I ran across this article, this morning. I worked on NOAA's Coastal Zone program in the 1970's. For me, this article merely substantiates what we were seeing thirty years ago.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20061103-9999-1n3fish.html"Declining ocean biodiversity could lead to the collapse of all commercial seafood stocks in the wild by midcentury, said a new international study that involves San Diego scientists."
Forget the word "biodiversity". Insert the word "over-harvest" and you'll be in the right ballpark.
"Third, the researchers studied commercial fishing data between 1950 and 2003 for 64 large marine ecosystems worldwide. They found that 29 percent of all marine species commercially harvested in 2003 the latest year for which statistics were available had collapsed.
The study's authors regard a fishery as collapsed when its total catch in a given year falls below 10 percent of its recorded maximum yield."
The population of the Atlantic giant tuna had already collapsed by the 1960s.
"The amount of seafood caught in the 64 ecosystems peaked in 1994 at about 84.7 million metric tons. Despite the growth of fishing fleets and the use of improved technology, total catches in these areas fell 13 percent between 1994 and 2003, the scientists said."
Sounds like what we're doing with oil. We're using it up existing oil fields faster than we're finding replacement oil fields. In this case of fishing, however, more equipment is not catching more fish.
Start more catfish farms, I guess...
Art
