in their
cant concern, mainly because an estimated one billion immature stage. As harvest shrink, the prices of most fish
people, mostly in low-income countries, depend on fish species continue to rise, making fish a less affordable food
as their primary source of food. On the average, fish source among low-income populations.
supply 16% of animal protein consumed by
humans. The fishing industry, ranging from

Top 12 countries fish production, 2001 20

FAO 2004b
0 - 0.2 Total fish catch by marine area, 2002
FAO Fishstat 2004 Marine catch
0.2 - 2 10
Details regarding the FAO fishing areas (numbers in italic in Total fish production including marine catch, freshwater and fish farming
2-5
ocean areas), can be found at :
Fish and seafood production ready for human consumption 5
5 - 15 ftp://ftp.fao.org/fi/stat/by_FishArea/Default.htm
15 - 22 2.5
27 18
million tonnes
million tonnes
ICELAND NORWAY RUSSIAN FEDERATION 21
67 27

REP. of JAPAN 61
KOREA USA
37 CHINA
INDIA 31 34

THAILAND 77
71

51 INDONESIA PERU

47 57 87

CHILE 41

81

48 58
88 48

18 - Arctic Sea (0 t.) 34 - Atlantic, Eastern Central (3 373 623 t.) 48 - Atlantic, Antarctic (134 595 t.) 61 - Pacific, Northwest (21 436 229 t.) 81 - Pacific, Southwest (739 868 t.)
21 - Atlantic, Northwest (2 245 008 t.) 37 - Mediterranean and Black Sea (1 550 099 t.) 51 - Indian Ocean, Western (4 243 330 t.) 67 - Pacific, Northeast (2 702 885 t.) 87 - Pacific, Southeast (13 765 143 t.)
27 - Atlantic, Northeast (11 048 962 t.) 41 - Atlantic, Southwest (2 089 660 t.) 57 - Indian Ocean, Eastern (5 100 261 t.) 71 - Pacific, Western Central (10 510 202 t.) 88 - Pacific, Antarctic (1 559 t.)
31 - Atlantic, Western Central (1 764 352 t.) 47 - Atlantic, Southeast (1 701 440 t.) 58 - Indian Ocean, Antarctic (8 004 t.) 77 - Pacific, Eastern Central (2 037 267 t.)
Overfishing

Causes of the decline

Technology
Today's fishing technology is highly elaborate. Fishing
lines can reach as much as 120 km, furnished with thou-
sands of hooks. Some trawlers reach 170 metres in length
and can take on board the volume equivalent of 12 jumbo
jets, and drift-nets can exceed 60 km in length. Fishing
vessels cover large distances at high speed, from coastal
zone to high seas. They fish at great depth, stay at sea for
several months, while fish are often prepared for the
markets on board. Destructive sea-bed habitat bottom
trawling involves powerful boats dragging heavy, metal-
weighed nets across the ocean floor to catch the maxi-
mum possible amount of bottom-dwelling life. Eash year,
bottom trawlers drag an area twice the size of the conti- Bycatch
nental United States! Sonars, air monitoring systems and The word "bycatch" refers to the portion of marine life
satellite platforms help to locate fish schools and follow caught that was not targeted. It may include low-value
them with greater ease. Navigation apparatuses, such as species but also vast tonnage of young or undersized fish
Global Positioning System (GPS) and radar allow boats to of valuable commercial species. Almost 25% of all the fish
constantly reconsider the best fishing spot, with very high pulled from the sea never make it to the market. An aver-
precision. Fresh fish is a highly perishable product and its age of 27 million tonnes of unwanted fish are thrown back
consumption was traditionally limited to coastal areas. each year, and a large portion does not survive. Some-
With modern transport and food preservation technolo- times bycatch fish are kept for the market, but most often
gies, one can offer fresh fish during all seasons, anywhere they are thrown back dead, because they may be the
in the world. wrong species, the wrong size, of inferior quality, or
surplus to the fishing operations quotas. The potential
effects of bycatch are not just for commercial fish stocks,
Open access and over-capacity but the entire diversity of species in marine ecosystems
Over-capacity is the presence of too many vessels in a and essential food chain components. Bottom trawling
growing number of fisheries. Fish stocks have generally nets are indiscriminate and tend to pick up everything in
been considered common property, open to exploitation their path with an extremely high bycatch rate. For
by anyone with a boat and gear as long as they were used example, up to 95% of the take in halibut trawling can be
outside a country's 200 Mile Exclusive Economic Zone. If bycatch, which include a variety of endangered or over-
enough fish are caught to cover operating costs, there is fished species.
little economic incentive to stop fishing once a vessel is
built. As more fishermen enter the system, greater effort is
World fishermen and fish farmers by continent
required to catch a dwindling supply and revenues fall. In Number of people (in thousands)
time, fish stocks can be severely depleted. Excessive 35 000
World
fishing capacity leads to overfishing and therefore to the Asia
degradation of fishery resources. Such unsustainable 30 000 Africa
practices, creating a conflict between short-term and Europe
South America
long-term gains, lead to serious impacts on biodiversity 25 000 North & Central America
and diminish vital food production potential for a number Oceania
of developing countries. 20 000

