globeandmail.com: Gone fishing - A new study has forecast the emptying of our oceans by 2048 - by Richard Ellis

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A new study has forecast the emptying of our oceans by 2048 - by Richard Ellis

In recent years, there have been a number of reports about the catastrophic decline of marine life. In 2003, in the journal Science, Ransom Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, published the shocking news that over the past 50 years, commercial fishermen have "harvested" 90 per cent of the larger fish species in the world's oceans -- cod, tuna, swordfish, billfish and sharks -- leaving only a measly 10 per cent for current fishermen to work with. This month (also in Science), 14 biologists contributed a paper in which they concluded that 40 years from now, at the current rate of exploitation, there will be nothing left for people to take out of the ocean. Commercial fishing, they said, will be over by 2048.

Carl Safina's Song for the Blue Ocean (Holt, 1997) sounds the alarm for North Atlantic bluefin tuna, Pacific salmon and South Pacific coral-reef fishes, all of which are in serious trouble because Mr. Homo sapiens the not-so-wise has insinuated himself into the complex equation that is life in the ocean -- with cataclysmic effect. The tuna fishermen are unable to resist the high prices paid by Japanese buyers -- a single fish sold for $173,000 U.S. at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo in 2001 -- and the lust for raw, red-meat tuna (sashimi) is driving the bluefin tuna to the brink of extinction.