Research conducted by scientists at the Pelagic Fisheries Research Program (PFRP) of the UH Mãnoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, and reported in a paper published in the December 15, 2006 issue of Science, refutes the claims that ocean ecosystems are on the brink of collapse.
Although the new research finds significant decreases in abundance of some fish stocks resulting from increased fishing, the picture is not nearly as gloomy as has been previously reported.
The paper, “Biomass, size and trophic status of top level predators in the Pacific Ocean,” is authored by four wellknown fisheries scientists: John Sibert, the PFRP's Manager; John Hampton from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community; Pierre Kleiber of NOAA Fisheries; and Mark Maunder of the InterAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission. Unlike previous studies, the paper analyses all available data for Pacific tuna fisheries from 1950-2004 to estimate the impact on the Pacific fish population that fishing has had in the past 50 years .The analysis finds that the situation of different types of top predators such as tunas and sharks varies considerably.
“Recent claims of catastrophic reduction in the biomass of top-level predators and the collapse of oceanic food chains have attracted widespread attention and provoked alarm among the lay public,” reports the paper. As lead author Sibert notes, “Fishing impacts on an ecosystem are complex.
They cannot be reduced to sound bytes. Management of ocean ecosystems in the 21st century will require comprehensive analysis and not the halfbaked approaches used in some recent papers and so widely reported in media.”
