Saving Seafood

Researchers make troubling discovery while assessing marine life: ‘The extinction risk is significantly higher’

September 30, 2024 — Many fish species are finding it harder to survive because of warmer ocean temperatures, overfishing, and increasing plastic pollution. In a troubling new study, French researchers found the number of fish species at risk of extinction is five times higher than previously thought.

What’s happening?

Researchers from the MARBEC Unit (the Marine Biodiversity, Exploitation, and Conservation Unit) in France predicted, based on their models, that nearly 13% of marine teleost fish species — which include salmon, tuna, catfish, and cod — are at risk of dying out, a fivefold increase from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s previous estimate of 2.5%.

“Our analysis of 13,195 marine fish species reveals that the extinction risk is significantly higher than the IUCN’s initial estimates,” Nicolas Loiseau, one of the study’s lead researchers, said in a news release in the Public Library of Science, via Phys.org.

While the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species tracks over 150,000 species to assess their extinction risk status and inform conservation policies (as the release reported), many species have slipped under the radar.

Read the full article at The Cool Down

Tuna recovering – IUCN Red List

September 7, 2021 — The populations of four of the most commercially fished tuna species are showing signs of recovery but rising sea levels mean the Komodo dragon is now classed as endangered on the latest Red List of species at risk of extinction.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) that compiles the list is also stepping up monitoring of marine species such as coral and deep sea snails to see how they are impacted by climate change and threats such as deep sea mining.

“Ocean species tend to be neglected as they are under the water and people don’t really pay attention to what is happening to them,” Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List unit, told Reuters.

But as catch quotas and efforts to target illegal fishing showed signs of working, the outlook for tuna appears to be improving.

Atlantic bluefin tuna, a huge warm-blooded migratory predator that is prized for sushi and can sell for thousands of dollars, jumped three categories from “endangered” to “least concern” on the list, although some regional stocks remained severely depleted.

Read the full story at Reuters