Boris Worm is assistant professor of marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, informed that the problem has gone away as there are a range of solutions that have been proven to work, and that’s really important. He told that in 2007 or 2008, there have been more collapses of fish stocks than ever before.
As the exploitation have been lowered the recovery of the over fished stocks are visible. He opined that broad recovery we’re seeing in three places: California, then some in New England and also in Iceland. Those have been managed for recovery for a while, meaning a decade or two. Then there’s other tools, such as the certification of sustainable fisheries and catch shares, where fishermen take a more long-term view because now they own part of the catch, they’re guaranteed a part of the catch, and they don’t have to compete with other fishermen anymore.
Dr Worm rightly said that the biomass of fish is just so low that it takes a very long to recover, and although the rate of fishing has dropped here, at least on those species that have collapsed, the recovery is very slow or nonexistent. In some cases, the ecosystem has changed so much that it does not support those recovering fish stocks anymore.
