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Global impact of Industrial Fisheries on Marine Ecosystem and Food Security
7pm on Tuesday June 26
Theatre 3,
Building G17,
Gold Coast Campus,
Griffith University (View campus maps)
View Professor Pauly's Profile.
Please register your intent to attend this seminar by filling out your details below.
Individual fisheries are generally perceived as one fleet exploiting one or several target species. Their welfare then depends on the relation between the sizes of each fishery relative to the size of population(s) it exploits, which ‘stock assessments’ are supposed to evaluate and ‘fisheries management’ is supposed to adjust. The vision of fisheries that will be presented here, however, is that of a global system spanning all oceans. It is the result of an expansion which began in Europe, North America and Japan over a century ago, and which is now being completed by largely uncontrolled industrial fleets operating in all oceans.
The consumers, mainly the European Union, the United States, Japan and increasingly China, have been to date largely unaffected by the local depletions these fleets induce, in spite of globally declining catches, buffered as they are by an integrated market that causes a large and increasing fraction of world fish catches to be consumed in countries other than those where the catches are being made. This global fishery, fed by enormous subsidies, has an enormous impact on marine ecosystems, with the biomasses of large and middle size target species and associated organisms generally reduced by a factor of ten a few decades after a fishery opens. This effect can be detected by declining trends of the mean trophic level of fisheries landings, a process now known as ‘fishing down food webs,’ and which encourages jellyfish outbreaks. At the same time, the sea bottom is extensively modified by trawling.
It can be anticipated that this form of interaction with marine organisms and their supportive ecosystems will lead in the next decades to a succession of local extirpation, followed by global extinctions. Confronting the ecosystem impact of this exploitation system will require a new mode of thinking on how humans and marine wildlife can co-exist on Earth.
If you require further information, please contact Dr Kylie Pitt as follows:
Ph: 07 5552 8324 Fax: 07 5552 8067 Email: K.Pitt@griffith.edu.au