Fisheries outlook remains bleak in Canada
In other countries, some species showed recovery after restrictions imposed, study finds
By Amy Minsky, Canwest News ServiceJuly 31, 2009
Steps taken to curb overfishing are finally showing signs of success in many of the world's fisheries, according to a report released Thursday, but the news isn't so good in Eastern Canada, where there have been "dramatic stock collapses."
The assessment report, conducted by an international team of fishery scientists, suggests that five of the 10 large marine ecosystems examined are showing improvement. None are in Canada.
Recovery rates in Eastern Canada are slow or non-existent, said Boris Worm of Halifax's Dalhousie University, a co-author of the report.
"We're losing entire species," Worm said. "Many are either no longer economically or ecologically viable. We're running the risk of destabilizing the entire ecosystem."
Two-thirds of traditional fish resources in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have collapsed; meaning the abundance has decreased 90 per cent from its un-fished state. Because of the collapse of so many species in Eastern Canada, different fish -- many of which have no commercial value -- are now fuelling the area's fisheries.
In other ecosystems, according to the study, at least some species showed recovery when the amount being fished was reduced. This was the case with haddock and scallops off New England.
In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, however, recovery is not occurring. Worm said that could be because of the "incredibly low level these resources are at."
Researchers focused on the Atlantic fishery and collected little data from Canada's West Coast.
The state of Eastern Canada's fisheries should be taken as a warning that measures to counter overfishing must be implemented, Worm said.
"It demonstrates that you can't recover at just any point in time," he said. "When fisheries are depleted to 0.1 per cent of its former abundance, like the Newfoundland cod, it may become very difficult or impossible to recover that resource."
The two-year study, led by Worm and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, assembled data from fisheries around the globe and compared the effectiveness of different management regimes. Their hope, they said, was to reveal methods to help fisheries recover and, ultimately, to help solve the overfishing crisis.
The study was a followup to Worm's 2006 paper in the journal Science. That paper described an increasing collapse of seafood stocks since the 1950s and forecast if that trend continued, all commercial fisheries could be lost by 2048.
One of the keys to reversing this trend, Hilborn said, is using effective management -- such as combinations of quotas and ocean zoning -- to recover species on the verge of collapse. This has been successful in several ecosystems in the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand.
The assessment looked at stock assessments and survey data, and found excessive fishing pressure and below-target stocks were common in eight of the 10 ecosystems analysed.
Only Alaska and New Zealand had not been subject to excessive fishing pressure and had never declined below target levels.
Five of the other eight ecosystems had been overfished in the past, but the fraction harvested had since declined into the target range.
"This means we now find that seven of the 10 systems are being fished responsibly," Hilborn said. "And for five of them, this represents an improvement."
As for Canada, Worm said, fishermen have to be more cautious.
"Refrain from fishing potentially endangered species," he said. "We have to assess situations before removing fish."
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