According to the report only 17 percent of the world’s fisheries should be considered capable of any growth in catch at all. It also said that there is very little room for further expansion of global fishing efforts. Courtney Sakai, senior campaign director at Oceana, informed that the world’s fishing fleets can no longer expect to find new sources of fish. He added that if world nations want healthy and abundant fishery resources, they must improve management and decrease the political and economic pressures that lead to overfishing.
Oceana’s report is based on data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The report finds 58 percent of the world’s fish stocks are being fished at or beyond sustainable levels, 24 percent of the stocks have an unknown status and only 17 percent are considered underexploited or moderately exploited. The report revealed that major emerging fishing grounds, including the Southern Oceans, the western Indian Ocean and the southern Atlantic Ocean, have large numbers of fish stocks with unknown status, ranging from more than 50 percent to nearly 75 percent.
Sakai opined that the large numbers of fisheries with unknown status in major emerging regions is particularly alarming. According to Sakai these fisheries are at great risk of overfishing and depletion, which threatens the economic stability and social welfare of the people and communities that depend on the resource. The report assessed that many of the areas with high levels of unknown stocks also have high levels of exploitation on stocks.
It is true that fisheries subsidies create strong economic incentives to overfish and undermine good fishery management. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently engaged in a dedicated negotiation on fisheries subsidies as part of the Doha trade round to reduce and control subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.
