“More age complexity among species can contribute to the overall stability of a community,” researcher Lewis Barnett said
September 15, 2017 — Catching an old fish has become an increasingly rare and difficult task in today’s oceans. New research suggests fishing pressure around the globe has depleted stocks of older fish.
The findings — detailed this week in the journal Current Biology — are worrisome, as the longer fish live, the more chances they have to reproduce and replenish a species’ stock.
“From our perspective, having a broad age structure provides more chances at getting that right combination of when and where to reproduce,” Lewis Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, said in a news release.
Scientists analyzed the numbers of older fish among 63 populations across five ocean regions. They found older fish had suffered significant declines in a vast majority of the studied populations. For roughly a third of fish populating, declines among older fish measured a magnitude of more than 90 percent.