18 September 2007 - Amsterdam,
Netherlands — Our planet's oceans are in
deep, deep, peril, says a new report from
the Worldwatch Institute. The only road
to recovery may be to declare 40 percent
of the world's oceans off-limits to human
exploitation to ensure the restoration of
life in depleted areas.
The Earth's surface is 70 percent covered
by ocean, and three-quarters of humanity
live in coastal areas. We are hugely dependent
on marine resources - yet our oceans are
facing threats that include overfishing,
toxic pollution, climate change and whaling.
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A new report from the prestigious Worldwatch
Institute, Oceans in Peril: Protecting Marine
Biodiversity, calls for these marine reserves
- areas where all extractive and destructive
activities, including fishing are prohibited
- while giving an alarming snapshot of the
shocking state of the world's oceans. It's
a wake-up call that should jolt the complacency
of policy makers worldwide.
Written for the Worldwatch Institute by
a team of experts - this time from the Greenpeace
Science Unit in the UK's Exeter University
- Oceans in Peril updates an earlier study
by the same team in 1998. They have been
staggered by the scale and rate of destruction
that has taken place in less than a decade
in every ocean on Earth.
The Science Unit provides crucial scientific
expertise to our campaigns, and has a long
history of working on oceans issues, including
whaling, toxic pollution, climate change
and overfishing.
"Recent studies such as the one which
shows how 90 percent of the world's large
predatory fish, which include the sharks,
swordfish and tuna, have disappeared due
to overfishing since the 1950s have helped
expose what has been happening under the
waves and have therefore been out of sight
and out of mind to most people", says
Paul Johnston, Greenpeace's chief scientist.
Oceans in Peril details new and emerging
threats, such the increasing acidification
of the world's oceans, and underscores how
the race for ever-diminishing resources
is forcing marine ecosystems to the point
of collapse.
The report illustrates how 76 percent of
the world's fish stocks are fully or overexploited,
an estimate borne out by figures from the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), which suggest that 158 million tons
of fish were harvested worldwide in 2005
- a seven-fold increase since 1950. Catch
records between 1950 and 2000 show the "collapse"
of 366 out 1,519 fisheries worldwide, most
famously the Grand Banks cod fishery off
Newfoundland.
Oceans in Peril also details the pitfalls
of fish farming, the supposed magic bullet
of marine resources with alarming statistics:
producing carnivorous animals such as salmon
or marine shrimp requires 2.5 as much fishmeal
as the amount of saleable fish eventually
produced. For tuna caught in the wild and
fattened in "ranches", the weight
of fish fed to the tuna is a shocking 20
times more than what is actually produced.
The damage to thousands of marine animals
and entire ecosystems by the likes of longlining
and bottom trawling, as well as overfishing
off the coast of developing countries, is
exacerbated the estimated 20 percent of
the global catch that is illegal, unregulated
or unreported, and worth somewhere between
US$4-9 billion a year. While countries with
enough resources to control their own waters
stand some chance of putting measures in
place to protect resources, there's little
or no regulation of any kind of marine harvesting
in international waters - an issue that
needs to be urgently addressed at an international
level.
500-year old Gorgonian Coral trawled from
the sea bottom by a fish net. (Image ©Ministry
of Fisheries NZ)
But it's not all doom and gloom - there
is a beam of sunshine in the report, including
a comprehensive package of measures that
if implemented could reverse current trends,
restoring the former productivity of our
planet's oceans. That solution is the establishment
of comprehensive marine reserves all over
the world, protecting vulnerable species
and habitats, enhancing fisheries beyond
the reserve boundaries, and buffering the
worst impacts of climate change.
Marine reserves are the single most powerful
tool available for arresting and reversing
the decline of our oceans and are equally
applicable to the high seas as they are
to coastal waters. The oceans have immense
powers of regeneration and wherever in the
world marine reserves have been established
marine life is flourishing.