15 000
Subsidies and jobs
Large economic losses have plagued the global fisheries
10 000
sector for more than a decade. However, national govern-
ments have traditionally heavily subsidised the fishing indus-
try, since it is an important source of employment, food and
export earnings. Such subsidies have often been used with 2 500
little consideration for their long-term damage to natural
resources. Global subsidies, which reach about US$ 13 billion 2 000
per year, encourage fishermen to remain in a depleted fishery
even though it may no longer be profitable, thus further 1 500
depleting marine resources. About 50 million people
(including 35 million fishermen) worldwide depend directly on 1 000
fishing for their living. According to the FAO, reducing the
large - and medium - scale fishing industry by half might
Photo: NOAA

500
eliminate several hundreds of thousands of jobs. Reducing
the small-scale, artisan-fishing sector by half would eliminate 0
several million jobs. 1970 1980 1990 2000
Data source: FAO 2002
 Environmental Alert Bulletin

Aquaculture
The decline in marine fish catch has been largely offset by increased aqua- Global trends in marine fisheries
culture production, which grew from 2 million tonnes in 1980 to nearly 16 and aquaculture
million tonnes in 2002. In view of its evident success and declining wild 100
stocks, policy makers and fisheries managers often see it as an alternative to Total production
Aquaculture
marine fishing, as it has the potential to take pressure off wild stocks and Marine fish catch
also provide economic development opportunities. Ironically, if not practised million tonnes - live weight
80
wisely, aquaculture can actually increase pressure on wild stocks and cause
environmental damage, including to fish habitat, and affect other sectors of
the food supply chain.
Some concerns focus on potential environmental and ecological risks. For 60
example, cross-breeding between wild stocks and escaped domestic strains
of fish could weaken the genetic makeup of wild populations. The risk of
disease can be increased in farmed fish cultivated in confined areas, with the 40
possibility of subsequent transmission to wild stocks exists. Fish farming
requires suitable areas for development and can therefore lead to destruction
of important habitat of wild stocks. For example, cutting down mangroves to
provide areas for the construction of fish pens is cited as one of the major 20

Photo: NOAA
reasons for the destruction of as much as 24% of the world's mangrove
swamps, which, like other wetlands, are important spawning and nursery
areas for shrimp and fish. 0
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2002
Aquaculture also has social implications. In developing countries, fish Data source: FAO Fishstat 2004
farms are often owned by foreign companies who displace small fisheries in
order to produce high-value products such as shrimp for export to richer countries. Shrimp farming in particular is reported to have
caused serious problems in a number of developing countries such as Thailand, India, Malaysia and Ecuador, where it destroyed
mangroves, caused water shortages, damaged crops because of seepage of salt water from ponds, and polluted rivers.

Food security
Reefs threatened by destructive fishing Fish depletion constitutes a threat to food security. In
Asia alone, over a billion people depend on fish and
seafood as their major source of animal protein. The
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) warns that fish, long regarded
as the "poor man's protein", is diminishing globally as a
result of increasing market demand and overfishing.
While citizens of developed nations have average
annual supplies of about 26kg of seafood per person,
people in developing countries have only nine kg per
person/year. For people who are highly dependent on
fish in their diets, uncertain supplies increase their
vulnerability. Moreover, in the next 30 years, more than
6.3 billion people are expected to make their home in
already densely populated coastal zones world-wide.
Coastal population growth often results in an ongoing
increase in the number of people fishing in depleted
near-shore areas.
Note: Areas classified as threatened by destructive fishing practices are based upon a
20-kilometre radius zone from known occurrences of dynamite or cyanide fishing as found
in ReefBase (ICLARM, 1997) and were revised based upon expert opinion obtained at the
two-day "Reefs at Risk" workshop held in September 1997 in Manila.

Destructive fishing
Cyanide fishing is a popular method to capture live reef fish for the seafood and aquarium markets. It is widely practiced in South-
eastern Asia and the South Pacific (see map) and is now spreading to other parts of the world. Cyanide fishermen squirt cyanide
into coral holes and crevices, where reef fish seek refuge. The cyanide stuns the fish, making it easy for fishermen to capture their
prey. Cyanide poisons reefs and is extremely harmful to coral polyps and other reef organisms. Furthermore, less than half the fish
caught with cyanide survive long enough to be sold to aquariums or restaurants. Destructive cyanide fishing practices are spreading
from currently over-harvested and devastated reefs in the Philippines - where an estimated 65 tonnes of cyanide are sprayed each
year - to remote coral reefs in eastern Indonesia and other nations of the western Pacific.
Fishing with explosives, also known as "blast fishing", has probably been in existence for centuries and is apparently spreading.
Explosions can produce fairly large craters, devastating 10 to 20 m2 of sea-bottom. Explosions kill both the target fish and the
accompanying flora and fauna, the blasts being indiscriminate to size or species. Explosives and raw materials used as compo-
nents, such as fertilisers and sugar, are cheap and easily available. Commercial explosives are often obtained from mining or
building activities. Fishermen often only need to extract the explosive charges from munitions left over from on-going or past armed
conflicts. In other areas, fishermen can access army munitions through illegal channels.
O verfishing

