The world's oceans have been fished nearly to the limits, after decades of fishermen using bigger boats and more advanced hunting technologies, according to a new report.
"Although worldwide environmental degradation of the oceans contributes to the decline of marine life, overfishing is the primary cause of dwindling fish populations," said the report, released Saturday by the non-profit Worldwatch Institute. "The oceans are not the unlimited reservoir of lowcost food they were once considered."
A 5 percent decline in the worldwide catch since 1989 is due largely to more people fishing in large-scale, industrial operations, often in waters that are becoming more polluted, the report said.
Meanwhile, world population is growing at 1.6 percent annually, equivalent to the population of Mexico being added to the world each year, the report said.
"This is a global problem that has already caused armed confrontations between fishing nations, gunfire between fishers and hunger in the developing world," said Pete Weber, author of the report, "Net Loss: Fish, Jobs and the Marine Environment."
"If current mismanagement continues, we can expect a future in which millions of fishers are out of work. ... A future in which traditional fishing cultures from Nova Scotia to Malaysia disappear," he said.
After decades of rapid growth, all the planet's major fishing grounds are at or beyond their limits, and many have already suffered serious declines, the report said.
All fishing grounds in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean and Black Seas are in decline after peaking between 1973 and 1991, the Institute said. Only the Indian Ocean fisheries are still increasing total output, although they are unlikely to expand much more and could be poised for serious declines, the institue said.
The total catch has shrunk by more than 30 percent in four of the hardest-hit areas -- the Pacific's east-central region and the Atlantic's northwest, west-central and southeast sectors.
The supply of fishery products grew at three times the rate of human population growth during the 1950s and '60s.
Declining catches have already cost more than 100,000 jobs in the last few years among the world's 15 to 21 million fishermen.
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