According to a study led by researchers at the University of British Columbia, there’s no more room on Earth for fisheries to expand.
The study, published in Friday’s issue of online journal PLoS ONE, charts the expansion of industrial fisheries, claiming to be the first to measure the spatial expansion of global fisheries by tracking fleets’ movements.
The research revealed that fisheries expanded at a rate of 1 million square kilometers annually from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, and the rate of expansion more than tripled in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a result, global seafood landings increased fivefold from 19 million metric tons in 1950 to a peak of 90 million in the late 1980s.
“The decline of spatial expansion since the mid-1990s is not a reflection of successful conservation efforts but rather an indication that we’ve simply run out of room to expand fisheries,” said Wilf Swartz, the study’s lead author. “If people in Japan, Europe and North America find themselves wondering how the markets are still filled with seafood, it’s in part because spatial expansion and trade makes up for overfishing and ‘fishing down the food chain’ in local waters.”
Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre also co-authored the study.
Study: Sustainable seafood choices scant in B.C.
A study conducted by students at the University of Victoria’s School of Environmental Studies suggested that less than one-third of seafood products sold at restaurants and grocery stores in the Victoria, British Columbia, area are considered sustainable.
Students analyzed data gathered from 27 restaurants and 10 grocery stories and applied the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s color-coded sustainable-seafood rating system to determine the number of sustainable and unsustainable seafood items being offered at each establishment.
“The mission to the students was to navigate the waters of sustainable seafood as a consumer,” said John Volpe, a University of Victoria professor and marine ecologist. “They came away with first-hand knowledge of how challenging this can be and, in many cases, how far short we fall.”
First Nation launches lawsuit
The Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation’s (KAFN) has launched a class-action lawsuit against the British Columbia government, claiming their aboriginal fishing rights were violated by salmon farming.
KAFN said on Friday that it won the right to file the lawsuit after achieving certification, a procedural step required under the B.C. Class Proceedings Act to seek the approval of the court for the case to proceed as class action.
The class-action process was important because of the potential for quick processing for the judicial system, since speed is crucial to resolve the matter in light of the rapid decline of wild salmon populations, according to KAFN.