Actions / Solutions
Although a growing number of countries have adopted fleet
reduction programmes, over-capacity has been recognised www.unep.org
United Nations Environment Programme
as a serious problem by most fishing nations. Around 120 P.O. Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya
countries have discussed issues such as overfishing of the Tel: (254 2) 624105
world's major marine fishery resources, destructive and Fax: (254 2) 624269
E-mail: [email protected]
wasteful fishing practices and excess capacity, and adopted Web: www.unep.org
an "International Plan of Action for the Management of www.unep.net
Fishing Capacity". The Plan's objective is to achieve
"an efficient, equitable and transparent management European fishing quotas
of fishing capacity". At the end of 2003, the European Council of Fisheries Minis-
The FAO estimates that the world fishing fleet ters adopted a long-term recovery plan for endangered fish
numbered about 3.8 million vessels in 1995 of which stocks. What were difficult negotiations finally resulted in a
nearly 1.2 million were vessels with storage space. balanced compromise. The latest decisions also take into
The fact that fishing capacity reduction has often account social aspects, i.e. fishermen will be able to continue
been achieved by relocating vessels in other coun- fishing at a reduced level and will not have to stop altogether.
tries' fisheries or in high seas' fisheries is of serious At the same time the compromise is also justifiable in biologi-
concern, as it does not contribute to a global reduc- cal terms since long-term recovery plans will be in force for the
tion of fishing capacity. Significant reductions in first time for endangered stocks such as cod, hake and plaice
fishing capacity in highly populous and least- (the plan aims to increase cod stocks by 30% and by 5% for
developed countries are not likely to occur due to the hake in the next ten years). For threatened stocks, the
increasing social pressure. inadequacy of annually adopted measures will be replaced by
The best way to reduce bycatch would be to multi-annual programmes tailored to each region and the state
lower the total fishing effort as much as possible, of each fishery. These will not only involve catch quotas and
and develope selective technologies, better regula- restrictions on fishing effort, but also tighter policing.
tions and stronger enforcement. So far, only eight
countries have imposed a total or partial ban on Atlantic cod catch (million tonnes - live weight)
4
bottom trawling (New Zealand, Indonesia, Philip-

Photo: NOAA
3.5
pines, Scotland, Italy [Sicily only], Kenya, Seychelles
and Greece). In all studies conducted within these 3

countries it was found that pressure on fish 2.5

ressources had been alleviated and stock recovery 2

had taken place. 1.5

As a recent action, the Economics and Trade 1
Branch (ETB) of the United Nations Environment
0.5
Programme convened the fifth Workshop on Fishery
0
Subsidies and Sustainable Fisheries Management 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
on 26-27 April 2004 in Geneva. The workshop
Overfishing has severely depleted cod stocks in the Atlantic. The cod catch has
offered an open forum for exchange of views and plummeted over the past 30 years and some fisheries have been closed entirely. FAO
opinions on the impacts of fishing subsidies and the warns that cod and many other heavily fished stocks will recover only if catches are
sharply reduced and carefully monitored for at least a decade.
means for reforming them. Data source: FAO Fishstat 2004

Sources: Alder D.P.J., Bennett E., Christensen V., Tyedmers P., Watson R. (2003). The Future for Fisheries. Science, 302, 1359-1361.
FAO (2002). The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture. Rome.
FAO (2003). The State of the World's Forests. Rome.
Jackson J.B.C., Kirby M.X., Berger W.H., Bjorndal K.A., Botsford L.W., Bourque B.J., and al (2001). Historical Ovefishing and the
Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems. Science, 293, 629-637
UNEP (2004). 2003 GEO Year Book. Nairobi.
URLs: FAO (2004). Fisheries, Databases and Statistics at www.fao.org/fi/statist/statist.asp
FAO (2004b). FishStat database at www.fao.org/fi/statist/FISOFT/FISHPLUS.asp
UNEP/WCMC World Atlas of Coral Reefs à www.unep-wcmc.org/marine/coralatlas
World Fish Centre Reef Base à www.reefbase.org
UNEP Economics and Trade Branch at www.unep.ch/etu/Fisheries%20Meeting/FishMeeting2004.htm
World Fisheries: The Current Crisis at www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/bp434-e.htm
United Nations Atlas of the Oceans at www.oceansatlas.org
Background cover photo: Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER) For further information

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