WASHINGTON — February 23, 2018 — A new study published in Science Magazine found that large-scale commercial fishing covers more than 55 percent of the world’s oceans. Today, Dr. Ray Hilborn, a respected fisheries expert and professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, responded to the study in a statement, saying in part that it “does not provide any new insight on the impact of fishing on the oceans.”
“The media claims that this paper shows that fishing has a wider impact than previously known is simply wrong,” Dr. Hilborn said. “For most of the areas where there are data in this study, fish stocks are actually increasing and tuna populations are well documented and globally stable.”
Dr. Hilborn’s full statement is reproduced below:
This new study in Science using the AIS data does provide detailed information on fishing effort of specific vessels, but it does not provide anything new about the global pattern of fishing. High seas fishing for tuna, which constitutes the majority of the “footprint” shown in the Science paper has been mapped for 40 years, and the widespread nature of high seas tuna fishing is well known. The footprint of bottom trawlers has been mapped in much finer scale already in many places, and the Science paper overestimates the proportion of the seabed impacted by trawls by 10 fold.
The media claims that this paper shows that fishing has a wider impact than previously known is simply wrong. For most of the areas where there are data in this study, fish stocks are actually increasing and tuna populations are well documented and globally stable.
The comparison to agriculture fails to note that the 50 million square kilometers under agriculture have destroyed the natural ecosystem as the plow or new pasture eliminates the native plants. The areas fished, particularly for tunas, have changed very little. Fishing does not impact the primary production (plants), and in very few cases does it impact the species that graze on the primary producers. So the 50 million square kilometers of the earths’ surface that is used for agriculture is totally transformed, most of the oceans that are being fished (high seas tuna) have some changes in top predators abundance.
Certainly AIS data is very interesting and can let us look at specific things we could not do before, but it does not provide any new insight on the impact of fishing on the oceans.