An international team of experts has issued a statement saying that small fish play big role in ocean preservation and they urged fishermen to lower their catches in order to protect marine food chains. They said that rising human exploitation of little fish – including anchovy, sardine, herring, mackerel and capelin – had had far less attention in marine research compared to big commercial species such as cod, tuna, swordfish or salmon.
Tony Smith, the lead author of the study at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, has commented that over fishing of small fish has a significant effect on other parts of the marine ecosystems. He refer to an article saying how catching small fish, as well as shrimp-like krill, can disrupt marine food chains and so affect human food supplies.
They said some stocks were harmed even by a level of catches known as the “maximum sustainable yield” (MSY) of a stock. The study said that having exploitation rates would result in much lower impacts on marine ecosystems, while still achieving 80 percent of MSY. Big catches of small fish often had damaging effects even though it might benefited other creatures lower down the food web, such as plankton, jellyfish or squid.
