Governments must step up protection of fishing limits in international waters to prevent fish species being killed off, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said yesterday.
International waters account for more than half the world's surface, yet many governments are ignoring controls and increasing catches, while pirate fishing is also common, said Simon Cripps, head of the WWF's marine program.
"If they're not addressed now, you won't have livelihoods, you won't have fish stocks," Cripps said. "You're seeing it already in the choice of fish in your shops."
In its latest report on the state of the world fisheries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that a quarter of the fish stocks it monitors were overexploited or depleted. A further half were fully exploited, meaning they were producing catches close to their maximum sustainable limits.
There has been a consistent upward trend in the proportion of overexploited and depleted stocks, from about 10 percent in the mid-1970s to almost 25 percent in the early 2000s, the FAO report said.
According to a report released yesterday by the Switzerland-based WWF, regulations under so-called regional fisheries management organizations need to be tightened to restrict any overfishing.
The management organizations "are constrained predominantly by the lack of political will, commercial motivations or the capacity of their members," said the 56-page report.
The WWF report was released before a meeting in New York when governments will review the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, the legal framework for management of fish populations in the high seas, which are further out from coastal areas and so not under national government control.
Countries like Australia, Britain and Canada should be taking more responsibility, setting examples and putting pressure on other states, Cripps said in an interview in Geneva.
Some regional agreements, such as the Antarctic Convention, do a good job of protecting fish stocks as well as the rest of the environment, Cripps said.
But others are failing.
Some signatories to a North Atlantic agreement are ignoring their fishing quotas, he explained. Some countries have not even signed up to such treaties and are severely undermining the efforts of responsible governments.
The Grand Banks off Canada's east coast are suffering huge declines in cod stocks, devastating the income of coastal communities, Cripps said. This is happening even though Canada's government is protecting stocks in its national waters, because the Grand Banks extend into international waters where others are overfishing.
Regulations must be tightened and pirate fishing clamped down on. Otherwise, there will be few fish left for anyone to protect, Cripps said.
"It's got to stop, we've got to do it quickly," Cripps said. "There is hope, if we can get management put in place."
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