New research from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London finds that tuna and mackerel populations have plummeted nearly three quarters over the last 40 years.
Fish of the scombridae family – including bonito – saw their numbers drop by 74 percent between 1970 and 2012. According to the research, some 1,234 other ocean species saw a decline of 49 percent over that same period of time. Louise Heaps, chief advisor on marine policy at WWF UK, calls the results devastating, with the decline soon challenging human food security if drastic measures are not taken: “This is catastrophic. We are destroying vital food sources, and the ecology of our oceans,” Heaps said to The Guardian.
Sea cucumbers are also facing major population declines – the Living Blue Planet report finds that sea cucumber populations have fallen by 98 percent in the Galapagos and 94 percent in the Egyptian Red Sea.
A variety of factors have contributed to population declines across seafood species since 1970, says the WWF, including overfishing and pollution. The increased acidification has also become an increasingly dire issue, according to Heaps; it could even result in all of the world’s coral reefs dying out by 2050, she posited.
“I am terrified about acidification,” Heaps told The Guardian. “That situation is looking very bleak. We were taught in the 1980s that the solution to pollution is dilution, but that suggests the oceans have an infinite capacity to absorb our pollution. That is not true, and we have reached the capacity now.”
With respect to overfishing, success has come from better governance in places like the North Sea, which saw cod stocks improve. Governments should embrace the sustainable development goals, proposed by the United Nations, Heaps suggested. More partnerships between private sector fishing fleets and governments is also necessary in the quest to preserve stocks, she concluded: “We need to keep [fishermen] on board, because they must see that good governance is in their interests.”
Check out the Living Blue Planet report, which was released 16 September, in the window below:
