http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/wwf-report-global-wildlife-populations-down-by-half-since-1970-1.2782031
QuoteWWF report: Global wildlife populations down by half since 1970
Opportunity to 'develop sustainably' must be seized, WWF director says
The world populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles fell overall by 52 per cent between 1970 and 2010, far faster than previously thought, the World Wildlife Fund said on Tuesday.
The conservation group's Living Planet Report, published every two years, said humankind's demands were now 50 per cent more than nature can bear, with trees being felled, groundwater pumped and carbon dioxide emitted faster than Earth can recover.
"This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live," Ken Norris, Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London, said in a statement.
However, there was still hope if politicians and businesses took the right action to protect nature, the report said.
"It is essential that we seize the opportunity – while we still can – to develop sustainably and create a future where people can live and prosper in harmony with nature," said WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini.
Preserving nature was not just about protecting wild places but also about safeguarding the future of humanity, "indeed, our very survival," he said.
Biggest declines in tropical regions
The report's finding on the populations of vertebrate wildlife found that the biggest declines were in tropical regions, especially Latin America. The WWF's so-called "Living Planet Index" is based on trends in 10,380 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species.
The average 52 per cent decline was much bigger than previously reported, partly because earlier studies had relied more on readily available information from North America and Europe, WWF said. The same report two years ago put the decline at 28 per cent between 1970 and 2008.
The worst decline was among populations of freshwater species, which fell by 76 per cent over the four decades to 2010, while marine and terrestrial numbers both fell by 39 per cent.
'Ecological footprints'
The main reasons for declining populations were the loss of natural habitats, exploitation through hunting or fishing, and climate change.
To gauge the variations between different countries' environmental impact, the report measured how big an "ecological footprint" each one had and how much productive land and water area, or "biocapacity", each country accounted for.
Kuwaitis had the biggest ecological footprint, meaning they consume and waste more resources per head than any other nation, the report said, followed by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
"If all people on the planet had the footprint of the average resident of Qatar, we would need 4.8 planets. If we lived the lifestyle of a typical resident of the USA, we would need 3.9 planets," the report said.
Many poorer countries - including India, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - had an ecological footprint that was well within the planet's ability to absorb their demands.
The report also measured how close the planet is to nine so-called "planetary boundaries", thresholds of "potentially catastrophic changes to life as we know it".
Three such thresholds have already been crossed – biodiversity, carbon dioxide levels and nitrogen pollution from fertilisers. Two more were in danger of being breached – ocean acidification and phosphorus levels in freshwater.
"Given the pace and scale of change, we can no longer exclude the possibility of reaching critical tipping points that could abruptly and irreversibly change living conditions on Earth," the report said.
Enough with the wrestling shit Sweetass.
I was expecting a wrestling joke within the first three comments. Languish has become too predictable.
Quote from: Syt on September 30, 2014, 01:21:15 PM
I was expecting a wrestling joke within the first three comments. Languish has become too predictable.
How 20th century.
Pity I thought we were doing better. Or maybe we are and we just need to do betterer.
Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2014, 01:31:52 PM
Pity I thought we were doing better. Or maybe we are and we just need to do betterer.
At least I tried. Jesus.
Quote from: The Brain on September 30, 2014, 01:42:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2014, 01:31:52 PM
Pity I thought we were doing better. Or maybe we are and we just need to do betterer.
At least I tried. Jesus.
:lol:
Still too many damned insects :angry:
Quote from: derspiess on September 30, 2014, 01:48:37 PM
Still too many damned insects :angry:
Especially those damn stinkbugs.
They need to gather the last plants and animals and put them in a spaceship. Then could have robots help the human caretakers. All that would work well until Bruce Dern goes nuts.
No worries; the cute little robots would look after the plants and ultimately seed the rest of the galaxy :cool:
Quote from: PDH on September 30, 2014, 05:17:50 PM
They need to gather the last plants and animals and put them in a spaceship. Then could have robots help the human caretakers. All that would work well until Bruce Dern goes nuts.
I loved that movie.
Quote from: The Brain on September 30, 2014, 01:42:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2014, 01:31:52 PM
Pity I thought we were doing better. Or maybe we are and we just need to do betterer.
At least I tried. Jesus.
:lol: It works on so many levels.
Quote from: Ed Anger on September 30, 2014, 05:08:26 PM
Especially those damn stinkbugs.
DUDE. Those fucking things are in my office at work! I told my admin to call the property management company about them on Monday. Of course nobody has shown up yet. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Caliga on September 30, 2014, 07:50:33 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on September 30, 2014, 05:08:26 PM
Especially those damn stinkbugs.
DUDE. Those fucking things are in my office at work! I told my admin to call the property management company about them on Monday. Of course nobody has shown up yet. :rolleyes:
I've managed to contain them outside the vital interior of Festung Monkeybutt, but the outer fortifications Garage, Workshop and Sunroom have fallen.
Visiting Black Kitty has made a sport of batting the, on the deck and patio.
But what about the deer??????? :lol:
Ain't no shortage of deer roadkill around here.
You know what there's actually a lot more of lately? Coyotes.
Do wildlife populations actually provide anything for the environment, aside from ecological reasons?
QuoteMany poorer countries - including India, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - had an ecological footprint that was well within the planet's ability to absorb their demands.
Yes, those are great models of ecological sustainability, especially the DRC with its fertility rate of 6. :lol:
India is experiencing massive environmental disasters so I am not sure where that came from. Maybe disasters per capita were low.
Quote from: garbon on September 30, 2014, 08:21:08 PM
Do wildlife populations actually provide anything for the environment, aside from ecological reasons?
:lol:
Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2014, 09:29:11 PM
India is experiencing massive environmental disasters so I am not sure where that came from. Maybe disasters per capita were low.
I guess they're looking at resource consumption per capita and whether or not it replenishes.
One thing that isnt mentioned in the news report in the OP is that the reason this number is so much bigger than previous estimates is that the researchers used a different methodology. Whether or not the methodology is more accurate is something I dont know. If it is more accurate then this is a very scary number.
Quote from: Syt on September 30, 2014, 11:16:18 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2014, 09:29:11 PM
India is experiencing massive environmental disasters so I am not sure where that came from. Maybe disasters per capita were low.
I guess they're looking at resource consumption per capita and whether or not it replenishes.
It's the per capita bit that's silly, since having lots of babies doesn't increase available resources. If the whole world was as crowded as India, we'd be fucked.
Quote from: Caliga on September 30, 2014, 08:18:19 PM
Ain't no shortage of deer roadkill around here.
You know what there's actually a lot more of lately? Coyotes.
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/26664652/coyote-hit-by-car-gets-stuck-in-bumper
For the CdM crowd, the story has a happy ending. :)
In related news...
That's a lot of walrus right there....
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adn.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flead_item_image_wide%2Fpublic%2FPt%2520Lay%2520Walrus%252002-2.jpg%3Fitok%3DrzOZ4xUO&hash=0600de8f9ca8205d3aae01d49e4f419d750899a0)
http://www.adn.com/article/20140930/biologists-spot-estimated-35000-walruses-crowded-land-near-point-lay
Katmai at the beach.
It's Halloween season, so let's have an update to this horror story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622
QuoteWorld wildlife 'falls by 58% in 40 years'
The Living Planet assessment, by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, suggests that if the trend continues that decline could reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020.
The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses.
Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines.
Dr Mike Barrett. head of science and policy at WWF, said: "It's pretty clear under 'business as usual' we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we've reached a point where there isn't really any excuse to let this carry on.
"We know what the causes are and we know the scale of the impact that humans are having on nature and on wildlife populations - it really is now down to us to act."
However the methodology of the report has been criticised.
The Living Planet Report is published every two years and aims to provide an assessment of the state of the world's wildlife.
This analysis looked at 3,700 different species of birds, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles - about 6% of the total number of vertebrate species in the world.
The team collected data from peer-reviewed studies, government statistics and surveys collated by conservation groups and NGOs.
Any species with population data going back to 1970, with two or more time points (to show trends) was included in the study.
The researchers then analysed how the population sizes had changed over time.
Some of this information was weighted to take into account the groups of animals that had a great deal of data (there are many records on Arctic and near Arctic birds, for example) or very little data (tropical amphibians, for example). The report authors said this was to make sure a surplus of information about declines in some animals did not skew the overall picture.
The last report, published in 2014, estimated that the world's wildlife populations had halved over the last 40 years.
This assessment suggests that the trend has continued: since 1970, populations have declined by an average of 58%.
Dr Barrett said some groups of animals had fared worse than others.
"We do see particularly strong declines in the freshwater environment - for freshwater species alone, the decline stands at 81% since 1970. This is related to the way water is used and taken out of fresh water systems, and also the fragmentation of freshwater systems through dam building, for example."
It also highlighted other species, such as African elephants , which have suffered huge declines in recent years with the increase in poaching, and sharks, which are threatened by overfishing.
The researchers conclude that vertebrate populations are declining by an average of 2% each year, and warn that if nothing is done, wildlife populations could fall by 67% (below 1970 levels) by the end of the decade.
Dr Robin Freeman, head of ZSL's Indicators & Assessments Unit, said: "But that's assuming things continue as we expect. If pressures - overexploitation, illegal wildlife trade, for example - increase or worsen, then that trend may be worse.
"But one of the things I think is most important about these stats, these trends are declines in the number of animals in wildlife populations - they are not extinctions. By and large they are not vanishing, and that presents us with an opportunity to do something about it."
However, Living Planet reports have drawn some criticisms.
Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation ecology at Duke University in the United States, said that while wildlife was in decline, there were too many gaps in the data to boil population loss down to a single figure.
"There are some numbers [in the report] that are sensible, but there are some numbers that are very, very sketchy," he told BBC News.
"For example, if you look at where the data comes from, not surprisingly, it is massively skewed towards western Europe.
"When you go elsewhere, not only do the data become far fewer, but in practice they become much, much sketchier... there is almost nothing from South America, from tropical Africa, there is not much from the tropics, period. Any time you are trying to mix stuff like that, it is is very very hard to know what the numbers mean.
"They're trying to pull this stuff in a blender and spew out a single number.... It's flawed."
But Dr Freeman said the team had taken the best data possible from around the world.
"It's completely true that in some regions and in some groups, like tropical amphibians for example, we do have a lack of data. But that's because there is a lack of data.
"We're confident that the method we are using is the best method to present an overall estimate of population decline.
"It's entirely possible that species that aren't being monitored as effectively may be doing much worse - but I'd be very surprised if they were doing much better than we observed. "
Quote from: Caliga on September 30, 2014, 07:50:33 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on September 30, 2014, 05:08:26 PM
Especially those damn stinkbugs.
DUDE. Those fucking things are in my office at work! I told my admin to call the property management company about them on Monday. Of course nobody has shown up yet. :rolleyes:
odd way to talk about collegues :p
It would really help if we collected the useless third of humanity and put them on a giant "Ark" ship and send them to Mars, with assurances that we'll join them eventually.
Quote from: Syt on October 30, 2016, 02:37:33 AM
It's Halloween season, so let's have an update to this horror story.
Nobody cares, man.
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 30, 2016, 04:17:02 AM
It would really help if we collected the useless third of humanity and put them on a giant "Ark" ship and send them to Mars, with assurances that we'll join them eventually.
Ah, someone else who's read "the Marching Morons." :)
Quote from: grumbler on October 30, 2016, 08:26:53 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 30, 2016, 04:17:02 AM
It would really help if we collected the useless third of humanity and put them on a giant "Ark" ship and send them to Mars, with assurances that we'll join them eventually.
Ah, someone else who's read "the Marching Morons." :)
More likely a reference to the Golgafrinchan Ark in Hitchhiker's Guide ot the Galaxy: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B
Though it might be that Adams got his inspiration from Marching Morons.
Quote from: Syt on October 30, 2016, 02:37:33 AM
It's Halloween season, so let's have an update to this horror story.
:hmm:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/10/millions-of-years-mammal-evolution-lost-news/?user.testname=none
QuoteHuman-caused extinctions have set mammals back millions of years
Mammals took over the world after the last big extinction event. Now, one mammal is undoing all of that—us.
IT'S OFTEN SAID that extinction is the rule, rather than the exception—after all, 99.9 percent of all species that have ever existed on Earth have gone extinct. In a sense, that adage is true. Life on this planet has toughed it out through five mass extinction events, in which huge numbers of species disappeared during relatively short periods of time. After each, life eventually rebounded.
The keyword in that last sentence is eventually, though. Many scientists say we're in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, with species dying off 100 times faster than they have in the past. And, according to a new study, it'll take several million years for mammals to bounce back from the extinctions that have been occurring because of us.
The scale of the losses
"No matter how you look at it, it is going to take a long time for mammals to recover," explains Matt Davis, a paleontologist with Aarhus University's Centre for Biodiversity in A Changing World (BIOCHANGE) in Denmark and lead author on the paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Davis, with the help of ecologists Søren Faurby and Jens-Christian Svenning, using funding from the Carlsberg Foundation, set out to determine just how much evolutionary history has been lost in the mammal lineage alone since the rise of modern humans after the last ice age (roughly, in the past 130,000 years). In addition to counting the number of mammal species that have gone extinct (about 300, in case you were curious), they determined how evolutionarily distinct each species is—that is, the amount of time it spent evolving independently, or in other words, its phylogenetic diversity.
If you think of life like a tree, then this evolutionary uniqueness is akin to the length of the branch for each species or group of species. The longer the branch, the more the species have changed since splitting of from their shared ancestors. According to the team's models, in the past couple hundred thousand years, we've lost about two and a half billion years of evolutionary history.
"With the extinction of so many megafauna, we've lost both a whole chunk of functional space and some of the longest branches on the evolutionary tree," Davis explains. "This kind of pattern isn't common in the extinctions we know of from the fossil record, so we are entering uncharted territory."
The authors calculated that given the current rate of extinctions, we'll lose even more mammals in the next 50 years, and it'll take 3 to 5 million years to once again reach today's biodiversity levels. If we want to go back to the level of mammal diversity that existed before our species, that'll take 5 to 7 million years. Plus, since big body sizes develop more slowly than small ones, it will take even longer to recover the loss of diversity in large mammals like mammoths that occurred between 2,000 and 50,000 years ago. And those are the "best case scenarios," Svenning says.
Weighing what matters
"Any study like this is always something of a 'back of the envelope' study because there are so many moving parts, but the authors pulled it all together wonderfully," says evolutionary ecologist Will Pearse from Utah State University, who was not associated with the research. The findings aren't all that surprising to him, but he's still upset by them and says he "shuddered" when he read the part about how long recovery could take. "This study shows we're on the brink of losing so much diversity it may not even recover within the lifetime of our own species," he says. "And if that isn't cause for concern, I don't know what is."
Evolutionary biologist Arne Mooers from Simon Fraser University in Canada, too, found the paper unsurprising but sobering, and wonders how the findings will inform conservation policy going forward. "That is the 20,000-dollar question, because it gets to the heart of what conservation biologists are actually trying to conserve," Mooers says.
Still, it's unclear how to bridge the divide between research and conservation policy. "So far, phylogenetic diversity has mostly been an academic issue and hasn't been used much with conservationists on the ground," Davis explains, and he feels that should change. "Phylogenetic diversity isn't the only metric we should be using, but it is one we should be using a lot more."
Still, there's only so much time and money to go around, so studies like this inevitably raise questions about how those resources should be allocated says Christopher Lean, a philosopher of science at Australian National University who was not a part of the research team. He says the paper is "critical" for conservation science, as it highlights the importance of preserving evolutionary diversity.
"We are currently losing lineages with unique evolutionary history at a devastating rate," he says. "When we lose distinct species we lose evolutionary heritage and unique possibilities held within this heritage."
Pearse says he doesn't see these findings as changing how conservation is conducted so much as underscoring the urgency and magnitude of the task. "For me, the saddest part of this is all the history we are losing," he says. "When we kill off a species, we are depriving our children of millions of years of unique, unbroken history."
We're much less flippant about the protection of ancient human artifacts, he points out. "Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old, and so we would never destroy that, but 5,000 years barely registers in comparison with the shortest twigs on the mammalian tree of life that we are so willing to snap off."
That's not fair. Mammals we eat are doing great too. Come on nature, make yourself tastier, it's your only hope.
Mammals the Chinese eat, not so much.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 17, 2018, 11:02:26 AM
Mammals the Chinese eat, not so much.
Dogs and cats are doing fine.
I was speaking of rhinos and tigers.
I was being facetious.
Long article on NYT about the massive drop in insect populations in the past few decades and the influence on other populations, and also how little we actually know about insect populations: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
Some excerpts:
QuoteWhen his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car's windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn't see through it. But all that seemed distant now. He couldn't recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield; he even wondered, vaguely, whether car manufacturers had invented some fancy new coating to keep off insects.
QuoteIn the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period. With other, less-studied insect species, one butterfly researcher told me, "all we can do is wave our arms and say, 'It's not here anymore!' "
QuoteAnyone who has returned to a childhood haunt to find that everything somehow got smaller knows that humans are not great at remembering the past accurately. This is especially true when it comes to changes to the natural world. It is impossible to maintain a fixed perspective, as Heraclitus observed 2,500 years ago: It is not the same river, but we are also not the same people.
A 1995 study, by Peter H. Kahn and Batya Friedman, of the way some children in Houston experienced pollution summed up our blindness this way: "With each generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation takes that amount as the norm." In decades of photos of fishermen holding up their catch in the Florida Keys, the marine biologist Loren McClenachan found a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, which is often called "shifting baseline syndrome." The fish got smaller and smaller, to the point where the prize catches were dwarfed by fish that in years past were piled up and ignored. But the smiles on the fishermen's faces stayed the same size. The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.
QuotePeople who studied fish found that the fish had fewer mayflies to eat. Ornithologists kept finding that birds that rely on insects for food were in trouble: eight in 10 partridges gone from French farmlands; 50 and 80 percent drops, respectively, for nightingales and turtledoves. Half of all farmland birds in Europe disappeared in just three decades.
QuoteThe study included data from the 1970s and from the early 2010s, when a tropical ecologist named Brad Lister returned to the rain forest [on Puerto Rico] where he had studied lizards — and, crucially, their prey — 40 years earlier. Lister set out sticky traps and swept nets across foliage in the same places he had in the 1970s, but this time he and his co-author, Andres Garcia, caught much, much less: 10 to 60 times less arthropod biomass than before. (It's easy to read that number as 60 percent less, but it's sixtyfold less: Where once he caught 473 milligrams of bugs, Lister was now catching just eight milligrams.) "It was, you know, devastating," Lister told me. But even scarier were the ways the losses were already moving through the ecosystem, with serious declines in the numbers of lizards, birds and frogs. The paper reported "a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web."
Cool. There hasn't been a mass extinction of insects since the Permian-Triassic. Actually that was the only mass extinction of insects.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 01, 2018, 02:50:17 PM
Cool. There hasn't been a mass extinction of insects since the Permian-Triassic. Actually that was the only mass extinction of insects.
Yeah...that's really a bad fucking sign.
More on the insect decline:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47198576
QuoteGlobal insect decline may see 'plague of pests'
A scientific review of insect numbers suggests that 40% of species are undergoing "dramatic rates of decline" around the world.
The study says that bees, ants and beetles are disappearing eight times faster than mammals, birds or reptiles.
But researchers say that some species, such as houseflies and cockroaches, are likely to boom.
The general insect decline is being caused by intensive agriculture, pesticides and climate change.
to many other species, including humans.
They provide food for birds, bats and small mammals; they pollinate around 75% of the crops in the world; they replenish soils and keep pest numbers in check.
Many other studies in recent years have shown that individual species of insects, such as bees, have suffered huge declines, particularly in developed economies.
But this new paper takes a broader look.
Published in the journal Biological Conservation, it reviews 73 existing studies from around the world published over the past13 years.
The researchers found that declines in almost all regions may lead to the extinction of 40% of insects over the next few decades. One-third of insect species are classed as Endangered.
"The main factor is the loss of habitat, due to agricultural practices, urbanisation and deforestation," lead author Dr Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, from the University of Sydney, told BBC News.
"Second is the increasing use of fertilisers and pesticides in agriculture worldwide and contamination with chemical pollutants of all kinds. Thirdly, we have biological factors, such as invasive species and pathogens; and fourthly, we have climate change, particularly in tropical areas where it is known to have a big impact."
Some of the highlights of study include the recent, rapid decline of flying insects in Germany, and the massive drop in numbers in tropical forests in Puerto Rico, linked to rising global temperatures.
Other experts say the findings are "gravely sobering".
"It's not just about bees, or even about pollination and feeding ourselves - the declines also include dung beetles that recycle waste and insects like dragonflies that start life in rivers and ponds," said Matt Shardlow from UK campaigners Buglife.
"It is becoming increasingly obvious our planet's ecology is breaking and there is a need for an intense and global effort to halt and reverse these dreadful trends. Allowing the slow eradication of insect life to continue is not a rational option."
The authors are concerned about the impact of insect decline up along the food chain. With many species of birds, reptiles and fish depending on insects as their main food source, it's likely that these species may also be wiped out as a result.
While some of our most important insect species are in retreat, the review also finds that a small number of species are likely to be able to adapt to changing conditions and do well.
"Fast-breeding pest insects will probably thrive because of the warmer conditions, because many of their natural enemies, which breed more slowly, will disappear, " said Prof Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex who was not involved in the review.
"It's quite plausible that we might end up with plagues of small numbers of pest insects, but we will lose all the wonderful ones that we want, like bees and hoverflies and butterflies and dung beetles that do a great job of disposing of animal waste."
Prof Goulson said that some tough, adaptable, generalist species - like houseflies and cockroaches - seem to be able to live comfortably in a human-made environment and have evolved resistance to pesticides.
He added that while the overall message was alarming, there were things that people could do, such as making their gardens more insect friendly, not using pesticides and buying organic food.
More research is also badly needed as 99% of the evidence for insect decline comes from Europe and North America with almost nothing from Africa or South America.
Ultimately, if huge numbers of insects disappear, they will be replaced but it will take a long, long time.
"If you look at what happened in the major extinctions of the past, they spawned massive adaptive radiations where the few species that made it through adapted and occupied all the available niches and evolved into new species," Prof Goulson told BBC News.
"So give it a million years and I've no doubt there will be a whole diversity of new creatures that will have popped up to replace the ones wiped out in the 20th and 21st centuries.
"Not much consolation for our children, I'm afraid."
Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636
Quote from: Syt on February 12, 2019, 06:35:51 AM
.....
snip.
Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636
Thanks for that Syt, an interesting and disturbing read.
(https://pricetags.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/new-yorker-shareholder-value.jpg)
https://news.ubc.ca/2020/07/21/popular-seafood-species-in-sharp-decline-around-the-world/
QuotePopular seafood species in sharp decline around the world
Jul 21, 2020 | For more information, contact Valentina Ruiz Leotaud
Fish market favourites such as orange roughy, common octopus and pink conch are among the species of fish and invertebrates in rapid decline around the world, according to new research.
In the first study of its kind, researchers at UBC, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the University of Western Australia assessed the biomass—the weight of a given population in the water—of more than 1,300 fish and invertebrate populations. They discovered global declines, some severe, of many popularly consumed species.
Of the populations analyzed, 82 per cent were found to be below levels that can produce maximum sustainable yields, due to being caught at rates exceeding what can be regrown. Of these, 87 populations were found to be in the "very bad" category, with biomass levels at less than 20 per cent of what is needed to maximize sustainable fishery catches. This also means that fishers are catching less and less fish and invertebrates over time, even if they fish longer and harder.
"This is the first-ever global study of long-term trends in the population biomass of exploited marine fish and invertebrates for all coastal areas on the planet," said Maria "Deng" Palomares, lead author of the study and manager of the Sea Around Us initiative in UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries."When we looked at how the populations of major species have been doing in the past 60 years, we discovered that, at present, most of their biomasses are well below the level that can produce optimal catches."
To reach their findings, the researchers applied computer-intensive stock assessment methods known as CMSY and BSMY to the comprehensive catch data by marine ecosystem reconstructed by the Sea Around Us for the 1950-2014 period.
The greatest declines in stocks were found in the southern temperate and polar Indian Ocean and the southern polar Atlantic Ocean, where populations shrunk by well over 50 per cent since 1950.
While much of globe showed declining trends in fish and invertebrates, the analysis found a few exceptions. One of these was the Northern Pacific Ocean where population biomass increased by 800 per cent in its polar and subpolar zones, and by about 150 per cent in its temperate zone.
Despite these pockets of improvement, the overall picture remains cause for concern, according to co-author Daniel Pauly, principal investigator at Sea Around Us.
"Despite the exceptions, our findings support previous suggestions of systematic and widespread overfishing of the coastal and continental shelf waters in much of the world over the last 60-plus years," said Pauly. "Thus, pathways for improvements in effective fisheries management are needed, and such measures should be driven not only by clearly set total allowable annual catch limits, but also by well-enforced and sizeable no-take marine protected areas to allow stocks to rebuild."
"Fishery biomass trends of exploited fish populations in marine ecoregions, climatic zones and ocean basins" was published in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"
I suppose marine-based foods will nearly always be unique in that it is almost the equivalent of trying to live-off-the-land without really developing (or being able to develop) anything similar to a land-based system of agriculture in aquaculture. It's almost as if we tried to sustain wildlife hunting as a effective means of contributing to our food supply. Naturally, the continental shelf waters would be the hardest hit, as I imagine that is where most of the marine life is (easier access to the sun/food supply, and all).
We'll probably either have to look at ways to make aquaculture/fish-farming either far more viable and widespread (while balancing the environmental effects that will have, of course)...or accept minimizing and eliminating marine-based foods more and more from our diets.
Personally, I blame all you millennial sushi snobs. :mad:
I never had conch. is it good? should I find some before its gone :P
Btw, surprised the study got released. :P
(https://triviahappy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/06062014soylentoceanographic.jpg)
Quote from: HVC on July 22, 2020, 11:13:38 AM
I never had conch. is it good? should I find some before its gone :P
It's absolutely delicious. When I was in Turks and Caicos I ate the shit out of conch fritters and conch salad.