March 31, 2016 — Fish populations around the world have been decimated by overfishing — but new research suggests that this could soon change if the world got its act together.
Fishermen around the world could haul around 16 million more metric tons of fish than they do today and generate $53 billion more in profits while more than doubling the amount of fish left in the oceans by 2050 if they adopted sustainable fishing practices, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Those practices would involve a so-called “catch share” model of fisheries management. In catch share systems, regulators figure out the maximum number of fish that can be hauled from the sea without hurting future fish populations. The regulators then divvy up that amount of fish into shares that are distributed to individual fishermen. Each fisherman has a set amount of fish they are can catch in the year.
“If you can reform fisheries and eliminate their competitive nature, there’s enormous room for profits, catch, and abundance,” said Ray Hilborn, a professor of marine biology and fisheries science at the University of Washington who co-authored the study with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Environmental Defense Fund.