THE SCOPE AND EXTENT OF GLOBAL FISHERIES ISSUES

There is a global crisis in marine capture fisheries that has been punctuated by a few success stories. This crisis has been expressed in several ways, chief of which is the collapse of targeted stocks (sensu Botsford et al.1997; NRC 1999; Jackson et al. 2001; Pitcher 2001; Pauly et al. 2002, 2003; Garcia and de Leiva Moreno 2003; Rosenberg 2003; Beddington and Kirkwood 2005; Mullon et al. 2005; Berkes et al. 2006; Beddington et al. 2007; FAO 2007). Both the global catch and the vast majority of the world's fish standing stock biomasses either have plateaued or are down. Specifically, over ∼70% of the world's fish stocks are at overfished or fully utilized levels (NRC 1999; FAO 2007; Figure 1.1). We can argue over the finer points regarding whether we have 90% or 40% of the “virgin” biomass of many of these species (e.g. Myers and Worm 2003; Sibert et al. 2006; Hilborn 2006), but the germane point is that we have removed a significant fraction of these fish stocks. It is unclear whether these stocks can recover and if the associated impacts from their overfishing can be overcome (sensu Hutchings 2000; Pauly et al. 2002; Hutchings and Reynolds 2004).

Most of the larger-sized fish in the world's oceans are much less abundant than they were 50 years ago (Myers and Worm2003; Worm et al. 2005; Sibert et al. 2006; Figure 1.2).