Scientists have long been sounding the alarm about a looming catastrophe of ocean overfishing—the harvesting of wildlife from the sea at rates too high for species to replace themselves. Yet for two decades, global leaders have been at an impasse in their efforts to reverse the damage that has been done.
A fisherman hauls in a net full of fish while trawling in the English Channel. The rise of industrial fishing has led to the harvesting of wildlife at rates too high for species to replace themselves. Today, over a third of global stocks are overfished, posing a threat to biodiversity and throwing ecosystems dangerously out of balance.
In the mid-20th century, countries around the world worked to build their fishing capacities to ensure the availability and affordability of protein-rich foods. Favorable policies, loans, and subsidies spawned a rapid rise of big industrial fishing operations, which quickly supplanted local fishers as the world’s main source of seafood.
These large, profit-seeking commercial fleets were aggressive, scouring the world’s oceans and developing ever more sophisticated methods and technologies for finding, extracting, and processing their target species. Consumers soon grew accustomed to having access to a wide selection of fish at affordable prices.
But by 1989, when about 90 million tonnes (metric tons) of fish were taken from the ocean, the industry had hit its high point, and yields have declined or stagnated ever since. Fisheries for the most sought-after species, like orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, and bluefin tuna, have collapsed for lack of fish. In 2003, a scientific report estimated that industrial fishing had reduced the number of large ocean fish to just 10 percent of their pre-industrial population.
Faced with the collapse of large-fish populations, commercial fleets began traveling deeper in the ocean and farther down the food chain for viable catches. This so-called “fishing down” has triggered a chain reaction that is upsetting the ancient and delicate balance of the sea’s biologic system.
Overfishing can also harm other marine species. Trawling, a method in which boats pull massive nets behind them in the water, pulls in more than just shrimp and bluefin tuna—it captures just about anything in its path. Sea turtles, dolphins, sea birds, sharks, and other animals have all faced existential threats as bycatch.
Over the years, as fisheries have caught less and less, humans have begun to understand that the oceans, assumed to be unendingly vast and rich, are in fact highly vulnerable. In 2006, a study of catch data published in the journal Science grimly predicted that if such unsustainable fishing rates continue, all the world’s fisheries will collapse by 2048.
About a third of global stocks are overfished—and the overall proportion of fish stocks at sustainable levels has continued to decline. The FAO report says this deterioration of fish stocks can particularly be seen “in places where fisheries management is not in place, or is ineffective.” Of the areas the organization monitors, the Mediterranean and Black Sea had the highest percentage of stocks—62.5 percent—fished at unsustainable levels.
Government subsidies to the fishing industry remain a significant challenge to reversing this troubling trend. One global survey found that in 2018 nations spent $22 billion on so-called harmful subsidies that fuel overfishing—a 6 percent rise from 2009.
As National Geographic reported at the time, harmful subsidies are those that fund practices that would not otherwise be profitable, such as for industrial trawlers’ fuel costs. China, for example, has increased its harmful subsidies by 105 percent over the past decade.
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